One Meeelion . . . Words!

That’s right folks. I’ve set a goal for the year 2010 to write no less than 1,000,000 words.

The reason for this announcment? Accountability.

As many of you know, my wife and I have been participating in National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) and each year we’ve announced to everyone we know that we’re doing it. This is because we need the social pressure to make sure we meet our goal of writing a 50,000 word work of fiction in a single calendar month.

This situation is no different.

You should know that not every one of those 1,000,000 words will be fiction. I also write non-fiction for my living and those words will be counted as well.

This breaks down to about 4,000 words a day, about five days a week for the whole year. At my usual pace, this works out to at least two hours of sustained drafting each day, or less when you factor in my daily work. This is very do-able for me!

I came to this resolution when I heard an unwritten rule that professional writers have to write at least 1,000,000 words before they can be truly successful. Of course there are exceptions, but I totally see the logic. It’s sort of the writer’s equivalent of the 10,000 hour-rule presented in the book Outliers.

According to some, this work is necessary to learn just how bad a writer you are, and gives you the time to work out all your demons and issues. After that, the bad writing is out of the way and you can move on to the good stuff!

I’m excited to see the results.

To help ensure success I’m committing to incremental goals that will help me get to 1,000,000. I plan on entering the L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future contest (www.writersofthefuture.com) every quarter. I plan on drafting 10 full-length novels in the course of next year. I’ll write for my business blog faithfully every single week.

I’m sure as I get closer and as I move through the year I’ll come up with some other incremental goals, but I think those should make for a good start.

I thank all of your for your interest, support, and (should I decide to chicken out) merciless ridicule.

To 1,000,000 words! Here I go!

-Tom

Knitting real lace

So tonight I finished my first lace shawl. I call it my first, even though technically I knitted up a couple less involved and shorter lace scarves last year. I was proud when I finished those earlier projects, but when I look back at them now, I can see how simple they really were.

When you have a piece of lace that hasn't been blocked, it literally looks like a rumpled old bag; definitely nothing to be impressed with. The blocking process, however, changes that dramatically. I forgot to get any pictures of the shawl before I blocked it, but here is one of the actual blocking.



To block a piece of lace, you first have to soak the finished piece in cool water with a touch of wool wash (I just use a mild detergent, since I haven't actually gotten around to buying any wool wash). You have to completely soak it, and if the yarn is thicker it takes awhile to get completely soaked through. For this project I used a lace weight yarn (alpaca and silk blend), so I only soaked it for about ten or fifteen minutes.



After the piece is soaked through, you need to squeeze the excess water out of it. You don't want to wring it out, because it can distort or felt the lace, and that would be bad. You squeeze it gently, trying to get out what you can with your hands, and then you roll it into a towel, squeezing out as much as you can that way.

After you get the excess water out, you need to set the shape you want the lace to stay in. They recommend using a blocking board with lines and measurements printed on it so you have a guide as you're laying out your piece to block. I used a piece of foam and measuring tape. You take pins and create whatever shape you want to form with the piece, making sure you get the measurements right and spread out the pattern to show it off best. With scallops like this piece has, it doesn't take that many pins. With straight edges, however - like the scarves I did last year - you can never have enough pins. You don't want to leave any crescents in a line that's supposed to be straight.

After you set the shape the way you want it, you need to wait for the lace to dry completely. With the wool I used last year, that took quite awhile - it was at least twelve hours before I felt safe unpinning it - but with this lace weight piece I only had it set for a couple of hours before unpinning it again.


After this process, the piece of lace will hold its shape until I decide to clean it (or, I suppose, get it very wet). At that point, I'll just take the lace through the blocking process again.

I am completely blown away by the beautiful drape this shawl has; it's way better than I could have hoped for. I think I picked a great yarn, and though there are many mistakes in the piece I knit up, I am very proud to be on this end of that process. I'm looking forward to wearing this shawl this winter!



-Amy

Write or Die!

Do any of you blog readers out there struggle with getting distracted when you really need to be writing instead? Do you lose your focus and log onto facebook or some other popular social networking site instead of working on hitting your 50,000 word target by the end of the month?

