I have bought the mansion of a love but not possessed it; or, Good news comes in threes!!

The two big clouds on my Croatian horizon have been this hateful apartment and my inability to find a job, and it looks like they're both dissipating...but on both fronts I'm in that tenuous phase when the step has been taken but the results haven't come through.
1.  We are currently paying rent on this adorable cottage:

I could not be more in love with it! It looks bigger than it is: the attic is unfinished, so we just have the bottom floor: bedroom, living room, little kitchen and 1.5 bath.  But, more importantly, a rose garden

And over the garden walls, a castle view!

Okay, it's only sort of a castle view, if you peer real hard over the neighbor's shrubbery.  But I LIVE NEXT DOOR TO A CASTLE!  

Kinda.  But we are still staying in this dump of a Jugoslavian sardine can.   Why? We're waiting for them to switch the internet service from the apartment to the house, and, like a good telecommuter, I follow the internet.  We could, in theory, go ahead and move, but then I'd have to come back to the apartment every day to work.  I'm not sure what could make grading more unappealing than it already is besides walking 20 minutes and climbing 5 flights of stairs to a stinky gross cave where there is no longer a coffee pot.  

2. It looks like I may have gotten a new online teaching job! I got an email yesterday from Rasmussen college saying they wanted to tentatively schedule me to teach starting in October, pending of course the requisite phone interview, paperwork, training, etc.  No word about how many classes or what it pays, but still, I'm so happy: if I do get this job and it pays about like my current online job, we can get a car!!  Plus, I'll actually be working something closer to a normal workweek instead of finishing my work at 9:30 and then twiddling my thumbs for the rest of the day (i.e. playing video games).  However, this job is not a done deal by a long shot, 

so it could all come to naught.  But in the meantime, I'm going to just hope for the best and enjoy my dreams of car ownership!

3.  Best of all, three week from today I'll be on the island of Vis on my honeymoon!!  Kristian and I are married, legally, but it doesn't feel like we are because there wasn't a religious ceremony and our parents weren't there.  I don't feel any more or less committed to him than I did before we signed the papers.  (after all, I sold my car and moved to the sardine can for him, and as distasteful as those things were, I'd still rather be here with him than in the U.S: comfortable but lonely!)  But on August 23rd we're having the ceremony with our parents on one island, and then hopping a ferry to our honeymoon on another one! It is going to be really nice to put on a white dress and stand in front of our parents and say our vows for real.