an.epic.update [3000+]

in the beginning, there was...

ike.
as many of you know, if youre following this, I last left off before ike had even entered the picture. Which gives you some idea of how long its been I suppose. Well we were gearing up to leave town and go to denver and ike was still in the gulf. Needless to say we’re all aware of just what kind of damage came out of ike, but safety first, so im going to fill you in on where I and mine stand in the wake of ikes devastation. First of all, everyone is fine. Everyone is healthy. Everyone is safe. Karen and I actually missed all of ikes havoc even though it came right through Cincinnati and did some serious damage up here. Its still being called the worst storm in the history of Cincinnati. Ike hit cincy with hurricane force winds and gusts up to 80mph causing serious damage to a city that was in no way ever prepared for a storm of this magnitude. I doubt before this cincy had even seen tropical storm force winds. When it was over with, over a million people in the ohio river valley were without power, huge trees that had been here for centuries (literally) had been up rooted (and their roots stood 11ft high!) steeples from historic churches had been relocated in buildings across the street, and many people had roofs blown off and pretty serious wind damage. To this day (over a week since ikes landfall) people in cincy are still without power. It blows my mind, but duke energy is doing all they can day in and out to get it back up, and people are trying to go on with their lives as best they can. Apparently our apartment lost power for about 17-18 hours, but other than that, no damage at all. The most Karen and I actually even saw of ike was a lot of rain in western Missouri while we’re on the road, but it wasn’t even very hard rain.
As for our families, we’re not dumb people and being that everyone lived on or near the coast, everyone evacuated. Now that its all over and it has been over a week, heres the status report. Texas city, from what ive heard, had very minimal damage compared to the rest of the region. From the news reports ive heard and read, the texas city seawall or “skyline” as we call it, was the only seawall in the entire coast that actually did its job in this hurricane. Im sure a lot of that is because it’s a little taller than some of the others in the area, and by the time the surge got that far inland it wasn’t nearly as high as it could have been anyway. Either way, the power is on in texas city, my family is at home, and theyre slowly cleaning up and repairing what damage was done. Miraculously, that damage was little to nothing at all in the grande scheme of things. I say miraculously because with my dad in Saudi Arabia before and during ike, my mom was unable to put the storm shutters on the doors and windows before evacuating and miraculously, there was no damage at all to our house, not even a cracked window from what ive heard. However, the trees and gates and fences at our house were not as lucky and all of them have been in the process of being rebuilt either completely or partially over the last week. But other than that, everyone is safe and the house is in the same condition it was before Ike hit.
As for karens family, well theyre islanders, so their fate wasn’t quite the same. At this point, they still haven’t been able to get back on the island to go and see the house (as far as I know) but they do know some people that have seen the house and to my understanding there has been some damage but it could have been worse. They live in a beach house type structure so the lowest level is garage and utility and the actual living space is on large piers and starts at 14ft above grade. From what ive heard at this point the lowest level of the house has sustained some pretty good damage and I don’t know to what extent, but its not good. Karen’s mom’s car I believe is upside down on the lawn, and theres definitely been damage to the yard and landscaping. That’s really all I know about the damage to the house, but her parents are safe and hopefully will get on the island at some point today or tomorrow to further evaluate the damage and go from there.

