Blaise and Charlie

It's been a while - I know. I'm still in training. Pay day is Monday. Boring boring stuff about work. Not that work is boring. It's just boring to talk about. We're getting kittens, though. I'll post pictures when I get a chance to take prettier ones. They're siblings - born in Rich's dad's window well. Rich and Charlie fell in love, so Blaise will keep me from feeling like a third wheel. But since Rich's apartment is "the kitchen" and mine is "the living room" (also much emptier), I get to house them. Something about a litterbox in an efficiency seems a little stinky (ha.), but I'll deal. I've spent the last couple nights re-wiring the internet, speaker wires, and power cords so their wire-chewing habits have less support. In grown-up news, we're looking for a piece of land. For a house. We don't really want to have to move (ever), so we're going to try to build the house of our dreams (see house ideas) near work. Right now, our obstacles are:

• near work ® good school district
• good school district ® expensive real estate
• good school district ® $ subdivisions
• subdivisions ® $ restrictions
• ¬ subdivision ® well water, a propane tank, and no neighbors for the (eventual) kids to play with
• Rich's college loans > income - expenses

KEY:
®	implies
$	there exists
¬	not

I guess we'll figure that out once these kittens are settled in... and the wedding is planned... and work settles down... Yeah. Probably never. But I can hope.

Insanity

I was going to post on Monday, but my computer's battery died when I was almost done and I haven't gotten out since then. In any case, work started Tuesday. Not real work, but all 80ish of us new hires are in orientation all week. And the next few weeks will be tech camps and application camps to learn about the software we're working on. Overall, it's really exciting, but that means not wanting to go home and go to sleep, so I'm extremely tired. And meetings all day don't help. But at least they're interesting. I've gotten to know more about how healthcare works in the past 3 days than I ever thought I would, and it's all been really helpful for a) giving me an idea of what I'll be doing and b) helping me see that though I'm not directly affecting peoples' lives in a positive way (as I was hoping to, through teaching), I'm going as far as to save peoples' lives by working on software to help their healthcare providers work more efficiently and make many fewer mistakes. Other than that, I don't have much to say about what's going on. This is the kind of thing, for me, that I want to tell all my friends aboutso they can get in on the deal, too. That being said, if a career here sounds like your thing (if you're a nerd and anywhere along the scale from outgoing & likes to travel to technical & programmer-y, let me know, an I can submit your resume or at least put in a good word - or ask me questions. I'd be glad to brag about where I work! :-)

We moved!

So we arrived in Madison on Wednesday and despite being a little delayed, we managed to unpack the U-Haul and not die. I guess that required some explanation: we packed the U-Haul Monday. Pretty much just Rich and I - a neighbor helped move the couch, but we brought down the bed, desk, and kitchen table ourselves. And then we filled (and I mean FILLED) the 14-foot truck with boxes and bags of stuff. Then we drove home. Leaving Cincinnati at about 6:11, we were only supposed drive 45 mph, so we got home at 1:30ish. Not bad. But we were dead after packing all that stuff. Tuesday, we got up and mom helped us repack half of the truck to fit my bed, a tv, a tv stand, a couch, and our bikes. Then dad took us to an apartment to actually get the tv and stand, and we took a computer and other items from home. Then we drove to Rich's mom's house. There, we unpacked all our laundry, washed it from Tuesday night through Wednesday morning, and finally left for Madison after a late lunch at Culver's. Then we had Rich's mom and grandma helping unpack light stuff and carry it up to our apartments (conveniently, just down the hall from each other) while we hauled the big-ticket items ourselves. We started at about 5 and they helped until about 7. Then we kept unpacking until about 9 or 9:30. It was then time for dinner. At Old Chicago. The spinach and artichoke pizza was superb. And then we each retired to our respective apartments and rearranged our stuff until the early hours of the morning. Fun.