Save for a down payment...

The landlords have sold the apartment building we live in, so it appears that we probably won’t be having any further repairs done on the place for the foreseeable future. That rather sucks, as there is still a lot of work the old landlords claimed they would do, but which they obviously no longer feel they need to give any thought to. Maybe the new folks will take care of the place better, but I somehow doubt it.

In any case, that makes it a little more pressing that we go ahead and start looking at moving soon. It’ll be a pain, and it’ll be sad to leave all the space in this apartment, but it’ll be nice to actually have our own place, where we don’t have to wait on the whims of landlords to get things done.

With that in mind, I’ve decided that I should try to save up for a down payment, and $10K seems like it should be a decent amount for this area. So that’s the goal…

See more progress on: Save $10,000 to put a down payment on a house

And all of the hunts continue...

I woke up early this morning, after not getting to sleep until about two last night. My sinuses feel like crap, and I've had fluid draining from my nose for the past hour. I'm not really sure whether it's a cold or allergies. After sitting down in the park for the past couple of days, it might very well just be some kind of spring pollen or grass issue, but I don't really know or care.

I got a reply back from the guitarist/steel guitar player I wrote to last night. He said he's looking for a singer/songwriter first, but he'll keep me in mind once he gets that part lined up. I wrote back and told him that sounded good, and that I could also help out with collaborating if he found a writer who just needed a little help with getting stuff finished. Because I'm so damned good at finishing stuff myself, right?...

I still haven't heard back from one of the people whose ad I responded to, and I haven't heard back from the guitarist who I replied to yesterday, probably because he now thinks I'm just far too old. Little bit of a double standard on that one, methinks...

Guess I'd better get back to the old job hunt now. I was just reading an article about how current college graduates are facing one of the toughest job markets ever, and that they should get out of fields that are shrinking, like finance, and into ones that are growing, like healthcare and computer science. That's just great, as I'm thinking about going back to school to get out of computer science and into finance. I still just don't know what the hell I'm going to do, but I'd better damned well figure it out pretty soon...

It's another day, and I still just feel listless and depressed. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing lately, and I really have no idea what the hell I even want to do. I've been thinking that I'd like to go back to school and get an accounting degree, or at least study accounting and get into that gig.

In the meantime, money continues to run out. I haven't posted as much stuff for sale on Craigslist as I wanted, and I didn't make as much money selling books at Half-Price as I wanted, and it's probably going to take a couple of weeks before I get the money from my old 401(k). Guess I'd better get to trying to post some ads...

I've been looking through the Craigslist musician ads for the past few days, too. I found a few here in Denton that looked interesting, and I've bookmarked them to write back. I just haven't even felt the ambition to draft a few e-mails to people lately. Damn, I feel useless. I should get that done today, too, and maybe I'll actually be able to play some more music, unlike the past several years...

Planning for the day...

So, after doing almost nothing that I wanted to get done yesterday, and almost nothing that really needed to get done, I'm going to give it another try today. The girlfriend just got up and is taking a shower, so I'm going to wait until she heads off to work in half an hour or so, then I'm going to take myself a shower, have a cup of coffee, and get my show on the road.

I have to finish filling out the form for the distribution of my retirement, and then get that sent in to the people who manage the fund. Fortunately, it's not that much of a form, really. While I'm mailing that off, I need to find out how much these stamps are worth, so we can use them for mailing off stuff in general. I'm not sure if they're the ones that are good for the cost of a first-class letter no matter when you bought them, or what. I got them a few years ago, and I don't know if they had that program going then. Guess I'll find out when I stop at the post office on the way down toward Lewisville.

She has a rebate form for her new cell phone, and she wants to get that mailed off. Which I'll do after I get back from hopefully making some money at Half-Price Books. I also need to see if I can find the next book in her series. In her line of work, having some reading material isn't really a luxury. It's pretty much a necessity for keeping one's sanity. So, I'll try to see that she gets her next novel. That's about the only thing I'm going to be buying down there, though...