trip.
so we ended up embarking on the trip to denver as scheduled on saturday morning at about 4am. if you remember from the itinerary we were originally going to stop in kansas city to check out a museum and stay the night, near salina to see a little attraction and then on to denver. then two museums in denver, and two more on the way back in st. louis. well not everything went as planned… everything was fine on the way out until we got to illinois at around 10-11am. At which point the serpentine belt that I had just replaced a week before (if you remember from an earlier post) popped on us and left us stranded on the side of I-70 in no-where Illinois. Well after battling with triple-a on the phone and giving up, theyre absolutely worthless, and contacting a tow company on our own via a sheriff’s advice, we found ourselves in Effingham Illinois to get the truck repaired. Effingham - where the t-shirts actually say “where in the Effingham are we” if that tells you anything. (although they do have a 900ft tall silver cross that can be seen for miles around and serves absolutely no purpose at all from what I could tell, lol!) anyway, we were in Effingham for about 3 hours while the truck was towed and repaired and then we were back on our way. We made it to Kansas city, but certainly not in enough time to make it to the museum and we already had hotels booked elsewhere, so we decided that stop was going to have to be postponed. We did try some of the famous Kansas city bbq while we were there and speaking as a Texan who knows real bbq… I was more than disappointed with our meal. I wont go into detail, but I would recommend NOT getting bbq in Kansas city if you ever had the option.
So the next morning, Sunday, we got on the road again and we did make our stop at “rock city” near salina. It was actually pretty cool and the huge nerd I am, I ate it up. Took dozens of pictures, if you know me, then you know whats up, haha. After saline we finished our trip and made it to denver around 8-ish mountain time and actually were able to meet up with a friend of mine, cody, that night for dinner and to catch up.
Monday we were supposed to do museum stuff all day but discovered that both museums were closed on Monday so instead we took care of other things. We got my truck inspected and my license plates renewed in Colorado, a fairly lengthy little process, and then picked up the u-haul and ended up emptying out my storage unit and getting all that done on Monday before 8-oclock even hit. After talking with a few other friends I was able to get ahold of while we were there we ended up meeting up with bob for a drink @ 8:30 at the rio, and then we had sushi with chris and nick @ 9:30 at konas. It was really great to get to see the friends I could while I was in denver and catch up on things before I had to leave again for who knows how long. Part of me does miss denver…
Tuesday we decided to ditch the u-haul at the hotel and try to get the museums in before leaving as early as we could. Since Karen and I had both been to the dam before she just wanted to get some pictures of it for her research and we did that pretty quickly and then moved on the the mca. Now personally I love the mca, if you ever get the chance to go there, do so. The dam, not so much, but do whatever you like I guess. So we went to the mca and had a blast, we toured the museum and were able to take a ton of pictures and even left with a few souvenirs. When we got back to the hotel to leave we discovered that the u-haul wasn’t balanced as optimally as wed like and wanted to rearrange things before getting back on the road, but the door was seriously stuck – not good. Something must have been jammed in the track we assumed, and there was no way we were going to make it with it bouncing around the way it was so we went through circles to find a u-haul place closer to us (the one we got the trailer at was a half hour in the wrong direction – the u-haul people do not know how to locate a nearest location on the phone to reserve your trailer…). Eventually we did find one and luckily they were able to help us open it (there was something jammed in the track) and we were able to get things balanced better and finally get on the road by about 4pm… definitely later than we were hoping so we cancelled the hotel reservation we’d made in Kansas city and got one in Abilene Kansas instead and I drove until we got there at about 1am central time.
We left there Wednesday morning and decided we were definitely stopping for the museum in Kansas city. So we stopped at the nelson-atkins and it was awesome. Stephen holl did a fantastic job on this one and we enjoyed every second of it. Again we got tons of pictures and between taking longer at the museum than wed expected and the u-haul seriously slowing us down, we decided to spend the night near st Louis at about 10pm. (we were both exhausted) we didn’t end up getting to go to the two museums in st.louis or really get to enjoy the gateway arch, but we went by all of them and got as close as we could and took what pictures we could while we were in st.louis. maybe some other day we’ll be able to go back and get the full experience, but for now it just wasn’t in the cards.
So Thursday, a day not originally intended to be on this trip, we drove the rest of the way to cincy and got back around 2 or 3 if I remember correctly. We were pretty beat from the whole trip but we got it done. Friday, Saturday, and a little on Sunday, we unpacked the trailer into our apartment, mostly into our storage here in cincy and then returned the u-haul and finally got this all over with and now we’re all organized and finally settled back into cincy again. When all was said and done it took us 19 hours to get to denver, and approximately 23 hours to get back and I hope I never have to drive cross country with a u-haul again. It sucks.

house.
So on Friday before we left for cincy, we got a call from the realtor, and they had finally sent us an official 20 page contract to read over and sign. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen right away given the circumstances of our cross country adventure, so it got put on the back burner until we got back to cincy. Friday when we were back in cincy we went to the realtor and went over the contract and signed it and actually got it to them quick enough that they responded and told us theyd forgotten 2 pages we needed to sign originally and via internet we were able to sign and email those to our realtor and were able to get them to the bank before the end of business on Friday. At this point, its Tuesday afternoon and we haven’t heard anything back as of yet, but we’re hoping it goes pretty quick. The contract weve signed does have a closing date of October 6th, and it even provides time between when its approved by the seller and the closing for inspections and possible negotiation of price, so the games not over yet, but we’re definitely getting into the later innings (finally!) so stay tuned for more updates on the house as soon as I have them, but for now we have gone by there since the storm and the house appears to have not been touched at all by it as far as we can tell. Guess we got lucky on that one, but now we need to close the deal and get going on the next little adventure eh?

