Unemployment, OSHA and other wondrous things

The sun has set on my first full week of unemployment.    I have just under a week before beginning my new life in the Southern Hemisphere where everything is upside down, reversed, counter- clockwise and, yes,  already tomorrow.   Gravity and the International Date Line are wondrous things.   Right up there with giraffe tongues and Greyhounds.  

I decided to give myself two weeks of leeway to make sure I had plenty of time to tie up loose ends, but I'm already beginning to regret it.   Granted, I managed to accomplish several things on my list, but I spent much of the week planted in front of this darn laptop.  What's so different about that than if I'd been at work?  I'm still sitting on my bony arse surfing the net!!

  Okay, it has been mostly worthwhile usage of the World Wide Web (another wondrous thing), but when will it stop??   When will my ass no longer be betrothed to  hard-seated chairs with no lumbar support? Chairs so ergonomically egregious they'd be profiled on OSHA's Ten Most Wanted poster if there was such a thing.  OSHA is not a wondrous thing.  Admittedly, the only thing I know about OSHA is that they required us to install an "eye wash station" at the vet clinic I managed several years ago.   Its purpose was to wash irritating chemicals out of one's eyeballs - picture a double faucet where the water runs UP.  The thought of having to use the evil tap so frightened me, I was always extra super duper careful around caustic chemicals.  Yes, I was more afraid of the water torture device than dangerous blinding liquids.

Wow, I digress.  I didn't start this blog to talk about OSHA, rogue chemicals, random wondrous things or even unemployment.  I was ordered by some friends to start it.    They'll be the only ones reading this.  At first.  Then, no one will read it.  Including me.

I've quit my job as a paralegal (a job that allowed me to own a home, travel and pay off my credit cards on a monthly basis), sold many personal belongings, rented out my home and will head to New Zealand in one week to study animal management and welfare (leading to a career that will most assuredly not allow me to return to the aforementioned life). What the @#$% am I doing?  The economy stinks.  I should be hunkering down like the rest of the good people of this nation and world.  But I can't.  If I stayed  I know I would  eventually poke my eyes out in frustration.  I was coming dangerously close, seriously, and OSHA would not have been there to fix them.

This is the point where I might write, "and so the journey begins dot dot dot" but that would make it sound as if I expected anyone who reads this to be enthralled by my plans.  OH, PUHLEEEEZE (ode to Amy & Kath).  I don't take myself that seriously, and I certainly don't want anyone to think I do.  I want to stumble happily and drunkenly along this path, and if you care to follow, you need to be just as happy and you'd better be just as drunk.  Sometimes just drunk on circumstances and surroundings and at other times drunk on a really good Pinot Grigio. 

By the way, I have no place to live when I get down there.  I've secured temporary lodging and  given myself 10 days to find a permanent place once I arrive.  Wish me luck.  I need it.