And, if I'm feeling good when I get back here, I might go out and start working on the patio or vacuum the floors. Of course, I also really need to update my resume, since the one I'm sending out now obviously isn't doing me a damned bit of good...

Getting ready to face the world...

I'm having the morning cup of coffee, getting ready to head down toward Lewisville. I'm going to try to sell the rest of the books in the back of my car down at Half-Price Books. Hopefully they'll at least take some of them and get me enough money to be able to pay both the rent and either the car payment or the car insurance, at least. It would be wonderful if I got enough money to pay both, but I'm really not counting on that.

Prior to heading down there, I thought I'd check out the job listings in the Sunday paper I picked up last night, just to see if there was anything good that direction that I could hit on the way down or back. And as I was looking for the classified section, I saw a picture that looked kind of familiar. I sort of wondered if they were so desperate for something to print that they were re-running stories. But, no, it turns out that I bought the Sunday paper not from last night, but from last week. That's what Walgreen's had out on their display. I'm not terribly happy about that, but I don't think I'm going to head in there and demand a refund or anything. Next time, I might just make a few pointed comments, but I have enough other things to do to try to find work to not stress that much over that. I've got to stop at the gas station anyway, so I'll see if they still have a copy of the right paper...

In reading my mail this morning, I heard that J.G. Ballard died. He wrote some really weird sci-fi stories, many of which I really enjoyed. "Billennium", "The Terminal Beach", and "The Garden of Time" come to mind, but I know that I've read several of his short story collections and liked them a lot. I just can't remember all of the quirky details right now. He wrote what almost seemed to be hallucinations put down on paper, and it's rather sad to see the loss of one of the really original minds out there. I need to go back and read more of his work...

Anyway, I guess I should quit stalling and get my coffee chugged down so I can get out into the world...

Plans for the day, perhaps...

The girlfriend was asking me last night if I thought we could get all the stuff from my storage unit and be able to store it in the two rooms upstairs, but still be able to actually use those rooms somewhat. That would save us $65 per month that I'm paying right now. I told her that I thought it could probably be done, so she said we might want to use today, which we both have off, to get some of that stuff over here. I think the main things we need to move, if possible, are the two bookcases. The two reasons I'd like to get them today, if we can, are that they're bigger than most of the other stuff, so having her car available will give us more options; and they can be used to hold other things, like books and such, which will actually let me clear out more space that I currently already have taken up with boxes of books and such.

I was looking around the room upstairs when I was feeding the wee beastie this morning, and I'm honestly not sure how much more stuff I can fit in there. I guess if I can get some of the shelves cleared out and such by bringing some of the books down here and putting them on the bookshelves, I might be able to clear up enough room for another few boxes, but all of the computer stuff is going to be a total nightmare to fit into that room. And I really don't want to start taking up a bunch of space in her room upstairs, because that's her craft room. What I really need to do is try to get rid of a bunch of things, to make room and for the money I need to pay the bills. Damn it...

She's still sleeping now, and I'm trying not to wake her up, since she doesn't get nearly as much sleep as she needs these days. We'll see what gets done with the day whenever she gets up...

Broker and broker, more and more useless...

Makes me feel really great when the girlfriend is home for lunch and we start talking about buying groceries and such. The topic turned to paying the bills, and the realization that I basically have enough to either pay my car insurance and car payment, or enough to pay my half of the rent, but certainly not both. Fuck. Now I'm taking a break from looking around for things that I might be able to sell, since it doesn't look like I'm going to get that damned paperwork from the 401(k) managers in time to help. Damn, damn, damn...

Might have to go down the street to the day labor place and see if I can haul some buckets or dig ditches or something for a week or two...

It's drizzling down rain outside. A few thunderstorms rolled through last night, and we had a serious little squall drop a few buckets this morning, but mostly it's just gray and miserable looking. I still have a sort of disconnect with the weather, though, because whenever it would look like this in Oregon, it would be nearly freezing outside. Here, it can look gray and overcast and the sun will be nearly totally blocked out, but it's still warm and muggy. Right now I think it's about 60 degrees outside.