truck.
Well in addition to the serpentine belt popping on us, theres one other short update on the truck. The stupid effing truck… grr. So the locking mechanism on the driver side door was giving us problems the entire trip and on wednesdays trek it got so bad that we finally got it closed and locked it and I climbed in and out of the window every time we needed to get out the rest of the trip. It was like i was in nascar or something… translation - I felt like the biggest piece of white trash to ever walk the planet… on Friday I made the mistake of opening the door again and that was all she wrote. It would not close. Luckily it was while we were out running to the realtors and a few other errands so we didn’t have the u-haul hooked up. Well we ended up going to a dodge dealership in Kentucky and they got us all fixed up and squared away in about an hour and a half. And, for those of you who know my truck, not only did they fix the locking mechanism, the shimmed the door panel and made it more solid, fixed the door handle so it would stop falling out, and did something to the hinge so the door closes easier than it ever has since ive had that damned truck! What a deal, haha, I guess. I still hate that truck and want to get rid of it, but for now its transportation and itll do.

work.
So when we last left I believe I had had an interview that went very well with a firm here in cincy. Well it went very very well actually and over the course of the trip I had a few more phone conversations with the firm and they even made me an offer on Wednesday! So I reviewed the offer and discussed things at length with Karen and came to my decision. I had a hard time getting in touch with the principal id been speaking with for the rest of the week however and it made me very nervous that perhaps they were changing their mind or backing out…
On Monday, yesterday, Karen started her new job here in cincy as part of a co-op for her masters program. She will be working for this firm for the next 6 months and she gets credit for 2 quarters in school as part of the program shes in. its actually kind of cool I guess because while not all schools force you to get work experience like hers, they do all encourage it, and since shes being forced, it works out well. The school was very helpful in her finding the job and shes being paid pretty well (thank god! Because ive been out of work for a week now and we spent a fortune on that damned trip to denver, lol!) and if yesterday was any glimpse of the future, she seemed to like it there okay. So that’s great news! As for me, I did not go to work yesterday, I waited on a plumber all morning who showed up for 5 minutes and then disappeared… our shower has been leaking since we moved in and I guess the landlord finally decided hed lost enough money from it and was having a plumber come fix it. Well for whatever reason they didn’t get things straight yesterday and he didn’t do the job.
However, I did call the firm and they were still very interested in me and actually scheduled a meeting at 3pm yesterday afternoon. And im happy to report that when I left that meeting I officially had a job and I start work on Monday! Its not a job with a lot of fluff, its very cut and dry as far as my salary and benefits go, but it’s a job and its money and while im not working yet, it is finally settled. So Karen and I are extremely happy about that and we feel a lot more relaxed in our future.

a final note.
The plumber did come this morning and, after 2 and a half hours, he has successfully fixed our shower! Now it has all kinds of sparkly new hardware and its no longer leaking so that little saga can be closed as well. Well, I think that’s all ive got to report at this point. Life is getting interesting here in cincy hm? Hope youre all enjoying these little updates. Ill try to keep them coming, but for now (at over 3000 words) im done for the day, adiosa!

acting.like.children.cont'd

house.
well. we havent heard anything from the realtor today. guess we'll see if he calls tomorrow and what he has to say then. sorry theres not more of an update there, but if it helps we're feeling pretty nervous about it.

work.
so most everything went as planned today. we went and got me a new shirt, but it was one of the folded up kind so it was wrinkled and it was one karen liked with stripes so i needed a solid tie. and about the time we finally found a shirt that we liked it was already almost 2pm. so we decided to dash to target real quick to get a solid tie (because im not paying twice as much for one at a department store) and then hopefully dash home to iron my shirt and still make it in time for the interview. well while we were at target we made an interesting discovery... a vest. not like a sweater vest, but like a real button up vest. i dont know why the thought never occurred to me before to wear a vest, its so obviously my style, but anyway there it was. so i tried it on and boom baby, instant solution! now we dont have to iron the shirt and we're not running late. so ive added a new level of class to my wardrobe and we made it to the interview with 20 minutes to spare. as for the interview itself, i couldnt have asked for it to go better. the guy was still really interested and seemed to really like me and everything about me. he even thought id be great for them in some ways i hadnt expected - he likes my graphics and wants to use me in graphics and marketing in addition to architecture. so yeah, it went really well. at this point he wants me to take a day and consider how interested i am in their firm and what im looking for as far are as salary and benefits and call him friday morning to discuss things. in the meantime hes going to the other principals in the firm to talk about me and how i can fit into the office. so all in all, it seems like a dream come true. i really like the firms structure and culture and values and it seems like a good fit for me. this huge office corporate thing just isnt my style. so ive got some thinking to do and karen and i need to discuss things more, but hopefully this works out and i'll be able to report that i have an official job very soon. so more on that when i know more.

