December 2012 – Page 4 – Andelin Adventures

Opportunities and making decisions

I’ve always been of the opinion that it doesn’t hurt to pass my resume around, to see what the current market is like and test the water and see what I’m worth. I figure, what’s the worst that can happen? You get a job offer and have to make a decision?

Last year, a former manager at my company was looking for some support people to fill positions in the company he went to, and I passed my resume along to him wondering if I could stand a chance at getting an offer. Actually, with some arguments in my favour, I got a really decent offer at much higher than I make, but Symantec countered with something less than the offer. Considering the options, I felt like I should stay, even though the money was less, as the new position didn’t feel as stable and required more travel, plus the benefits wouldn’t be as good. Hey, money isn’t everything, right? I spent some time regretting losing out on that extra money, but also this decision allowed me to move into a new family of products to support, and that has been really fun to be part of, even though it was annoying at times.

Well, in the last few weeks, a similar thing happened. A former manager contacted me and I passed my resume along, and one thing lead to another and I got called in for an interview last week, spending a decent amount of time talking to him about how things are going at work, and also talking to some of his team for a technical interview. Upon leaving the interview, I met another former Symantec person, whom also really enjoyed working at this new place and hoped I would get a position there. Then today I had a phone call with his manager, just as a “get to know you” type of thing. I typically feel like I don’t gauge interviews well, but I felt like these went well and I impressed him.

Now comes the problem – what if the worst thing happens?

Gas, and Electrical

Thursday was Jeremy’s birthday, and I was expecting the guy to come move the gas line, so I planned ahead and made Jeremy’s birthday cake on Wednesday instead. However when the door bell rang in the ten o’clock hour, I was not expecting to find electricians. I was still wearing pajamas, as I planned on getting dressed as soon as my pants were clean. I only have two pairs of pants that fit my postpartum rear and both of them were in the wash. I had a load of laundry in the washer and in the drier, and the electricians were here to move the main power line through the house. The builder ran the main power line under the joists and the electricians needed to move it to run up through the joists.

In the picture, the blue pipe is a water line to our water softener, the gray line is the main power line, the pink wire is also power (I think) and the black pipe is the gas line, and as you can see, they are all UNDER the joists!

So the electricians went downstairs to take a look at what they are dealing with, and then one of them came upstairs and went outside to shut off the power. (Which means that my laundry got switched off, mid cycle. 🙁 ) He went back downstairs and got to work.

A little bit later the other guy came to move the gas line. My big kids came home from school and my silly boys hear the drill in the basement and Ethan shouts “I didn’t do it!” and Jeremy looked at him and said “It wasn’t ME!” And then they were saying “EEEW!” whenever they heard the drill downstairs vibrating the floor.

That yellow hose is the new gas line up running through the joists.

The guy that did the gas lines also ran a line to the drier, (so the house will be compatible with either a gas or electric drier) and he ran a line to the backyard so we can hook up a gas grill. Notice how the yellow pipe on the left says “BBQ”? 🙂

Friday the electricians were back running more power lines, for outlets and switches, and light fixtures, and smoke detectors. They also started running wires for home theater type stuff (speakers, projector…). I thought that most of the electrical was supposed to be done after the framing was finished. But I guess since we have most of the framing done it won’t be too much of a big deal.

Only one of the electricians was here today. He said his companion was needed some where else today, and so he got to work on our basement alone. He finished with whatever he was doing and cleaned up and left about lunchtime. The odd thing though is that he left without saying anything, so I’m not sure if he is done or not. Upon going downstairs and looking at the electrical, I see things that aren’t finished, so I’m not sure what is going on now. But I am so excited that it is coming along finally.

Lydia’s further experience with nursery

So that first Sunday that Lydia went to nursery, back in October, she was completely fine with being left. Only when I came to pick her up, did she realize that I had left, and THEN she turned on the tears. Since then though, she cries as soon as we are in the classroom. I don’t even have to let go of her hand, or start to walk away before she starts crying. I try to get her interested in the toys, and then I leave. But then shortly into Sunday school one of the teachers brings her to me. I keep having to take her back to class, and end up being stuck in there for the rest of the block of church meetings. I really want her to learn that I WILL come back for her, but I haven’t had an opportunity to go back and get her just because they always bring her to me. I DON’T want her learning “If I scream, they take me to mommy”.

Also, she has learned the magic word that all toddlers learn when they go to nursery, “mine”.

My new computer

Kyle has been looking into getting me a new computer for a while now. My old computer has been slowly falling apart. The ‘o’ button is loose, the track pad hasn’t worked for months, the battery only lasts for about half an hour while unplugged, and the whole laptop keeps over heating. He kept asking my opinion on certain things, but honestly they all look pretty much the same to me. I don’t know much about all the technicalities of the different options out there. Eventually we settled on a nice new computer and it arrived yesterday! It has a much larger hard drive than my old computer. That was important to me considering one of the most important things I use my computer for is scanning and cropping family history pictures and storing home videos that I have collected from either VHS or our digital video cameras over the years. Pictures and video takes up a LOT of space. 🙂 My new computer also has a cd/dvd drive. Which is awesome because I will still be able to burn cds of pictures or dvds of the home videos to be able to share them with the rest of my family. The battery on my new computer can last hours before I have to recharge it, and it has a web cam thingy in it. The only thing, is it’s got a newer version of windows than my old computer. So I have to figure out where to find all of my stuff. Also I don’t like the version of excel that is part of this newer version of windows. I can’t figure out how to do all the things that I used to know how to do. But hey, I have LOTS of space on the hard drive to fill with more scans of pictures. 🙂

Jeremy turns SEVEN

Jeremy’s birthday ended up being celebrated over the course of a few days. I had a service unit meeting to be at on the evening of his birthday, and just everything else that was going on made it difficult to celebrate on his birthday. So we let him open his presents yesterday.

We sang to him and had cake today.

I really need to be better about celebrating birthdays on the right day. I did pretty well through all of the summer birthdays, then it just seems that every birthday since Adam was born, I haven’t been very well prepared for. I’ll get back on top of things eventually.

Jeremy is enjoying first grade. He is the king of goofy faces in our family. And in general, he is just a really good kid. His primary teachers tell us every week about how much they love having Jeremy in their class. They tell us about how reverent he is. His first grade teacher, Mrs Peterson, also tells us about what a good kid Jeremy is, and how much she loves having him. She was actually quite surprised when we told her that at home he is always making silly faces and when he doesn’t want to answer a question that we have asked him he says “Ba boo boo!” (I honestly don’t know where that phrase came from).