Category: Family

It’s been a cold first week here in Utah. Snow and ice and all that fun stuff. It was 4 degrees yesterday morning at the airport. When I got in my car to go to work yesterday, my windshield slowly started cracking. It was like it was happening in slow motion. Unfortunately, my buddy who does auto glass doesn’t have an office up here yet. For any of you wanting good glass service, here’s his site: http://www.clearcutautoglass.com

I hear that it’s also been pretty cold down in Phoenix, with lows in the 30s and highs now getting out of the 50s. Julie said she had to turn on the heater for the first time. Must have been downright chilly.

The new job is going well. There seem to be some interesting dynamics and certainly no shortage of things to do, which is better than the alternative. There are a few projects (or initiatives, maybe) that seem destined to fail, so we’ll see how those turn out. I’m loving the commute, though. It’s not even long enough to bother with talk radio. It’s about a 2 song commute, if that. I’m starting to feel like I don’t know what’s going on in the world, with no talk radio and no internet at my in-laws’. I’m writing this from David and Marilyn Jenkins’ home. Julie says it’s good for me to be disconnected, trying to recover from my addiction.

Speaking of Julie, she’s having quite the time with the girls. She tells me that she wouldn’t be the greatest single mom. I don’t plan on her having to be, so hopefully she won’t have to struggle through it much longer. She has her Super Saturday thing this weekend, which is pretty much for the birds as far as I’m concerned. But no one ever asks me my opinion (though they often get it anyway). Once that’s done, she should be able to focus on other things. I’m flying home next weekend (Dec 8 I think) to hang out with my girls. I’m pretty excited. Julie’s mom has been spoiling me, what with packed lunches and hot meals in the evening. I’m not sure what they think about their house guest, but he sure appreciates it. Julie says not to get too used to it . . .

Things seem to be going along well as far as the homes are concerned. I’d really like to sell the rental and rent our home. I have a good prospect for the latter and a decent one for the former. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Housing up here is a little more confusing. I’ve got a few things I want to do and Julie’s got a few that she wants to do (or pretty much just one). She usually wins, but I’ll see if I can pull something off this time around.

I don’t have a camera up here, so no pictures for a while. More later.

What a week it’s been.

Last Monday, we all piled in the trusty mini-van for our trek up to Utah. We somehow made it in a day. The next few days were spent looking at homes,  being discouraged, getting more encouraged, and then back again. It’s an interesting market up here — surprisingly few homes for sale. I guess that’s the cycle of things in Utah. In the wintertime, people just take their homes off the market. We’re still weighing the buy vs. rent thing. We’ll see what wins out.

Thanksgiving was spent in Lehi at Jim Jenkins’ home. It was fun.

We left Utah on Saturday, arriving in Surprise around 9pm. Gwen wasn’t too thrilled with all of the travelling, but she survived. She didn’t spend the entire time in her carseat, as listening to her scream for hours on end got a little bit tiring. We tried to clean a few things up and get a few more things together. Then Sunday morning around 10:30 I left again to come back up to Utah.

The title of this post is in reference to the Chief Yellowhorse shops on the side of the road. These are the ones that are maybe 30 miles north of Flagstaff. He’s got all of these signs before and after his table stands telling you that his stuff is coming up and then more afterward telling you to go back. The last few say “Ol Chief Sez Turn Back Now” and “Hurry, It’s Not Too Late.” I tell you what, it was all I could do to keep myself from turning back and going all the way home to Surprise. I left home thinking that I didn’t really want to do this, so why was I? I can be such the drama queen.

Today I started my new job. After assurring both security and the head of HR that I was, indeed, supposed to report for work today, I settled in and met some people. It seems like a good bunch. My computer was hurting (kind of like those south of Rittenhouse, mid), so it took quite a while to do even the most menial of tasks. Supposedly I’ll have a new machine in short order, though not short enough. Snow and traffic jams greeted me at the end of the day. All of the traffic seemed to be going North, so maybe that was a sign that I don’t want to live up north. We’ll see. More later.

Happy Halloween everyone. It was a cool balmy 70-ish degrees outside tonight when the fesitivities started. Julie made some great clam chowder, salad, dip, and all kinds of fun stuff. The dessert was some sort of free-for-all in the neighborhood. But I guess we made out OK.

Abigail was a cat, Grace was Dorothy, Lucy was TinkerBell, and Gwen was the old standby, the duck. Catherine, Mike and Annie, my parents, and Grandma Eslin came over to join the fun. My mother has always loved Halloween, so seeing our house decked out as it is did her heart good, I’m sure. We went Trick-or-Treating up and down the street. Lucy had some “slippers” (shoes) that were 3 sizes too big and kept falling off, so she was a little slow. I don’t think she minded much, as it just gave her yet another chance to eat a sucker. It was 9 at last count. I had to pry the bag out of her hand.

New pictures are up at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/midder/ and to the right. Enjoy.