so grown up

I'm pretty sure no one reads this anymore, but it was well lived while it lasted. Anyway, thought I'd give it a try if anyone happens to check it once in a while.

The move to NM was fine. Pretty uneventful except for tire blow out on my car dolly that took 4 hours to repair. I was jobless for 2 months. We lived off of just Jesse's salary and were so broke. Even now that I have a job we're still broke because we're still just living off of his paycheck and all of mine goes into savings. At least we have a good chunk of money in case we ever need it.

After sitting in the house playing housewife to Jesse and the dog, I started subsitute teaching just so I had something to do, and a month later Jesse's commander hired me as the unit training manager. During that whole time Jesse was away for training. So here I was, just dropped everything in Madison to move to Alamogordo in September, and 3 weeks later Jesse leaves for training in Mississippi and doesn't get back until a week before Christmas. Nice right?

At least after I got the job I had something to do...kind of. I don't actually have any security clearance to be able to do anything, so for the past 2 months I've been sitting at my desk pretending to be interested in reading Air Force Instruction manuals while still waiting for my clearance to come through...

So I moved, was alone for almost 3 months, sit at work for 8 hours doing NOTHING. On the flip side, Jesse is home for good, we got a puppy, and *drumroll* we put an offer on a house and it was accepted last week!

We don't actually close until February, so I can't say we bought a house quite yet, but we're almost there. It's a department of Veteran Affairs repo and is in pretty bad shape. It needs to e gutted and completely remodeled. Which is almost s good as building a new house because we can make it all our own. After remodeling costs we'll probably out $110k into the house, and the good news is, just last month other houses on the street were selling for $120-$130k. In a few years we might be able to sell it for $140!

That's all my news since September, check Facebook for house and puppy pictures.

Love you all!
Newman

Update from Meg

So this mainly goes out to Kels and New since I don't get to see you guys! The summer has been very good, i thoroughly enjoyed my office's half day fridays all summer long (most afternoons spent reading by the pool). Liz was gone most of the summer globe-trotting with her family so I was basically living by myself a lot, but I did in fact enjoy it and it made me realize I would eventually like to live on my own someday. But it is nice to have Liz back again and on the same schedule as me.

Work is going really well, I honesly like my job a lot. My one-year anniversary is this month! hard to believe. I've started to travel more, mainly going to trade shows to represent WEF. I went to Orlando in August and am leaving tomorrow for Dallas for 4 days. And we have our big conference and exhibition every October and this year its in Chicago, so that will be lots of fun. I am really trying to get involved more at work, especially since i really like all the travel i've been doing, and i would eventually like to work in our marketing department (i'm still in Advertising now). And, my boss' boss Jack told me in secret that he was really impressed with my work at the trade show in Orlando and he said he put me "on the list to travel internationally". (We recently started an international pavilion program where we make it possible for smaller US companies to exhibit at Int'l shows by covering all the transportation/logistics for them.) Jack expects this program to be really successful, so I am hoping to get involved with it within the next year or two. So there really is a lot of opportunities for me to move up. And now that I have some really good friends at work, we've been going out a lot in DC on the weekends and stuff.

As for boys, there is not a whole lot of activity in that category...my friend Cari from work introduced me to her friend Drew, who graduated with her from GW. He's tall, blond, and works for Obama on the campaign trail. I've met him twice, and we've been tlaking but haven't seen him in a few weeks because he's gone a lot with Obama. So we will see if we keep talking and who knows. If anything should happen I will defintiely have to give my vag a pep talk.

I'm gearing up to run in the Army 10-miler race on Oct. 5 around downtown DC. So far i'm running 8.5 miles so I'm basically there. I think I'll run it again next year if anyone else is interested, the training really was easier than I thought.

I guess thats about it... the next couple months will be super busy at work in preparation for our conference, and its also the Season of Birthdays around here! Hope you all are doing well. p.s. Talia got engaged to Jeremy! (bf of 2+ years)

~meg

New-how did the move go???
Kels-How was your first week of school???

Oops

I think I have boyfriend

Life Change!!

Jesse and I had started making plans for me to move down to NM with the understanding that I'd stay in Madison until I secured a job in Alamogordo. Well, Wednesday was an exceptionally stressful day and I said, "I need to get out of here today" Jesse said, "Well, tell HR tomorrow!" In one day all our plans of making a sensible move were thrown out the window.

And so I resigned yesterday and my last day at Epic is September 12th. I'm not sure how I'll pay to move all my stuff 1500 miles, I don't have a job out there, and we don't have anywhere to live yet.

Talk about irrational things people do for love...

(P.S. I'm terrified!)

The Visitor

My mother is up here in Madison visiting; I love my mother, but I want her to leave already! She's been here since last Friday and has a few more days until leaving on Sunday. This trip is making me rethink my scheme to have her come live with me and raise my children...

Who thought that having a visitor would be so irritating.

-Newman

Alamogordo, New Mexico

So I found out some stuff about your new town, it's way more interesting that my actual work. Your town was the first testing site for the atomic bomb...haha i thought that was cool...the population is around 36,000, about the same as the number of people who attend UMD...your town has a hot air balloon festival and a film festival every year...and i found a great blurb about shopping on your town's website:

"You will find great shopping in Alamogordo. It is the retail center for the region. Alamogordo has Wal-mart, K-mart, Home Depot, Lowes and JC Penny to name a few of our local national retailers. Our historic New York Ave. shopping district is a must see." ~http://www.alamogordo.net/shopping/

Assuming you get along with a decent amount of people and you don't get too bored, it might be a nice small town to live in for a few years. P.S. You are becoming such a grown up...moving in with your fiance and buying a house and all that stuff...wow when did we start getting old! Glad to see you're doing so good!

Love,
Kathy

You ladies have been pretty quiet lately! Busy like me I'm assuming. Kelsey, how was your trip back to MD?

Jesse asked me to come live with him. :) Originally, I thought there was no way I'd ever go to live with him in New Mexico (google his city, Alamogordo, to find out why). But since he asked me to move in, I started thinking that if I can get a job on base that pays more than what I make now, it could make up for Alamogordo sucking...not to mention I'd get to be with J. and I'd get to buy a house :)

So it turns out that there are a lot of jobs on base. I'm going to apply for one that is almost identical to what I'm doing now and is about a 15K salary jump!!

So I may be moving even further away from home, but I'll be able to use my vacation days to go visit people other than J. Maybe Maryland will be our next vacation get away!


Love-Newman