Happy 1st Anniversary

It's so weird thinking that Jeff and I have been married for a full year, even when we were able to spend so much time together before we got married. It just doesn't feel like it's been that long.

I love looking back over the 2 and a half years and seeing how much we've grown as a couple and as individuals:

Jeff and I met through mutual friends in the summer of 2006. We played Nintendo with our friends through the wee hours of the morning, often when we all had school or work the next morning. We started a long distance relationship when I moved back to CO to renew my health insurance. Jeff even drove out to visit me at one point -which did not end up going well, as my parents did not approve of the fact that he was still working on his divorce. Jeff almost figured it wasn't worth it at that point and might have stopped communicating with me all together if I wasn't so persistent with my phone calls.

I moved back to Utah in early 2007. For some time I had been struggling with (what ended up being) non epileptic seizures. Jeff, although he'll deny it, is probably one of the most patient men I have ever met. He took care of me when I needed it, even driving me to the emergency room at one point. I think him helping me when they couldn't helped my parents warm up to Jeff.

He proposed to me on one of our many walks after our D&D game, and it's still one of my fondest memories. He got down on one knee and everything.

In late 2007, Jeff was offered a job in Las Vegas. I couldn't stand another long distance relationship, so I moved down there too. He was a little jumpy about getting married again after his divorce, and we set a date 2 or 3 times before we actually tied the knot. In Dec of '07, he finally told me he was ready, so I jumped on it. We set the date for 2 weeks away (we wanted to get married before Christmas) and prepared for no one being able to make it. Amazingly, our entire families (minus my big sister, Mary) were able to make the drive. Plus, my grandma flew down!

We had our reception a month later in Colorado Springs, and I think it worked out well for everyone. It gave my mom an excuse to get new carpet and furniture. We also borrowed a chocolate fountain from some friends, which was extremely hard to stay away from, even in my white dress. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect and relaxing wedding.

I am so lucky to be married to Jeff. We've had some hard times this past year (you only have real fights after you're married), but it has all been worth it. With each fight comes a better understanding and a better appreciation of the other. I love Jeff more every day, and I'm sure the next year will bring more (but fewer) arguments, more appreciation, more love, and maybe the pitter patter of little feet!

Happy Anniversary, handsome!

Corporate Shill

I guess this makes me a corporate shill, but I'm going to go ahead and plug a company that my brother helped create called bloggled (http://www.bloggled.com/). Basically, it backs up your blogger blog for free. Google handles blogger right now, and while google has a good track record, accidents still happen. It wasn't even a year ago that many, many users lost their gmail accounts. In addition, it's pretty easy to delete your blog and pretty hard to undelete it without a backup. They even let you print out a hardcopy in case you want it for your family history stuff. It's pretty cool.

They're doing a contest today where they have ipods and cricuts (?) that they're giving away. Apparently cricuts are very desirable things. Whatever.

Finally, and I doubt this makes any difference, but I did write some of the code to make it work.

Red Eyes

I got my close up from my coworker and thought I'd post it for you guys:

My Family is Coming!

I'm so excited that most of my family is coming to visit for Thanksgiving! We even get to have baby Ki here. It's going to be great!

I finally bought myself a new pair of jeans. I don't know if anyone has noticed my pants, but they were pretty awful long before I made myself get some new ones. I took pictures so you could see the difference:

This last week, Twilight came out in movie theaters. I've read the book, but it was a long time ago and I wasn't all that impressed, so I didn't bother finishing the series. The women at my work, however, all love the books. They couldn't wait for the movie to come out, so they set up a girl's night out for Friday night, where we'd all go and see Twilight together. I went because it sounded like a fun thing to do. Plus, we all wore red contacts from work so we looked really creepy. It was a lot of fun, and the movie was better than I expected.

In preparation for my family's visit, Jeff and I bathed the cats yesterday. Wet kitties are so funny looking!

Halloween

Halloween didn't go quite the way I wanted it to, but I was still a lot of fun.

I was going to make costumes for Jeff and myself. We were going to be peasants. I thought it was going to turn out rather well. I even almost finished Jeff's pants before my sewing machine stopped working. Did I mention that this was the night before Halloween? But that same night (I got to bed around 3:30am) I was able to finish the homemade oreos I was bringing to my work's potluck party the next day.

