I officially got the job in California! I will be doing quality for a large bottled water company and will have a good starting wage, benefits right away, 401k, and all that fun stuff. I will be starting in about 5 weeks so things are going to be going pretty fast. Here is my tentative schedule:

Load stuff up to ship April 20-23

Fly to Portland April 25

Visit family and friends April 26-April 30

Drive down to California May 1

Move into the apartment May 2-4

Pick up Leah at airport May 4 or 5

Start work May 9

Since I will be in Portland for about a week, I want to see as many people as I can since it has been a long time!

So I ended up not getting the Charleston job (sad) but I am in the running for another job that would take me back to the West Coast. I have interviewed with HR and the plant manager and they both like me. The last hurdle is meeting with one of the corporate directors while he is in St. Louis. If he likes me, the HR guy said it would be pretty quick before a formal offer is made (just have to do a background check and drug test, neither of which really take too long). If I get the job, I will be moving out to California. The job pays well, has health insurance, and a 401k. It also happens to be in the same city as a couple of my college friends and that a few more college friends will be moving to in July. I am trying not to get too excited about it, but the prospect is pretty exciting. It would be nice to be back on the West Coast and with friends.

In other news, Leah is now working at Whole Foods. She is working for a new store that is opening in a few days, so her schedule will be getting crazy pretty soon. She likes working there so far and the benefit of working there is that they have stores everywhere and transferring is fairly easy.

That is all for now. I am going to St. Louis on the 22nd, so I should know more after that.

Charleston

We went to Charleston on Monday and got back yesterday. It was wonderful! We both loved Charleston and didn't want to leave. It has very old architecture and a laid-back feel. It has a lot of palm and magnolia trees and (apparently) a lot of really good food. It was a comfortable city and I am sad we couldn't see more of it. The first day it was raining the whole day and the second day we had to take off so we could get back at a reasonable time. The interview went really well and I should find out tomorrow if I have a second interview. It seems likely that I will get a second interview and I can't imagine them calling me all the way back down there (4 and a half hour drive!) for another interview unless they were seriously considering me for the job. Anyway, Charleston is right on the coast and felt like home the moment we got into the city. Here are some pictures of our trip. Most of from the car as we drove around and there aren't too many because, as I mentioned before, it was raining the whole first day we were there so we took all the pictures in the couple hours before we left yesterday.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2343295&id=19703332&l=a601f56c8b

I got a call last week about interviewing for a chemistry job down in Charleston, SC! So Monday we are heading down to Charleston to stay the night and the interview is on Tuesday. I will try to take a lot of pictures and update about how it was. The city seems pretty neat, but we will find out as much as we can in the two days we are there. This is a short update so here are a couple pictures. One is of the snow storm we had over Christmas weekend and another is a recent one of the cats.

Resolution

So I/we are making a resolution to update this more. This is the first update of the new year and I am going to try to update once every week or two. Anyway, Christmas was good although low-key. We talked with all the family and on Christmas day we had brunch at a friend's house. The kitties got some presents as well and they loved them all (we could tell by the growling at each other when one had the toy).

Other than that, Leah is going to Portland soon and I am taking the first actuary exam on the 20th. After that I will start applying for jobs and take the second exam on the 15th of Feb. I have been looking to see what entry-level jobs are available and it seems like my best bet is one in Connecticut right outside of NYC. There is another in Wisconsin that I will apply for too, but I don't really want to end up in Wisconsin, haha.

We have a bunch of pictures saved up so maybe the next post will be of all the pictures we took of the snow and all that. Happy 2011 all!

Not Ribs!

Okay, we've kind of been failing at blogging...but here comes a revival! Jared gave a photographic essay in the last post, and hinted that there is another piece of exciting news to share...

Kittens! The title of the blog comes from a conversation we had after hearing about wedding vows that included "I love you more than tacos." Kittens and ribs are the two things that make Jared happiest in life. Smoked meat is aplenty out here (food posts coming, I promise!) but we have had kitten-shaped holes in our lives for a while.

And then we found these ladies on Craigslist!

That first photo is from 3-4 weeks old. Born Aug 1. They are identical twins from one placenta, which is apparently a rare thing that does happen in cats. Oh, the cuteness.

We drove out to meet them at 4 weeks, fell in love with them and laid claim. We got another email yesterday saying that they are using a litter box and eating food. We'll be picking them up at 6.5 weeks.


Their mom is a really, sweet and affectionate dilute calico and they seem to be taking after her in both coloration and personality. Perfect.

This is what they are looking like now. The worried eyes kill me!

If you follow the micro-blogging that is my twitter, you'd have seen the series about potential names. We like food names for pets, especially those of the meat or cheese variety.

