Ready for the iPhone!

After talking about it for some time, and many trips to the Apple store to play with it, we are going to move forward with getting me an iPhone for my Christmas present. And boy, am I ready!

For quite some time now, I've been relying on iGoogle's sticky note and To Do list widgets to keep track of things I need to do, but these are only accessible when I am online. Granted, I am online around 11 hours a day, but when I have my errands listed on iGoogle, I have to copy it down onto a slip of paper to carry in my purse when I run errands at lunch or after work (offline).

Same thing for directions. Dallas is huge, and I often have to Google Map things, but I can only do that from a computer. Since we don't have a printer hooked up at home, I end up writing down the directions on a slip of paper and bringing it with me in the car. Hoping I wrote it down correctly. And that I don't lose that slip of paper.

With address/phone/email info, it's the same way. I keep all those things on the Mac at home. If I need someone's mailing address I have to boot up the machine if I am at home or wait until I do get home. And if someone gives me new contact info, I have to write it on...guess what... a slip of paper! Which I carry in my purse until I remember to take it out and update the Mac Address Book.

You can imagine the number of slips of paper I have in my life right now. Too many! So I am excited about giving up the paper slips and having everything consolidated using the iPhone's always-online functionality, built-in Google Maps, and the way it syncs with Mac Address Book.

Christian and I also currently use Google Calendar to coordinate our activities, so that when someone asks "can you do something on X date?", we can check our Google Calendar and see if we are free, or which one of us is free. Lately, this has been difficult when people ask us about our plans and we are not near a computer. We can't access Google calendar unless we are online. A few times we have said we could do something and later found out we had something else scheduled.

So, very excited! Don't know when the purchase will happen, but maybe not until Christmas, since it is a Christmas present. Even better, I should be able to do blog posting and even send photos to this blog from the iPhone!! Good times!

We're back...well, I am

We had a good time in San Antonio, very much enjoyed Meredith and Kelly's beautiful home and found an affordable hotel with suite-style rooms that we can use for future visits with my stepdaughter! We all played Wii and visited Max Lucado's church yesterday. It was good to see everyone.

Even though we left before 1:00 PM yesterday, we didn't get home until around 6:30 PM and we had to leave to take Christian to the airport for his flight to PA by 7:00 PM. So he did a great job of unpacking and repacking in around 30 minutes. I can't help but think that a girl could never do that! At least, not this girl!

I think this week without him will be much longer, since it will be a complete week. I hope it is the last week of his travel. We'll be traveling again in 2 weeks, back to San Antonio, and then to Kilgore the weekend after that. Somewhere in there we have to find at least one night we can spend celebrating our 2 year anniversary somewhere. But, that can be hard to do when we're traveling between places that are 10 hours apart plus working regular work weeks.

Today during lunch I heard the song "Home for the Holidays" on the radio and couldn't help but thinking that, as a married couple without children and parents, grandparents, and siblings living 2, 5, and 8 hours away... we are never home for the holidays. We are always traveling, always packing and re-packing and driving some more. That's why I don't decorate our house much, because we won't be there. We'll be living out of suitcases using those tiny sample sized bath products from around November through January.

Taking care of kitties

I am a little discouraged that none of our friends were willing to come by either Friday or Saturday and refill the automatic feeders for our kitties while we are in San Antonio for Thanksgiving.

So, we called a pet sitting service we found on Angie's list and so far I am very impressed. They assign a sitter to us that will be our sitter every time going forward, so she'll know what to do. She will come by personally tomorrow to take a look and get instructions. They have a web site that allows us to book their services and record any special instructions. While the sitter is there, she will even clean the littler boxes and take in the mail. And the usual price is only $18/visit! Of course, we are paying more this time because we are booking for a holiday 2 days before the fact, which is our fault. With so many things going on, I just overlooked the fact that we would need someone to visit the cats. I also kind of thought someone in our community would volunteer, since so many of them are here in town for the holiday. But, whatever. I think this will be good to have going forward.

How is the job going?

