Nothing left but grunt work for the last few days, mind-numbingly tedious. But then I’m looking up the record for a book titled Voodoo Queen: The Spirited lives of Marie Laveau, a nifty enough name itself, and find its first chapter is “Who in heaven or hell, Africa or France, was Marie Leveau?”

Dunno why, but that makes me all giddy.

Fret, fuss, and bother. How do people, how have you personally, managed to get into a state where such things manage not to overwhelm you?

My mom, like most people, says you just have to trust to luck and realize that things will work out. This does not work for me. Neither do affirmations, meditations, protestations, or medications. Other people seem to manage to get by without being (visibly, at least) big balls of worry, and I want to know how they do it. Please. With cherries on top.

Got my official offer letter today. Will return my official acceptance letter in the morning. Woo!

Application for the cutest apartment was approved, the back half of the top floor of a lovely old rock-faced house. Two beds, one pink-tiled bath, very large kitchen (without, sadly, a dishwasher) and a nicely sized living room.

I rest easier now.

Imagine a rubber band made of pure, unadulterated, hyper-intensified stress.

Take a whole big bunch of those rubber bands twisted together into a tightly compacted ball.

Add more and more and more until the diameter of that ball reaches the height of the Empire State Building, including the King Kong on top.

Squish that ball down to a compact cube such that the density of the stress approaches singularity.

Stack twelve of those cubes on top of each other, and you’ll have a fair approximation of my recent mental state.

Still haven’t received my official offer letter to which I will send an official reply officially accepting the job which I’ve been verbally offered and have verbally accepted. The job which is to begin, mind, in three weeks 500 miles away.

But not 500 miles away from where I am right now, for I am in Rolla, MO, at the moment in a fit of apartment-hunting which absolutely must be completed this weekend but the completion of which is complicated by everybody wanting to run credit and background checks, which for arcane reasons cannot be done until Monday, at which point I will be back in Tuscaloosa and unable to return in order to find replacement digs in case my extant applications are rejected, which they may very well be due to my credit sucking.

And I don’t even have any money in the bank, or rather I can’t access the money I have in the bank, because my financial institution thinks it imperative to put an 11-business-day hold on out-of-state checks like the large one I deposited last week.

Oh, and there’s no way in hell my car is going to make it to Missouri, and it’s equally impossible I’ll be able to replace it any time in the next several months. I’d thought maybe it could be towed behind the moving van, but after the trip up yesterday I realized the state of the roads between St. Louis and here make that kind of a pipe dream.

And speaking of the trip up: Missouri, I am told, does not ever ever ever get hit by tornadoes. Yesterday, seven of ‘em appeared over the state, all around the St. Louis/Rolla area. This is clearly a sign from the Great Something, and it caused my 8-hour drive to stretch out to 14.

Oh, and I’m still entirely too fat, bald, and homely. Just thought I’d throw that in for the judges.

Got the verbal offer from Rolla, Missouri, and have a tentative start date of 16 October. It’s less money than I’d hope–considerably less–and not faculty or faculty-status, but it’s a start.

Now I just have to figure out how I’m going to move 500 miles away without any friends or contacts in the area (and with kind of a money crunch in the ol’ bank account) (and with an unreliable car).

or, “Thunderbird, Thunderbird, why hast thou forsaken me?”

I brought to Tuscaloosa only my laptop, and it seems to be growing cranky in its separation from the desktop. Or maybe, now that it is no longer shadowed by the dominance of what I had considered my main machine, it is petulantly attempting to display some sort of authority.

Whatever the reason, something in its whizbang innards went zing! Wednesday night and ate up my email settings, filters, inboxes, saved mail, and address books. All gone, bye-bye. This is a Very Unfortunate Incident.

Additionally, the laptop seems to have developed an extra-sensitive fontanelle, a soft spot just below the left side of the keyboard that causes complete and total crashitude should I press down a bit too hard with the base of my hand whilst typing or resting. This is a major annoyance, and probably isn’t good for the stability and longevity of the system.

Also, I have by now pretty much completely slipped back into my Bad Old Eating Habits. The tragedy of this is self-evident, and every morning I wake up saying “this is the day I’ll get back on the horse” and every night I go to bed saying “tomorrow is the day I’ll get back on the horse” and every in-between I lose will power and sense and feelings of self-worth. Grr.

There have been good bits. Reunited with Alas, which was swell, and met up with just about all the old crew at the Downtown Pub. Being around friends definitely takes out some of the sting, as does beer.

Got my official (and, amusingly, almost identically worded) rejection from Lincoln Memorial University in TN today, too. Joy, rapture, etc.

This is turning out to be much more difficult than I’d expected.

It’s official. Damn.

Maybe Rolla will come through; should know in a month or so. Start a staff position back in Tuscaloosa on Tuesday doing basically the same stuff I did in Cataloging as a student worker but for almost twice the money plus benefits. It’ll tide me over, at least.