Okay, maybe I'm the only one out there who has this problem. I am the biggest procrastinator in the world, and I REALLY know how to waste time when I'm supposed to be writing. It's amazing how interesting my desktop background can be and how many times in a ten minute block I absolutely have to save my file and check my word count. Let's just say it's not very conducive to getting my novel written this month and leave it at that...

We were recently directed to an site here to try something called "Write or Die", which I did for my Sunday writing session. Talk about a complete changing of my ways - I hardly recognized myself after so much productivity!

If you read the "Write Or Die" blog, it explains why the program was created, but to sum it up, some of us just need to be prodded a little bit with a tangible deadline and threat of disaster in order to get creative writing done. For the full explanation, go here. There are consequences if you don't keep writing, and they run as follows:

• Gentle Mode: A certain amount of time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing.
• Normal Mode: If you persistently avoid writing, you will be played a most unpleasant sound. The sound will stop if and only if you continue to write.
• Kamikaze Mode: Keep Writing or Your Work Will Unwrite Itself

Yes, it actually DOES start deleting your work if you don't keep writing - we tried it. Not only does it make a nasty noise, but it also flashes pink and red all over your screen until you start writing again. Remember that studies have been done all about how negative it is for teachers to use a red pen when correcting their students' homework? So how do you think that makes a person feel when their monitor suddenly starts flashing pink and then darker into red? It feels like the whole computer is about to spontaneously combust, that's how. I was so anxious the whole time I was writing that even though I told the program to give me 90 minutes to get my 2000 words written, I finished in about 35.

Holy cow, talk about an epiphany! So would I use the program again? You betcha! Will I buy the desktop version that just got released for $10? Yessir! Am I going to whup Tom's word count score one of these days? Um, I'm working on it....

-Amy

NaNoWriMo 2009

Well friends, here we are in November again, which of course means that NaNoWriMo is upon us again. Tom and I are plowing into our novels and enjoying the terrifying ride that is creating a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. Housework goes onto the back burner as we crank up our ipods and pretend the dishes sitting in the kitchen sink are not in fact starting to smell a bit off. Our desks are piled high with plot notes, hot chocolate mugs, and various writing tools and books.




Oh, and you can't forget our writing totems, of course - mine an excessively gaudy ring and Tom's a miniature rubber duck.



We're both doing fantasy genre novels this year - a first for Tom, at least. No, we're still not allowed to share our stories with you (it's against the rules, so don't ask until after the month is over :D), but we'd love to have your happy thoughts flowing through the ether toward us, cheering us on throughout the month as we drive to the end of the 50,000 word pool we're diving into. We probably won't be doing much blog updating, but feel free to send us emails full of guilt trips from time to time this month. It never hurts to have a guilt monkey on your shoulder when you're trying to do the impossible.

We went to our first NaNoWriMo kickoff party on Saturday night up in Bellevue. It started at 11:00 pm and let up to a countdown to writing starting at midnight. Because there are so many nano participants here in the Seattle area (we're talking a few thousand, very different from the couple hundred in the Salt Lake area!), there were about 60 people who showed up at the one we went to. Many of them - as you can see - wore their Halloween costumes for the event.


Talk about a strange silence setting over the room when midnight struck! There was a contest to see who could get their first 1000 words written the fastest, and there were prizes for everyone who got at least 1000 words done that night. We stayed until a little before 1:00 am and took away our special prizes (notebooks and stickers a kindergartener could be proud of!), but most of the group was still there going strong when we left. We hope to go to a few more write-ins before the month is out. It was great getting the chance to meet some similarly crazy people we had something in common with.

Anyone who is interested in joining in the November madness, we'd definitely encourage you to jump on in. We're only two days into the 30, and it wouldn't be too hard for you to catch up!

Happy noveling, all!

-Amy

Salmon Running Through The Library

I’m writing this blog in the Renton City Library. It’s an older building constructed sometime in the 1960’s, and it shows. It’s not likely to be renovated or replaced any time soon because of where it sits. It straddles the Cedar River, site of an annual run of salmon swimming upstream from the ocean to spawn in the fresh water they were born in.



