It's Been a While

Well...

It's Christmas break and things are finally starting to slow down a little. Everything has been going well for me and Tiffany, she's continuing to work at Kohl's and substitute teach every once in a while. I'm working at Benner Library still, although this year has been a little different with my new job description. I've been keeping the software development team on track this semester, and we've done some great work together.

Winter is here, and Christmas is coming quickly. There's been snow everywhere for the past couple of days now. It was snowing pretty hard when we went to go see the Kindles last weekend. It made the Christmas light display in Windmont park pretty awesome. Christmas came early at their house and we celebrated with stockings, gifts and games. It was a pretty good time. We ate dinner with Reeva and Dave, and I learned to play Dutch blitz!

I also heard that the Trotters got about a foot of snow--unbelievable! Tiffany and I can't wait to go and see them for Christmas. I hope that it's not too perilous of a journey--I went to go help Tiffany put some things in the car and almost fell over backward because of the ice. Olivet also closed at 10AM on account of the ice today, so I didn't go to work.

I didn't do much today--probably the most amount of nothing I've ever done in a long time. I played EVE Online with Jesse for about half the day. Nerd Paradise. Then I hopped on Monster.com to create a profile and post my resume. I was surprised to discover that the resume that I had written about a year and a half ago was still mostly accurate, I only needed to tweak a couple things here and there.

Well, I guess that's about it for now.

Merry Christmas!

New Car

So, after about 3-4 weeks (my math is probably a little off) of waiting, praying and trying not to worry we've finally found a car. It's a little black '95 Ford Contour, and a little bit of a fixer-upper. It's not too much to look at--seeing as it used to be purple and somebody gave it a custom paint job, window tints and a couple other "improvements".

We couldn't be happier though. It came with new tires and new brakes. It also runs great and we got $1000 off the original price!

The Day the Buick Died

Well, I guess it had to happen sometime--I just wish it wouldn't have happened now.

We were driving home from school, nothing too out of the ordinary, when we rounded the corner coming in to our apartment parking lot. Tiffany was driving and all of a sudden we hear a big snap. We lost all steering, but luckily we weren't near any cars or buildings. Tiffany was able to stop the car and we both looked at each other wondering what do do next. We tried turning the wheel again and noticed quickly that it wasn't giving any resistance, it just spun freely.

Long story short, the reason we lost our steering was because our engine practically fell out on the ground. Yep. The back two brackets holding in the engine rusted and gave out at the same time--looks like good old Illinois weather got the best of us. I snapped a few pictures while I was out, if you want to see them you can go to this link:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=373847&l=df2d0&id=1151340017

John from Menz towing told us that this isn't the first GM that he's seen this happen to. Apparently it's a known problem with the design, there just aren't enough instances of this happening for a safety recall. I'm just glad we weren't barreling down I-80 when this happened.

Anyway, thanks for everyone's support and prayers... looks like we've got some car shopping to do.

Code Sprint

Yesterday I participated in the ACCA programming competition at North Central College in Naperville, IL. I've never been to one before, and on top of that I was placed in the advanced division. After finding out that we were only allowed to use one computer, we decided that we were going to have to solve most of these problems by hand--ouch. With 7 problems for our 4-man team to solve, we split up the problems starting with one for each of us. After 110 minutes, Adan was able to write up some quick and dirty code and submit one of the programs--that was the only one out of seven we completed all day... I ended up working the entire 4 hour period on one program on paper :-p.

It was kinda depressing actually. The team from Wheaton College was able to complete and submit all seven problems. I guess we've still got a lot to learn... haha...

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was very relaxing--especially after all the things that happened this week...

Locking the keys in the car, dealing with a broken washing machine, and staying up until 3:00am waiting for work to be over... all that fun stuff.

We spent the day before and the holiday with my parents and Alyssa, and also had a wonderful time with my grandparents. We had celebrated my sister's birthday the weekend before, so it hadn't been too long since we'd been home.

We gave mom her present a little early this year--we got her one of those fancy pants Red Apple Yankee Candle Oil and Reed sets. She says she's using it to make the corner where Alyssa's achievements sit smell better, and I'll have to admit, it does smell pretty good. I think the red apple flavor is the best one they make.

After a night of baking pies with mom, Tiffany made some green bean casserole for Thanksgiving dinner--pretty good stuff might I add. I used to be resistant to the stuff, now I think it's starting to grow on me a little bit.

Dinner and the pies were pretty good. The time we spent together afterward was pretty relaxing. After discussing the impending future of digital television and trying to make closed captioning work (with no avail) we watched Miracle on 34th Street and The Santa Claus to get in the mood for Christmas time.