My work's party was nothing compared to Jeff's, though...
Jeff's work is really, really into Halloween. To them, Halloween is a bigger deal than Christmas. They decorate their entire office (two buildings) and have a party for the families and friends of the employees. Jeff's nephews, Brayden and Will, came with their dad, and my aunt Karen brought my cousins, Zac and Abby (and baby Nathan). I didn't get to spend too much time with Brayden and Will since I didn't get to the party until 4pm, but they seemed to be having fun with Jeff.

I took Zac and Abby through the "scary" building first. We walked through a TMNT area, Ghostbusters, Batman, Space Ghost, and some other random dark areas. Karen was carring Nathan, so I held Zac and Abby's hands. If I let go for anything they would pull at me until I took the hand again. It was really cute.

In the Batman area, we came to a room where a guy dressed up as the new joker was sitting at a table with candy all over it. I was trying to get Zac and Abby more excited about collecting candy, so when I saw the table I said, "Hey look! That man has candy for you guys! Go get it!", without even realizing what I might be teaching these kids. "Hey! That creepy man over there has candy! You don't know him, but it's okay to talk to him because he has candy." Anyway, we went into the room and Zac takes some candy and says thanks. The Joker starts stroking his "scars" and says, "You kids wanna know how I got these scars?" They both just stare at him with wide eyes. "It's because I forgot to say thank you." Abby stares at him for another minute, then takes a piece of candy, says thank you in a tiny voice, grabs my hand and pulls me out of the room. It was funny.

Zac and Abby eventually felt comfortable to let me go and would dash to any bowl we told them had candy in it. They really seemed to enjoy themselves. I loved spending time with my cousins and Karen. I don't see enough of them. :)

That night, Jeff and I just handed out candy to trick or treaters. It was almost relaxing. We have a lot of candy left. I love it!

The Sick That Wouldn't Die

I have been sick for almost a full month now. It's pretty awful. The funny thing is that when I was finally feeling better, Jeff caught whatever I had and said (I quote) "I can't believe your throat hurt this bad". I was no longer suffering from the sore throat and thought it was very funny. You can't help but feel a little satisfied when someone else gets to feel just how miserable your symptoms really were.

About a day after Jeff caught my sick, we flew to Colorado to visit my family and celebrate my dad's birthday. The morning before we arrived, my mom woke up feeling feverish and sick. During our 3 day stay, my little sister, Amy, and my dad both caught the sick. It was nice being the healthiest person in the house after 2 weeks of being ill. :)

We spent most of our vacation on the couch playing Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS3 with Amy and my dad. It was very relaxing not having to be anywhere or do anything except not lose my temper with the baby who kept trying to grab my controller. I'll admit, I yelled at him at one point. I don't think I have the patience for babies yet. It scares me to think that someday I'll have children of my own. Do you grow out of wanting to strangle them? I know it's an awful thing to say, but I could barely stand 5 minutes of Ki's nonstop crying. I'm sure it will help when it's my own baby, right?

Anyway, the visit home was a LOT of fun. We watched general conference at my grandma's house in Broomfield and I spent some good quality time with my Aunt Amy. It was great! Poor Jeff passed out during the afternoon session, but having my husband fall asleep with his head in my lap is never a bad thing for me.

When we got home, the sick had apparently regained some strength with the help of mother's strain of illness and I have had a runny nose ever since. It is the bane of my existence, especially since work carries cardboard-like tissues that tear up my nose. Thankfully, the fevers are gone and Jeff is down to just a cough now. I'm sure it's only a matter of time (and vitamin C) before I'm feeling better as well.

Here's a cute picture of Taffy sleeping against Jeff's legs:

First Day on the Job

It feels so good to be working again. I have a job! It's a really good job too. I've got benefits and I'm getting paid $9 an hour. I even have life insurance!

I'm going to have to remember a lot. There are 7 doctors in the office, including a plastic surgeon, and each doctor has at least 2 technicians. There are 3 other receptionists, and an entire billing department. That's a lot of names and schedules to memorize. It's going to be interesting. I'm excited. :)

Good webcomic

A webcomic from xkcd was really good, and I'm pretty sure that the people in our families who would enjoy it don't read that webcomic, so I'm going to post it here (with the artist's permission, he just asks that you attribute it to him and don't use it commercially).







