holy oversaturation of emotion, batman! too much going on these days (both good and bad, though mostly bad currently) for me to focus on one particular emotion or another. it all seems to blend into one big mess where my heart and brain are concerned. on top of all of the distractions in the world, my emotion factory kicks into overdrive because of the things going on in my personal life, too.

i spent the entire weekend reliving the last moments of my lovely dog's life... i know i'm not the first (nor the last) person to lose a pet, but man does it sure suck. he was a member of the family, and it's so hard to make the decision to end a life. i had to be there, i wanted to be in the car on the way over there, i wanted to comfort him in the vet's office because he's always been nervous there... but it was so unbelievably depressing to see his head upon his big paws for the last time, outstretched on the gurney as though sleeping but sleeping the longest sleep there is. so unequivocably sad.... i miss my sweet old dog.

the rest of the weekend that wasn't spent moping, i went apartment-hunting (with liz and marla, who were kind enough to join me). we found a very cute in-law apartment in daly city (officially, but really just up the street from stonestown galleria and sfsu, both san francisco addresses)... the landlady is very cool, and she seemed to like me quite a bit. the rent is steeper than i'd hoped to find, but all utilities and cable are included in the cost. there's not much closet space, but the apartment is clean, pretty sizeable, in a good area, and very cute. i'd even have a small back deck that leads to a small (shared) backyard. i'm supposed to find out about it by wednesday. i found a one-bedroom in san bruno last week that i liked as well, but it was more expensive. i'm not sure how high a price i can justify. it's so frustrating to try to eke by in such a high-priced area on such a damn low income. who knows, though, maybe one day my budget won't be so tight.

ahh, one can dream.

i'll be out on a site visit tuesday, so i may not have time to update. i still need to get my new contracts out the door. sadly, this new process is taking several hours per contract... mostly because the guidance is minimal, but also because it's a new process and i'm double- and triple-checking everything to make sure i'm doing it right. the scary thing is that the idea of the new process was to instill uniformity among contracts... and there evidently is very little uniformity as various grants managers and regional directors okay contracts as they deem fit. we have in-house legal voices who refuse to let us make any changes without senior staff approval, but not every office has that. oh well. maybe the new restructuring will mitigate for that.

gillian may be coming back to work at nfwf, once jonathan leaves for grad school! she'd be getting her old job back... it would be very nice to have her personality added back to the mix at the office. she's a good addition.