Brie & Camembert? Chicken & Nugget? Rosemary & Marjoram? Biscuit & Muffin?

The next best kind of names are old lady names (though I like them better for human babies.) Jared came up with Ethyl and Ester...he likes these because they are also food chemistry names. So I think we'll give those a test run when we finally bring them home.

Long post, lots to update

This is going to be a long one since it has been exactly one month since we updated last. We have a bunch of pictures so I will just go off of those. Here we go:

Farmer's Market:

We went to the Farmer's Market a few weeks ago and bought some plants, veggies, meat, and a ton of o

ther stuff. The market here is huge! It runs every day all day and they have two restaurants that use food

from the market right next to it. This

picture is of part of the selection of peppers from one grower. As you would imagine, there are a ton of peaches and corn being sold at these things but also a lot of neat plants and really good meats, cheeses, and bread. We ended up buying some herbs to keep on our porch and that got us wanting more plants so now we have eight things growing on our porches (hopefully they all survive).

Home-making:

After we moved all our stuff in, we realized there were a few things we still needed. Pictured above are the couch that we bought (we will post an updated picture of it later, that is just right after it was delivered) and the TV we got. We also had to get a couple more bookshelves and luckily we found someone selling his for cheap. We have been buying things to furnish the porch (like a little light, chairs, table) and the kitchen (hooks, knife rack, etc). It is amazing how much stuff we still needed when it seemed like we brought so much out here.

The Tour:

The three pictures above are from the brewery tour we have on the second Saturday of each month. The top picture is of the line about a half hour before the doors opened. A ton of people show up for these things. The second picture is of one of the tour groups. They split all the people into three groups for tours and the groups are huge. To show how many people are at this thing, the last picture is from the stairs going up to the bar from the brewery. This picture is probably about a sixth of the people that were there. The brewery was packed, the parking lot was packed, the bar was packed; there were just people everywhere. It was a ton of fun, though, and it is more of a party than a tour. Everyone comes and just hangs out, chats, and has a good time. They also have a military vehicle preservation association that comes out with a big army truck they outfitted with benches in the bed of and gives about 12 people at a time rides around the block. There is also a truck that shows up and makes amazing burgers. The next one is this coming Saturday and I am pretty excited for it.

Baseball:

We were invited out to a baseball game by the guys at the brewery a week ago. We sat at a bar that overlooked the field, as you can see (free to get in, no cover. Bonus one). As we walked in, we saw that they had a pint special that day where every beer was $2.50 (bonus two). As we went and found my boss, we found out he had reserved two tables out on the porch right next to the fence and it was a beautiful day (bonus three). We sat and ate and drank and even had a couple baseballs hit up to us while we were sitting there. About 10 people showed up in our group and it was a lot of fun. It is too bad the season is about over or else we would definitely do it again.

That's about it for the updates from me. I think Leah is going to update tomorrow (or tonight, not sure) with some fun news and also to cover anything I may have left out. We will try to update more when things actually happen instead of forgetting or losing track of time and not posting for a month.

Y'all Go Swimmin'?

"You know, this is how Sookie's parents died..." - Leah

I said I was going to make a post about storms, among other things, and that seems like the best thing to start with because there was a CRAZY one last night!

I think this could officially be considered our second huge storm so here are a couple videos I took from our first. These were taken from our side balcony. I'm filming the trees, or really the space between the trees as they light up with insane/awesome lightning.

In this first one it isn't raining yet so you can also hear the cicadas and crickets and shit. More on those later.




In the next one, it has started to rain. This isn't rain like how it's always soggy in the NW, this should have some other kind of name - "it's drenching outside?" Anyway, so you can see that, and probably hear the thunder 'cause now it's right upon us.


Yesterday it was hot and sticky when we headed out to Best Buy...but when Jared pulled the car up to the front of the store to load the new 42" tv into it, it was "drenching." Carrying the tv 30 ft to the car and trying to shove the box in the back seat (a total of 3 minutes max?) resulted in us looking like we went swimming in our clothes. The tv didn't fit! The Best Buy guys were kind of awesome, brought it back in the store, took it out of the box, and three of them wrapped it in like 10 layers of plastic and we headed out.

We drove home from the mall/flash flood and ran ourselves and the tv into the apartment. Got out of our wet clothes, then the power went out. ("I can't pee in the dark!" -Jared) I found a lighter and lit a few candles and then the power came back. What a joke show.

Oh, when we got home we found this article. Six sentences down? That's where we were when this nonsense started.

Don't Touch That Dial

Downtown Raleigh. So cute and tiny.


