So, yeah, I’ve totally been slacking on this blogging thing lately. I put a draft together in April but never published it so, alas, I have broken my streak of posting at least once a month. Dang. Well, here we are rapidly approaching on the end of May and I can’t let another month pass without posting!
May has been a hell of a month. It’s all good stuff but it’s just a lot to pack into a month. At the very end of April we saw a 2008 Subaru Forester with 3,000 miles on Craigslist. After talking the decision to death, we decided to replace the 9-year old Jetta with 136,000 miles and buy the Subaru. We’ve been working so hard on getting rid of debt over the past year that it really hurt to take on more debt to buy the car but it really seemed to make sense. Basically we got a new car without the depreciation!
The next excitement was that Pete discovered that his job has tuition reimbursement – $10,000 a year! This is a relatively new development; in the past they didn’t offer this. He’s been wanting to get more education for a while but the biggest stumbling block has always been paying for it. We didn’t want to go into debt for it and we were working so hard to pay down the debt we do have. Granted, he now has to determine what he wants to study and where, as well as get approval for the funding. However, it helps that his director really values education and he’s been there a while. Looks like he may be studying again sometime in the next year or so!
Next up… vacation. This year was the first year I went on vacation with friends, not just family. All I have to say is, CAN I GO BACK?!?! It was wonderful – the right combination of active and relaxing, great company, great food. It was good to have a break from work, too. Don’t get me wrong – I still love my job but I was getting a little crispy around the edges. My empathy was getting dangerously close to being broken again. I came back happier, more relaxed, and nicely rejuvenated.
While we were on vacation Pete got an email from his director saying that he wanted to talk with Pete about an opportunity. Monday, his first day back, he talked to his director and heard that another group had asked for him by name. It’s a nice opportunity for him to get back into some of the work with hardware and to build more connections in the firm. The folks asking for him are pretty swamped so he started working with them that Wednesday. The only downside of this new project is that he can no longer telecommute. Kind of hard to work on hardware remotely… So, we’ve been scrambling to find an apartment that’s closer to his work. For now, he’s spending a couple of nights a week at his parents’ house, which is only 45 minutes from work (about 1/2 the distance all the way home). We’re hoping to move at the end of June or mid-July at the latest because I don’t really want to keep up this whole being separated thing. Last weekend my parents came for a visit and on Saturday we dragged them around to look at a couple of apartment complexes. We found one place we liked and two duds. We’re going tomorrow to look at 1/2 a duplex in Hatboro. I hope it’s nice because it’s within our price range, which is kind of hard to find in this area.
So to sum up… new car, more debt, tuition reimbursement, vacation, new project at work, and now moving. This is all good stuff but, man, I hope we can take a little bit of a breather in June! Hmm, not likely since June will be filled with packing and possibly moving… maybe July…
