The big event this August was taking a trip to Washington state's San Juan islands north of Seattle with Nicole's family. For an entire week, we enjoyed specifically Orcas Island from the comfort of a beach rental with a fantastic view. The drive to get there involved a ferry trip (Which was a fun experience in and of itself) then an hour-long ( Read more... )

The family trust's farm sale we were hoping would happen so Nicole and I could finally begin house-hunting will hopefully continue on soon. Earlier this month we finally heard from the interested party and they said new contracts will be on their way soon. It's been hard to have to have such ambiguity hanging in the air but there's nothing we can ( Read more... )

So it's been a few weeks since the move to our new apartment and things are good. The move itself was pretty smooth. We had some help and managed to do everything in only a couple days. The new apartment itself isn't bad. It's an adjustment to get used to a tiny bathroom and that we get the afternoon sun which really heats this place up. The ( Read more... )

Outside of another wonderful Thanksgiving with my family, it's been another quiet few weeks around here. I gave my family their copies of the DVDs made from their old VHS tapes, and we even put a few on to watch. I'm so relieved that that monster project is done. The weather is really beginning to turn and last night, we got down to 10 degrees F (- ( Read more... )

A week and a half ago, the father of my best friend from high school, Bryan, died after a violent heart attack following years of battling heart failure. We've all known that the end could be near at any moment, so while that makes the passing a little less of an impact, it is a passing none the less. Last Saturday, Bryan and his family held a ( Read more... )

I've been in a full-fledged move-in phase for the last fourteen days. Truthfully, I'm not as far along as I'd hoped, but the place really is coming together. The biggest hurdle at the moment is that when I'm not working (Which is half the time), I'm awake overnight and trying to be quiet since I'm in an apartment surrounded by other tenants. I am, ( Read more... )

When I finally get my own place ( Read more... )

The same day as the ten year anniversary of this journal two weeks ago also happened to be the one year mark of employment at my current job. One year down! Speaking of my job, things are better these days. While we are short staffed and on a hiring freeze, the layoffs have completely stopped on our shift. We're even playfully competing with the ( Read more... )

I started my new job at Maxim's Oregon fabrication installation last Friday night! It was a twelve-hour shift beginning at 6 PM. Yee haw. The big mystery up until then was where were they going to put me within the fab. During orientation last week, no one seemed to know and we could only speculate. It was only finally revealed when I arrived in ( Read more... )

After about a month and a half of waiting, last week I finally received an official job offer from Maxim! I went in last Thursday and spent half the day filling out and reading all this paperwork to become official. It's happening and it's finally happening now! For the first time in almost a year, I can say I'm legitimately employed at a real ( Read more... )