I took a little video of the salmon run here: (Don’t attempt to adjust your volume, there’s no sound.)



As I write this, countless fish are slowly moving upstream about thirty feet below where I’m sitting.

Apparently it’s quite a city event, attracting people coming and going from the library to the edge of the railing, the very spot from which this video was taken.

A few ladies were sitting at what looked like an information table laden with literature. Nobody, including me, is going to talk to them. They have a haggard look. They wear fleecy sportswear and hold their hiking sticks on their laps. I get the sense that they use those sticks every day, all day. I’m sure that, whatever they do, they’re very good at it, but only if that doesn’t involve inviting people to talk to them and dispense information. They seem out of their element, and nobody seems to want to rub it in by trying to talk to them.


As a true introvert, I’m much more content to find the information I’m looking for online . . . where I don’t have to interact with anyone to find what I’m looking for. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Anyway, chances are these ladies would want to do me physical harm if they knew what my political views were, and they’re armed. I could only hope to feebly defend myself with my Neo and my canteen full of water, but I digress.

It’s strange, but living here I seem to have so much more contact with nature than at any time when I was living in Utah. Just running errands can become a dazzling afternoon drive to see the fall colors.

I lived here before, and somehow I managed to take the wonders of this place (like the library built over a freaking river!) for granted.

I think the only thing missing here is a glass-bottomed area of the library that would allow you to look down and see the river rushing by. That’s not likely to happen, nor are any other major renovations or replacements barring a generous grant or private donation. I’m willing to bet the environmental impact study alone would cost as much as city’s monthly budget. Who knows, though. The stimulus bill has taught me to never underestimate the power of Federal pork.



I’m writing this at the next best thing to that glass-bottomed area that’s never to be. I have a window seat on the other end of the building from the entrance, allowing me to look down on the river and watch cars passing on the bridges as it stretches towards the lake, all framed with emerald, yellow, and red leaves on the trees along the bank.

Check it out!

-Tom

Happy 30th Birthday, Tom!

Well, just like my subject line declares, Tom turned 30 on Monday. It was great that it turned out to be on my day off, so we got to spend the whole day together. While we didn't get very many pictures to catalog the day, the ones we got have the bonus of being full of fall colors.



Tom really wanted to eat at Ivar's for his birthday, so we headed over to our usual haunt (Lake Washington, where else?) picked him up some fish and chips, and had our lunch out on the pier.




This is actually the only picture I got with Tom in it. Not much of a 30th birthday commemoration photo, but at least it's proof that Tom really did get to eat seafood that day. This is the part where I admit that I'm not much of a seafood fan. I do like Ivar's fish and chips (sometimes, and only then the halibut ones), but I grabbed takeout from Panda Express before we went to the lake.



The trees are turning all sorts of crazy colors that I have never seen before. The pictures just don't do the colors justice; I swear there were a dozen different colors of red, yellow, orange, and coral there at the park.



After lunch, we went to a Toy Story 3D double feature. It was really cool to see the original movies in 3D. You could see a bigger difference in the technology development between the two movies because the first one had pretty 2-D backgrounds while the backgrounds in the second movie really came alive. We're looking forward to seeing the third movie when it comes out in another few months.



After the movie we relaxed and did a little cleaning at home before meeting Janet and John over at Hong's Garden Chinese restaurant for dinner. Talk about a crazy eating out day! The food was good, and afterward the four of us came back to our place where we sang happy birthday to Tom and had some cake and ice cream. It was about this point where I realized I had left the camera in the car I had meant to bring in for real birthday pictures, but none of us felt like making the trek downstairs to grab it. Oh, well.

One thing we've realized in getting closer to this age landmark is what little difference the passing of a year makes. Many things have changed for us this past twelve months, but we don't really feel any older.

-Amy

Discovering "Discovery"

Today we spent the afternoon at Discovery Park in Seattle. It was beautiful! We've been meaning to explore some of the greener wilder places we have around here. The recent Ken Burns documentary about the national parks reminded me that we have two national parks right here in our backyard. In fact, on a clear day you can see both of them. Today was such a day.


