Vacant - No one home

Yesterday, I spent my first time alone in a week. The apartment felt strangely empty. It felt like something was missing, and it was too quiet. I did some chores, read a book and watched some TV, but it just didn't feel the same. Before Jeff stayed the week with me, the silence was okay. It was comforting. Now it's too much. It felt better this morning and I'm sure I'll be okay by the time I get home from work. I guess this is a sign of falling in love.

It's so strange. I never felt this way with Lance. Dropping him off at home, etc. was almost a relief. In the best cases, it was more of a sense of well-being. But, I'd never felt so alone like this before. It's kind of scary.

The new coffee shop next to the apartment closed down. I'm sad about that. It was only there about two months. It was open the week I left for Montgomery, but closed when I got back. I've not had time to go by and ask the Chinese restaurant folks what happened to it.

I tried to practice some of my news design skills this morning by pulling apart Sunday's centerpiece and redesigning the page on my own. I played up a recall story as the centerpiece, but I'm not that satisfied with it. I may rework it again and try doing my own region fronts. This was advice I got from a designer at a major metro paper, to keep my skills honed while waiting for something to open.

There's no word on Florida yet. Jeff's hearing that they'll make him an offer this week. Knoxville is pressuring Jeff to say no, but their problem is that they haven't offered him much to stay with the News-Sentinel either.

In any case, all of the talk about moving prompted me to sit down and go through my books. I weeded out more than half of my romance novels - trading in some of them and donating the others. Now that's organized. Next will be the closet. I took more stuff than I needed to with me from Selma, now it's time to get things cleaned out. No matter where I move next, I want it to be an easier process.