... and a new Chapter begins!

I know it has been a while since I have posted, but so much stuff has happened that I don't even know where to start.

I mentioned in our last blog that we were working on a new project. Well, the new project was the purchase of a house. I did not want to talk about it until it was truly ours, since dealing with a bank owned property, who is out of India is not the easiest thing to do. It took Doug about a month of back and forth, since our realtor made some mistakes too, but he was finally able to get everything straightened out and as of January 26th, we are officially the proud owner of a three bedroom two full bath house in Monroe, WA.


I can not tell you how much work Doug put in this project and luckily for me, all I had to do was go to work, while he was dealing with everybody. I was going to take pictures of all the progress we have made so far, but first I need to find the camera in all the piles of stuff we have in the spare bedrooms, so pictures will have to wait. Here are some that I took when we first looked at the house.

The kitchen

Dining Room towards the backyard

Living room towards the front of the house.

As you can tell, the first thing we had to do before we moved in was to replace the carpet. I can not stress enough how Doug has done everything. He went to the various carpet places, furniture stores and bedding stores and all I had to do was go with him on a Saturday and pick out what I want. As you all know, I hate to go shopping and luckily Doug did it all for me while I was at work.

So we had the carpet replaced, bought a bed, bedroom furniture and some living room furniture and and moved in on February 17th. Sounds all very easy, except that Doug took daily trips from the rig to the house bringing up all the stuff out of the rig and that trip is 30 miles one way. It is amazing just how much stuff we still had in the rig. So now everything is in the spare bedrooms, the garage and spread around the house and I have to figure out where to store all our stuff. I will take me some time so that I only have to do it once.

Last Monday Doug went back to the rig, hooked it up to the truck and brought it down to Uhlman RV and once it gets detailed it should go up on their website. We went down yesterday to sign some paperwork and take off the pressure pro sensors from the tires. It was time for me to say good-bye to the home we had for the last four years and I have to say it was hard for me.

I know we are starting a new chapter in our lives and I am excited, but also a little bit sad to see our old home go. Well I will stop for now, since I have a ton of work to do in the house, but I will post again when I have some pictures of our improvements.

SNOW!!! OH NO !!!

This entry is brought to you courtesy of the Seattle snow storm.They started talking about this over the weekend and we really did not pay that much attention to it. We had a dusting before and found out that Seattle really does not know how to remove snow, since they only own 28 plows, but we were able to get around.

Well Doug took a couple of pictures Monday while I was at work.


Can you see the icicle that formed on the downspout on the rig. There were also some beautiful ones coming of the front of the rig. Luckily we have an electric heater and the furnace to keep us warm inside.

I still went to work yesterday, but decided to leave at 11 am, since the snow was starting to stick on the road and I have 22 miles to go to get back to the rig. It took me over an hour and the roads were getting really bad with slush and snow. My car did just fine, but some people just don't know how to drive on ice and sleet up or down a hill and there is a lot of hills around here.

I got up at 5 am this morning, saw the snow that had come down last night and decided to stay home today. These are pictures I took about 11 am.


We lost power for about 1 1/2 hours today, but at least right now we have power and therefore water again. The county road in front of our place is packed with snow and slush and if it does freeze tonight, it will be a mess again tomorrow. At least this storm is supposed to turn into rain by tomorrow and it should wash the slush away soon. I will decide tomorrow morning if I will go in late or have to take another day off from work. At least they are were understanding about me having to take time off due to the weather at work so I don't have to worry about loosing my job.

... and I thought we would only have to worry about rain here!!!

Happy New Year Everybody!!!

This was our dessert for New Year's Eve and it was soooooo delicious. Actually, it was so rich that I could not finish mine and enjoyed it again on New Year's Day. Between the pecan pie and the butter cookies for Christmas and this delicious dessert we definitely need to go back to our diet.

It has been a while since I have last posted and lots of things have happened since then. The biggest one right now is that I have found a job as an inventory analyst. I am working since Thanksgiving week through an employment agency a 90 day contract, but the company has already said that they will take me over after the contract expires. I have a very nice boss and really like my job, which is an added bonus for finding employment again. Doug has not been as lucky yet, but I am sure something will come along for him also.