Regardless, my throat hurts, I feel a little sore, and in general I feel like a useless sack of crap like I have for the past month and a half or so. I have no idea what I'm going to do, or what I even want to do. I guess I'll just keep filling out the applications for crap jobs until I get something that will at least pay some of the bills and keep food on the table, and I'll just keep plodding along toward nowhere, like usual...

I don't know what the hell I'm doing any more...

I just feel depressed and disconnected. Seems that the only people I talk to lately are people I'm asking for jobs and the girlfriend. I know a big part of that is my own fault, because I don't keep in touch with people one I've moved away or left jobs or whatever, but it still rather sucks. I feel like the world has just closed in on me and I'm sitting in a closet in the dark...

Ideas...

So this morning, I called the company that handles my old 401(k) from back in Oregon. I talked to the guy there for a little longer than I had anticipated and got some good information from him. Part of the information was investment advice (diversify, and go into bonds), but the majority was just some of the information about what I need to do in order to access the money that's in there.

Unfortunately, what is involved is getting some forms from my old work, which I should already have but which I've probably thrown away, and getting them mailed back to my old work, then having the fund management company cut a check. So it's probably going to be something like two weeks before I can actually have the money, and I think I might be running out of cash by then, damn it. Linda, the HR manager at the old company, said that they management company might be able to send the forms via e-mail, so that would cut the time about in half. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I haven't seen anything just yet, and I called four or five hours ago...

After I made that call, I ran down to the storage unit to do a little organizing and pick some stuff up. I really need to take some photographs of stuff that I have and get to work trying to sell things. People certainly aren't going to beat a path to the door when they don't even know there's anything to be had inside. Sigh... I also paid the bill for the storage unit while I was there, racking up a little more on the credit cards, and I paid one of the credit card bills before I headed over there. But the cash is still getting mighty low...

I was thinking about a couple of things while I was driving to and from the storage unit. I would like to either go back to school or start a business of my own. I just don't know what I want to study or what kind of business I'd like to start. And those are pretty large problems, honestly. I would like to either start a bookstore or something to do with cooking, but I don't know what would make either of those businesses better than any of the ones already out there. And I think I'd need to differentiate myself from other businesses in order to make some kind of a serious go at it. Startups tend to go under if they don't have something that really sets them apart from the crowd.

As far as school, I'm thinking either an accounting or library science line of study. Of course, to get any kind of degree or anything like that in either of those fields is going to take a couple of years, at least, and that's time that I'm just not sure that I have to spare. I'm not getting any younger. Fuck, I've just pretty much wasted a lot of my life, and it sucks...

Oh, and the Rangers gave up a 4-run 10th inning yesterday. They put up a valiant effort with two runs of their own in the bottom of the 10th, but wound up losing the game anyway, 7-5. I got to see the end of that game on the tube. Toronto also lost in extra innings, losing 2-3 in Minnesota. And despite having given up three runs in the top of the first, the A's came back to beat the Red Sox 5-6 in Oakland. They took 12 innings to win, so pretty much every team I'm following this year went into extra innings.

AL West standings:
Seattle, 6-2 (.750 win %)
Oakland, 4-4 (.500 win %, 2 games behind)
LA Angels, 3-4 (.429 win %, 2.5 games behind)
Texas, 3-5 (.375 win %, 3 games behind)

More later...

Manic Depression's a Frustratin' Mess...

So I find myself here, feeling depressed and like a considerable failure. I always just seem to find myself distracted, not finishing the things that I really should. It seems I constantly have things added to my to-do list, and nothing ever gets to-done. And now most of the girlfriend's friends have pretty much quick contacting us. Before I moved down here, they all seemed very happy for her. Now we could all go out as a group and have fun together, and she wouldn't be the single person there like a third wheel. Now, though, the former roommate who has since moved out really doesn't talk to us at all, and of course most of his friends and such don't really talk to us much either, since their real connection with us was through him. And the girlfriend's best friend doesn't really answer her phone or return messages any more, so we haven't really seen her for a month and a half.

