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.

Exploring Seattle

We have been here about two weeks now and have been exploring the area whenever it is not raining. I have to say it does rain here a lot, but it is not all day, just ever so often. So we make sure that we are outside whenever there is a sunny day.

There was a car show in north Seattle on Saturday, it was a gorgeous day and we decided to go. We got really lucky finding a parking spot at a church, and they did not even want any money or donation for us to park there. The car show was 28 blocks long and we saw some awesome cars.



I could not believe how many people attended the car show. Look at all these people all the way up the hill.

It took us over three hours to walk the whole show, but had a good day out.

Moving on ...

We were in Vancouver for five weeks and nothing was happening in regards to finding a job. It is amazing just how much the job market has changed. There are no more jobs in the newspaper, everything is done through the Internet and you just don't get any responses. I can take a "no thank you" response, it is still better than not hearing anything at all.

So we had been discussing on a daily basis for the last two weeks were to go next. Doug had interviewed for an engineering job east of Seattle and we were starting to see if we could find a campground in the area to stay for a while. I just can't believe how difficult it is here to find a campground with sites big enough to accommodate us, and then Doug mentioned something about ads on craigslist for private RV parking options. We got lucky and found a new place where we can hang for a very reasonable price (actually cheaper than Vancouver) a week ago.

We moved last Monday and are now surrounded by trees, but still very close to Seattle. Doug did a fantastic job backing in the rig from the blind side. I am so proud of him. Our new landlord was totally impressed and thought Doug was a professional driver. So now instead of being awakened by train horns throughout the night, the birds wake me around 5 am. I have to say I prefer the birds.

It also seems that there are more jobs available here and one of us will hopefully find something soon.

Vancouver, WA

We arrived here almost four weeks ago and I really did not feel like blogging lately. Thank you to all our friends that have been sending e-mails of concern, since I have not been keeping anybody updated. We are okay, even though it has rained here almost every day since we arrived.

It has been a challenge since we got here. First we pull into the campground and I saw that the sewer gate dragged a little bit as we are trying to pull into the campground. I just don't understand why you would have a big old dip in your entrance way. The gate broke, but at least the sewer pipe itself is okay. The sites are not as long as we had been told. Doug thought we can fit and we started checking in. The rig and car fit just fine, however, the truck did not fit in the spot. It is parked right now in a site that they use to store their landscape gravel. We are close to I-5, but you really can't hear the highway at all. What you can hear is the logging trucks driving over the bridge and using their jake brake to slow down for the traffic light. They are so heavy that it actually makes the rig vibrate a little bit while they drive over the bridge. At least they seem to stop around 6 pm so the evenings are peaceful, if you are able to ignore the train whistles throughout the night.

We got here on a Thursday and got the local newspapers on Sunday to see about job opening. Well, apparently they don't use newspapers much anymore for job postings. Everything seems to be on the Internet and of course not all in one place. We went to Washington Worksource to register for work and got some tips from them on how to go about finding a job in the area. So we have been filling out applications on the Internet for the past three weeks and so far I have not had any hits. It is somewhat troublesome when 1500 people look at one job posting. We knew it was not going to be easy, but I did not think it was going to be this bad.

So in order to not go crazy, we have also done some sightseeing. We went to the shore for a day and went back to Mount St. Helen for the 30th anniversary of the eruption of the volcano.


As you can see, there is still snow in these mountains here! It was cold, but still a beautiful sight.

Doug had an interview the other day in Boardman and we decided to take the scenic route back to Woodland. The Columbia river has some beautiful views and than we came across a whole group of wind surfers.

It sure looked like a lot of fun. The dam was pretty interesting also.

It sure is a beautiful area here, it is just very difficult to find a job with a 12% unemployment rate in the county.

So now you are all caught up and I will blog again when I have news again.

Bryce Canyon

We wanted to go to Bryce on Tuesday, but the weather forecast said snow for Bryce, so we decided to wait another day. I had seen enough snow on Sunday and I do now understand why people wait until May to visit this area.

So Wednesday we packed a lunch and made our way to Bryce National Park. On our way there we saw these beautiful fields of purple flowers.

I took over 90 pictures at Bryce and it is hard to pick just a few to show in the blog. So you guys will have to wait until Doug puts the rest of them on Webshots. We decided to drive the 18 mile stretch with the car to the most southern end and then start our way back up. I have to say that I was getting a little bit disappointed as we were driving along, since from the road you really can't see any Hoodoos or canyons, or really anything other than a whole bunch of trees. We changed our mind really quickly when we arrived at the first lookout point.






By the time we were back at the beginning of Bryce, we were exhausted. It was a great day and Doug wanted to drive Route 14 one more time, since they say that it is a scenic drive and we really did not see anything while driving on it during the snow storm. It was a beautiful sunny day and not a cloud in the sky. I have to admit that it was a very nice drive, the road was clear and the snow on the summit was actually blinding. It truly was a great day.

We decided to leave Cedar City yesterday and move further north, since there was a high wind warning for Friday. We are now at the Nevada/Utah border, the wind has certainly caught up with us and we will move again on Sunday. There are only 750 miles left to go until we get to our destination.

Zion National Park

Zion National Park is just stunning. I really like the free shuttle system they have, since it allows Doug to also look around without having to watch were he is going.


I was so fascinated with all the different colors of the cliffs. It was so beautiful.



As you can see in the last picture, the sky was getting a little bit dark, but we were not worried yet. We decided to take Route 9 towards Route 89 and see some more of Zion, which is not viewable with the shuttle bus.

It was well worth the drive. The colors of the rocks are just so amazing.



So far so good, the weather seemed to stay to our east on Route 89 and we were going to go west on Route 14.

I saw the sign that said that the top was at 10,000 feet, but I don't think it really registered with me what was about to happen. First we just saw snow on the side of the road, the road itself was still dry.

Then, it started snowing a little bit and it started to stick on the road.

Yet, we are still climbing and I am getting worried. Our car does not have four wheel or all wheel drive, but Doug kept telling me that it would be okay. By the time we got to the summit the road was completely covered with snow, I am to nervous to take anymore pictures and Doug decided to put the car into manual drive, since the engine will act as a brake. We actually had to pass two cars, since they were going way to slow on the downhill. By the time we got to the bottom of the mountain the defrost was running on high, there was ice on the windshield and our license plate was covered with snow.

It sure was an adventures day and I was glad when we got back to the rig.