well thats all for today, we just finished working out and we've got some dinner cooking. ill update again soon enough im sure, later gaters ;)

acting.like.children

so i dont necessarily have an extraordinary amount of updated information for you guys, but im a little bored at work at the moment and there have been a few things come up since the last blog, so this will be a short one to get you up to speed.

house.
yesterday at about 3pm karen got a call from the realtor. apparently the bank had faxed over yet another change to the offer after we'd already accepted it and signed it and everything. [which we're confused as heck about anyway, if we've accepted and signed the contract as it is, how can they keep changing it?? isnt that a binding legal document?? if not, then what the hell are we doing??] so having changed the offer again the realtor decided to call them. this time they were only changing really tiny details, they didnt change the price, the earnest money, the closing date, or the condition of the house, they just decided to add in 10 days for inspections... um, we dont need inspections, we've already been through this, so the realtor was calling to tell them, we dont need to recounter for inspection, we dont want them, the contract we already signed is fine. well i dont know the exact conversation word for word, but in essence the bank told him that we'd sign as many changes as they wanted to make, we didnt have a choice, and then hung up on him. so.. our bank is being run by 2nd graders? nice. very encouraging. we probably could have gotten a better price if we were dealing with adults, but obviously theyve just been dicking us around from day one. so anyway, the realtor said he wasnt done talking to them yet, he was going to call some other people and he'd get back to us later today. ill probably post again this evening with whatever happens today.

work.
yesterday at noon i got a call from one of the firms i had actually gotten some interest from. they set up an interview for today at 3, so im taking a half day at work today and im going to go get a new shirt and look the best i can for this interview. maybe i should even get a jacket... anyway. so thats at 3 and when i update later this evening ill let you know how that goes as well.

this weekend.
we've started planning out the trip to denver to get the rest of my stuff. we're leaving really early saturday morning (theres really no traffic if you leave at like 2 or 3am) and driving halfway the first day. we're planning to stop in st. louis on the way and to see the arch, and then we'll stop and stay in kansas city and see a museum that karen wants to see and stay the night there. (its pretty much exactly half way) then sunday we'll drive the second half and get spend the night in denver. monday we're going to check out a few museums in denver for karen (shes doing research for her thesis project i believe) and hopefully catch up with a few people in denver. (call me and we'll schedule something!) then tuesday we're renting a u-haul, emptying my storage unit and hitting the road for another halfway trip, staying the night somewhere close to halfway (possibly kansas city again) and then wednesday we'll make the rest of the trek home. at this point we're planning to try and see a few more fun sights along the way there and back but we havent gotten them all nailed down just yet, we'll probably look more into it this evening. (and if you have any ideas along that route please let me know!)

alright, thats all for now, more to come later this evening. wish me luck!

just.a.quickie

jut a real quick update because i know there was some concern with the last one, haha.

the fridge situation.
well on friday karen called home depot about the fridge and it was scheduled for delivery on wednesday... not good. we then contacted the landlord to see what could be done about the situation because, well, that really wasnt cool for us to not have a fridge for another 5 days. so friday night he got back to us and said he'd talked to home depot and that tuesday was the earliest we could get it delivered but we could see about trading fridges with one of the other empty units in the complex. so that was friday night and we just let it go for the night and decided to deal with it saturday.

