I found it sort of poetic that, now that I have a job, I got up this morning and found an email waiting for me from the university -- rejecting me for the position I'd interviewed and had done the presentation for.
"It was meant to be," Daisy said.
It's fine, really. As good of an interview/presentation as I gave, it's not like I expected to be offered the university position. I'm sure, eventually, that if I want to get back into academia, I'll have the chance. For now, however? I have to focus on the hand I've been dealt, and that means accepting and working the job that I was offered, and for the moment I am perfectly happy with doing that.
I also think it's somewhat amusing that I expected this, and bought those new shoes for said job a few days before I actually got it.
"When it comes to the training," I asked Daisy tonight on her lunch hour, "am I allowed to wear what I want, or is it all the same sort of 'business casual' that I'd have to wear every day when I'm there normally?"
"It's the business casual," she said, looking at me as if I was nuts. "They'll send you home from training if you walk in there wearing shorts and a t-shirt. And if you get sent home during training, you generally get fired."
I looked down at myself. I was wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Looks like I'm going to have to put away a lot of that stuff soon.
"Well, I'm glad I took out all of my collared shirts and polos now," I said. "I figured I'd wear the same sorts of stuff I wore to my interviews, like the purple shirt I wore last week and all of the nice pants Dad gave me -- stuff like that."
"Yeah," she said. "That's fine. Shirts with collars, slacks, dressier shoes. No ties necessary; nobody there wears ties."
So, basically the same outfits I wore when I was on the main campus as a professor and wanted to look somewhat impressive. Okay.
This is good, as I don't know where any of my ties are. They're boxed away with the rest of my clothing that I won't need until winter; I only unpacked the stuff that I knew I'd wear over the summer...which was basically my t-shirts and button-up shirts, shorts, and my sandals. Oh, and underwear, of course.
I know roughly what my work schedule will be once I start the job, barring any unforeseen changes, and it seems reasonable and decent enough. It's actually (honestly) the best schedule I could ask for, and I hope it remains that once I actually start. I'm not going to mention it here for fear that I may jinx things. Because yeah, even though I am an educated man in his thirties, I still get somewhat superstitious about things like that.
Daisy and I long ago had a long discussion about what would happen once I got a job, especially a job that was stable and full-time work, and it boiled down to what we could and would do with our finances. I told her that first and foremost, our priority was paying the monthly household bills (obviously) which will be made much, much easier with two incomes. The second priority was to pay down our credit cards -- all of them -- as much as we could. We've been doing this now, yes, but we're still using said cards more than we're paying them off, and once I start bringing in another paycheck every payday, we won't have to worry about that as much.
The third priority we discussed was to finally get the table and chairs we need (as we will now be able to afford them) and get a larger television for the living room. My TV was fine for the small living room I had in Newton; 22 inches was perfectly fine for that place. Here? With a living room probably three times the size of that one? Yeeeeeah, not so much. We need something bigger and easier to see/hear from across the room.
The last priority is to get me a newer car. That's a big priority, yes, and it's the most expensive of all (obviously). We've discussed it, and I've even had discussions with Dad about vehicles, as Daisy's parents recently got a new, really nice SUV. However, the car has to be the last priority as it's currently infinitely more important that we pay down our credit cards first and can sock away money into our savings account once or twice a month. Well, unless the Monte Carlo dies sometime soon, anyway.
However, a lot of this has to be done, well, rather quickly. Why? Because once November rolls around, my year of student loan forbearance will be up. And with this job, I'm pretty sure I'll make more than it takes to qualify for it again. That means said forbearance will end, and I'll immediately have to start paying off monthly student loan bills. Which, obviously, I don't want to have to do right after I've started a job, but it's relatively unavoidable. So we have to do a lot of this stuff within the next few months while we can still afford to do it. We'll be a two-income household, yes, but paying student loans will take more than 1/3 of my monthly pay, I'm guessing. And if I recall correctly, forbearance goes by the yearly salary, not monthly. I cannot remember for certain, though. I'm sure I'll find out in November when it comes looming again. Daisy isn't immune to this either; while she has less to pay back in loans than I do, she's also on forbearance right now, as she applied for it a month or two after I did so that we could save money for the wedding and the move. Hers will have to be re-upped or ended eventually as well.
On the plus side? For the moment, for a while, we'll be one of those DINK families. You know, dual income, no kids. And that's exciting.
I'll find out more about the job and the schedule stuff in the next few days/weeks, I would imagine. I'm guessing they'll send out an itinerary for their new hires that will detail where they're supposed to be and when. Then again, they may just do that when one arrives for training, so who knows.
In other news, I did get to take out the Monte Carlo last night and drive it around as I'd needed to do, but the reason I did/had to wasn't a good one.
Daisy's car headlights no longer work.
No, we don't know why.
I will say this: one of them works -- the passenger side lower parking light. None of the other lights come on at all. To drive at night, she has to drive around with her high beams on (which do work) if she wants to see at all, and apparently the switch for that isn't working correctly either, as she has to hold it to keep them on instead of just hitting the switch and having them stay on. We found this out last night when she was off work and wanted to go out to pick up a few things from Walmart. We got halfway down the street before I asked, "Hon, are your lights on?"
Well, they were turned on, but they weren't working. Turn signals and hazard lights work fine, but the actual normal headlights don't. So we turned around and came home, and we took my car out. The Monte Carlo has a lot of problems and it's old, yes, but at least its damned headlights work. All of them.
When we got home she researched the problem and found out that it's fairly common, apparently -- and it could be a fuse (or several fuses) or a larger problem, such as the lights' control board (or something like that). She set up an appointment for in the morning with an auto shop that her parents and sister have used before, and we're taking it in. They also honor her extended warranty as well, which is one of the reasons she chose that place.
We don't know how much it will be to fix it. It could be a cheap fix or it could be hundreds of dollars...dollars that we don't exactly have right now. Well, we do, but we can't afford to blow all of them on the car's headlights, of all things. This is a new problem, as well; the lights were fine two or three nights ago. It's only now that they're not working correctly. Here's hoping it's something simple and cheap like fuses. Seriously.
"Well, they'll be able to tell you what it is within five seconds once they plug the computer into it," I said. "Then we'll know."
I'm going with her to the auto shop this morning to take it in; the techs there told her they'd try to fix it while we were there, but it's possible that they may need to keep it for the day. If that's the case they'll give us a ride home and I'll take her back there later to pick it up (or, conversely, take her to work tonight and pick her up in the morning if it's not done by the time her shift starts this evening). Obviously this isn't ideal for anyone involved, so we're hoping it's something simple they can fix while we're there this morning. Going by my own gut, if even one of the lights is on normally (and yes, one is), my instincts tell me it's a fuse issue. But that's just me; I could be wrong. Daisy's car is a lot newer than mine is, which is why having any problems with it whatsoever is somewhat disconcerting. It's not like either of us abuse her car -- we don't even speed in it, and she gets the oil and filters changed regularly. Hell, we just did that last week. But sometimes these things happen, I suppose, and they have to be dealt with.
"I know it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things," I told her last night, "but I know that it sucks and I know I'd be stressed out if it happened to my car. I just want you to know I understand that frustration, love."
Daisy isn't the kind of person to get stressed out about many things, let alone something so small and otherwise insignificant. She and I are very different people in that regard, as even the small things stress me out and make me twitch -- especially things that involve money and/or vehicles.
So, I suppose, we'll see what happens this morning. She also accidentally left her purse here over her lunch hour -- which has her license, wallet, and everything else in it -- so here's hoping she doesn't get pulled over on her way home this morning from work...
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