a.short.one

house.
so for those of you that havent already heard, we didnt actually close today like we were supposed to. there was some issue with the title search taking longer than normal and they werent finished by this morning, so we have to delay in waiting for its completion. other than that, as far as we know, everything is in order and we're ready to close as soon as possible. so keep your fingers crossed that itll be very soon, we're hoping this week for sure.

work.
work is going well. ive got enough going on to keep me busy most of the day and the office is slowly getting used to me being here. its an interesting culture though, the architects/project managers in this office dont naturally or instinctively hand down work to the underlings [which took me a few days and a few conversations to really understand] and instead prefer a lot of the time to do the work themselves that someone in my position would normally do. [what we in the industry refer to as the b!%*&-work, lol] so what that means is that where im used to having a handful of project managers eagerly doting upon me the mundane tasks they feel theyre too busy to do, i now have to circulate the office each morning asking each individual project manager if they think they could find something for me to do today. [which is definitely a lesson in humility - i hate asking for b!%*&-work...] however, after a conversationi had this morning, theres a possibility that i'll be getting to put one of my biggest strengths to use [organization! woohoo!] and help the office by giving their project storage system and drawing standards some much needed attention. more on that as i know more.

karen.
karen is good. shes been enjoying her classes as far as i can tell, and work is... well, work. shes still um, frustrated, with her office environment and the work shes doing is beyond mind-numbingly-dull, but its a job and it pays better than mickey-d's, so she tries to be happy with it. things between us are great, we seem to be adjusting to our living situation and this whole marriage thing better than some half-glass-empties anticipated. ill admit i feel inadequate at times as a provider, we havent yet been able to live solely on my income when little things like truck repairs or me getting laid off pop-up, but she loves my in spite of my faults and hopefully someday soon we'll get there. getting the house should help significantly so we can stop throwing money away on rent and storage each month, although the other obstacles with the house are definitely going to be a financial burden for a little while...

im learning to thank god for obstacles he presents me with. ill keep trusting that theres nothing coming my way that i cant handle, and while its extremely frustrating at times and im never clear on the purpose behind some of these hurdles, im trying to be patient. wisdom, strength, patience. thanks...

family.
everyone in texas seems to be doing better. things are slowly getting cleaned up, everyone has power as far as i know. theres still ridiculous devastation that beyond anything you could possibly imagine, but theyre making it. dad just got back to saudi and hes fine. long trip, and uncomfortable next to a rather large woman all the way to amsterdam, but hes there and safe. other than that, i dont have much new information to report on the family, ive been a little out of the loop for whatever reason.

last weekend.
karen and i mostly just tried to catch up on little things weve been getting too busy to stay on top of. we did laundry, we cleaned the apartment, some shopping, catching up on the daily show and the colbert report, some little repairs around the apartment... on saturday morning we went to a tiling class at homedepot and learned everything we'll need to know to do tiling projects at the house - oh yes bathroom-suite, you are mine! it was actually very fun and informative and if youre interested in learning hands on how to do home improvment type stuff, i definitely recommend going to homedepot things. they usually do them every saturday, check your local on for specifics. saturday evening we went to a little dinner party at a friend of karen's and had a nice time. some home-made pizza, a little wine, a lot of laughs, it was nice. we're hoping to get together with some of the people again to have a debate-party for the next presidential go-around. [and speaking of politics. i wont go into it now, but in the near future im going to post a little rant of my views on the current situation...] the only other thing worth mentioning from this weekend was that karen and i decided we're going to go on a little detox diet [thanks to karen getting some inspiration from claire's blog, lol! thanks claire] starting next weekend. we've done some research and theres a bit of planning we'll need to do before hand so hopefully we can be prepaired by next monday.

well "ya'll," thats all ive got for now.

tune in next time...

[for stew: currently listening to p86-rival factions]