I’ve dropped the ball a bit on posting weekly as I had intended. I’ve lacked some motivation lately, as I was sick for a little while and am now working on becoming a functioning human being again. I managed to catch the flu for the first time in… I don’t even remember when I last had the flu, and then as I started to recover from that I managed to segue into a cold. Uck. Anyways, it could have been worse so I won’t complain, I’m feeling much better now.

We’ve officially passed our four-month mark! It’s odd because in some ways it feels like we’ve been here so much longer, yet it also feels like time has flown by. I feel like things are going relatively well. Our utilities are still not properly set up after being in our flat for three months now… getting utilities set up here has been a nightmare (we’re on our third utility company now). Apparently, this is pretty normal here. We’re getting billed for utilities we’re not using and they’ve linked the wrong gas meter to our account and communication regarding what’s going on with this has been incredibly difficult, so I’m trying not to freak out at this point. It will work out eventually. Fortunately, other than that things have gone ok.

I recently attended another six-hour flying trapeze workshop and it was great. I have also started taking straps classes (google “aerial straps” if you’re not sure what this is) and that has been challenging but I’m sticking with it for the moment. Straps, or darn near any apparatus in aerials, utilizes muscles that most people would never use in their daily lives so I find myself trying to develop/wake up these mystery muscles. I’m also still going to my weekly dog agility practices and we have our first UK competition on December 2^nd, which should be fun even if we flop.

We’ve met some really lovely people here. My husband has been getting out to a lot of meetups and networking events and has met some really friendly and creative people through those. This city is feeling like it’s opening up to us a bit more. I think once I land a job I’ll truly feel like we’re more settled here. While I’m looking at job postings frequently, just in case something that’s a perfect fit pops up, I’m planning on putting off the serious job hunt until January.  It’s looking like the end of the year isn’t the best time to job search and a lot of places shut down completely for the last few weeks of December. We also have a few things coming up that I’d have to request time off for and I’d hate to do that when starting a new job, so I think starting something in the new year will be ideal.

One of my best of friends is coming to stay with us for about two weeks. He arrives towards the end of this month and I’m so very excited. After he leaves, we have something fairly big that will be going on for five days (I’m not permitted to talk about it until later, so look out for that in a few months) and after that we will be doing mostly nothing for the last few weeks of the year. We have no Thanksgiving plans. Ryan is at an event that day and I have agility practice that night. I’m a little bummed since that’s my favourite holiday. I’ve considered taking Chewie to the pub and having an early meal for Thanksgiving, we’ll see.

Christmas lights are starting to go up and I’m really excited for that. By the end of this month it will be dark around 3:45, so I’m looking forward to a little cheer in the streets. This Christmas will be interesting since it’s the first Christmas I can remember where I won’t be with family. In some ways I look forward to doing nothing on Christmas but there’s still a little sadness there, I’ll miss Christmas morning with my family. The positive is that I’m not Christmas shopping, we have nowhere to drive to, absolutely no expectations for Christmas, we can simply enjoy the lights, Christmas displays and markets for what they are. Wait, I lied, I will be doing a little Christmas shopping for the dogs.

Oh, we also now have some furniture and our flat finally feels like we have mostly everything we need (remember we started from scratch and the flat was unfurnished). We don’t have a microwave or a tv but we haven’t had either of those for over four months now so they’re low priority. I do find myself longing for some old familiar things from the before Scotland days but in general I’m quite happy here and can see staying here for the long run. Things felt so difficult initially and I feel like I can breathe more at this point, I can find some peace in all the uncertainty.