and so, we are guests in our own home, now. we put it on the market yesterday. we placed an offer on a house in town on Friday and it was accepted, contingent upon the sale of our house, on Saturday. nothing like working things backwards and living from behind the eight ball.
concurrent with all this, we got a new computer system in, and i have yet to get this old 21″ NEC MultiSync monitor calibrated on it. i’m about ready to give up: i can’t process photos on it right now because the color’s off and it’s way low-contrast even after several iterations of the half-hour long calibration routine. bah. it’s just one of those things, i guess, but i’ve been fighting it for two days and not getting any real work done, other than getting some print orders out, and those had to be done off the old machine with the new monitor. bah. computers suck. it’ll piss of #1 Son, but i think i’m going to swap monitors back and put the new one on here. there’s a point wherein the clients do have to come first.
obviously, the imminent move (presuming someone doesn’t out-bid us on that house with a non-contingent offer) weighs heavily on all of us. an interesting side-benefit is watching the kids actively seeking to gain parental favor by virtue of picking up after themselves. but of course, the weather has been crap, so no one’s seen these ultra-clean guest quarters we continue to call “home” other than ourselves and our realtor. winter’s a stupid time to be trying to sell a house out here, but we really had no control over the Spouse Unit getting laid off. and the timing with my not having any contracted client work from January through April was just one of those coinkydinks where you roll your eyes, sigh, say “Go fucking figure”, and sigh again.
other than that, we’re all doing fairly well. the Spouse Unit has accepted a job with a former employer out of California that is going to pay her decently without expecting us to move out there, so that part of our futures is looking bright. it’ll also suffice to see us through in case we have to leave this house on the market through the spring. sorry if that was redundant to a previous post. i’ve been so busy with trying to serve client orders, getting the house ready to show, and getting the new system configured, calibrated, and all the software installed, that i’ve become too damn lazy to go read any previous posts. forgive me. i’ve gotten very adept at not allowing some emotions to show to my fellow family members, for what it’s worth, so i suppose it’s only natural that i bitch and moan a bit on my blogs.
as i was taking photos of the house for the realtor on Monday, i couldn’t help but to think about all the photos that were taken from or of this property. so, i made a compilation of the ones that had been previously published on synthaetica.com.
we’ve been without hot water since Monday morning. we got a company to come over and look at it, but they couldn’t come until Tuesday afternoon, and the guy didn’t come with parts despite having been told that manufacturer and model of the water heater. he did come with some sort of cock-and-bull story about how we’re supposed to have some overflow reservoir in there for the way we’re set up, in order to meet “state code”, and he wasn’t “supposed to leave a house that didn’t have that done.” since he didn’t have the parts or equipment for that, either (in his little 1-ton pickup truck), i generously let him leave without kicking his smug ass.
i don’t know why the Spouse Unit called that particular company, anyway. today, we’ll call the guys who came out and worked on our furnace a couple of years ago. they were cool, and one of their managers is the brother of our next-door neighbor.
but yeah, anyway, it’s sub-20 outside and we have no hot water. brrrrrrrrrrrr…… and i’m going to leave out some serious gripes with this company without elaborating on them in the spirit at least attempting to be positive today.
{there, i got the bitching and moaning done first, because there are some great things to celebrate today}
Celebration #1:
First and foremost, a heartly congratulations goes out to Tramplingrose, on the birth of her baby boy on January 3, 2008. I hope Rachel and Alexander will continue to do well, and will accept my apologies for not getting around to other blogs much of late. In fact, I’ve been really bad about that for the past several weeks, so I’m really sorry Rachel. I hope you’re feeling better. And Jay, go have a beer. It’ll help. Not much, to be honest, but it’ll help. I do know how it feels from your perspective, my friend. Best of luck to all three of you!
Celebration #2:
Yesterday, the Spouse Unit received her first formal job offer for a position that would employ her to perform work here in Sioux Falls, comes reasonably close (very reasonably, I might add) to paying her what she’s worth, and would allow her to continue on in the most recent augmentation of her career track, the usability testing and analysis. Even better, the offer is from a former manager of hers out in California who told me, when that company laid her off, that his next big problem at the time would be to find three people for very little money to even replicate her work for him. In other words, he’s been missing the Spouse Unit as an employee ever since that happened, and literally jumped on the chance to get her to work for his new company. They talked on Friday and the offer letter came yesterday. The only down-side, in fact, is that she’d be having to learn how to work from home, which would almost make us co-workers, at least in terms of proximity. That might really be interesting, though!
