we interrupt this blog post

I know I promised to post the rest of our travel photos "tomorrow" a week ago. And I will, possibly later today. Where does the time go? I'm going to tell you a little bit of news, then I'm going to go outside and shovel snow, then I'm going to decide what we are having for dinner and make a shopping list. I'll walk to the grocery store two blocks away through this blizzard, and then come home and start cooking. Or maybe I'll get another blog post in first.

The news: We have been here for eleven days now. Surely the weather is colder than we are used to and there has been snow on the ground the whole time. I don't mind, it's just one more new experience. Well, not new, I did after all grow up in a place that has real winter. But it's been twenty years since I really lived in a place that has weather like this and that it is a normal thing that will stick around longer than a few days.

We are enjoying our new surroundings and are making new friends. The "street" we live on, the one on our address, is not actually a street, it's a sidewalk off a street. I'm guessing it used to be an alley for horse-drawn carriages? At any rate, it means that all our neighbors are close but we have an amazing amount of privacy. With no cars going by, it is also very quiet, which I love. The place we were in before was noisy and not at all private, and I felt like a caged animal in that house. This house is much nicer than the one we moved out of. It's smaller, and far easier to keep clean. I can't tell you how happy I am about this. Sam is happy too, she has been more affectionate with Dan here than she ever has in her whole life.

So my first bit of news is that I have been requested to write a blog for a private company. It hasn't started yet, as the company isn't quite ready to get going, but when they are that task will fall to me. I'm pretty excited about that, it's a great company.

The second is that I had an interview with the Wasatch Community Gardens on Monday. I had contacted them in December, in applying for one of their intern programs. I am passionate about local food and I wanted to get involved with the local foodshed right away, this seemed the best place to start. After my conversation with the coordinator, we agreed I am a good fit and so will be their 2014 Urban Farming Apprentice, starting in a few weeks. Much of the things they want done are things I have done before, in terms of compost rehabilitation and soil building, and there will be some organizing too (yay! I love organizing).

The biggest news: I have been in touch with a few people from the University of Utah, having met a number of them at the AMIA Symposium back last November. After a meeting yesterday morning that I was hoping would result in a job, ended up resulting in an application to do a second Master's degree. I was kind of deflated at the suggestion ("but I already have and MSc in this field!") but it became clear that there are many more doors open to students. This is not to say there won't be work for me beforehand, and I am making my rounds and meeting all the people. There is a dearth of qualitative researchers here and I am SO EXCITED because I was warned all those years ago that there wouldn't be much work for people like me. There hasn't been. Until now. I am in the right place. So HURRAY! I have sent off my resume to a number of people and some of them have heard of me already. I'll go to the research seminars presented every week (the U is an 11-minute train ride from my station, which is only a block and a half away) and will get deeply reacquainted with what is happening in the field. Turns out there is a lot happening at the University of Utah.

It all happened so fast yesterday that I was still spinning by the end of they day, but it feels right. If I can turn that Master's into a PhD, I may do just that. This is a place I want to stay for a while, I can certainly commit to being in Utah for at least five years. More if things are good for both me and Dan.

Oh there is one other thing - we got fitbits! I heard about fitbits in November when I was at the Symposium and have been thinking about them ever since. Certainly with the stress last year and the difficulty exercising (due to crazy schedules and not feeling safe in our neighborhood), I have regained much of the weight I had lost back in 2011. But I did it once and I will do it again. This time it will be much easier (well, if weight loss can be easy) because it seems like a video game and watching the stats on my iPhone app is a data manager's wet dream. People are obsessed with these things. I hope I don't become like that. I'll let you know.

Still one other thing: Thanks to my Twitter buddy Donna Druchunas, there is a small group of us doing a group course of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I have owned the book since 1998 and have done the program a couple of times on my own, but it is nice to go back to it with a bunch of buddies and see how we do. I may do some blog posts specifically about that - I hope I have time because this kind of work digs up a lot of stuff formerly buried in one's psyche.

Okay that's it, I really have to go shovel snow. I will try to post photos later!

Not the smoothest transition

I must admit I *love* being a housewife. Waking up when I want, setting my own pace, drinking coffee, writing, doing laundry, baking bread, reading/writing/knitting at my leisure. It's really a lot of fun.

But it doesn't pay the bills. My new job at the health food store is nice, but it is not going to pay any bills either. So far I have had only one or two shifts a week, and they are only four hour shifts, so it is definitely not sustainable for me. I'll have a conversation with the owner next week and we'll talk about what our needs are, mine and hers, and see if we can come to a new arrangement.

