the end is not yet

You know the feeling when you're working on a puzzle and piece after piece just falls into place without trouble? Now imagine that you've been staring at that incomplete puzzle for two years before everything started coming together.

Ever since Christa and I started seeing each other nearly two years ago, we've been doing a weird dance in time and space. We lived in the same city (Guelph) for only about a week. Then she moved back to Mississauga for the summer and we dated for two months. Then she moved to Australia and we existed in limbo. I moved to Toronto. After six months down under, she moved back to Guelph. After school ended last year I moved back to my hometown to work. She moved up to Orillia for the same reason. Then she moved back to Guelph for her fourth year and I continued living in my hometown as I commuted to school.

This is how the last month or so has unfolded:

1. I get a job I badly want. (If you've been reading, you know about this already.) It starts mid-April, runs for a year. It means I get to move back to Guelph.

2. Christa applies for a bunch of summer jobs, one of which could have her working in Manitoba. Within a couple weeks of me hearing about my job, she gets a research assistant gig in a lab on campus for the summer. Which means she'll be living in Guelph this summer too.

3. That weekend, Christa and I go see a dozen apartments in a half dozen buildings around the city. Only one is a definite no. The rest are perfectly managable, and one is perfect. Good location, space and price. We ask them to hold the apartment while we get our application together.

4. We put in our application a few days later. The next day we're approved. Last Thursday we sign the lease.

5. My contract starts April 13. The last day I need to be here at school for the paper is April 12.

6. A huge part of my revenue for the school year falls through. Yesterday I get my 2005 tax return from the government. It's four times the size of the grant that didn't come.

I humbly offer my thanks to whatever deities have been watching out for us.

Quotations are like crack for me. Which is why sites like Brainy Quote are dangerous.

Anyway, that site attributes all of the following to Albert Einstein. There are a ton more on the site, but these are the ones that stick out to me:

"Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves."

"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue."

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty."

"I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."

"I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil."

"I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed."

"If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."

"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."

"Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person. "

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

There's a clock ticking somewhere inside my head. It's been there for years and it's getting louder.

More later. Maybe.

The upside of the strike is that I'm able to spend a lot of time at the place I'll be working next year job shadowing the guy who currently has my job.

I know my paranoia over identifying details often makes for convoluted sentences like the previous one. That's not likely to change, so if it bothers you, better get used to it.

As I was saying, I'm getting a lot of excellent experience and the job hasn't even started yet.

Last Thursday I spent all day in meetings. There was one with the business and advertising managers where we set the production schedule for next year, another with the current editor in chief about transition stuff, another with all three of those plus the prepress manager and the operations manager at the local daily where we print the paper, another with the hiring committee for next year's staff and a last one with the finance and equipment committee to start the budget process for next year.

This past weekend I took part in the shortlisting of job applicants for next year's staff. Today I'm job shadowing the current editor. Tomorrow night, Saturday and Sunday we're interviewing for next year's staff.

All in all, I'm having a hell of a lot of fun.

Long, but interesting story over at Wired about Internet newsreaders.

It's been a long time since I've wanted to put my fist through a wall.

More later when I know whether I should be angry or not. But to alleviate some concern, this has nothing to do with me, Christa, or family.

My blog isn't displaying. It says I don't have permission to access it.

I'm eagerly awaiting word of whether my teachers will be striking tomorrow.

This is alarming. The Ottawa Police Association apparently has a plan to endorse mayoral and city council candidates in the city's next election.

About $1,000 disappeared from my budget for the next two months this morning.

It was what I thought I was going to get from a tuition grant through Dad's work. Discovered today that I'm no longer eligible. Turns out I'm too old. While I was still 24 when I started the academic year, I was 25 when this calendar year started. We'd thought that didn't matter. It does.

Lesson: Don't depend on what you think you know. Chances are it's wrong.

This means I'll be spending a little more time building suspension modules at the factory over the next month and a half than I'd expected. This also means it's just as well that I can't go to New York for a college journalism conference after all.

I might be able to get some money for just last semester, but I'm not going to depend on it.

I'm sitting at a hexagonal table with six mac workstations around it in photojournalism class. There are four other people at this table. I don't know them, but they know each other and are chattering incessantly about every featherbrained thought that comes into their heads.

It's giving me chest pains.

Are people actually like this? I thought they only existed in terrible college movies about "valley girls." And only three of them are girls.

Wonder if this makes me an elitist.

I need to get out of here.