Of course, a large part of the reason I moved down here to north Texas was so that I could find a band, which I thought would be considerably easier here than in southern Oregon. Of course, it probably would wind up being easier if I actually followed up with any of the leads that I had obtained when I first moved down here. But, being the lazy ass that I am, I didn't follow through with most of them for one lame reason or another, and the few that I did, I either let slide after the initial contact or else I just didn't like the music that the group was playing. I was playing with one guy for a while who was doing music that I enjoyed, but it was all covers, and it just seemed like I didn't have a whole lot of input into what we were playing. Then my car broke down, and between how I was feeling about things and the problems with getting to his place to jam, I just let it drop. I shouldn't have, but I can't do much about it now. I really need to get back off my ass and put up another ad or two on Craigslist and see if I can't generate a little more interest. See if I can find someone who wants to jam on some original material but isn't necessarily out to change the world with their music. We'll see if I can do something about getting back in that flow this weekend.

And my work has just been a royal pain in the ass. Everything was initially moving along just fine, but since I've been here, I've run into a few little sticking points in the programming, and I got lazy about doing as much stuff as I should have during the day. I'm kind of left alone over here in my little corner all day, and it's easy for me to just screw off a fair portion of the day. And, unfortunately, I've spent too much time doing that and too little trying to figure out the problems I've been having with the programming. And now it's come to the point where I really need to get the stuff done immediately, and I'm just having a hard time even concentrating on what I'm doing.

So I guess my plan for the weekend is as follows: When I get home this evening, I'm going to clean the cat's litter box and water dish, and finish doing the dishes if the girlfriend hasn't already done so. Actually, before I get started with the litter box and such, I'm going to get a load of laundry running, since I'm way behind on that, too. Somewhere along in there, I also need to make sure that I take out the garbage, since we have a bunch sitting in the laundry room waiting to go out. I should also make a special run down to the recycling center and get rid of a bunch of the crap that's in the closet under the stairs. After I finish doing the dishes and cleaning the litter box, I'm going to gather up all of my Dremel equipment that is currently sitting in the living room and put it in one of the totes that I have sitting up in my room upstairs. Following all of that, which really shouldn't take all that long, I will spend the remainder of the evening finishing the data-entry form for the contracts database, as well as taking screen shots to document it once it is done. I might try doing a little of the technical documentation, but that can wait a little longer as long as the database itself is up and running. One thing that I will not do this evening is have a drink, because I tend to get lazy and stupid when I do that, and I don't need it right now.

Tomorrow morning, the girlfriend wants to go see a house that she's been interested in. It's probably going to be auctioned off long before we could save up enough money for a decent down payment, but I can at least humor her and go to the open house. If she has the time and the interest, I'm going to see if she wants to run down to Home Depot or Lowe's so I can pick up a 3/8" drill bit so I can finally get her shelves hung up in her room upstairs. If she doesn't have the time or doesn't want to make that long a run out of the way, I'll go get it after she goes to work, and then I will get her shelves hung up, finally. Assuming it's not raining, my next goal after that is to get all the stuff unloaded from my old car, so I can think about getting it listed for sale. After I get the car unloaded, I'm going to write up a listing for Craigslist to see if I can find some fellow musicians to play with. I'm also going to draft at least three messages to people on various forums, although I might not send them all immediately because some of those forums are only available on my old laptop, which is currently having issues. And I'm going to write a message to Mom, because I haven't really talked to her for a while, and I should keep in more touch.

