Various and Sundry Items ....

Sigh ... it's the middle of March here in the 'ville, and winter is still sticking around for a little while longer. Lauren (aka Cheshirewoodgie) is feeling a little bit tummy-ish this evening after lunch at the local Italian restaurant (the food was as excellent as always, but there may have been a bit too much garlic in the oil which came with the excellent bread rolls, so she's sacked out early). It's okay; she needs the rest, especially after the road trip down to Savannah (MO) to pick up a couple of rotten hay bales she picked up off of Freecycle in order to do some root gardening.

We also looked at a nice house which is up for sale near Savannah, as we've been discussing what to do in the long-term for housing space. We've both realized that when Lauren bought our house, she didn't have concerns about the amount of living space: she was the only person living in it, and she had 3 cats, one of whom was an outdoor cat that spent a lot of her days outside. Now that I've moved in with my stuff, we've realized that it's cozy, and certainly comfortable for the most part (thanks to the house's amazing TARDIS-like qualities), but we're a little cramped in a few ways with two people and four indoor cats, we're short on storage space, feeling the pinch of a small kitchen, and wishing that we had more space for hobbies or additional bedroom space so we could put family up on visits. I think we both looked at the situation and realized that while a move to the house we were looking at would save me a half hour each way (or an hour a day) on the commute, the prospect of owning a 5-bedroom, 4-bath house is a bit daunting. So now we're making up a list of things we'd like to do to this house in terms of expansion (now if we only had the money!)

Meanwhile, Lauren's back to bed now, and that leaves me with a little time this evening to blog. A few highlights from the last couple of weeks going into April:

1. I finished my semi-annual review (my first) at my new job. The managers are pretty pleased with me so far, and it looks promising from here. As I noted to Cheshirewoodgie, I'm VERY relieved to get past this milestone.
2. It's banquet season at the college. Last Wednesday was the faculty HR banquet, with tenure awards. Cheshirewoodgie got a very nice ice cream and cake spoon and turner set with the Northwest logo (it's apparently a standard) for 10 years of service. Tomorrow afternoon, one of the sororities has put her up for a teaching award, and there is a reception after church for this. Then Wednesday, it's the departmental banquet. In addition, there were two annual student dinners: the annual international student banquet and the annual foreign language department/club banquet. Then today, we discovered that Lauren has won another service award, the Tower Award that has eluded her for the last few years, so we'll have yet another banquet on April 1st when she is presented with that. The challenge through all of this? Enjoying the food without letting it go to our waists.
   
3. We're heading into the last month of the Spring semester, and by mid-May, Lauren will probably be recuperating from what that entails, including finals week. And then the road-trips begin.
   

Keeping Up With Things

Hi all,

It's been a long while since we've last posted, but we've been really, really busy over the last few weeks: Lauren with mid-terms and classes, me with wrapping up the last few weeks at my (now former) job at the plant, and both of us trying to get caught up on house cleaning and various home repair projects. We mostly wanted to get as much done as possible prior to having company (Lauren's friend Jenny) over this weekend for Homecoming festivities and the game of the week (yet another close near-heartbreaker, as our Bearcats barely beat Washburn by 1 point! And this after almost giving the game away in the last 3 minutes). Once again, we're left grateful that they won, but scratching our heads at the last four games (which they've won by a grand total of roughly 10 points).

Once again, we're in a transition period ... me moving on to a new job (and the longer commute and being home later in the evenings), and adjustments from that. But we'll manage.

New Opportunities and Moving Forward

Hey all,

Looks like it's one of those months where I get a whole new set of challenges. Specifically, I successfully applied for and (pending final acceptance of their offer this evening), gained a new job working for Cerner, a medical software corporation down in KC, as a document developer (i.e., a technical writer). That was one of the "promising" prospects I mentioned in an earlier posting.

On one hand, it's going to be a long (roughly an hour plus forty) commute each way every day, but it will be worth it to once again have a job with benefits (paid holidays, vacation, and health insurance), plus a better salary than I could hope to make at most of the jobs here in town.

So, that puts me in my last two weeks working as a temporary, and my last two weeks (hopefully) of blue-collar factory work. I've toyed with the idea of writing up my blue-collar experience in a blog post, but that may wait. I don't want to burn any bridges at the plant; after all, I do owe them (especially the folks at Northwest Services), quite a lot, given I was out of unemployment money when they hired me. Maybe later.

So, it's a time of new opportunities and moving forward in a lot of ways, and it looks like I'll be doing it for a great company.