The subtext is: "Except for anything by Lewis Carroll or Tolkien, you get five made-up words per story. I'm looking at you, Anathem." I might have added Shakespeare to that list as well.

Getting Out of the House and Bringing People Into It

Finally, I have a job! I was hired yesterday at an eye doctor's, and I start tomorrow at 8am. Both Jeff and I are really excited. He's more excited because I'll be getting out of the house every day and making some extra cash, and I'm more excited because I'll be accomplishing something every day besides cleaning the litter box. The extra money is always nice too, though.

Last night, we had the Mortensen's over for dinner. It was a lot of fun! We had stew and rolls (my first attempt at Grandma's roll recipe), and everything went over really well. Nathan especially loved the rolls and got so excited to get his next bite that he would rock back and forth on his dad's lap, gasping loudly. It was really cute.

After dinner, we ate chocolate chip cookies and Jeff and I held Nathan while his family played tennis on the wii. It was a lot of fun to watch Zach and Abby try to swing the wiimote in time to hit the ball, and after an hour of "Just one more game" they left to put their chocolate covered children to bed.

I'm really glad we were finally able to invite Karen and her family over for dinner after all the times they've had us over on Sundays. We'll definitely have to do it again sometime. :)

Presidential Debate

Cyndi and I were watching the debate tonight, and some things have been striking us.

First, Obama said that we need to stop letting down the middle class, which I don't think is happening. My experience is that the middle class is quite well off and don't feel like they're being let down. Just my $.02, but I think Obama's trying to appeal to a demographic that doesn't exist. However, I'm young and naive.

Second, Obama is an awful public speaker when he has to speak off the cuff. He stutters and has awkward word choices. Also, attacking McCain on the war in Iraq doesn't make a lot of sense, since Obama opposed the surge and McCain had been calling for the surge long before Bush proposed it.

Finally, McCain's a jerk. This is something I've known since the 2000 election, but in this he was talking over the mediator and Obama. Reminds me of Al Gore in the 2000 election debates, actually. Obama's been doing it too, and I wish they would show more class than that.

My favorite quote from Obama: "There are some things we need to do. We don't know what the tax revenue's going to be, and there are things that we need to do that we might not be able to do. But there are also things that we have to do."

Perhaps Mr. Obama should consider not categorizing things as either needs or things we have to have.

I hate both candidates. McCain's a jerk who left his crippled wife for a younger, richer woman. Obama's an elitist, inexperience, out of touch college professor. McCain blatantly lies in his ads and gets called on it by all the media outlets. Obama attacks McCain for not being able to use email when McCain's stated his inability stems from the torture he suffered in Vietnam. Joe Biden and Barack Obama are the two most liberal senators in the senate.

They're both awful choices. Unless something changes drastically, I'm voting Bob Barr.

Edit to add: My second favorite Obama quote: "Mr Lehrer, I have a bracelet too."

Odds and ends

Some random information about the past few weeks:

• In my defense, the columbian is big, scary, bald and columbian; I, on the other hand, am a coward. Perhaps I should get a gun. As Professor Farnsworth said, "Who needs courage when you've got a gun?" or, as Doctor Zoidberg said, "No, world, you put your hands up!"


• We bought a dryer to go along with our washer. One of our friends had one left over from her divorce, so we got a neary brand new washer for not too much money.


• I've now changed the plug type on the dryer and replaced our cracked garbage disposal. It's like I'm a real husband!


• Our lawn has started to come in. We have a really small amount of land, and we decided to see if we could get some grass growing before winter hit, hopefully making it easier to grow it next year. We'll be putting in some raspberry bushes, strawberries, and random garden vegetables next year. I'm pretty excited about it.

All told, things are looking pretty good. Cyndi's been emailing the counselor at UVU to square her schooling away, although she's not sure what she's going to major in. I'll be looking into going in january, or maybe just taking some courses online, we'll see. My job's going well, and my stock options are already worth quite a bit of money, so I've got a lot of incentive to stay and make the product better since they're not vested yet and I can directly affect the quality of the program. It's pretty wild for me to think that I'm one of around 20 guys who makes the product that makes our company worth $1.5 billion. Absolutely wild. I expect to be fired any day now ;) Just kidding, they seem to have some faith in me (for whatever reason).