My excuses for the lack of posting are that our internet has been spotty, Jared works 10 hrs a day, and I...am kind of a mess.

It's still hot, though not *so* hot and storms are helping with that. Stay tuned for a post about thunderstorms.

There are still bugs - mosquitoes are still kinda ruining my life and I think I killed the venus fly trap the day after we got it. Stayed tuned for a post about cicadas and ''water bugs."

Still trying to get settled and moved in, though we're getting close and settling in. Stay tuned for a post about how we're eating.

In other news...I've applied for a catering job at the Whole Foods up the road from us - if I don't get it I'm going to keep applying for things there. We're thinking about heading to the coast this weekend, but we'll see. So...stay tuned for news about those things.

26 Going On 70

This climate is making me so much more like my Okie grandmother and great-grandmother...After both of my lukewarm/cold showers every day, I powder up. I see now where I grandma is coming from with this shit. Yes, Shower-to-Shower is old lady-scented, but I don't mind smelling like a sachet when I can be chafe-free and less sticky.

So then once I'm all lavender-ed up, I put on a "house dress" if anything at all. The a/c hovers around 80 degrees, which is comfortable but still a little sweaty. Why bother with real clothes? I was totally wearing this super sexy moo-moo when the maintenance guy came by today to fix some stuff.

I was inspired to buy this polyester beauty at House of Vintage by Tracie, my hero/stay-at-home Jezebel-editor extraordinaire. However, my great-grandma wore the same things everyday while she played solitaire on her coffee table and watched her "stories" or creepy televangelism.
Hmm, I watched True Blood and played Spider Solitaire on my laptop in between unpacking and doing housewife-y stuff today....

So, it's hot. And I am basically a crotchety old lady. As soon as we're mostly unpacked, I'll start looking for age appropriate hobbies/a job. But I'll still smell like a grandma.

The day the internet died

So after the last post our internet decided to fail for a while. It is finally back up (what Leah did to fix it I will never know) so I can post. Anyway, we went out with a couple of my co-workers and their girlfriends on Saturday night. It was pretty fun. We met up at the brewery for a couple free beers and then headed downtown. Down there we went to a Creole restaurant and had some jambalaya and *gasp* alligator. One of the guys from the brewery had ordered these "gator bites" and they tasted a lot like orange chicken. They were pretty delicious. We then went to a bar for quite a long time until it got a little too "bro-y" then we took off. We got home at about 1am and found out that 1am was the one time of the day when the weather was actually pleasant (we had a 3-day heatwave where we had 100 degree days with 50% humidity. It was gross). Another lesson learned was that to get Leah to move mattresses, you just have to feed her gin and tonics. Unloading was a success!!

Other than that, today was my first day at the brewery and it was pretty low-key and I enjoy the people I work with. Despite it being a 10 hour day, it was still pretty good. We are still unpacking and settling in and trying to find the things we are missing from our apartment.

To end on a positive note, the bugs are still large, we are getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, and we can't cook without setting off the fire alarm.

Hot Enough For Ya?

We arrived at our new home Wednesday afternoon, but the truck with our belongings (including internet things) came today. So here begins the updates.

In our couple days of exploring, we've come upon lots of "southern things" already - some surprising and some expected. The two things West Coast-ers immediately say when we mention North Carolina are HEAT and GIANT BUGS. They have no idea...

As I said, the moving truck came today and we have all weekend to unload it. All extreme heat advisory weekend.

THE COMBINATION OF VERY HIGH HUMIDITY AND TEMPERATURES NEAR 100 DEGREES WILL PRODUCE HEAT INDICES BETWEEN 105 AND 110 DEGREES

So thanks for that, weather channel.

The afternoons are crazy hot. I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my life as I did today, what with hating sweating/physical activity. We thought today that we would wait until nightfall to unpack what more we couldn't get in before it hit 100 degrees today. NOPE.

As the temperature decreases the humidity increases, seemingly as a rule. A whole new kind of sweaty, possibly worse. And darkness brings a whole new swarm of problems: Giant beetles, crickets, and whatever the f* this thing is!!!

It flew around me at the front door when we came home with groceries. It stalked around waiting for me to open it again and while making ice water for Jared (who is still carrying boxes while I stop to document this) it came right at me again in the kitchen!

Do I even need to stop and point out the wtf-ness of this bug? You see the scale, and the DANGLY THING! I wish we had a side view of how big that booty was, and maybe video of the way it rotated its wings slowly in opposite directions.

So moving took like a 15 min break while this thing flew around the apartment tricking/terrifying us before Jared finally killed it.

Back to moving now, let's see if we can get a bed moved in tonight so we are less like squatters in our house!