After all of that is done, I'm going to spend most of the afternoon and evening working on finishing the edit/view form for the contracts database, as well as finishing the documentation for that portion of it. I want it to be pretty much cosmetically perfect, and I want to start entering some data in to make sure it's showing up the way I want it to. If I feel like the form itself is pretty well complete, I'm going to see about making a couple loaves of bread, or perhaps some other similar kind of baked good. No cookies, though, because they just take too much time and would keep me from getting anything else done. Maybe I'll make those cinnamon rolls I was thinking about making a couple of weeks ago, though. Those would be good for breakfast on Sunday morning, too.

Speaking of Sunday morning, I would like to spend at least an hour or so picking stuff up in my room upstairs. I don't really have any good way to get everything organized as well as I would like, but at least I can get stuff off the floor and into some of those empty totes that I have sitting around up there. I think there is a hockey game Sunday afternoon, so I'm going to take a little time off and watch that, maybe have myself a nice cup of coffee with some Irish cream, but then I need to get back to it. For programming, I'm going to try to complete both the payment report and the payment reconciliation module, as well as hopefully being able to complete a couple of other reports that I think Deana might find handy. Documentation for those in at least a basic mode. And I need to write a couple of search functions for her, because she asked for them before.

Since I will hopefully have picked up a fair amount of stuff in the upstairs room, I'm going to get the old laptop set up and send off the messages I hope to draft on Saturday, if I haven't already sent them off prior to that. I'd also like to go through the old 43Things list and see what needs to be weeded out of there and what other things I need to add to the list. We'll see whether I have time for that, though. In the evening, I'm going to take a shower, read some of my ASP.Net AJAX book, and try to get myself rested up for the coming day. I'll hopefully check in to see how everything's going, too. We'll see, though...

Updates to my life...

So, it's two days before Christmas, and I think it's been several months since I've updated the blog, or virtually any other of my online presences. I apologize for that to anyone who bothers to read any of the stuff, but that's kind of the way I've always been. I always try to keep up to date for a while, but I get sidetracked and off course, and then I get frustrated because I haven't kept up, and then I drop things altogether. It's a bad habit of mine, but such is my life.

I've mostly just been working and going home for the past four and a half months. I've been working at Denton County MHMR here in Denton, doing database and web programming. The database programming part is pretty decent, kind of the stuff I've been doing for the past ten years at my old job in Oregon. The web programming is causing me major problems, but I'm gradually getting a grip on it. The fact that everything is disconnected, with the server not really having control over what the client side is doing, is causing me to have to rethink how I do most of my database stuff, but it's starting to come a little easier, I think. At least I hope so, because I really need to get some kind of actual product developed in the near future. So far the management has been pretty relaxed about things, but I know that if I don't actually have some kind of demonstrable productivity in the near future, that relaxed attitude is going to tighten up a fair amount. And my six-month probationary period is coming to an end in a couple of months, which would be just the perfect time for them to let me go if they wished to do so.

Anyway, I'm not going to try to update everything that's been going on, but it's been kind of a hectic run-up to Christmas. The roommate moved out a short time ago, or is in the process, kind of, so the girlfriend and I have been trying to get his old room renovated into being our master bedroom before one of her friends comes by to visit after Christmas, so there's been a lot of cleaning and painting and little household things to take care of. And, in the meantime, there's trying to find all the presents, get the ones sent off to the family in Oregon, baking cookies and things of that nature, and trying to find a new car, since my old one died a couple of months ago.

Hopefully, in the midst of all of that, I'll be able to keep a little more up to date in here. We'll see...

The daily rundown, April 25

So I've decided to write a little daily entry on here, in addition to my updates on some of the 43Things.com goals that I do, and possible other entries as I see fit. So, what's happened over the past 24 hours that's really of any interest, even to me?