so saturday morning we still didnt know what we wanted to do because we got the impression from the landlord that we would have to move the fridges around ourselves if we wanted to trade, and neither of us was really in the mood to do a lot of fridge shuffling considering the weekend and week we'd had before. but around 10am or so, we were sitting in the living room finishing some breakfast, watching a little tv, and karen was working on some school stuff when the on-site manager knocked on the door. he hadnt spoken to us in a few days and wanted to make sure we'd gotten moved in okay and that there werent any problems for us at this point (obviously the landlord hadnt discussed the situation with him). i casually mentioned that things were fine that we just hadnt figured out the fridge thing yet and he got this really distraught look on his face, "what fridge situation?" so i filled him in and he immediately wanted to investigate and get it solved. hes a nice guy, young, lives in the apartment below us, seems to really genuinely care about us being in good shape. anyway so he called the landlord, discussed things, etc.
in the end he walks me across the hall to a recently emptied apartment and shows me the fridge there. its not in great shape, but its certainly not as bad as it could have been, just needed a good cleaning really. i told him it looked alright i guess, but i wanted to plug it in to make sure it actually was working, and we didnt have the same problem all over again. so we did so and it was cooling in the freezer immediately, but the fridge part didnt seem to be working. well, he had to leave to take care of some things but asked if we wanted to clean it up and trade it out. i told him i wanted to let if run for a while and see if the bottom got cooler and then we'd make the decision. he agreed and left. well a couple of hours went by and i went over to have a look at it. it was in fact starting to cool in the fridge part, so i got a light over there and karen and i started to clean it a little. soon she got a disgusted by it though, and needed to leave, like i said, it needed a good cleaning, and i finished up the job. by the time i was done it was in great shape, sparkling white, and we got to the task of switching them. it was no big deal really, the newer one actually had wheels on it, so that was helpful. so in the end it took a couple more house, but we had a fridge by saturday afternoon and now its nice and icy cold. its actually a good fridge and we had to turn the temp down a little because it was cooling too well, haha. but we were able to go to the grocery store and get a few things, so now we're all set.

the rest of the weekend.
other than that we had a really calm weekend. we went for a few walks and ran sunday morning before church. watched a few movies, went to church obviously, karen worked on some school stuff, and we got to recover from the week and a half earlier. it was good, we had fun and we're feeling better and refreshed. hopefully things will get better soon.

work.
so i emailed a follow up letter this morning to all the firms i hadnt heard back form yet and a few i had, and ive been getting responses already. so at least that part is looking up. i dont have any solid options yet, but im hopeful.

coming up.
this weekend after im officially unemployed, lol, we're heading out to denver for a little road trip to retrieve the rest of my belongings that are in storage and hopefully finally get everything in cincy. itll be nice to have the rest of my stuff although i have no idea where we're going to put it. we havent heard back from the realtor yet, but we're really optimistic at this point. so wish us luck on the trip, hopefully all goes well and hopefully i get a job soon, lol.

thats all for now folks, thank you, and tip your servers!

the.saga.continues...

i figured it was time for another update. im thinking of starting to blog for everyone who cares to know this stuff so i dont have to send out a dozen different emails, and just let you guys know when i update. ill let you know about that if and when it happens.

so where we last left off, i believe we had just been re-countered by the bank for 33k and i was not all too happy about it. on the work front i think i left you guys knowing that at some point in the near future i was going to have a conversation with my boss to discuss my full-time employment salary and benefit options.

a lot can change in two weeks.

so lets do this chronologically by subject shall we?