An Experience I Could Have Done Without

Scene: It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Neighborhood children are playing across the street, a man is working on the underside of his car, and Jeff and Cyndi are enjoying the day inside their apartment with the windows open. The man working on his car is doing so with the radio blaring. This isn't the first time he's forced the neighborhood to listen to his car stereo, and Cyndi has finally had enough. She goes outside and kneels next to the car the man is under. Her conversation with him goes something like this:

Cyndi: "Excuse me, could you do me a favor and turn down your music?"
Man: "I don't think it's that loud."
Cyndi: "Well, I can hear it in my house, do you think you could turn it down anyway?"
Man: "I don't think it's that loud. If you don't like it, you can call the police."
Cyndi: "What? Seriously?"
Man: "Yeah. If you don't like it, call the police."
Cyndi: "Okay."

Tell me, what would you do at that point? I'll tell you what I did. I called the police. It's not something I've ever done before, and I hope I'll never have to again. An officer came and he and the man talked for about an hour. At one point the man was handcuffed, but they were talking and laughing again by the time the cop left. Thankfully, the music was turned down, and I was able to enjoy the rest of my day with my husband.

The next morning, the man was waiting for Jeff when he walked to his car to go to work. It turns out that he didn't turn down his music even when the officer asked him to, and that's why he was in handcuffs. It was considered an arrest, and was apparently his first. He was really angry about it and told Jeff we should have closed our windows if his music was annoying us.

I do feel bad that he was arrested in front of his family, but I never meant for that to happen. All I wanted was for the music to be turned down. I don't consider it my fault that he pissed off the cop.

Jeff recommended that I apologize to him so we could have a decent relationship with our neighbors, and my mother agreed that apologizing would be the best thing to do IF we wanted to get along with these people (I do wish I knew if they were renting or if they owned their town home so I could let it blow over until they moved out- I'm such a coward). So I said a prayer and went over that afternoon to apologize, but no one was home. I wimped out the next day, and I've been sick the rest of the week. I don't know if I can work up the courage to try again. :(

It doesn't help that they all apparently hate me, from before I called the cops. They think I'm a jerk because when I came to look at the house, I didn't wave at them. Honestly, I don't think I even noticed them. I was a little preoccupied at the time. Also, the guy thought I had an attitude when I asked him to turn down his music. I'll admit, I was irritated when I asked, but I thought I was pretty polite.

I was so proud of myself for going outside to talk to him at all. He's a big, bald, scary looking Columbian, and it took a lot of courage for me to ask him to turn down the music. I wouldn't have even thought about calling the police on him, except that he asked me to.

I think Jeff and I will make some cookies this week and go introduce ourselves to all of our neighbors properly. It's about time we made more of an effort to get to know the people we'll be living next to for a while.


On a lighter note, here's (another) picture of the cats. Our new home came with a doggy door, and the cats absolutely love it. I'm not sure what they imagine they see through the non-transparent flap, but I'm sure it's fascinating. :)

Quick Kitty Update

Since the cats are the only other residents in our new home, I can't help but post about them when they learn something new. :)

Sadie and Taffy have figured out how to open the bathroom drawers, and they love to lie in them and crawl behind them, when possible.

It's still a little disconcerting to be the only one in the house, and hear drawers opening and closing.

A Moment of Silence for Minion and Maude

The house is looking a lot nicer than it use to, and almost all of the boxes are unpacked (most of what's left are books). We finally got a fridge! We were both very excited about that. It is so nice to have a full size freezer and a shelf for milk, unlike the mini fridge we bought to hold us over until we could afford a real one. Now the mini fridge just sits in the bedroom and holds drinks for Jeff and myself. :)

We also finally bought a washing machine. It's going to be delivered today! Now all we need is our friend Emily's dryer, and we'll have a real home!

Jeff is teaching me how to program in php. It's really easy, and pretty fun. I've always been interested in programming, but I've never really committed myself to learning it. We're having "classes" Mon, Wed, and Fri while Jeff waters the lawn. Maybe I'll get good enough to be hired at a good paying job. I'm crossing my fingers.

