Me - The Year in Review - Part Two
One thing I forgot to mention in the first half: during my summer downtime I also worked for the Tim Kaine for Governor campaign making phone calls and doing surveys.
After moving to Norfolk we sold the old house quite quickly to some friends of ours. Work was going really well for me, though the amount of actual work I was receiving began to taper off to almost nothing. Unfortunately, my mother’s work was not going very well at all. For several years she had been growing more and more disgruntled with the administrator of the school she worked for, who had been working hard to change the nature of the school. My mother had been working at the school since the seventies and had been the headmistress at one point. The current administration of the school, perhaps perceiving her as a threat, decided to fire her this fall. After consulting a lawyer, she was able to obtain a decent severance package; it’s not as if we’re out on the street or anything. The decision came as a shock to everyone in the school community; though in hindsight it does not seem totally unpredictable.
In a terrible twist of events, while on the way to sign her severance papers, my mother got in a car accident. It was ruled entirely the other driver’s fault (they had pulled out in front of her); but my mom’s 2000 Volvo V40 was ruled totaled when they discovered that the frame had bent in the collision. She was provided with a rental for a few weeks and a fairly hefty chunk of bills with which to buy a new car.
Around the beginning of December I completed my months-long search for a car when I settled on a Silver 2002 VW Jetta. I won’t say how much it cost, but suffice it to say it’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever purchased by a factor of five. (And that includes a trip to Europe.) So far she’s been treating me right. I recently decided her name is Rosalyn.
My girlfriend came to visit me for two weeks over the holy-days. It was wonderful and I miss her terribly now that she’s gone back home. I look forward to a time when I can always be near her.
My mother’s search for a car was much shorter than my own. She bought herself a brand-new Prius for Christmas. It’s black and sleek and futuristic like it was delivered by space aliens. I love the way the engine shuts off at stop signs. Very sexy.
That just about concludes the short version of my 2005. When I’m fifty or sixty or seventy I’ll be looking back and I’ll probably think of 2005 as one of the most influential years of my life. Obviously I didn’t mention everything, but these posts are long enough as is. Stay tuned for 2006: The Year in Preview.