Part of the problem is that we are planning some weekend trips in the next five weeks. I am going to the AMIA Symposium in DC in the middle of November. I registered for the symposium back in August, paid $700 from basically a whole paycheck in order to be able to go. Normally the people who go to these kinds of things are sponsored by their employer or school. I decided to fork over the money and go so I can meet people and get back into my field - health informatics. I will do all kinds of research before I go - who is presenting, where the attendees are from, who are the right people to approach with my curriculum vitae in hand.Surely with the symposium being so close there should be a fairly good representation from employers in North Carolina, right?

One thing is for certain: there no career for me in Kinston or even Greenville, it sounds like. With my education and experience, well-meaning people who don't know any better keep telling me I'm sure to get something at such-and-such a place. But I have been applying to all of those places. I am either overqualified or don't have the skill set they are looking for. I need a bigger market to be looking in. I'm sure I could find work that would allow me to pay my bills, but my career is idling and after all those years I spent in post-secondary, it's a shame to let all that go to waste. I have huge income-earning potential and after getting a sense of what it is like to run a business (albeit a night club), I am ready for a bigger project to sink my teeth into. But how do I get there? How do I get my foot in the door?

Admittedly this is a terrible time to be looking for work. The US government has been shut down since October 1st and is heading for a default, which will not only mean severe hardship for federal employees, but also to all those businesses that rely on those government agencies and the income generated by them. The US economy as a whole is contracting and will continue to contract. Where will I find my place?

On the other hand, with the Affordable Care Act (i.e. Obamacare), one would think that there is a demand for someone with a health informatics background in this new health care paradigm. Unfortunately the Courtyard Group is enmeshed in another controversy after making a big attempt, it seems, to rebrand itself after what they did a few years ago, and it is they who are responsible for the problems all those millions of Americans who have tried to sign up for Affordable Care but were shut down by website glitches. Interestingly, I was considering taking a job with Courtyard when I graduated in 2009, before all the scandal broke out. I am so glad I dodged that bullet!

I am sure you are wondering too what a job for me in the city will mean for me and Dan. It's hard to know. For the right job, say in Durham, (specifically at Duke) we talked about me getting an apartment for work during the week and coming back to Kinston on weekends. Yes it would suck to be apart so much, especially after our immigration ordeal, but the fact is I need to be earning money and using my brain. Maybe we could find a place to live that's halfway in between here and there - I have friends in British Columbia who do that. I don't have this imaginary well-paying job yet, so it's almost futile to really consider.

I really like not working six days a week. I really like not working weekends, and being able to spend my weekends with Dan is wonderful. The night club was really quite stressful for me, really more stressful than I realized while I was in it. In some ways I'm still having a hard time letting go, but that will come in time.

The other thing I am finding is that now that I am not working in a job that has me interacting with hundreds of people, I... have no social life. I only see people if I go to the restaurants downtown or back to the club for a visit. I would love to join or participate in a stitch night, but for a state that grows cotton there are very few people who do any textile-based crafts in this area. It's really disappointing. I heard there is a book club in Kinston but that it's "mostly old ladies", which wouldn't bother me if it didn't bother them, depending on the kinds of books they read.

And it's not like I can go hang out in coffee shops. There is only one, is only open until 4:00, weekdays. I can't really go for walks or runs in my neighborhood without getting ogled by men or being asked for money/cigarettes - there is a lot of poverty here and I don't feel safe outside my truck or without Dan at my side. Now that I am not completely enmeshed in my job I have time to look around.

I feel hopeful that something really good is about to come along though. I have a lot of applications out there and I am excited about the symposium. Not only will I get reacquainted with the state of the art in health informatics, but I will see who the big players are now and hopefully I recognize a few - I knew all the names back around 2005-2009. I'll give my CV a facelift and I am even reconsidering joining LinkedIn again - I dropped it a few years back when I saw no value in it, but it seems to have changed according to some. (If you have an opinion on this I would love to hear it).

MIA because we moved into the house...

Hi guys,

Sorry you haven't heard from me. We moved into the house in town last week and have been very busy with cleaning and unpacking ever since. I have not been able to leave the house much because I have had tradespeople coming through too...


We moved in on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, I took a bath, then walked over to the brewery to find hot water to make coffee with. Dan came back with me an hour later to find this in the hallway, a puddle below. Not only that, Sam was missing.

Just before they came over to rip open the ceiling to find the leak, we saw cute kitty footprints near the site of the puddle on the floor, so I knew she had to be somewhere in the house. We found her in the cupboard in the dining room, but later when I put her in the upstairs bedroom to keep her safe from the tradespeople in the house, she headed straight for the chimney.
 OH great. That explains why she was so dirty! She was covered in soot, my little cinderkitty. This house has six coal fireplaces (not in use) that haven't been cleaned in forever and oh by the way also aren't sealed. Perfect.
A pool noodle comes in handy! 
 
  My black and white kitty, temporarily black and grey.