We put the rats down last week. It was really sad, and it was really drawn out (the visit to the vet's, not their deaths- I hope). I had already gotten myself into the mindset that neither rat was coming home because a tumor removal surgery really isn't worth it for a pet who's average life span is 2.5 years, and there's a really good chance the tumors would come back anyway. I just wanted to let the rats go together before life got too miserable for them. Jeff came with me and he held my hand while the doctor kept us waiting for an hour, and then went on for another hour about surgery and people who have had multiple surgeries on their rats and how she would prepare the rats for surgery if we wanted it... It dragged on and on. She eventually asked if we wanted an estimate, and even though I knew we weren't going to get the surgery, I said yes just to get her to shut up about it. She left the room, and we didn't see her again. 15 minutes later, a tech came in with the estimates and left us alone to think about it. I started crying. Jeff eventually had to go up to the front desk and tell them we just wanted to put the rats down.

Before we went to the vet's, I was more than prepared to take the bodies home and bury them in the garden, but that visit had turned what should have been a quick and tearful goodbye into a two and half long lecture on other people who didn't murder their beloved pets, and I just wanted to get out of there. So we left Minion and Maude in their traveling cage in the exam room, and left.

For those of you who met my rats, I hope you got to meet them before they got tumors. They were so much happier and hyper back then. I'm really going to miss them.

This is the only other picture of the rats that I have, so please forgive my foot.

P.S.- What do you do with boxes after a move? Do you just throw them away? It seems like such a waste, but I have so many.

The Virtual Tour

Future living/dining area

Future Jeff's office

Future spare/reading room

Future master bedroom

We Have The Intranets!

Finally! Jeff and I can get online without pirating our neighbor's unsecured wireless networks. That means I can create a blog and post pictures without waiting two hours for everything to load! Hooray! In all honesty, that is what has taken me so long to post, so I apologize.

I've got a lot to catch this blog up on. Jeff already posted that we bought a house. Technically, a townhome, but I'll post more about that later. :)

To start, I'd like to thank my mother for letting me help her while she packed up our old apartment. She is amazing and I really don't think I could have made it through that week without her. I wish I had taken pictures of the old apartment for this so I could show everyone how much junk we had. Thankfully, that part of the move is over, and now I just have to unpack the massive amounts of unnecessary crap that I've hoarded over the 23 years of my lifespan.

I have some pictures to share with the next portion of the move: The Car Trip. Jeff drove the 22' moving truck, while I drove the Civic with the animals. Just so everyone is aware, cats do not enjoy car rides. We had both of the cats in harnesses and on leashes so they couldn't climb into the diver seat foot well, and, as adorable as they look in their gear, they really, really disliked it. Taffy spent most of the trip either yowling at me from the front seat or hiding in the litter box in the back seat. Thankfully, she hid more than she yowled. Sadie, on the other hand, spent the majority of the trip climbing all over me (while yowling), sitting on the front seat glaring at me (and yowling), or sleeping in my lap (finally unconscious). Dangerous, yes, but quiet. I was finally able to enjoy Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on cd. :)

The cats and rats spent about a week at Jeff's very kind parent's house while Jeff and I were in and out of hotels, waiting to officially move into our new home. It's been almost a full week since we got in, and I absolutely love it. Jeff did an excellent job picking out a new home for us. :)

Finally, it took us long enough

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. We've known we were buying this house for a week and a half, so I don't know why it's taken us this long to post. Anyway, google maps can show you some pictures of our house if you're interested in seeing pictures. It's a simple townhome, between 1300 and 1400 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths. Our mortgage payment's going to be more than an apartment would have been, but there aren't any apartments that are this nice, really. We're closing tomorrow at 6:00 pm, so hopefully this will be our last night sleeping on a bed that isn't ours.

My new job's going well. I've been bored out of my mind since I don't know the system or the code base yet. That will probably last another 2 weeks or so. They're also going to reimburse the moving expenses that we incurred, which I think is really nice. As a quick side note, the comfort inn in cedar city has whirlpool tubs right in the room. I know what you're thinking, and yes, sitting in a whirlpool tub watching a hotel's big screen is one of the greatest things in the world, especially when it's only $10 more per night than the same room without one and they let you keep pets there.

Other than that there's not much to say. My family came out like champs and helped us move the stuff into the empty house, with my older brother Duane and my brother in law Spencer moving our most heavy furniture up the stair together, and if you've ever tried to move my desk, you realize what a feat that is. On a scale of 1 to 10, they're both 11's. Maybe 11.2's. If only Guinness had been there.

