Forward Progress

Sorry it is a little off center, but it becomes increasingly hard to photograph larger quilts in my increasingly small house.  New Years day proved to be snowy and cold, a perfect day to knock out a large chunk of sewing for the top of Thien’s Block of the Month quilt.  I am loving how it looks.  The fabric colors are slippery, changing from brown to tan to green to yellow depending on the light.

Oh, yeah.  We also updated the blog in the past few days. Comment away.

Holiday, Celebration

Often when I shower at night, I see this little guy on the window in the shower. He just comes, walks around a little bit, probably looking for bugs in the light. We also have several living in the garage. They used to come inside, but since we got the cat, they realize that they are safer outside than in. As I was looking at this guy, I realized that I won’t see little lizards scuttling about when we move. No little lizards like this in Indiana. And it makes me think of the things that I will miss about Texas. With less than one week to go, in no particular order, are the things I will miss:
1. Lizards
2. Non-stop flood coverage
3. crape myrtles
4. Go Spurs Go
5. Shopping at a store named after someone’s Butt
6. Turnarounds
7. Living 12 minutes from the airport
8. the 80 different Thai restaurants, and everybody having a favorite that no one else has heard of
9. Oyster Bake
10. Live Oaks being green all year round
11. The very rowdy library “knitters” – Thien, Sonia, Sonia, Nohemi, Adam, Jessica, Jessica, Angela, Amy, Cindy, Darlene, Kendra, Mark and Rolf
12. The Riverwalk
13. My quilt group, especially Cecily
14. Rock Music from Chacon Suzuki
15. Learning “important” Spanish like chanclas and chones
16. People from The Valley, because it reminds me of people from The Region
17. Blue Bonnets
18. Streets with crazy long names like Nacogdoches, Bintz-Englemann, Perrin Bietel, Nacoperrin, Jones Maltsberger and Harry Wurzbach

I’m sure there are more…may add as I go!

New Toys

Under the premise of being broke in the near future, we are spending like fools while we can, preparing for the drought if you will. New phones, new laptop and a new bike for Tim. He is gonna cruise to campus in his new Electra bike. Now we’ll just have to see about a helmet to protect those expensive (“some” would also say extensive) brains.

History Repeats

There has been packing:

And there has been rain:

In early July 2002, as we were getting ready to move into this house, San Antonio had a 100 year flood. Now four years later as we are packing to move again, more rain. Maybe instead of renting a Uhaul, we should build an ark. Though I hear it is a dry summer in Indiana.

Unemployed

As of 5:01 pm on Thursday (when this picture was taken), I am no longer employed. Well, for about 2 1/2 weeks anyway. I believe I am holding my final evaluation in my hand, on the way to Azuca for mojitos (and later at Bar America). I have mixed feelings about leaving this place, but I have learned a lot. Its been really hard, but also fun, interesting and many days I left feeling like at the very least I helped out one person who didn’t have any resources, any knowledge of how to obtain those resources, and used to hearing the word ‘no, I can’t help you’. I love it when people say, really? You can help me? That can turn any crappy day into one with a light at the end of the tunnel.

Moving forward on the house in Btown, including HOI and POA and learning what those even mean. And no, POA doesn’t stand for Piece of Ass…but it should. I have procured a sublet for le chat et moi for the month of July while I start work and before we can move into the new house (Aug 1). Have I mentioned that our new house will be . 9 miles from work? Not 9 miles, but less than a mile!

Made Zucchini Frittata this evening for dinner with zucchini that we grew in our garden! V. good.

Steel Mill

We laughed. We cried. We hugged and said goodbye. Thien’s last day at work is Friday. She beats me out of the system and I am so excited for her to be moving forward. Tonight we went out to dinner to celebrate and it has made me nostalgic. Yes, even for San Antonio.

We worked in the same office, within arms reach of each other for five years. And then I left to go to a branch, and I think that has helped us a little bit…knowing that we were both leaving at some point. But it still won’t be easy. I will miss her.

Sold

Ok, so we sold the house with in 24 hours of it being on the market. The first couple that looked at it, offered. We countered and they accepted. Full price plus the lease back option that we wanted. We have passed inspection with just a few minor repairs to do and then we close on June 5. It all seems too good to be true.

I also have a second interview and another interview in Indiana later this month for which I am flying out for.

Things are finally falling into place after a year of waiting. I feel fortunate to share it all with someone I love.

For Sale

By this afternoon our house, that we’ve lived in since the Summer of 2002, will be on the market.

This was the first house either of us has owned and the house we lived in when we got married. We’ve spent 80,000 hours working on the house, what with the painting, wallpaper scraping, yard, light fixtures, shelf replacing, etc. While it isn’t really my dream home, it is a great house and we’ve had a lot of fun living here.

I hope it sells soon, as this cleaning thing sort of sucks.

Banner Year

Yay! I have an interview this week AND Tim got a fellowship for grad school.

Now we just need to get this house on the market. Its funny, doing some things around the house that make a huge difference (like the door, or new windows, or even some plants out front) and you wonder why you didn’t do them years ago.

Another Last

One of the kick off Fiesta events every year is the St. Mary’s Oyster Bake. For over 90 years, people have gathered at the university to eat oysters, funnel cake, sausage on a stick, poppers (my personal favorite), chalupas, burgers, cotton candy, pretzles and wash it all down with mass amounts of beer. This year was our last.

Tim works the information booth for one night and one extremely long day during Oyster Bake and it takes him a few days to recover.

Today made Pasta Fagioli soup (Tim’s favorite, I just skip the meat part and add in some liquid smoke…you can’t tell the difference), and need to start working on some resumes.