It's hard to see in this picture, but Mt. Rainier is rising just above the convergence of the two hills. The Olympic mountains were even more visible in the other direction. We didn't have the time or the funds to get out to either of those magnificent national parks, but we found a gem of a park right near Seattle. In fact it's five minutes from downtown, and only twenty minutes from our home in Renton. You can't be out in nature and be any closer to the city.

Discovery park is on a little peninsula on the north side of town and is covered with various wooded trails and is edged with pleasant beaches.


Most of these were taken on such a beach. Amy even managed to find a few stones for her hot stone massage set.

We didn't even begin to see everything. There's apparently a lighthouse and a little historic town that used to be where the park now stands. We spent most of our time hiking the trails and just seeing what there might be to see. I doubt we even got a look at a tenth of it. We must have hiked at least five miles today.

The whole place is a reminder of what Seattle once was before Americans arrived. It's not hard to imagine native fishermen out in the sound or preparing their expeditions on the shore.
We found this arrangement of driftwood which was kind of disturbing. Sorta looks like a grave, doesn't it? I doubt it is, but there is actually a cemetary nearby come to think of it.
It's hard to believe that I lived here as long as I did and never saw or even knew about some of the natural treasures around here. I'm hoping in the next few years Amy and I can rectify that.
The whole day I was thinking how fun it would be to bring Amy's family here whenever it is they can manage to visit. There's so much to see and do around here, we feel very luck that we'll have some time to take it all in. It was a good workout and a day off well spent. I had some work to do before we left and it took longer than I thought, so we left the house a little flustered. We both had a long week and this trip was exactly what we needed. The air under the canopy of the trees seems so rich and fresh. Spending a few hours in it was extremely relaxing, in spite of the traffic on the ride home.

In any case, we'll definitely be coming back soon.

-Tom

The Knittery - my knitting haven.

So I'm trying to knit a nice lace shawl from one of the patterns in this book and I'm learning how difficult lace can be. Don't get me wrong - I'm enjoying myself (mostly) - but I've never struggled so much while trying to knit anything else. This is what it will look like when it is finished (I hope), though I'm making it out of a plum-colored yarn instead of this sage green.




I got the alpaca/silk yarn I'm using at a local knitting shop about a mile away from our place. They have all sorts of lovely yarn out of just about any material you can think of, and there's a nice old lady that runs the place and welcomes any questions. I went in yesterday and got some help and I was really impressed that she would sit down with me for ten minutes just to answer some questions and watch me knit.

So I'm giving her business a shameless plug. This is her website, where you can order products or get help with tricky patterns.


-Amy

Hot Stone Training

This weekend I got to go to a two-day course to get certified in hot stone massage. I figured it would be pretty relaxing, but what I didn't expect was to learn so much about injury treatment and triggerpoint therapy. Oh, and who knew that you can freeze stones and do cold stone therapy sessions as well?

As with any massage course, we got to do a lot of hours of trades on each other (after each lecture and demo), so I probably received about five hours of massage while I was there. That's a pretty good bargain for the money I paid for the class, and I of course also get the continuing education credits and the opportunity to do hot stone sessions at work and get paid a bit more per session.

For those of you who are not familiar with hot stone massage, I'll answer some questions you may be having right about now. Yes, we really do stick hot rocks between your toes like the picture above. No, we do not actually leave hot rocks just lying on your bare back like you see in every ad depicting hot stone massage; we have to keep many towels around to wrap hot stones in for that purpose. We do, however, use the stones to rub the oil into our clients. The heat helps melt the sticky points in fascia and muscle so the massage can get really deep with much less effort on the therapist's part. The ice helps set the newly-relaxed muscles in their stretched out state so the treatment lasts for much longer than a normal massage session.

Anyway, that was way more information that I'm sure any of you ever wanted to learn about rocks or massage, but as you can tell I'm feeling excited about learning a new modality. I had a good but exhausting weekend, and I'm SO glad I have a day off tomorrow so I can catch up on my sleep.