Le Sigh

So we found this amazing townhome in South Orem that was worth over $200,000, but was selling for about $180,000. We saw it and fell in love with it. The owners just wanted to get out of it (something had come up with their daughter, apparently) so we offered $178,000 with them paying $5,000 of our closing cost (so we only would have to dish out $173,00 - still a LOT of money). Long story short, someone else dove in and offered full price. We were already out of our comfort zone with the price, so we lost the townhome.
Now we have to meet with the realtor again and go look at homes. Actually, Jeff gets to meet with the realtor and look at more properties, because I get to go home and clean and pack up the apartment. Jeff also starts work on Monday, so he's going to have to house hunting in his spare time after work. I feel bad. We really wanted the expensive place because it was absolutely perfect, but also because this would all be over. That was our first day of hunting (and we looked at about a dozen other places) and we found a perfect place. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a loft, and a pretty nice kitchen. We wouldn't have had to move for a long long time, and then we could have possibly rented it when we did move.
Like I already said, Jeff is going to be staying in Utah and I'm going back to Vegas. The last time we did this (last week) I lasted all of 3 days. Let's see how long I can make it before I break down this time...


(Just something random:)

Bonus

As a bonus, here are pictures of our cats: Taffy and Sadie (Sadie hates the flash)

Also, here are our rats: Minion and Maude



I love pictures. I only wish my parents would start a blog so I could see pictures of Amy's haircut, Mom's braces, ect (Hint hint, Mom. I know you read this). I'll try to put up new pictures every time I post, just to keep things interesting.

The Search Is On For A New Home

Jeff and I are officially moving to Utah, and we've been extremely busy trying to take care of everything that needs to be done before our move. We've already spoken with our property management, and they're willing to let us out of our contract early. We forfeit all deposits and are responsible for rent until the apartment is rented out again (or until October, when the contract would end). Also, we get charged with the marketing fees for putting the apt back on the market. I'm a little annoyed that we're losing about $1,000 in deposits alone, but if someone picks up our contract soon, it will be worth it.

Jeff traveled up to Utah to take a look at possible apartments/houses, and he also looked into the possibility of applying for a mortgage. It looks as though we would be approved for a mortgage up to $200,000. Now we're seriously looking into purchasing a house/townhome. It's fun, but it's also stressing Jeff. This is a really big step, and a huge responsibility.

Jeff left Thursday morning for Utah (he was suppose to leave Wednesday, but I talked him into staying another day). I was perfectly fine Thursday and Friday, but by Saturday I was depressed, lonely, and more than ready for my husband to come back home. He had originally planned on leaving Utah Sunday night, but when he heard how much I missed him, he left Saturday night and drove all night for me (stopping for a 2 hour nap). He is so amazing!

This next week is my last at the Computer Learning Center. We finally found someone who looks as though they'll be a good replacement for me. Now I just have to train her. Thurday, Jeff and I are going back up to Utah to go look at our favorite properties from the real estate listings. Hopefully we'll find something that we would be able to move into right away. August 4th, Jeff starts work, and I get to go back to Las Vegas to pack and clean. Fun fun. Thankfully, this should be the last trip that separates us for a while. I don't think I can handle another one any time soon.

Offer Received

About 5% lower than what I asked for, but it includes stock options and relocation assistance that bring it higher than what I asked for. I start August 4. Overall a pretty sweet deal. The hardest part is that they took so long to actually get to this point, that was pretty annoying.

So, we're not quite sure what our timetable looks like from here on out. I want to head to Utah for the latter half of the week to try to get an apartment all set up, or at least to get started with it. We're looking at possibly Pemberley, where Duane lives, or a place where Ricky and Taylor (Cyndi's soon-to-be-married friends) are going to be living and managing, or maybe renting/buying a house. We'll see what happens.

I don't know when Cyndi's going to be leaving her job or when/whether our current apartment managers will allow us out of the contract. There's no way that we're going to be willing to live apart for more than a week (if that). However, her current job is very dependent on her, and as far as I know there haven't been any decent applicants since they started trying to fill Cyndi's job. It's a real testament to just how good she is at what she does. Since she got hired, business went up by something like 60% (she can tell you the exact number), and it's largely fallen on her to cover all that by herself. She's incredibly good at her job and I'm sad to see her give up such a good job.

So, the deal is that Cyndi will go to school full time this fall and I'll take one class. If she can handle it, she might go for a part time job. It's an exciting change.

They said yes, I said wow

I said when, and they said either today or early next week.

