It’s been a huge while since I updated - it was right after Thanksgiving when I last posted! Kim and I moved, and Christmas came and went. The move went ok, but could have been better. I’ve partially regretted it, also. The house looked fine inside and out, but it wasn’t until we started to live here that all the downsides made themselves known. The house is very old, and terribly inefficient. It’s MUCH bigger than my old place, complete with a fenced-in back yard. But the energy bills have sky-rocketed despite putting plastic on all the windows and trying to seal every gap to the outside. The bathroom has carpet, which pulls up to reveal old asbestos tiles. Now I’m locked into a new 12-month contract for this place I can’t tolerate. It could be worse: the new occupant next to where Kim and I used to live has his band practice there at full-volume. Anyway, after the move I got really sick with stomach flu. I hate being sick during the holidays, and even more so because I hated taking sick days so soon after receiving my promotion. Being sick made me miss my opportunity to see Clint and Jacqui while they were in town, which also really sucked. Thankfully, Christmas gave the living room a much-needed visual boost with all the decorating gifts mom sent (pics to come soon). As soon as New Years hit, I went back to insanely-busy-mode. This is due to doubling up on classes this semester to make sure I get my Master’s degree by December 07. So now all my freetime has been spent on classwork (with the exception being this one small break to post this update). On top of this, work has proven to give me far more distractions than I had anticipated. I love my new job, and I feel that I not only belong but also contribute to the leadership team. I have successfully earned the respect of my subordinates and co-workers, but I’ve had to spend a lot of time in the office to get caught up to speed. Despite being sick for a while in December, I still put in close to 60 hours per week. Thankfully, this will only be temporary now that I’ve got a better understanding on how to do my various tasks. With the new promotion and my distaste for this house, I decided to look into buying a house. There’s a new housing neighborhood going up on the west side of town and the prices are affordable - especially considering all the money I’m tossing away right now for inefficient utilities. I went online to do research and put my info into lendingtree.com to get an idea of what I could start to look forward to. I didn’t plan for what happened afterwards: a flood of email and phone calls from people asking me to be their lender. I also still have this new rental contract to deal with as well.

… Back to homework.

Categories: Miscellaneous
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