1. I moved. As with most change, I'm failing pretty epically as I try to settle in.
2. I'm completely overwhelmed by my new job. And I haven't even officially started yet. But already feeling a lot in over my head. (See above re: failing at change.)
3. Excluding a 60 or 70 mile round trip to Ouray the first day after I got here, I have used less than a quarter tank of gas in 9 days of being here and driving somewhere almost every day. (Considering everything is pretty much within 5 or 6 miles, this isn't that impressive, but the overall situation is such that my wallet's a bit happier. Except now I'm spending money on teachery things, so...yeah.)
4. I have yet to kill (aka, see) a single spider in my shower - or even my bathroom. (Knock on wood.) I have killed one or two jumping spiders in my bedroom, and one or two little spiders elsewhere in the house. But overall, it's a vast improvement over other places I've lived. (Though I'm entirely aware that a week isn't a good sample size.)
5. It's quite a bit less light pollutiony out here (especially compared to Denver) since, you know, there are approximately 372 people in a 50 mile radius, and the first weekend I was here - aka last weekend - was the weekend of the Perseid meteor shower. I'm a sucker for meteor showers/stargazing, so on Saturday night my roommate and I climbed out onto the roof outside her bedroom and watched the sky. It would have been better to have driven a few miles out of town and laid out on a blanket or something (half the sky was blocked by our house, and there's a bright streetlight in front of our neighbors' house), but even still I saw a satisfying number of shooting stars. Enough to make me happy. Some that were quick, and a few that were the bigger, slow-moving, brighter stars that leave quite a trail behind them. I rated the whole experience acceptable.
6. I've also seen a few lovely sunsets. They're different here - the "real" mountains are to the south of us, and there are smaller ones closer to us that are to the east, so sunsets here don't have the same mountain effect they do on the front range. But they're pretty.
7. I need to figure out how to, you know, be a teacher first, but I really hope I can implement something like this somewhere along the way. Related: this, this, and this. (Bonus on the last one: an awesome picture of little girls knitting. Also, the lady toward the end of that article who says "These proposals will result in some fabulous knitwear but, sadly, fewer world-class engineers and innovators" obviously knows nothing about knitting. Or knitters. Or engineers or innovators. I mean, seriously.)
8. (because I'm a rebel) - I just read today that the dictionary people have decided to add a definition for "literally" that means, basically, not literally. You know, how people like to use it these days. It literally kills me.
