The cycle is complete

I didn't realize that it had been so long since I posted to my blog.

It has been a VERY long year for us. I was laid off from my job in Spokane on May 31, 2012, and it didn't take me very long to find a new job, but that job was across the country in New Haven, Connecticut. Almost exactly a year ago, August 4, 2012, I took off in my red Jetta for New Haven to work for NCR corp.

That job was supposed to be a three month contract-to-hire, meaning that at the end of the three months if everyone was happy I would become a full-time permanent employee with NCR.

Well eight months later it still hadn't happened, and in fact they terminated my contract. NCR is not doing all that well, IMHO, they being a hardware company in an increasingly non-hardware-oriented world.

A week later I had another job lined up, this time in Boca Raton, Florida. Back in my red Jetta and another three month contract-to-hire with Verio, a big internet hosting and services company.

The three months went by and they hired me! So I found us an apartment and Sally started to get ready to move here. That process (including moving her mother to Salt Lake City) is a whole saga in and of itself, but she finally got on the road in a U-Haul truck, stopped in Pocatello Idaho to pick up our daughter Amanda (who did the lion's share of the driving), and headed east.

Five LONG days later they pulled into the apartment complex at 4:30 am. At 9:00 am the eight missionaries assigned to our ward arrived and in 20 minutes we had the whole truck emptied.

So here we are, living alone for the first time in the eleven years (as of last Saturday) of marriage. It is truly wonderful to be together again, and to not be responsible for anyone other than ourselves. We have already had the time and the freedom (from interruptions) to talk about the kinds of things couples need to talk about - their past, their future, and what's on the menu for the next week.

As for my little red Jetta, it died as I pulled into Boca Raton. I managed to limp along with it until I got my first paycheck, at which point I traded it in on a hot red 2013 Passat.