housing.
well after the bank countered with the 33k we were very confused and i was upset about it and we took a day to consider our options. i wasnt really sure what i wanted to do when that day had passed, but we were going to the realtor (scott - great guy) after work and i needed to decide. karen wanted to just accept, get it over with, and be done with it. well... im an idiot. i thought it over really hard and decided i wanted to let the bank know just how serious we were about this offer. i told karen i wanted to re-counter their offer with the exact same offer we'd just sent, 17.5k. i mean obviously the house is in a certain condition, no one is buying houses right now, and they need to get rid of this thing, they'll have to take us seriously. wrong. so we did just that and the bank came back saying "this offer has been rejected." thats it. no counter. no nothing, the end. oops... ha, to say the least. karen was not a happy camper. so what we ended up having to do was start completely over with a new contract, fresh offer, lets take it from the top folks. so we got the hint, they werent ready to budge on their offer, definitely not to where we were wanting it to be, so we decided to compromise and be very conservative on this offer, 30k. thats reasonable right? we thought so. and just in case we never hear from them again because theyre fed up with dealing with us, it was probably a good idea to start seeing what else was out there again. we looked at another house around the corner and 2 houses down from the original house we looked at, what seems like years ago. it was okay. i guess. about half the size of the one we really wanted, and it definitely was going to need some similar work done to it. but it was cheaper, only 23k listed. we decided to wait on the bank for a few days and see what other options were out there as well. well at this point it was nearing the end of the week and by the weekend, august 30th & 31st, we had to be out of our apartment, our lease was up. great... more fun. well since we already had the storage place, that weekend started off a little easier. im not going to go into all the gory details, but we did find a new apartment on saturday morning and were able to take one load of stuff there by the end of the day and 2 or 3 loads to the storage. and then sunday we spent the entire day doing the same, truck loads of stuff to both places, packing, cleaning, & laundry. by sunday night we had moved everything to the new place and storage except for the few things we needed that night and the food in the fridge. we decided to stay at our place sunday night because technically we didnt have to be out till the 1st, and the new apartment didnt have any electricity. a problem worsened by the fact that it was a holiday weekend and so we werent actually even going to ba able to get the energy company until tuesday and it took 2 days before they could turn the electricity on after you called them... thats wednesday if youre keeping score. well monday morning we got up early, gave the lace one last cleaning, and got out of the apartment. now what? well... we had an entire fridge full of food in coolers in the back of my truck, no electricity in the new place, and no clue what we were going to do. we ended up getting an extended stay hotel room (the kind with fridges and appliances in them) and had to stay there two nights. the food was okay at the hotel, we made it work even though the fridge was ridiculously small, but we had to fork over two nights stay in a hotel when we already paid for an apartment and a security deposit. not cool. wednesday we did get the electricity turned on and we ended up staying in the apartment for the first time wednesday night, but it takes 24 hours for a fridge to get cold... guess the food is staying in the coolers for a day huh? well... thursday is here. i go to work, karen spends another day unpacking and cleaning the new apartment (she is the most awesome wife ever, love her to death!) and come noon she calls me and says um chris... the fridge is not getting any colder... at all. oh boy, good news. i told her to call the landlord and let them know the fridge was busted and so she did, they had a guy come and look at it, and eventually the landlord had to order a new fridge to be delivered friday hopefully. well, so much for the food. at this point it what we hadnt been able to eat had been sitting in a cooler for 2 days getting bad despite our attempts to put ice on it. we ended up throwing away about a hundred dollars worth of food thursday night. oh-well, thats the way it goes i guess. on the house side of things, we got a call on wednesday from scott that the bank had looked at our offer and had countered. yeah, you guessed it, 33k and an even later closing date, october 6th now. well we discussed it, and having looked at a few other houses in the area and looking at prices vs amenities, etc. we decided this house was really the best deal in the whole area, even considering the work that needed to be done, so thursday afternoon we accepted the offer of 33k. we havent heard anything back yet today about it, but we're very hopeful that they'll accept and we can finally get the house! so keep your fingers crossed :)

work.
so the same monday we head back from the bank that they rejected the offer, two weeks ago, i finally had my meeting with my boss. we sat down and he told me that they werent going to be able to offer me full-time employment after all. they just didnt have enough work on the books for the next 3-6 months to sustain a new full time hire. great. just... great. well, i certainly dont hold it against them, i mean, if they dont have the work, they dont have it. i understand, the economy sucks really bad right now and its really hurting my profession. it does kind of suck that they made me feel so secure in that id get hired, but i think they really were intending to when they said so. they said theyd really love to hire me, theyve been really happy with my work, etc. and even said theyd let me stay on 3 more weeks (till sept 12) so i could try to find another job to move to when they just couldnt keep me on anymore. so i worked on my resume and updated it. i started a new portfolio, but then just decided my old one was good enough. and friday afternoon i emailed 17 firms in cincy about a job. then this week on wednesday i found 8 more and emailed them, and then yesterday i found yet another one. so in all ive emailed 26 firms and so far ive heard back 4 no's (they just arent hiring right now, dont have enough work to do so) and 2 or 3 let me know they were passing along my information to the people that do the hiring for review, etc. so.. i guess thats not really a whole lot at this point, but i have no choice but to be hopeful. what else can i do? hopefully but the end of next week i'll either have a job or at least some interviews scheduled. either way i better find something soon or else... i just dont know.

karen.
to make things even more interesting, on tuesday after dropping me off at work, karen was headed to the apartment and the truck went crazy on her. turns out the serpentine belt popped and so we had to deal with all of that loveliness. luckily i got her towed and to a repair shop and 3 hours later she was able to drive out of there all fixed up. definitely could have been worse. also, karen has officially completed the quarter at school and she did great! shes gotten all her grades back and she did very well for her first quarter, im quite proud of her. now shes heading into 2 quarters (about 6 months) of co-op and luckily she has that lined up with a firm downtown, so at least we'll have one income when she starts working. (sept 23rd)

other than that... life is just exhausting. work is slow, but im staying busy for the remainder of my time here. karen and i have started running a lot more, we try to run at least a mile a day if not more in conjunction with our working out. in all we usually run/walk 3+ miles a day, so thats pretty good for us and im getting in better shape. who knows maybe someday ill be able to run a 5k with her or something.

well. i think thats all ive got for now, its time to get back to work - lunch is over. let me know how things are with you, i love getting email at work, haha!

love yah