Okay, so the country song attempt breaks down right there (link for the uncultured), but still, I just heard from the recruiter at Omniture that they're just putting together the final offer with the finance department and that I should hear from them either today or early next week. As long as they give me a reasonable offer, I'm going to take it.

This means that Cyndi and I need to start packing up the apartment to move it all up to Utah. I'll want to see the final figure on the salary, but I think it's safe to say that we'll be looking to rent a house or a spacious apartment. The problem is that the apartment would have to accept us having two cats. Renting a house would hopefully be more conducive to us living with cats, and it would maybe let us let the cats out of the house instead of keeping them inside all day. I'm tired of cleaning out that stupid litter box every day; who knew that cats would create so much waste?

Phone interview

The phone interview with Omniture happened this morning, and it went fairly well. I'm cautiously optimistic :D There was one programming question, and I did okay with it. He asked about my education, I told him, he didn't sound happy about that. Overall, it's a solid "meh".

Another Perspective... With Pictures!

We recently got back from an awesome family reunion in Idaho with my family. Jeff is really good with children, by the way. One of my favorite parts of the family reunion was staying up until 3am with Jeff, Uncle James, Katie, Joe, and my dad playing Munchkin. Another favorite part was the talent show. Jeff was a really good sport and sang with my family (Jeff and I couldn't really come up with a talent we'd be willing to do in front of everyone). We sang "Peanut Butter and Jelly" by InsideOut and Jeff and I were Peanut Butter and Raspberry Jelly. It was cute. I also really enjoyed watching my Aunt Amy sing with us from the back of the room. Apparently she really likes the song. I can't blame her.

On the way to and from the reunion we stopped in Utah and hung out with Jeff's family. We joined in their family reunion and got to eat some pretty amazing food (including homemade rootbeer!). I really enjoyed seeing all of his family again, especially his grandma Rosemary who tells me how pretty I am every time she sees me. She's adorable, and really good for my self-esteem.


I've posted a couple of pictures for color. The one above is from our wedding reception. I think we look better here than we do at the actual wedding -hence the posting. I've also posted a few pictures of Jeff and myself being silly from our long distance relationship:

As for the job situation, I feel a little uncomfortable about being the only one with employment right now, but I'm also extremely happy Jeff gets a break from work he doesn't enjoy. Plus, he makes me dinner. Omniture sounds like an awesome opportunity for him, but I would also love living in Colorado, so I'm fine with whatever position Jeff decides to accept (once offered). I really wouldn't mind getting out of Las Vegas. I'll miss everyone we have here, but I'm ready to be closer to family again.

jobs update

So, Monday's phone interview with Omniture fell through. The VP thought that it was a face to face interview, and the recruiter wasn't in the office Monday. Today the recruiter contacted me and set up an interview for Friday morning at 7:30 am PST.

Yesterday I had an interview with Kaango, which just got bought out by the hearst corporation. I have no idea if I'm going to get another interview with them or not. They're based in Aurora, CO, which would be a good way to get closer to Cyndi's family. I would really, really like to have either of those jobs.

It's about time that I start applying for more jobs in Vegas, however. With the family reunion right there and Omniture looking so good and me not even sure if I wanted to go back to school full time, it didn't seem prudent to apply for jobs locally. Now, I'm thinking it's time for me to go ahead and start casting a wider net.

New blog, new job, new schools

Cyndi's aunt Karen suggested we start a blog to keep everyone up on our lives, and so here we are. This blog will (theoretically) keep everyone in the whole wide world up to date on our lives. Just think of it, now even John McCain can know what's happening with our little family!

So, what's happening in our lives right now? I lost my job on June 19th, and last week I interviewed with Omniture in Orem. They're a good company, treat their employees right, etc. They even have a game room set up to look like a dungeon where you can play World of Warcraft or other computer games. Tomorrow I have a phone interview with the VP of Engineering and Wednesday should hold a job offer for me. From what the recruiter said, the only way I won't get the job is to completely screw up the phone interview. Here's hoping I get it.

Assuming I get the job, then Cyndi's agreed to go back to school full time and I'll take a night class at UVSC. I'm not sure what I'll major in, but it'll probably be either math, science or computer science. Cyndi wants to do elementary education, although I think she'd be great as a botanist or, really, anything else. It's fun to walk down the street with her and have her identify all the plants that she learned in High School.