Jason Huck just emailed me this photo and I had to post it. It features me (far right) and Jason Huck (in the orange “Gag me with a spoon” shirt) posing with some moon rocks that were visiting Watertown Elementary School for some reason. The fifth-and-sixth grade teacher, Mrs Crane, is on the far left.
I have no idea what year this was, but if it was Mrs Crane’s class, I’d guess it was about 1983 or 1984. Also, dig my cool “Raiders of the Lost Ark” shirt 
Costco actually found a use for the new Microsoft Zune player
Well, it was a very busy four days, but we’re back safe from Christmas in Ohio. We set out as early as possible on Saturday the 23rd, but had to drop the animals off at the vet’s at 8:30. That took a while, so we didn’t get on the road until almost nine (after our first brief stop at Starbucks).
The weather and traffic were pretty good, and we got into Marietta a little after 6pm. We swung by the old house on Scammel and they had some decorations on the front porch that looked pretty nice. Brenda exclaimed “There’s someone living in my house!” Still taking some getting used to.
Next stop was Kelly and Julie’s for some pizza and cookies. Wish we could’ve stayed longer, but glad we had a chance to visit for a while. Then on to Brenda’s mom’s to crash for our first night.
Next day, we went in to Grandma Jones’ to hang out for a while, and luckily John, Debbie and the kids were still there. Had a nice visit and got to see the new desk for Grandma we all chipped in for. It’s going to be pretty cool. Later that evening we went to the annual McCutcheon shindig where we probably told our Atlanta story a half-dozen times at least. Good food as usual.
Christmas day we unwrapped presents at Watertown. I got my usual “toys” (movies, games, etc) and Brenda got some good stuff, plus a dressmaking form she’d been wanting. Now I don’t have to model dresses anymore (kidding).
Then on to Zanesville for more unwrapping and dinner, which was pretty casual, sandwiches and chili. We got some much-needed gift cards and some other stuff. Donnie and I put together his new racetrack and had a bunch of fun breaking that in. Then we spent the next two nights in Newark, with dinner Tuesday back in Zanesville after a Kohls shopping spree.
Then back on the road for home at 5:30am Wednesday. We got into a couple spots of traffic on the way down, so it seemed to take forever. We just barely made it to the vet’s with time to spare without having to pay for an extra day. They were definitely glad to see us.
So all in all, I think we all had a good Christmas, other than feeling like we were in the car the whole time. Small price to pay to be home for the holidays. I’d love to come back for New Year’s, but the van needs a rest I definitely can see the appeal of flying up every other visit, though.
I really didn’t take many photos, but you can see some here. Oh, and this year I finally got photos of Brenda’s Aunt Connie’s decorations, inside and out. They really are amazing.
Happy New Year!
Brenda spent almost all day today making a batch of monster cookies (hey, I made lunch).
It’s weird but somehow as long as we’ve got monster cookies for Christmas, it feels like home
Okay, so that phone book we get in Marietta has no right to call itself “The Big Book”. Take a look at our phonebooks down here!
After two weeks of sitting on lawn chairs, sleeping on an air mattress, and endless runarounds from Bank of America (long story), we FINALLY got some furniture!
We got a couch and recliner for the living room and a mattress/box spring set from Rooms To Go.
The living room furniture is nice because it’s really sturdy microfiber and we paid a little more to have them stain-proofed. So it’s all pretty pet-friendly. It’s also a slightly smaller scale than what we had before, since we have less room.
Now we just need a coffee table, dresser, night stands and a couple miscellaneous other things and we’ll be done. Hopefully we’ll get to Ikea soon for some stuff.
Last Friday I got a job offer from a local web firm. While taking a salaried job was not necessarily my intention, the offer is pretty decent and comes with good benefits. Plus 10 days vacation and 7 paid holidays. I like the company and its president a lot, and I’m seriously considering this. We’re still negotiating on the price a bit, but if things can be hashed out to my liking, I may just accept it.
Going to be a very hard decision to take another salaried job again. There are many upsides, but it’s hard to give up something you’ve worked so hard on for the last few years. But then again, change of pace is what this move was all about.
Unfortunately, the clinic did not call on Friday to say whether or not Brenda got that job. I have to think there could be any number of reasons why, not necessarily that she didn’t get the job. We’re still optimistic, but there are many more where that came from.
Brenda had a pretty promising job interview yesterday with a clinic here in Norcross. At the time she’d be going to work, traffic would be nill, and she’d get there in less than ten minutes. They have two other interviews to do, and will be making a decision by next Friday. So it’s pins and needles for a while longer.
