I'm working on it...

Well, not now... but I'm working on it. :-)

"Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug..."

Biting the bullet

I went ahead and accepted a temp position with a company in Fairfield (about 20-25 minutes away) and have a meet-and-greet tomorrow at 9am. I will probably start work there Friday. It's just admin work, reception, word processing, etc... but it will at least start bringing some money in. The temp agency knows that the job is less that what I'm really looking for, but I'm not too proud to take something that will put some cash in our bank account. I'm bailing the temp agency out as well, so I figured this would probably get me on their good side -- which is good since they REEEEAALLLY have the ability to help me you out, ya know?

For better or for worse...

So far, so good...

I have blogged every day. Something I really got away from and I think it's definitely important now that I have so many people wondering what I'm up to. Hopefully I can keep up with it...

Sarah and I got to see Pirates III last night... good movie, although exceptionally long. They probably could have cut about a half hour out of the thing and had it still be a good movie. I don't think it was as good as the other two, but still worth seeing. I give it a 7.5/10.

Nothing new on the job front today... deciding whether or not I should look for a temp job while searching for something more permanent. I'm going to contact a few recruiters today to see if I can shake anything loose, and there's a job fair next Tue in Cinci. That should at least get me in front of some hiring personnel and hopefully I can find something I'm interested in there. A bunch of larger companies will be there, including Social Security Admin, PNC Bank and Home Depot. Keep your fingers crossed.

We stopped looking for houses in the area until we know how much money we're going to make... but once we have an idea, we've got a few places we're interested in. Hopefully they'll still be on the market at that point.

Into each life, a little rain must fall...

Comcast, Shmomcast

So I'm really impressed with our cable provider out here, Time Warner. Besides the fact that they have 24-hour, HELPFUL, FRIENDLY customer SERVICE, they have so far been able to fix everything wrong in a fairly timely manner. The cable modem kept going down on us (which is a little bit of a pain when you're trying to job-search), so I called Sunday night over the holiday weekend. I was on the phone less than 10 minutes and had an appt. Now, it did take a little longer than I wanted to get an appt (Wed AM), but since the problem was intermittant, we dealt with it.

Cooked a nice meal for us last night and it's starting to feel more and more like home... but we really do need to find me a job before it can really start to sink in. I still am trying to recover from all the house-fixer-uppering (sp?) and sometimes feel strange if I'm just sitting doing nothing. I've already replaced 3 of the lightbulbs here and have been unconciously looking for more home improvement projects around Debbie's apt. But I'm sure she doesn't mind...

We watched Stranger than Fiction last night with Will Farrell, Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah. Very odd movie, but very entertaining. It was one of those movies that you come away from wondering how in the world someone could have thought up that story line. Anyway, if you like Will Farrell, he's excellent in it... I highly recommend the movie. Just make sure you're not sleepy when you start watching it or it might be a little too weird to follow (think BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and you'll be in the right frame of mind).

What a long strange trip it's been...

Buyer's Remorse...

...is something the folks who were going to purchase our home won't feel any time soon -- they decided not to buy and are renewing their apt lease. Needless to say we are pretty bummed. Hopefully a new buyer will come along soon... we need to get this thing going ASAP.

Things are starting to fall into place here... have a lot to do, but feel like we're making headway. Sarah and I went looking at areas that we might want to live and there are a lot of affordable houses in the near vicinity... now all I need is a job. I have called to set up a face-to-face with one of the top tech recruiters in the area this week and hopefully can get them working for me soon. There's also a job fair next Tue in the area... I've never been to one before, believe it or not, but I went ahead and registered for it. Gotta keep pluggin' away...

We are also looking into possibilities of Sarah doing some "work-from-home" stuff... so if anyone has any leads, let us know...

If at first you don't succeed...

Jeff

A New Day Has Begun

You may wonder where the old blog went...

Well, maybe not, since I never posted in it anyway. :-

I was getting ready to make an entry in my WordPress Blog and saw that there was a new version available. So I decided to upgrade... They teach you in I.T.101: "Never upgrade for at least 6 months to allow all the kinks to get worked out." There's a reason for that... my entire blog got wiped out and I was back to square one. So I figure now I'll let Google worry if things get screwed up, and I can complain to them and let them fix things instead of complaining to myself and doing all the work on my own to get things back up and running. Lazy? Kinda. But I'm allowed. :-)

Sarah and I arrived in OH on Saturday evening and are trying to get set up here at Chez Maurer -- we'll be living with Sarah's Mom Debbie for a while until we have our own place. The doggies are at home being watched by a friend from church and this coming week we're going to start looking for a place and a job for me. Good times. It's nice to finally be ready to start the new chapter in our lives. We're a little nervous and a little excited and a little homesick, but all is well. I'm sure things will start flying along quickly once we get going. We're just glad we're finally done with fixing the house up and have it on the market.

Since we are now in the land of Bob Evans, Cracker Barrel, White Castle, Graeter's Ice Cream and of course Skyline Chili, here are a few pix from our first few days out here (our digital camera is busted, so we'll need to get a new one in order to keep them coming). Can you tell we've been sampling the goods?

Be all you can be...