3/17: The bank has officially approved us to owe them a giant pile of doolars for the rest of our lives! Oh boy! We have paper signing scheduled for the 30th and we get keys on the 31st. Crazypants! I'm so excited. Yes, it is the right time to get housed. It's like when i married spouse, i have no reservations. It is time. I like this little house and we're gonna live in it.

I had been thinking about buying a ganesha statue for the garden and there is one shop in town that immediately came to mind (mermaid imports). So i went there and sure enough, she had a stone ganesha about 10" tall and she gave me a deal on it, so now i have a ganesha to put in the garden. :-) Ganesha, opener of doors, remover of obstacles, god of beginnings and luck and prosperity. Pretty good patron for a new home, i think.

3/21: i've been running around investigating furniture options, looking at antique shops, thrift stores, boutiques, regular furniture stores. I've found some cool stores that i always drove past but never had a reason to check out. There's a shop that i can only describe as "boujie mad scientist" that has fancy antique crystal chandeliers and various animal skulls and specimens. So weird but kind of amazing. They have a $2k giraffe skull and bugs embedded in glass marbles. And very sparkly things. Why does this shop exist in alaska? No idea, but it does.

So today i visited a shop that sells furs and leather and all manner of alaskan handcrafts and art. Scrimshaw, ivory carvings, sculpture, beadwork - you name it. And while chatting they mentioned they had a job opening and asked if i wanted to work. It would just be a part time thing and probably doesn't pay much above minimum wage (if anything), but you know, that might be just my speed right now as i figure out how to be a real person again. So i got an application (it is charmingly generic - this shop is so old school). I might learn a lot about alaskan art and that sounds awesome. Plus maybe there's an employee discount and i can buy art pieces. It'll get me out of the house and maybe i'll make some local artist connections. Why not? Feels like a lucky thing i would be foolish not to try.

Spouse has started his new job and things seem to be going well. They assigned him to a type of work that i wouldn't have thought would be in his wheelhouse, but apparently he tested well for it, and there's a lot that needs doing so he will be kept very busy. The team he is on is small and special and has a reputation for being "weird" and they snapped him up. He seems happy with it so far. Also he's happy they are more relaxed in alaska and he doesn't have to be clean shaven or wear a suit everyday.

We are very much looking forward to leaving the hotel. I'm tired of cooking in a microwave. Cat keeps trying to escape into the hallway.