almost six months in the rural..

and two and a half more until I move back to DC. I'm amazed I lasted this long though there were few times late in winter and early spring when I was feeling rather despondent about not being in a full fledged ASL environment and being involved in the community. Monthly trips to NYC and DC helped keep me sane. Most of all - my parents are pretty cool and can engage in enough conversational sign language to keep me stimulated. The online courses at Gally helped pass the time and the timing is pretty good. I finished school last week and at the same time, started a new part time job at a place couple miles outside my hometown. It's still a hearing community, but I was raised with speech therapy and am accustomed to how people talk around here, so it's not bad as I expected. My co-workers are nice and a couple of them, I like their sense of humor and they get mine. I was amazed to find that the place I work in have a basic knowledge of sign language because a number of consumers do not have ability to speak and for expressive/comfort reasons, they are encouraged to sign. There are a couple deaf consumers but they have their own signs and it's funny to have the hearing staff teach ME a particular consumer's signs. Some of the staff can finger spell and know few but necessary (bathroom, eat, and so on) signs.

I'm really looking forward to the summer here at home - the lawns and fields out here have recovered from the wet winter and we replaced the linen in the swimming pool so it looks good as new. We've not been blessed with continuous sunny weather for a month now so it'll be a while til the pool is warm enough to swim in. The gardens are overrun with weeds but looks great anyhow! I'm working on convincing mom to let me at her gardens to do grunt work. My friends from NYC will visit me this summer starting next weekend so I'm totally psyched about it.

I actually had a decent Thai dinner in Cobleskill - I thought I would have to drive 30 miles to Albany for a proper cuisine.. it's nice to know ONE ten minutes away..

now I'm hungry.. gonna make me some grub.