Hi all! Many apologies for having disappeared - this post is being written to address that specifically.
When I returned from my trip to California (of which I owe you a plethora of pictures >_<), I started job hunting just like I told my family I would. I applied to all retail positions because I had no experience and felt like I couldn't really try for anything beyond that - and got two interviews within a week. The first one resulted with being put on a 'waiting' list, and the second resulted in employment [[yay!]].