August 10, 2006
Long-Belated Update
Umm ... hello, everybody. *Sheepish grin* It’s, uh, been a long time. Around two and a half months, actually. Which is terribly sad, and I really ought to update you all on what’s been going on. So I will.
My wife got a new job around mid-June (she was working at a day-care center here in Bellingham before). Now she’s working for an upscale women’s clothing store called Christopher and Banks. She’s bought more clothes since starting there than in our entire married life up to that point (nearly two years). Fortunately, Christopher and Banks is a good store, my wife has good taste (and consults with me), and she gets a 50% discount as an employee. :) All good things.
I’m still working at the same packaging company that I’ve worked for since May (and worked at since April). It’s not the most exciting work in the world, but it’s not bad either, and I really like the people I get to work with there. Also, the day goes from 7–3:30, so I get off with a fair bit of time at the end of the day. It’s been a good place to work.
However, in another bit of news, I’ve been offered a new job working at a naval research base in Dahlgren, Virginia. Conditionally offered, that is. First, I have to pass a security check. So I’ve been having fun the last few weeks filling out paperwork and tracking down old friends and seeing if they’d be willing to reassure the Navy I’m neither a Commie nor insane. :) At least, that’s the idea. I don’t expect too many problems from the process, but my parents and little sister do live in Iraq, so that could make things a little ... interesting. We’ll see.
I’m really glad to have been offered the job, though. I’m really looking forward to being able to work with computers and write code and make things blow up. :D I’m also really looking forward to being paid enough that Nikki and I can seriously consider starting a family in the relatively near future. That’s a ... shall we say trepidatious thought ... but also an ... exciting one. We’ll have to see how things will work out. I’ll miss the low humidity and relative lack of bugs of the Northwest, though. And Nikki and I will really miss our church. But my former room-mate and best friend, Daniel Wise, just started work there in a different department. I’m really looking forward to being able to work and hang out with him again.
In other news, Nikki and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary on Monday. It’s hard to believe it’s been so long! Yet it has ... and it’s been wonderful. It’s not every man that gets to marry the woman of his dreams, and then find out his dreams were a pale thing next to the reality of the woman he married. :D I love you, sweetheart. Our second anniversary was a good time to finally get our rings engraved. We’ve been planning on doing it since before our wedding. But it’s finally done, and the message we chose is the same one I thought of more than two years ago: semper fi. That’s the shorter version of semper fidelis, and is the Marine Corps motto (reading about the Marines was the first place I came across it). Its meaning is simple: “always faithful.”
Oh, one more bit of news. My wife and I have finally acquired cell phones! We chose Verizon, and we’ve been having scandalous amounts of fun with our new toys in the last few weeks. If you’d like the number, just drop me an e-mail. The cell phones sport pretty decent camera’s: here’s a picture of my wife I snapped a couple of days ago.
And with that, I close. God’s blessings on you all.