Celebration #3:
Well, this isn’t much of a celebration per se. We did have our most successful bridal show ever this past Sunday, however, and it really turned out to be a turning point for me, attitude-wise. I’m looking forward to the wedding season now, instead of dreading the work I’ll probably have to be doing alone again this year. But the clients we booked at the show seem to be really great couples, and the ones we’re meeting with from the show over the next couple of weeks are all in the category of ‘very strong’ leads. It helps that I did a better job this time around in communicating what my services actually are and being candid with how they compare to others. But actually, all my clients thus far this year seem like really great people, and we have gotten along quite well in our meetings. This is going to be a fun year!
We’ve got some minor repairs and cleaning up to do yet before we put this house on the market, but moving from here is something that would be good in many ways, as sad as it will make us to leave here. One of the other oddities in that upcoming move for us is that we’ve never move made a ’simple’ in-town move before. It’s always been from city to city. And with at least one wedding reception at the golf course that’s about a mile away from here, driving past here will be kind of sad when it happens, and of course I’ll miss just looking out the back windows and seeing the hawks. Nothing I can’t live with, of course, but still….{sigh} At least we can now move forward with finishing up this little bit of work (plus the damned water heater, now, of course) knowing that at least one serious (in my definition of that term) offer exists for the Spouse Unit’s (and thus our) future. I do believe we’ll be okay, and maybe even in the short term as well as the long term!
That’s really it as far as catching up with where I’m at. Please go browse my blogrolls here and over at the otherwhirled.
The folks at First Freedom First have some powerful new advertisements out, posing some interesting questions to be considered during this election cycle. I include a couple below, because I think they’re both worthy of listening to.
Here are some of the questions FFF believes we should be asking candidates when they come to our areas. These are just suggestions, of course.
Here are suggested questions that you can use at Town Hall meetings or other locations where candidates for office will be gathering. You can copy and paste them into an email message to the candidates. Or, use these as suggestions to help formulate your own questions to candidates, to find out their views on safeguarding separation of church and state and protecting religious liberty.
Leaders on the religious right often say that America is a “Christian Nation.” Do you agree with this statement?
Do you think Houses of Worship should be allowed to endorse political candidates and retain their tax exempt status?
Do you think public schools should sponsor school prayer or, as a parent, should this choice be left to me?
Would you support a law that mandates teaching creationism in my child’s public school science classes?
Do you think my pharmacist should be allowed to deny me doctor-prescribed medications based on his or her religious beliefs?
Will you respect the rights of those in our diverse communities of faith who deem same-gender marriage to be consistent with their religious creed?
Should “faith-based” charities that receive public funds be allowed to discriminate against employees or applicants based on religious beliefs?
Do you think one’s right to disbelieve in God is protected by the same laws that protect someone else’s right to believe?
Do you think everyone’s religious freedom needs to be protected by what Thomas Jefferson called “a wall of separation” between church and state?
What should guide our policies on public health and medical research: science or religion?
Questions that I might ask:
Status Quo is often cited by the religious right as a reason for continuing the nation’s “business as usual”. Would you support the “Status Quo” after the example of the current administration, even when “business as usual” over the past seven years has proven harmful to our economy?
Our nation is comprised of many peoples, religions and creeds. Do you feel that politicians should be allowed to campaign on specific religious issues and promote specific religious platforms while continuing to draw benefits from the government (security details, etc) while campaigning?
Do you believe that when a veteran’s service is over, the government’s responsibility to the veteran ends, or do you believe that the government shares an ongoing obligation to veterans to provide qualified health care and psychological services to all veterans with no strings attached?
moving choices now range from Colorado Springs, CO to Dahlgren, VA. whichever one of you sees me next, don’t be surprised if i’ve pulled out all my hair and tend to stare vacantly at some point between the end of my nose and whatever else is in front of me.
of course, it ain’t all about me. or the Spouse Unit. we discuss each option with the kids. they’re excited, but talking about it just brings to mind the uncertainty of their future.
oh, how i miss the old days. you know, back two months ago, when we didn’t know the Spouse Unit was getting laid off.
okee…well…i have to confess that the Spouse Unit and the Otherlings are not the only pack-rats in the house. guess who has tax records for his business, including State taxes across three States, all the way back to 1995. but not just the tax filings. all the manuals, preparation forms, multiple copies of W-2, 1099’s etc, etc, etc…gah. it has taken me the better part of two days to purge the office of literally hundreds of pounds of needless paper and other things, and i haven’t even managed to clean off my desk, yet. i have cleaned out my desk, though, which is kind of nice. instead of having four drawers full of outdated computer cables, connectors, small tools, and soccer referee paraphernalia (coins, pins, etc), i now have places where i can put things! whodathukit?!?!
what’s actually amazing is how long i’ve been carrying that stuff around, even paying to move it twice. {sigh}
this really hasn’t started getting fun yet, but i am certainly glad to feel lighter.
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