--Amy

A “Church Home” For Books

Last week Amy and I tried to find a good bookstore. Let me explain what I mean by that. When most Christians relocate they have to find a new church, a new “church home” they call it, where they can feel comfortable worshipping, socializing, and being preached to.

I guess if you follow the analogy through it's like we kinda worship books. We don't really, though we have a healthy fetish for them. To be clear, our fetish is more for the contents of books, not the objects themselves. We’re pretty conservative about how many books we buy and keep in the house.

Mainly, we love to browse, scope out the reading market, or just soak up the literary vibes while we work on our writing projects.

The Salt Lake City Borders store was our favorite haunt in Utah, but the one here turned out to be pretty different.

When I lived here before I used to spend a lot of time at the Borders. There, books were King. The coffee shop was nice with live music on Friday nights. The CDs and DVDs were tucked away under the mezzanine, and the store itself was set apart from the mall and the teeny-bopper crowd.

Not anymore.


The store’s been relocated to the heart of the mall, recently rennovated and expanded. Everything is now catered to the teeny-boppers with over-priced DVDs and swimsuit calenders everywhere you turn.

To coin a phrase, it sucked.

The nearby Barnes and Noble was okay, but only just. Set apart from the mall, it felt a lot better in there, but we’re still searching for the best place to go.

Seattle is a reading town with plenty of hole-in-the-wall places to check out, so we’ll see how it goes as we explore some of our other options.

-Tom.

Visit With Lorena

These pictures were actually taken about 2 weeks ago when Jeremy and Abby came into town for a visit, but I hadn't gotten the chance to post them yet. Lorena is getting big and doing great. We love to hold her when we get the chance; there's just something about the smell of a baby...



It always makes me giggle when I see Lorena's smile in this picture. Abby got a great shot!


-Amy

Living at the mall and other updates...

We've now been here in our new place for three weeks today, and we've been enjoying it much more than we expected. For those of you we haven't been good about updating about our situation here, I'll give you a little rundown...

My massage license went through just a few days after we got here, so we had just enough time to pull the household into some semblance of order before I started work on August 11th. Adjusting to my new commute time wasn't difficult in the least - it literally took me two minutes to get from our front door to the front door of the Massage Envy across the street (Some days it takes me a few minutes longer than that if the elevator or traffic light make me wait).

My boss told me to expect to be booked only about 50% for the first two weeks, but it's been more like 80-90%, and I just finished my second week. They keep me very busy and I love working there. I'm scheduled from 2-10pm Tuesday-Friday and 12-8pm on Saturdays. This schedule is about as different from our Utah schedule as we could get (the whole getting up at 4:30 in the morning thing REALLY wasn't my cup of tea, let me tell you!), but it's working well for us. Tom and I both are getting better sleep than we have in years!

Mid-day during the week we can be found at the gym downstairs enjoying the facilities and getting out our wiggles. They have really nice equipment as well as a hearty supply of freshly laundered towels and cold, filtered water. I've only accidentally stolen a towel once... but I took it back the next day. It really does feel like we live at a hotel! The pool should be finished any day now - just in time for it to close for the season, if we were still in Utah.

It's strange to be virtually living at the mall. We've walked around the shops here taking care of business and just checking things out, and it's certainly a different experience. There are always people around to observe and interesting things to see. We walked over to Lake Washington for the first time this past Monday as a day off treat. We kicked ourselves after we realized we had forgotten to bring the camera. It was a really nice day, and we felt grateful to be living here in such a beautiful place.

We got our new cell phone numbers this past week. If you would like those numbers or our new mailing address, just email me at amysgunn@gmail.com and I'd be happy to give them to you.

-Amy

Getting Comfortable 8/5/09

Well, the place is finally starting to look like a home. Our efforts at unpacking have turned the crushing mountain of boxes into inconvenient little islands of them.

Meanwhile, Amy and I have been loving where we live. I've told Amy we better plan on buying our own place next time we move. This brand new apartment is spoiling us, and I don't think we'll be able to rent another place again.

We've had the chance to try a few of the touted amenities. They have these great carts in the parking garage to help you get cargo from your car to your front door. Check it out!



The pool isn't open, but they're clearly working on it.



