Category: October 2017

Sandia likes to think they have the world beat in the ridiculous number of acronyms that new employees have to learn. I would say the Air Quality Bureau is holding their own.

I’ve been making myself an acronym list as I come across them so I can learn them all. I’m realizing this isn’t even half of them. I may never know them all. But here’s my first 4 weeks worth:

One of my new friends at work has chickens and sells eggs. I excitedly signed up for weekly eggs. Here’s my first dozen. Look at all those colors!

Then I heard he had accepted a new position with a different department in a different part of town (the state offices are scattered all around). I was bummed! He’s saying he’s going to keep bringing us eggs anyway. But…we’ll see how long that lasts. Probably just until his new coworkers find out and start putting in their egg orders!

THE JOB: My boss’s leave date is now official, and it’s even sooner than we thought. The 8^th instead of the 13^th. So I have just over a week to learn everything! They have not named the new acting manager yet. They’ve asked me for a long version of my resume, detailing my project management experience. I believe I’m still my management’s top choice, but they’re having to justify the decision. Now that everyone knows that Carina is leaving, I expect that other managers have put forward their own top employees as candidates. They do not have a formal interview process for the acting position – it’s appointed, but I know that Human Resources is involved.

Later they will go through the full advertising and interviewing process to fill the position permanently. Of course, everyone who has their eyes on the permanent position wants the acting position, because it gives you great experience (assuming you do well).

We have a halloween party tomorrow at lunch. I’ve made a spicy, sour, cabbage-based relish (of my own devising). It probably won’t be as popular as if I’d brought brownies. No brownie points for me. I get spicy cabbage points instead. It’s really spicy. They’re gonna hate me.

THE TOWNHOME: We’ve just been waiting for the new appraisal, which is happening today. Then it will be a few days before we have the results.

THE REMODEL: Turns out not all sandy stuff is sand. Our brick guy said our pink sand had too much dirt in it. But he says he knows an arroyo where he can get reddish color sand, now that he knows that we want. Apparently the distinction is particle size. If it’s too fine, it compacts too much and settles down too far. We want the sand to lodge in the cracks between the bricks and not settle out.

This is the sand that has too many fine particles. He’s going to vacuum it up and go dig up better sand elsewhere.

Also John ordered cabinets – the same ones we’d seen in a neighbor’s casita this summer. He ordered one for the downstairs bathroom vanity too, which is great. All the bathrooms are in terrible shape.

THE MOVE: You all know I’m quite an experienced mover (LOL), but OMG this is the most time consuming move yet! It’s insanely difficult moving into two houses instead of one. I can’t just mindlessly put stuff in boxes. Every single item we own (thousands of things), needs a decision made – which house?

It’s been a busy week, but I will bore you with more blog soon!

I bought this from a local artist for my new townhome. Isn’t it fun?

The artist is Erica Wendel-Oglesby

I have a new reader – one of my favorite brothers! (I have two brothers – they are both one of my favorites.) But I haven’t been doing a good job of keeping close friends and family members appraised of all our changes because so much is going on so rapidly, and anyway, you can just read my blog, right?

But without any context, the poor guy is confused. Who works where? Who lives where? What’s with all the houses!?!?

I figure if my own brother isn’t keeping up with it all, then it’s time I post some explanation.

First the lay of the land. You know how those epic fantasy novels start with a hand-drawn map with ^^^^ to indicate mountains and strange sounding place names penciled in? Well, here’s the modern, real life version of the map of our own personal epic.

It is approximately 30 minutes from Albuquerque to Placitas, almost another hour from Placitas to Santa Fe, and another 45 minutes from Santa Fe to Los Alamos, for a total of over 2 hours.

We don’t actually go up to Los Alamos very often, but I included it on the map because it just happens that John went up there last week and is going again tomorrow, so we’re both staying in Santa Fe tonight. More often, we are commuting to and from Albuquerque, Placitas, and Santa Fe. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the rundown as of this moment in time:

Jobs:

• I got frustrated with “at home” duties, such as running the remodel (in particular, running the remodel!) and missed the comradery of the office, and missed doing environmental work, which is something I do well. I also felt I was spending too much time waiting for John to get home – which isn’t a good thing because he often works quite late in the evenings. So I recently accepted a job with the Air Quality Bureau for the State of New Mexico, located in Santa Fe. So far, I’m very happy with the new job.
• John also really likes his current job. However, his team is actually located in California. So although he’s “officially” located in Albuquerque, he is in California about 1/4 of the time. He’s also on business trips to other places fairly frequently as well.

Commutes:

• John likes living in the quiet of a rural area. And he finds a modest commute to be a good transition between work and home. He actually enjoys driving out to Placitas from Albuquerque when the day’s work is done.
• Commuting does not work very well for me.  Driving at night gives me migraines. Plus, I have coaching clients scheduled in the evenings (I coach over the phone at home), and wouldn’t have time to coach if I had a long commute. I like to be close to everything and spend as little time in the car as possible.

Houses:

• We are buying a small townhome in Santa Fe near my new job. I’ll be up there during the week. Then on weekends, we will either be there or in Placitas, depending on what we want to do that weekend.
• Meanwhile, while we are waiting for the townhome purchase to complete, we are renting a small casita in Santa Fe.
• We are remodeling the house in Placitas that John bought 20 years ago. When it’s done, he plans to be there during the week. And I’ll come down to Placitas on whatever weekends that he doesn’t go up to Santa Fe.
• While we are waiting for the remodel to get finished, we have been renting a nearby house in Placitas.

We are looking forward to getting settled into the new townhome in Santa Fe, and the remodeled house in Placitas. We’re hoping both those things will happen by the end of this year, and we will no longer need either of the places we are renting.

To add to the confusion, we sold our rental property in California and purchased 3 replacement rental properties in Albuquerque this summer, which I blogged about quite a lot while that was going on. And we almost bought a house in Placitas this summer. I blogged a lot about that one too. But we didn’t buy it, and are remodeling our original house in Placitas instead.

There’s your rundown. This one’s for you, Steven! I hope that offers enough clarity that you can sit back and enjoy my amazing wit and light-hearted insight about the ups and downs of everyday life (LOL), rather than just shaking your head in puzzlement wondering what in the world your crazy sister is up to this time!

https://xkcd.com/1906/

Organized problems are much less scary than random, looming, drifting, problems skittering around, zooming in and out of corners and waiting for you in the dark.

Most of you probably already saw these on Facebook, but my wonderful kids email me the photos I would otherwise miss, since I don’t read Facebook anymore.

For my friends who aren’t on Facebook (and I know at least 2 of you aren’t), here’s the latest from Laura & Alex’s trip to Japan.

Oh, and Laura already corrected me from my post of 10 minutes ago. The flip-flop slippers I want are only available in one store and only in the spring and early summer. Bummer! Now I have a really good reason to go visit Japan again someday. After I spend a gajillion pay periods earning vacation time at an hour and a half a week.

Here’s her pics:

Aren’t they a cute couple, framing – what is that back there? A topiary bear?

Yum, yum, squid snacks!

There is a story associated with the last picture that we still laugh about. The first time I visited, Laura and I were seated at a counter on an upper level overlooking the station, with all these people running around down below us. I was trying to eat a rice ball. Imagine trying to eat a large round thing with chopsticks. Well, I dropped it. So I leaned down to pick it up off the floor to throw it away, and realized that it had rolled under the railing and had escaped – fallen – flown – gracefully arced – all the way to the ground floor below. Oops.

I emailed Laura to make sure everything’s still going well on her trip to Japan, and she sent me these pics. They do look happy!

Here’s Laura and Yuko:

And Laura and Alex: