Annnd, we're back!

Idyllic Camden, Maine, was idyllic. No one enjoys looking at a stranger's vacation photos, and yet I'm going to show you some vacation photos anyway. Bwa ha ha ha! I've become accustomed to a place where one does not have to lock one's car or even look both ways when crossing the street, because the drivers will just stop and wave to you. Clean air, pretty hay / grass / pine smells everywhere, wicked hilly bike rides, lobster... Sigh. Every single thing was great except for sleeping on the cold hard ground. Next year, we get fancy inflatable sleeping pads. Here are those pictures:

Home sweet home

They call this place "where the mountains meet the sea." Mt. Battie is in the foreground and accessible by a mile or two of 10+% grade paved road. Mt. Megunticook is in the background. We climbed it one day - it took a little less than an hour to go one mile. One mile that included about 1350 feet in elevation gain.

Acorns on the beach. Wha?

We're now rubbing the Maine sleep out of our eyes while being rudely awakened by Da Bronx. Traffic! Garbage! People yelling at each other on the street outside your window! Ah, city life. Anyway, there are piles of campfire scented laundry everywhere, I have a school orientation tonight, and a job interview (!!!) this afternoon. More on that later.

My acupuncture / massage therapy school is all squared away and scheduled and official (my first class is tomorrow) except for one major thing: funding. I was counting on financial aid / student loans, and everything was fine until a week or two ago, when the financial aid department at my school told me that as an undergrad I went $653 over the limit for subsidized Stafford loans, evidently because my school wasn't paying attention. The graduate limits are a lot higher, but that doesn't matter because I have to get something called a reaffirmation from my lender before I can take out any more loans. Well, then. I called my lender, and they didn't sound like they knew what that was, but said they'd send something out. Then, I investigated it online and found that it's not all that common but not that hard to resolve, either. I returned from Maine expecting a letter in the mailbox, but it wasn't there - just additional emails from the financial aid department. So, I have to make more calls today and see whether or not I'll keep attending school (I don't have the $6000 a trimester they want for classes, so if there's no aid, there's no school). I'm surprisingly calm about the whole thing - I think because I realize that not accruing $30,000 in new student loan debt wouldn't be the end of the world, and I could figure out something else to do with myself...

Anyway, this all sounds like prime material for a head-clearing run, right? But noooo... We arrived home on Sunday and decided to take Labor Day to veg out, restock our groceries, etc. During said vegging out I bashed my left foot on a table leg and did this to my pinkie toe:

Ignore the chipped nail polish and flip-flop tan lines.

See the bruising? And how it's the same size as the next toe over? I banged it, it hurt, that was it. But then later (when I went shoe-shopping for the job interview, actually - they called me at 8 in the morning on Sunday - it's retail, but really exciting, great retail that I'll say more about if it happens) I noticed it swelling and turning purple. I don't think it's broken. It actually feels better (but looks even worse) today. But do you think it's ok to run on it? Whatever, I'm probably going to try anyway.