The ride home was pretty uneventful. Tiffany and I discussed names for a puppy when we get one. We're pretty stuck on Neo (from the Matrix) or Subaru (sounds fun). We threw around a lot of stupid names, most of them had something to do with road signs we saw or towns that we were driving through. It was a lot of fun.

We got to sleep in the following morning, and for lunch we went to Grandma Kinnersley's house. I heard all about Renee's trip to Africa and got a couple souvineers! I got a wooden giraffe statue and I keychain from Etheopia. Tiffany got an Arimaian Coke bottle and a scarf. I also got to spend some time with Tiffany's extended family. Renee, Amy Jo, Anna and Timothy all came back to our place to see our new furniture and play the Wii. Renee had a few computer questions for me, and I got to see all her pictures from Africa.

After lunch, Tiffany went to work and the Kindles, the Hollywoods and I went to see the new Disney movie, Bolt. I thought it was pretty good. I'll probably buy it when it comes out on video.

I uploaded some pictures of the holiday season to my picasa web albums just now, so most of you should be getting an email invitation to see them. (If I forgot to send you one, just let me know and I'll get you one.)

So now I'm just waiting for Tiffany to get home... Looks like I've got quite a day ahead of me tomorrow. 10 pages of term paper about DHCP for networking are waiting to be written for Monday. :-p Blah...

Updates

So we haven't written for a while so I thought I'd write a bit.

So Wednesday we went out just to do some window shopping and look for Christmas presents and ended up putting a mattress on layaway. We got a queen sized Sealy and we're pretty excited. We have about half of it paid off already and are hoping to finish it off so they'll deliver it. We CAN'T wait!!

John and Jeanette came last weekend and we had so much fun. We went out for dinner, checked out some furniture and went to Oberweiss(yum!!) They also brought us some more furniture, which is awesome! They brought us another couch(which has a pull out bed which we're now sleeping on- a lot better than the floor!!) a coffee table and a lamp. It was a pretty awesome weekend!

Last week I had a couple days off in a row. Got kinda boring but it was good to rest a relax. Got a lot of things done though, laundry and dishes etc. Kohls is really being affected by the economy so its hard for them to give out so many hours. But I'm still getting a decent amount so I'm not complaning. I did apply for a supervisor position but didn't get it because I need more experience. But that's ok, I feel like not getting it will push me to start subbing which will probably be better in the long run.

I'm no longer at Burger King, a couple weeks back reminded me why I quit in the first place. Plus the working environment wasn't so great there either and that's why I quit the daycare so I decided it was best to leave. Not to mention I almost asked someone at Kohls whether it was for"here or to go" ... not a good sign :-p

So now we're getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can't beleive it's Novemmber already!! And tomorrow we have to vote!! I'm kinda nervous to see the outcome... I guess we'll just have to wait and see. So we'll be working on Thanksgiving and Christmas plans. I have to work Black Friday at Kohls again- yuck! Ah the joys of retail....lol

Guess that's it!
Love Tiffany

SO much better...

So like Paul said I've started back at Kohl's and I can't express how much better it is. Not dreading going to work is much less stressful. Everyone is excited to see me back and lots of people have already told me I'm doing an awesome job. A couple of things the other place lacked.

Since I told them I'd work anywhere and have open availability I've been placed in a couple of areas that are totally new to me. Even though that means I have to learn lots of new things its actually kinda fun because I'm doing something different almost everyday so things won't get boring. I helped the design person for a couple days and that was the most fun so far. I got to set up towel and dish displays which is fun.

Hour wise I'm doing pretty good. This week I wasn't even on the schedule and I got more than 30 hours so between this and Burger King I'll be doing great. Plus since Black Friday (yikes!) and Christmas are coming up hours at Kohls will be plentiful.

Speaking of Burger King I start there hopefully this coming week because they don't make their schedule for the next week until the day before the old one runs out. Last time I was in though the Assistant Manager offered to make me a manager, which would be awesome. After Christmas hours at both places are hard to get but as a manager they could offer me 40 hours especially if I do a good job. So I'll work hard the next few months and hopefully get lots of hours after Christmas.

In general I'm just glad to be done at the other place. It is sad because I love working with kids and it stings a little not to be doing that. But the place I was at was cutting me down and just crushing my spirit so I knew it was time to get out. Its taking some time to rebound because a lot of what they said hurt. I'm getting over it though. My amazing husband keeps telling me that I'm great despite what they think and everyone at Kohls is telling me I'm doing great so I'll get there soon.

I'm hoping to still work with kids until I get another job in a school. I want to work at our church in the kids program and talk to a couple teachers I know in the area to see if I can volunteer in their classrooms. So I won't be totally out of the loop when I got to interview for jobs.

So basically I'm doing great and am so much happier. Thanks for everyone's support.