Yesterday was mostly just a stay-at-home day. After the girlfriend* went to work, I checked my e-mail and such. Nothing very interesting going on. I was going to head up to the market and get a copy of the Denton Record-Chronicle to look through the ads, but I wasn't feeling all that ambitious about it. I did update my resume and such on the WorkInTexas.com website, and it wound up giving me a match for a Systems Admin job in Corinth. I checked the "how to apply" section and it was just an e-mail in your resume type deal. So I wrote a little cover e-mail and sent it to the appropriate address. I probably should have spent a little more time on the intro e-mail, because I think I kind of downplayed my skills and concentrated too much on my shortcomings relative to their job requirements. But, what the hell. The worst they can do is turn me down for the job, which isn't necessarily that horrible.

In between adding stuff on that website and sending off my C.V., I also read through a few days' backlog of e-mail and finished organizing my 43Things.com list. I moved a bunch of stuff down on the list that I'm not going to be able to do right now because the necessary items are stuck somewhere at the back of my storage unit, and it's going to take me a while to dig them out. Also, I moved down some of the long term goals and some of the things that are just going to take money. Can't throw money at any of the goals until I actually have a job, after all.

I did a little bit of organization around the computer room here, but not all that much. I did dig out my cross stitch stuff and did a little work on the 4th day of Christmas, which I'm now way behind schedule on. I don't really know if I'm ever going to be able to get myself caught up on that kind of thing now, but I at least managed to get a little bit of stitching done. I also posted messages to the cross stitch list on Tribe.net and my own little cross stitch forum on StumbleUpon. Thus far, however, no replies to either of those messages. While I was on Tribe, I also updated my profile to indicate my new residence and all.

One thing I found while organizing the room was that I actually did have the battery charger for my camera sitting in one of the boxes over in the closet. I thought that was one of the numerous things buried down in the storage unit, so I wound up ordering one from Amazon.com a few days ago after my camera started telling me the battery was low. Now I either need to deal with having an extra or I need to return the one I ordered. Decisions, decisions... It is nice that I'll be able to take pictures sooner than I expected, though.

As it started getting toward evening, I wandered downstairs and had myself some leftover turkey curry for a lunch/dinner sort of thing, and I turned on the hockey game, Montreal vs. Philadelphia. That was pretty much the end of any productivity for the whole evening for me. My girlfriend got home from work and after changing her clothes joined me to watch hockey and Battlestar Galactica, which is sort of a Friday tradition in the house. Her roommate was sleeping, though, and the friend who usually comes over had an important paper to finish, so it was just the two of us. We finished the evening watching the Stars beat the Sharks in overtime. I'm pulling for the Sharks, because they've always been one of my favorites. Of course, the Stars are the hometown team around here, so I'm sort of the outsider, but that's all right. However this series goes, I'll wind up rooting for the winner to go the rest of the way in the West, at least. If Montreal wins the East, I'll have to go with them to win the Cup, as they've been my favorites for as long as I've been watching hockey.

After the game, we came upstairs and I figured I'd check my e-mail before retiring for the evening. There was one message of particular interest to me. It was from my ex-wife. She had written this: "You need you to close out the joint checking account at [the bank]. As per our divorce agreement we were supposed to close all joint accounts. I think I have given you plenty of time since I discussed this with you. As I am authorized to close this on my own, I am asking you to do this within two weeks or I will do it. I am still liable for this account and would like to remove all ties I have to you. So if I haven't seen evidence of this by May 9th, 2008, I will go to [the bank] and close out that account."

I find it rather interesting that she didn't seem to think that the specifics of our divorce settlement were all that critical when our house sold for over a hundred thousand dollars less than we anticipated and I let her keep 90% of the portion of the profits that I was entitled to by that same settlement. And she didn't seem to feel that need to remove "all ties" to me when she asked me to give that reference so she could get into her new apartment, or when she needed to have some free work done on her computer. But, she is technically right that I should have closed the account earlier. I didn't because it was the account that I had all of my automatic bill deductions linked to, and to which my direct deposit paychecks were posted. But, since I'm now between jobs and such, it seems like it's a good time to do it anyway. And, since she's choosing to be a pissy little bitch, it's a good time to do just like she wants and cut all the ties to her. So, I sent her a similarly terse message saying that I'd do it on Monday, then I sat here and drank a bit before heading off to bed. Not the best night ever, but life goes on...