I also had a meeting yesterday with Cool Blue Interactve. It was mostly a get-to-know-you meeting and I was given a tour of the offices and met some of their people. They seem pretty cool so far. The president took me to lunch at this great little Italian restaurant in Midtown.
We’re having another meeting next week where I’ll discuss in more detail the work that I’ve done and give them a chance to ask more technical questions. However, he basically came right out and said he’d have an offer ready for me.
Now what that exactly means, I don’t know. But he wants to make some decisions very soon and was trying to gauge my interest in a number of options. I told him I was open to hearing anything, and I think he deduced that hearing an actual offer would be more helpful. If it’s too good to pass up, I may take it. But it’s not like I don’t have work. I’ve got about three open jobs and just landed another CVB (Zanesville) and one more soon (Parkersburg).
Will post more on the subject as things come up.
I don’t normally re-post things like this, but this strip was in our Atlanta Saturday paper this weekend and I laughed out loud for like five minutes. Maybe you have to have cats to appreciate it, but it tickled me.
Well, today marks the end of our fourth full day in Atlanta (Norcross to be exact). The brief version is that things are going very well and we’re looking forward to the future. For those with nothing better to do, continue reading below:
After spending what seemed like weeks packing, taking stuff to storage and throwing stuff away we finally made it to moving day. We rented a truck on November 30th and loaded it up. Brenda and I did all the loading with the exception of my computer desk and other furniture (Thanks George!). We also had to take Brenda’s car to her mom’s, as we decided to leave it behind for now. Even though I’d just put over $500 into it, we doubted it would make the trip. So with that, we ended up working until 12:30am.
Alarm went off at 6:30am and we still had some things to load into the truck. By the time we finished, had all the animals rounded up, stopped for coffee and hit the ATM, it was almost 9am before we got on the interstate. Much later than we’d planned. Murray rode with me in the truck and each cat had its own carrier with Brenda in the van. I think I got the better end of the deal
For the first couple hours we were hit with some major rain. I mean blinding, slow-down-to-twenty-five type rain. To make matters worse, I’d left Murray’s window open about 5 inches. And the truck cab was too wide for me to reach over and shut it. So Murray got drenched and we both had to smell wet puppy for miles. Luckily the rain lifted and I was able to dry things off at the first rest stop.
After that, we didn’t have any more rain, but high winds hit us the entire way down. That’s bad enough in a minivan, but quite a battle with a fifteen-foot truck.
While it only took us about 8.5 hours to drive down last year in the van, this time it took about twelve hours. This was due to driving a big, slow truck, plus having to stop pretty often for Murray to get out. The original plan was to leave Marietta by 6 or 7am so we’d hit Atlanta by 4 or 5pm (ie, before dark). No dice. It was 9:30pm when we pulled into the complex. So I ended up having to drive that truck about four hours in the dark, which was the main thing I wanted to avoid.
All the way down we were able to talk to each other with walkie-talkies. And Brenda was able to help me change lanes from behind me. That got a LOT harder at night, as I couldn’t distinguish the minivan from any other vehicle on the four-lane highway. My hands were killing me from white-knuckling the steering wheel. But no mishaps, and I’m really proud of getting everything down here by ourselves.
That first night, it was all we could do to find the energy to inflate the air mattress and pass out. But starting the next morning we we’ve been unpacking pretty much most of each day. Took us until Sunday to totally unload the truck, as we’re on the second floor and we were doing it by ourselves. We decided early on we weren’t going to rush it. Never been so happy as when I dropped off that truck Monday morning
So far, we’ve gotten quite a lot done. My office is taking shape and everything is up and running so I can start getting work done again. The kitchen is all set up and we made our first grocery run yesterday. We’d never been to a Publix store before, but it was pretty nice. Yesterday I also set up a new stand for the tv and stuff. Hopefully soon we’ll be going to look at living room furniture and beds. Oh, and we actually put up a Christmas tree today.
On the job front, I’m still trying to schedule a meeting with a local firm, just hard to get times to line up. I also just got another quote request from the Parkersburg tourist bureau. Pretty cool, as they knew ahead of time I was leaving for Atlanta, and they still want me to quote the job.
Oh, and Brenda has a job interview on Friday! It’s a treatment center here in Norcross. Everyone keep your fingers crossed!
I may update this post later if I realize I’ve left out anything newsworthy. But probably will try to stick to short updates as things come up. And as in the other post, you can check out our photos here.