The gym is great! All the equipment works, the towels are fresh and plentiful, the water is cool and clean, and the sanitary wipes keep the whole experience from being disgusting.

The free Starbucks coffee is good, I'm sure, if the hot chocolate is any indication.



We rented a video from the leasing office the other day; a movie called Radio. Their selection was decent, but we're glad they're rotating it. The bottom line is we got to watch something we didn't own, and all it cost us was a trip down the hall.


Speaking of trips down the hall, taking out the garbage is a cinch. The room in the photo below is about ten feet down the hall from our front door.


I finally got my very own key fob for the elevators, making an incident like the other night less likely. The weather has finally cooled considerably, and Amy and I took a refreshing stroll last night to pick up a few things up at Target. It really is amazing how close everything is. The reality of our new pedestrian arrangement is still setting in.

The courtyard our place looks out on is very nice. Ours is the first apartment on the second floor on the building on the right. See, there's our fountain on the porch.


After much travail and struggle with Qwest tech support, I finally got the Internet up and running, which means I'm returning to work tomorrow.

Amy's received word today that everything is coming together for her massage license, so she should be working before the end of the month. What a relief!

All the puzzle pieces of our new lives here are falling into place, and the picture taking shape is looking better every day.

-Tom

Controlled Access 8/3/09

Living in a big building is certainly a new and interesting adventure. As we were moving in, my cousin Dave said the long empty hallways lined with doors reminded him of a Stanley Kubrik picture. My adventures getting lost (and worse) have made me feel like I'm in a bizarre movie myself.

The leasing office has a rotating library of DVDs which residents can check out. Not sure if the office had closed yet, I went over that way to look into it. I had to get in an elevator to get up to the office, but I soon found myself virtually trapped inside it. The office being closed, the elevator wouldn't take me up there. With access to residential areas being controlled, I couldn't get off the elevator either. I could only go down to the parking level, which was also controlled and kept me from getting to our car, or the elevator that would take me to our floor.

The parking area I ended up in has a keypad by the elevator that allows you to call a resident you're visiting to unlock elevator. The number it calls is actually my cell phone number . . . which was locked in the car.

I soon found myself outside the building, locked out, with no recourse but to ask a stranger for the use of their cell phone. I found a security guard on patrol. I explained my predicament, and borrowed his phone. It took several panicked tries, but I finally reached Amy, who has the only entry fob. She came out and rescued me.

On the bright side, we now know just how tough it is to get into this place if you don't belong here, or even if you do. Compared to our place in Midvale, it's sure a nice change, as long as I can avoid getting locked out again.

-Tom

A Moving Adventure 8/2/09

We're here!

That sentence sums up nicely how glad we are to finally have our move over with. We've been dreaming of living here in the Pacific Northwest almost since we were first married, and this last weekend, that slice of our dreams finally came true.

It felt like it would never happen. With so many hassles with Amy's massage license (which still aren't resolved), and so many other concerns and obstacles that got in our way, the whole thing sometimes felt like a pipe dream.

With faith, determination, and heroic assistance from both sides of the family, we made it.


Amy's packing superpowers combined with the brawny efforts of the Spaulding boys got our rented truck packed tighter than an Italian sausage. The drive was long and lonely as we had to go slow, and Amy had to drive the car behind me in a little convoy. Borrowed walkie-talkies helped keep us together and sane, but it was a long slog.

There's nothing like the feeling of coasting down a hill in one of those trucks with every earthly possession directly behind you, and only a thin layer of inflated vulcanized rubber between you and destruction. Mad, really, but I guess people do it every day.

We had a relaxing stop in Tri-Cities, WA to see our new niece Lorena and visit my sister Abby and her husband. Thanks to my Dad for the hotel points! That was a lifesaver.



When we arrived the next day, my brother John, my mom, and my cousins Dave and Steve all helped immensely. Seattle's been suffering record heat, but everyone pitched in to help anyway with little or no complaint. In fact, Dave and Steve had a ball pushing each other down the hallways on the furniture dolly. Not only did they help with their muscles, they lightened the mood and kept us all laughing.