In regard to the weather we really can't complain to much. It has been a very dry December for Seattle standards and we only had frozen windshields a couple of times. It just seems to wrong to own a windshield scraper again. The winds have been so strong that our temporary roof over the bedroom has come down, but since the tree has lost all its leaves, we won't put it up again right now. It is amazing how strong the gusts get around here and you have to be careful about trees and debris on the road. We actually lost power for about two hours due to the strong winds the other night.

We are also working on another big project, but I am not ready to talk about it. It is in the beginning stages and I want to wait until it firms up a little bit more before sharing it will all of you.

We wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We want to wish all our family and friends a very Happy Thanksgiving! It has been the first time in four years that it was just us, but Doug picked up a very tasty honey baked ham, sweet potato souffle and green bean casserole and we had a very peaceful and delicious Thanksgiving.

It has been a long time since I have blogged, but nothing noteworthy had happened until last week. Doug has been sending out lots of applications, had some interviews, but nothing has panned out yet. Since I was laid off at Lavera, I had been finding pretty steady work as a warehouse associate for a temp agency. Let me tell you, I have found muscles in my back that I did not know that they were there. Standing on your feet for 8 hours, lifting boxes, emptying them, putting tickets on the items and repacking everything again is really not that easy and my body was letting me know that. I must be getting old!!

About two weeks I applied for a Data Entry/Inventory Analysis position in Bothel and to make a long story short, I got the job. I am working for an employment agency for the next four months and if the company likes me, they will take me over at that time. It is a longer commute than the warehouse job was, but it does pay better, which makes up for sitting in traffic on the way home. I started last Monday and have to say that so far things are going pretty good. It is a totally different inventory system then what I am used to, put I am picking it up pretty fast and my inventory control manager is pleased with my progress. This week we only worked three days due to it being Thanksgiving week. Somebody came around on Wednesday to hand out envelopes to all the employees, which I found out are holiday bonuses. About five minutes later my boss came to my desk with an envelope and said that they could not give me a check, but they wanted me to have something. Turns out, I got a $50 Amazon gift certificate. I can't believe that after working there for three days they would be that nice to me :-).

On the weather front I can report that we have had a lot of rain the last week. Up until now it has not been that bad, except that we had two days already where I had to use the ice scraper on my car, which is so wrong in so many ways, but we got the rig pretty well insulated by now and I am sure we will survive the winter just fine.

Update

It has been a while since I have last posted, but in my defense, I am working now and it seems the weekends go by way to fast and over the week I am tired when I get home from work.

We have been busy checking out the area on the weekends and by the time I am done cleaning and doing laundry, there is not much time left. We have been having issues with noise when it is raining, since the bedroom slide is underneath a tree and the rain drops from the tree are driving us crazy. So we have been discussing what we could do to dampen the noise and this is what we came up with

Of course, it has not rained since we build our "roof", so we don't know yet if it will help at all. If it does, we just have to add some weight to the plastic sheet to make sure the wind, which is supposed to get here in the fall, will not blow away our "roof". I will keep you guys posted on how it works, whenever the rain starts again. However, this will not be for at least another week. It has been just gorgeous here for the last couple of weeks.

We went to a state fair over Labor Day weekend and checked out a "super" mall in Auburn last weekend. I have to say, the Mall of America has nothing to worry about.

On the work front, I have been trying to get settled in my job. It has been a little bit hard, since there is no really direction and of course our shipper has decided to find another job, which means I now work half a day in the warehouse and half a day in the office trying to straighten out the inventory. It was Paul's last day on Friday and I shall see how everything will work out on Monday. At least we will be able to have major medical insurance in about six weeks and that keeps me hanging in there. Doug has had another interview in the area and the guy really liked him, but was worried that Doug is overqualified and might not stick around. The employment agency has convinced the company that this would not be the case and he has a second interview with the company set up for the beginning of October. The plant manager works here as well as in Denmark, so he is not here a lot. It is a bit frustrating to have to wait another three weeks for the interview, but Doug has been applying for other jobs in the meantime.

