Two months since the last update; I'm such a slacker.
Alright, what's happened since early December? The holidays. Lots of them. We spent the weekend before Christmas with Trevor's family, the weekend of Christmas with mine, and New Years with Trevor's again. From the weekend before Thanksgiving until the weekend of New Years, we traveled 5 out of 7 weekends to one of our families' homes. It was a lot of road-tripping, and we were exhausted. So we took some time in January to relax. Not a lot of time, but enough.
Somewhere in there, the boat went back in the water. Yay! And it's floating! Double yay! One of those warm weekends in January, we went up there with the intention of starting the motor and bringing Earendil home. Alas, the motor wouldn't start. Not surprising, considering the engine hadn't run since we hauled the boat out the first of July. Sitting for six months is not good for an old, grouchy engine. We figured we had air in the fuel lines, so we bled them. In the process, we discovered another part that needed to be replaced. Where fuel first goes into the engine, the threads were stripped out around the bleed nut. It wasn't like this when we left the boat, so we'll chalk it up to another charming gift from Brunswick Landing Marina. Thanks, guys. Fortunately, it was a relatively easy part to replace. With a 35-year-old engine, it can be tricky to find parts. We've been very lucky so far. Hopefully, nothing else will ever break ever again. Right? Trevor installed the new parts, but there was an issue with a bleed bolt. The old one was too long for the new part. The new bolt was too short. Yikes! Today, Trevor cut off a little bit of the old bolt, so hopefully we can install it and be good to go. Maybe next weekend? We would love to have our boat back soon. I miss it! And the weather has been crazy warm for this time of year. It's been in the 60s all week. Gorgeous! Daffodils are blooming. Not right for February. Have we skipped winter this year? Or are we going to get a cold-weather bitch-slap before it's over? We'll see. But for now we'll enjoy the warm weather while we can.
For me, work has been pretty good. We moved from the old location on Main St. (7 minutes away) to a new place on Amnicola (15 minutes to get there, 20 minutes to get home). We have so much more room in the new building! It's pretty awesome. And the commute still isn't bad. My coworker also moved down to Florida. Is it wrong to say I'm super happy about it? Might be wrong, but I'm not one to lie. It's fantastic! I am finally doing all of the testing on my own. Things are running much more smoothly. There are less errors. I have measures in place to double-check myself all the time. Life is good. And I should be finding less and less of his missteps as time goes on and they come out of the system. Dare I say it? Yep, I'm awesome! I actually love my job now that I'm on my own.
A really great bonus to the new location? I'm ridiculously close to the Urban Rocks climbing gym. AND work will reimburse me $25 a month if I go at least 8 times each month. Sweet! So now it's affordable and really, really convenient. Thaddeus and I went yesterday and climbed to our little hearts' content. I'm already feeling the soreness in my arms and shoulders. Yowza! But it's a good pain, right? We'll go with that. So I'll be doing that at least a couple of times a week. In no time, I'll have arms like I had on the trip. Buffness!
Trevor is still in the process of finding a permanent job. The cafe is starting to drive him crazy. He works really hard for much less pay than he deserves. He's searching and applying. Something is bound to come up soon. He deserves it!
We've started the process of house shopping. Last week, we turned in our paperwork to one bank to start the mortgage pre-approval process, and we'll do the same for another bank this week. Hopefully, we'll hear something soon. I didn't think getting a loan would be any problem, but the gap in our employment is a little scary to some lenders. So we'll just wait and see what happens. We're hopeful! And we look forward to having a house. (I so badly want to grow a garden this summer.)
The wedding is less than 3 months away now. Holy crap! We've taken care of a lot of the planning, but there's always something more to do. It'll be here in no time. I can't wait. It's going to be an awesome party! I bought my shoes yesterday. Yay, shoes! (Yep, I get girly sometimes.)
I think I pretty much covered the latest and greatest developments. Life is grand. Sometime, I read the blogs of the folks still traveling, and I get a little jealous. But then I think about hot running water and all the electricity we can use, and I feel a little better. I still like the idea of going back out there one day, but not yet. We've got some boring old settling down to do, and we are so looking forward to it. Bring on that picket fence!
