Akari Tsukumo

I spent the weekend at Heartland, gathering material to report on the current recovery efforts. While I was there I also finally got to inspect the damage on our house.

There is some pretty significant damage to it, but, with some work, I believe it'll be fixable. There's a lot of stuff inside that got pretty wrecked, not just from the earthquake, but simply from being left to the elements for the last year and a half. Pretty sure my expensive computer set-up is totalled, but, I've kinda gotten used to just working from a simple laptop since anyway.
You kinda have to accept these things and move on.

They're hoping that the recovery efforts will be finished by next year. It'll be nice to finally be able to see Heartland back as a busy city again.

[The rest is filtered from Yuma and Kotori]

Which makes me wonder what I'm going to do once it's finished.
If I keep my current job, the commute between Heartland and Domino isn't that big. I always felt the commute was a lot longer for some reason, but it isn't. I always have the option to work from home anyway. So this means myself and granny could easily move back.

But I'm not sure about Yuma and Kotori.
They've both pretty much started their adult lives here in Domino. They're building their careers here and they're already used to living together.
It definitely wouldn't benefit them to move back.

Right now I'm undecided on this, which is why this part is filtered from them, but... I'm thinking that if they are able to financially support themselves enough in a years time, I'll move the contract for the apartment over to them.
In the meantime, I may plan to give them more freedom and responsibility for the apartment. Possibly leaving them more on their own for longer periods of time gradually, especially when the damage on the house gets fixed. Myself and granny may spend some time living between the two for a bit.

Granted, I did already try at the end of last year to give them some some freedom and responsibility, by leaving them on their own in the apartment during the winter holidays. That ended up being a... bit of a disaster. Though, in the end, it was something that was out of either of their control and it's something I know won't happen again.
Plus, Yuma actually kind of surprised me. He dealt with that much more maturely than I would of expected.

I think this is something they're ready for.

So Granny and I will be out-of-town for the next two weeks, starting tomorrow.
Work wanted me to cover doing some interviews with some Pro Duelists doing events and meet and greets in Tokyo and were willing to let me bring along someone as a consolation for having to be away for the New Year.

We decided it would be good to give Yuma and Kotori the responsibility for the apartment for these two weeks. Though, I've been a little apprehensive about this with how Kotori's health has been lately, but this was decided on beforehand and talking to her today, she said that she wouldn't want to stop us from going, or from me doing my job and that she'd be fine, so I'll trust her judgement on that.

I guess we're not TOO far away from them, though and we could get back within a day if anything happens.

Well, I received some incredibly good news today. I was called into the Weekly Domino News office to discuss some things about the article I wrote for them. They told me they were impressed with it and that it really caught a lot of attention. The online article saw some of the most re-blogs and re-tweets they've seen in a while.

Long story short, they've given me a job. It currently only on a temporary basis, as they want to see how I do first, but I'm due to start working for them after the New Year.
The pay isn't as much as I was getting back in my old job, but it's at least something. Money might remain tight for a while, but it should be enough to pay the rent on the apartment we're staying in and for groceries and such. I just need to make sure to budget it.

Yuma! That means no eating everything in the apartment, y'hear!!