I am sure something will come along, we just have to be patient. Unfortunately, we will not be able to look for a house until Doug has a job, so we are still in our trailer for a while. Once he has found work it will be easier to know which area to look for a house in. I guess things will fall into place in time, but people that know me know patience is not my strong suit. Well, time to get back to cleaning house. I will post again soon, but it is a little bit like being in Mission, don't have that much to say, since not that much is going on here.

Welcome our new Addition!

With me having a job now, I have to take the car to work with me, since it is to far for Doug to drive me every morning and pick me up in the afternoon. We still have the truck, but you can't take the truck on an interview. So Doug started to search the Internet so see what kind of dealerships are around here and what is available. We spent the first weekend after I started working looking and test driving cars. Amazingly car dealers here are open on Sunday, not at all like New Jersey. We were looking for a used all wheel drive car, but could not find anything we liked or could afford.

So Doug drove me to work on Monday and continued the search for a small commuter car for me. On Tuesday he picked me up from work and we went to the Ford dealer in Kirkland. I am now the proud owner of a new Ford Focus.


Isn't it cute!!! It will take me a while to figure out how Ford Sync works and of course my phone is not compatible, but at least Doug's phone is able to link up to it. I will have to wait until October to upgrade my phone for free and than I will be able to link up.

In the meantime, Doug is now able to go to interviews and job fairs without having to worry about picking me up from work. Things are starting to fall into place and I am sure Doug will find a job soon. He has been looking so hard, something has to turn up soon.

Our luck is changing!!

It has been a challenging time since we arrived at the west coast in the middle of May. First we stayed north of Vancouver and started our job search. As you guys all know, the campground was far from ideal with the train horns blowing all hours of the night and the logging trucks over the bridge all day long. The job search itself did not go good either, since we were not even able to get an interview with any companies.

Doug had an interview on the east side of Seattle and we decided to find a place up there and start looking for work. Of course, that was not an easy task either, since all the campgrounds that are actually big enough for us don't do monthly rates over the summer and we just can't afford to pay $40 per day for campground fees. We got lucky when we found an ad on craigslist from a private residence that is renting out part of their property to RVers. We drove up on a Friday in the beginning of June to make sure the place was big enough and moved up to the Redmond area the following Monday.

So now we are sitting in Redmond and the first two weeks it rained almost every day. It surely did not help our spirits, but again we started applying for jobs in the area. As of today, the company that Doug applied for originally has still not filled the job as far as we know, but we have given up waiting for them to come through. We posted our resumes on job sites and I even met with an employment agency, which I have heard from twice in one month. I really should not be surprised, since I had the same experience with an employment agency in New Jersey. Next we went to a job fair at the Seattle football stadium and besides it costing us $11 to park there, it was a total waste of time. The ad on the internet said that you would be able to speak with potential employers, which was totally not so. There was maybe 25 booths with people handing out leaflets and telling you to apply for their job openings on line and I was so hoping to be able to talk to a potential employer and be able to explain my four year gap in employment.

And then last Monday I saw an employment ad on craigsllist that actually was looking for an administrative assistant with the German word "Sekretaerin". It sure caught my attention and I sent my resume. Within ten minutes I had a response asking if I could come in for an interview the following afternoon. Of course I said yes and to make a long story short, I got the job and started last Wednesday. I might have not asked for enough money, but at this point I am just glad to have a job and we will have major medical insurance available to us after 90 days. Check out the website of Lavera, which is the company that I am working for. The company is located in Kirkland, which is only 10 miles from here and I am the inventory control/purchasing manager. It is a small company and they are definitely in need of somebody to get a handle on their inventory. It will be a challenge, but that has never stopped me before.

Now we just need to find a car for Doug, since he really can't take the truck on a job interview. Life sure is looking up for us and I am convinced that Doug will find a job soon too. And on the weather front I can happily report that the sun finally has found its way to our area and from what I hear, it should stick around for at least a couple of months before the rain comes back.