A question I will be getting a lot and have been getting.
It's always so hard to say in the first weeks or even months of a new job. Mostly because it's hard to know what it is that you don't know for quite some time. I'm no stranger to changing jobs, so at this point in a new venture I typically just do a lot of praying and asking for help and listening so that I can feel out the environment. I think it takes about 6 months to know if you like a new job. In the case of my last job, it took about a year.

But I can say that the nature of the work here is very different from what I was doing at the AHA and I really like that. I think the uniformity of the work that comes down the pipeline is awesome.

I do not miss the marketing and consulting I have had in my previous job descriptions. Man, I hated trying to explain things to people who are ignorant and/or indifferent and then try to convince them not to abuse the technology once they grasp the vague concept. That was really wearing me down. Especially because it never worked.

Work between vacations

The rest of the weekend between jobs was good - we camped at Enchanted Rock for 2 nights.




On our way back from South Texas, we got a call that Christian would be flying out to Philadelphia at 6 AM the next morning for work. He was there all last week, came home late Friday night and flew out again tonight...well, is waiting at the DFW airport right now. He should get in around 1:30 AM. They are letting him fly back Tuesday so that he can drive with me to San Antonio Wednesday evening. After Thanksgiving, he'll be back in PA for at least another week. Please do pray that it is only one more week. I hope it is not extended.

I miss him, but tonight things are even weirder because our neighbor in the other half of our duplex let us know that on Friday night someone tried to break into her house, while she was home. It seems like it was not a very well thought-out break-in, because he tried to crawl in one of her windows that is open to the alleyway that is shared by all the houses in our corner of the neighborhood a little before 7 PM, which is right when everyone is coming home from work. She had one of those stoppers on the window and he was having trouble getting in when she saw him and when he saw her, he fell back out. She was so shaken she didn't call the police until the next morning after she talked to us. They came out and filed a report. I think that means they'll be monitoring more over here.

So, I think I might get a little scared at night. But I am sure it will be fine. It's only 2 nights!

Observations

Yesterday we watched all 3 extended versions of The Lord Of The Rings movies. Here are some very important observations I have made about Middle Earth:

- You know danger is nearby because you suddenly go into slow motion. You won't go out of slow motion until you strike the first blow against your enemy.
- Everybody wants to be an elf because they have all the cool stuff. Humans are dirty, dwarves are mean, and Hobbits have to carry rings and die, but elves are cool, their cities are beautiful, their clothes and jewelry are great, they are always clean, and everybody wants to be one.
- If you are latently powerful, either evil or good, your hair is really dirty and stringy. Ex: Wormtongue, Aragorn, Gandalf (when he was grey)
- I don't think it is a good idea to be living in any kind of provincial village. Mostly you just get pillaged and burned. And when that happens, everybody runs back and forth screaming.
- And my most important observation:

Grima Wormwood	Meatloaf, 1975

I've been blogging...but only in my head

Does anyone else do this: I write blog posts in my head that I never get a chance to post. It just seems like things go really fast in life and I don't get to stop and record it much lately.

Right now we're in the middle of the last scientific conference I'll have to work for the Association before my last day on Wednesday. It's one of the 2 times a year I have to work in evenings at this job. So I'm sitting in the coffee shop of the worship center of our church using the free Wi-Fi, hoping that the email will be approved to send before my Celebrate Recovery small group starts at 7:20. I hope that I get to make it into group tonight, but at the moment it's not looking promising.

It's weird to be at work while everyone is in Orlando at this conference, knowing I'll be gone when they get back. I really will miss a lot of the people, and it's been a great environment to work in, other than the fact that I've had to spam people for a living.

I am taking Thursday and Friday off and then starting the new job next Wednesday. Christian has taken the same days off work to use up his time off that he'd otherwise lose at the end of the year. During the week off, we are going to East Texas to babysit my niece on Thursday. Friday we are going to spend an entire day (9 hours) watching all 3 of the Lord Of The Rings movies back-to-back. Sunday and Monday we are going camping at Enchanted Rock. Somewhere in there, I need to learn SQL for my new job!

Pictures of the house

In case you haven't seen them, we do have pictures of the house online now.

However, you do have to be marked as one of our Friends or Family to see them. So, make sure you log in. If you are not marked as Friends or Family, please let Christian know by contacting him via Flickr.