再契約意思確認調書 (translated that means 'signing away the next year of my life')

Today I FINALLY turned in my 'Yes, I'll stay another year' form. AKA my recontracting decision form.

(Side note: the form is due on Friday. Sometime on Monday I thought to myself, hmm, I wonder where that form is? Isn't it due sometime in February? Then I found it. Then I realize, 'oh crap, THIS FRIDAY.' But turning it in was painless, just had to circle the 'Yes' and date it and sign it. But can you imagine if I had forgotten about it? I mean, classic Jessica behavior, but oy that could have been awful.)

At orientation, they told us that we would be facing this decision in February, the dead of winter, and that would make it harder. Harder to sign up for another winter, another February. But I loved January, and February is going pretty swell, at least the first 4 days of it. Silly orientation monkeys. Rather than being in a trough of culture shock, I'm finally adjusting to my surroundings and I LIKE February (It's like winter, but now with more sunlight!) and honestly...I just wish it could stay cold on the mountain so I could snowboard all year.

I feel good about staying two years. I kinda knew I would stay at least two years. I'm finally getting my roots here. It's been hard at times, but I finally have friends at work and friends at home and life is good.

The days shall now commence their lengthening.

Having reached the darkest and dimmest day of the year intact, I say with some conviction that I am looking forward to the new dawn of warmth and happiness and longer days.

I celebrated the winter solstice by getting myself my Christmas present (BTW, I got myself snowboarding clothes. AWESOME jacket, pants, gloves, and thermals. Keiko and Emerson and who knows who else are going to turn me into a SWEET AWESOME COOL snowboarding superhero, just you watch.)

Today was really great. I reinstalled Starcraft which will be ok as long as I remember to leave room in my life for doing other things. Thanks to a little help from my friend, I now have a clean house. (We even took care of the mold that was on the top of the fridge since I moved in...oy.) I was so happy tonight I kept dancing around my room...because there was room for it! Clean houses make the long dark winter seem less desperate.

Also despite the temperature not breaking 55 F (13 C) today, I haven't had the heater on since over 30 hours ago. And I haven't really gotten cold at all. I feel as though I'm running an experiment on myself to see if I can hack winter.