With our visitors gone, life has returned to normal for us. Well, nothing really feels "normal" here yet, but we're getting back into our old routine anyways. April was FUN. Having Clay and Kathie visit was a blast and we really used their time here as an excuse to see a lot more of the island and do some stuff we hadn't done before. We also used their visits as an excuse to eat out far more than usual, stay up far later than usual, and drink far more than our livers are used to. Let's just say...time to tame the beast.

Last Saturday, after a final sushi feast at the local watering hole, we dusted off our weekly grocery/meal planner and bought groceries for a week's worth of food. We even made some new stuff - a potato-asparagus soup with dill and lemon, eggplant curry, and two different types of hummus for our lunches (with vegetable sticks and WASA crisps...mmmm). It feels good to be back on track.

The bank account is also feeling better after its April assault. It's amazing what buying food will do to your wallet. We've tamed our weekly grocery costs down to about $130/week, including breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks, so we're feeling pretty good about that. That's also taking into account those items that we stock up on because we know if we go back for more, they'll be gone (i.e. Eggo multi-grain low-fat waffles...hot commodity around here). I can't remember what we'd spend in Ottawa for the same amount of food, but we don't buy cheap ingredients or anything processed (except said Eggos, but I'm thinking we could do worse than those little morsels), so even in Ottawa we were probably spending at least $80-90 each week. Mind you, that always included things like salmon or a big package of chicken breasts...and we really don't eat meat here more than once each week, so long as we're cooking at home.

Last week was a bit of a roller-coaster. A very tempting job offer landed in my lap from another much larger company here. More money, more responsibility, more opportunity...it looked great. I wasn't necessarily looking to leave my current job, but it was just one of those situations where it was almost too good to be true. The snag was Immigration, which is sticky in the best of situations and with me only having worked here for 6 months, they were not going to hand me a second work permit. There was a way around it, but it would have meant big changes to our plans. So...I turned it down yesterday. It was actually a really hard decision for me and ultimately came down to whether or not I was ready to sell my integrity...which I'm apparently not. Money aside, it would have opened a lot of doors for me, but I'm now thinking that if this particular one came along that easily, that there will be more down the road when I'm actually ready for one. Ugggh. It was such a tough call. I'm still feeling queasy over it.