Meanwhile, the upstairs bathtub has been torn apart. The plumber has been by every day this week working on this, trying to figure out the problem, replaced all kinds of things. In the end, it was the taps themselves that were malfunctioning so when we redo this bathroom (more below), new taps will be put in. Until then, we will use the downstairs bathroom.

So that was one thing. On Sunday night the toilets were backing up and when the draining of the bathtub made the toilets burble, well, let's just say there were some expletives projected. This was not acceptable. What is going on? First thing Monday morning the guy with the augur came and cleared out the sewer pipe - turns out there were tree roots growing through this old iron pipe. So that was fixed.

We also were still without appliances. Since we have been eating out for a month, we are anxious to get a proper kitchen together so we can prepare healthy meals.

 I can't remember which day the appliances came. Monday? Tuesday? The delivery guys from Lowe's were fantastic. Friendly, quick competent. They set up the fridge right away, but they aren't licensed to install the gas range, so we'd need the plumber to do that. Since the plumber was coming and going anyway, we had him hook it up but then we discovered the spigot that the hose attached to in the kitchen was not actually connected to where the gas comes from. Frustration. That was two days ago. We're still waiting for the gas guys to come and connect that so we can use the range.

 We also still don't have a washer or dryer. I'm not sure what's happening there, if one will be provided to us or if we are to get our own. Last night we took four loads of laundry to a laundromat. So romantic!

  On the weekend we drove to Charlotte, which is 230 miles away from here. We stopped at a glass store in Durham along the way (we'll be replacing some of the windows that are currently broken or plexiglass with stained glass) to buy a sheet of red glass. Dan downloaded two books about how to do stained glass on his Kindle, read them, and now knows how to do it. No really, I'm sure he'll have it figured out in no time. (He did go to glass school, after all). In Charlotte, we went to the biggest and busiest IKEA I have ever seen. There must have been a full square mile of cars in the parking lot. We were on a mission: to buy a bed! We've been sleeping on a 4" foamie for far too long, and it was a longtime promise to ourselves to get a bed when we were reunited. I've been sleeping much better ever since!

   In other random news, it has actually been too cold and I have been too busy to go outside and get busy gardening, but we have at least plotted out where we're going to put our first keyhole bed. Dan is going to build an octagonal frame with a south-facing entrance. I have already planted seeds indoors and can't wait to get this bed going!

On Monday night I hosted my first Stitch Night. My first night here I met two new friends who were interested in getting together, and met a third friend via Twitter who had just moved back to the area. Hopefully in the subsequent weeks the knitting/crocheting space will get noticeably more comfortable!

  Today I decided to tackle this room. It's a sun room on the southeast side of the house. It has 6x2x6 panels of windows, a handful of which are plexiglass, and I washed whatever interior window I could. This house was build in 1901 but I think this room was later closed in from what used to be an outdoor porch. The windows are old but the latches have been painted over, rendering them immovable.

 Somewhere along the way someone also painted the rope that rests on the pulley that lifts these windows, also producing immobility. Thanks, guys.

 There was a lot of dust. I took all the door hardware and put it in a box (I guess we'll attach them to the doors later?), brushed the shelves, then wiped them with a dry cloth and then a wet cloth.

 When these windows were last painted they didn't tape off the trim so I took a razor blade scraper to get the paint off the windows.

I am happy with the state of this room now. Well, happy for now. I'll have to be careful with what I put in these shelves, since yarn and book spines are likely to fade in this sunny location. I'll need lots of plants.

 Ok this is a view of the house from the back, across the street. Because we are on a street corner and there are no trees in front of the windows, it feels very exposed. Eventually we'll plant tall things and hang window coverings, but it's not like we have any furniture at the moment...

I haven't taken any photos but the drywall guys came today and closed up the hall ceiling. So that's good. What I forgot to tell you above is that, since the upstairs bathroom is ripped up now, we've decided that that will be the first room we renovate completely.

One more thing:

My tiny seedling collection! In February I ordered seeds from Sow True Seeds and have used every available container to plant in. I cut up the carton from the milk and soy milk, a tofu container, used the mini-cinnamon bun tray from the grocery store, used fast food cups and plastic salad containers. When the plumber saw that I had seedlings going, he offered to bring me some planting trays, so they got used right away! I have planted tomatoes, peppers, herbs, flowers, lettuces and sunflowers. I NEED MORE SPACE. As I mentioned above, it's been cold here, so it's almost good that I haven't been able to go outside to play in the garden (I've been busy organizing the house) because I don't have compost, manure, topsoil or even really a place to plant seeds out there just yet.


Sorry for the slapdash formatting of this post. I'm trying to get it up in a hurry so you all know what I've been up to! Now that I can actually leave the house I'm hoping to post more, and we should be getting the Internet hooked up at home soon too. I haven't had much luck looking for jobs just yet - I simply haven't had time.