---

* I refer to my girlfriend by that sort of impersonal sounding term not because I feel impersonal, but because she doesn't have her name posted on all of her websites and such like I do. So I don't really think it's my place to go spreading her actual name over the internet. Just so you know...

Adjusting to life in Texas

I've been here in Texas for nearly two weeks now. Unfortunately, I'm still unemployed, which is more my own fault than the fault of anyone or anything else. I just haven't been spending enough time and energy looking for a job. I did originally have something like $800 in my checking account when I got here, but I've purchased some new clothes, update the old wardrobe for the job hunt and such, and I've spent some money on other things, trying to help out with the household and groceries and such around here. So now my little safety net has dwindled to the point of having under $300 in checking and a little under $200 in savings. I definitely need to get myself out there and find something. I went to Lake Dallas to apply for a job they had there which I thought would be a good balance of pay and a relatively short commute, but the job closed on Monday and I didn't show up until Tuesday. Stupid procrastination manages to screw me over yet again. As soon as I finish writing this up, I'm going to head off to the store and pick up some newspapers and look for a few more jobs to apply to either online or in person, if they're close enough for the drive. I'm still not really confident about driving around here, even though the car seems to be doing just fine after its long journey across the country.

And the Kala kitty also seems to be doing just fine after the long trip, too. She's pretty much taken over some little spots here in the house, found her appropriate spots to sleep during the day. She likes sitting next to the open window here in the "computer room" and staring out at the traffic going by and the birds that eat the berries off the tree just outside. She's managed to get outside on a few occasions, escaping through the screens on the downstairs windows, but each time she's pretty much stayed right around the house, which is a good thing. The first time, we didn't even know she'd got out until she showed up outside the kitchen window yowling at the girlfriend as she did the dishes. I think I might need to go down to Home Depot and get some small lumber, maybe 1x2, and some screen and make some kind of barrier that will fit under the window while it's open, which she can't push out easily. Because, quite honestly, if the windows aren't open, it just gets way too hot and stuffy in this place over the course of the day and the evening.

I haven't really been doing very much musically since I've been down here. I did get back in touch with one guitarist who I'd contacted before the move, but he's on-call on his job this week, so we're going to try to get together next week or a bit after and see about jamming. I do need to also reply back to some of the other people I'd sent stuff off to before leaving Oregon, but I'd really like to get a job, get money coming in, and know what my hours will be like before I seriously try to start something in the way of a band. Guess I'd best get out there and start looking now, eh?

So this isn't going all that quickly...

I pretty much just archived my old website and put up a quick and dirty placeholder, but aside from creating a new blog for the site and adding a couple of links to the old site and one of the most popular pages on it, I really haven’t done much at all with this. Oh, and I did add a page for my cross stitch projects, but even that’s not getting updated when I complete all of my projects. Of course, stressing out over my move to Texas hasn’t helped all that much. Maybe once I’m down there, I’ll have a little more free time to get this done. For now, it stays on the list, of course, but it’s definitely slow going at best.

See more progress on: re-design my website

First steps...

I gave my notice at work today. I gave them a long time, because I’ve been here for quite a long time (14 years, nearly), and I feel like I should give them plenty of time to find and train someone to replace me. My position is one of those quirky ones that doesn’t have a real job description, and not a whole lot of people know what I really do and how to do it, so it’ll take a while to train someone else.

In any case, when I did this goal as a challenge, I kind of screwed up the date, because April 4, which is when the goal is “due,” is actually going to be my last day of work. I’ll pack up that weekend and do the move itself the following week. But now it’s not a maybe thing, because the job was just about the last tie I had to here…

See more progress on: Move to Texas

The inevitable first post...

So, this is the handy little first blog entry for my new blog. Not much to say yet. I'm really just checking to make sure it's set up properly...