Thanks to everyone for their kind support, time, and hard work in helping us get here.

-Tom

Goodbye, Utah!

Well, we're finally doing it after eight months of waiting. This Thursday we will be loading up our moving truck and then staying the night at Jeff and Crystal's place in Salt Lake. We will be getting up super early on Friday morning (probably in the neighborhood of 4 or 5 am) and getting on the road from there. We plan on spending the night in the Tri-Cities area on Friday night (eastern Washington). That way we can get cleaned up and - we hope - drop by to see our newest niece on Friday night before we shove off again early Saturday morning and make the rest of the trip to Renton.

Needless to say, we're extremely excited and anxious. We figured we wouldn't know when we were moving for sure until the last minute, but this was closer to the last minute than we thought it would be. We'll be packing a lot of boxes and doing a lot of organizing over the next couple of days, and Tuesday will be my last day working with Life Path.

We will probably be getting new phone numbers this week. We will try to get out an email blast as soon as we know what those numbers are (we already have our new address, but I don't especially want to post it here online where everybody can see - just call me paranoid).

We heard the Spaulding reunion was a big hit this week and were sorry we weren't able to attend. We plan on being there for the next reunion in two years for those of you who have asked.

I want to give a special thanks to my family who have let us stay with them for longer than any of us originally planned, and for all their help in seeing us off this week. I also want to thank Tom's family in advance for planning to help us on the other end. Thanks to all of you who hired me for last minute massages - it was great seeing you again, and every penny helps with a big move like this looming on the horizon.

-Amy

Lorena Maria Kidd - Welcome to the family!

Tom's sister Abby and her husband Jeremy are officially the parents of a new baby girl. We are thrilled to have another niece and look forward to spoiling her rotten once we get up to Washington!

They are planning to name her Lorena Maria Kidd. Although the papers are all signed and sealed, apparently it will be a week and a half before the birth parents can file the petition to terminate rights. Lorena is going to need to stay in the hospital another week or two since she was born so early, but she is doing well.



Both parents are deliriously happy, even if Abby's smile looks a little forced here!

Business and Pleasure

Tom and I made it up to Washington okay on Tuesday night. We had a nice relaxing day yesterday playing games and just hanging out with John and Janet, and I scoped out the area of my first interview while we were out for lunch. We went over to visit Grandma and Grandpa Fawcett at their not-so-new-but-new-to-us home here in Renton. They've lived there for about 3 1/2 years and we've never gone over to see them in their home for one reason or another. We stayed with them for a few hours and had a nice visit.

Today's interview was for the Massage Envy in Renton Landing.



The interview went really well and they offered me a job by the end. I'm extremely impressed with the owner and the way he operates his business - very different than other franchise locations. Whatever happens with my other interviews in Lacey and Woodinville tomorrow, I am thrilled to have a job if I choose to take it. This was a very successful trip, no matter how you look at it.

One of the wonderful things about Renton Landing is that it's an urban community complete with a Target, Fry's Electronics, many restaurants, shops and cell phone stores, banks, and of course the luxury apartments (which are by the way literally right across the street from the Massage Envy there). So we set up an appointment to visit the apartments today after my interview.

To put it lightly, I have NEVER IN MY LIFE seen such a fantastic apartment building. We certainly never thought we would be entertaining the idea of living in such a luxury setting, but the rent is not even that much more than we were paying in Midvale for our dump there. Here are some photos of the apartments - which come with a clubhouse, pool, hot tub with outdoor showers, no less than three or four free wi-fi spots, free coffee, tea and cocoa, a 24-hour workout room with fantastic equipment, etc., etc., etc...


Here's the outside of the building:
This is the floorplan we're looking at. It only has one bedroom, but everything is very open:
This is part of the clubhouse; one of the areas with free wi-fi. What a great place for Tom to do some writing if he has to get out of the apartment!


Another part of the clubhouse, also with free wi-fi. You'll notice the area in the back there is a full kitchen that residents can use, and invite guests as well:


Bedroom/bathroom. All of the walls have two-tone paint, so none of this boring white only stuff. The bathroom has a soaking tub, which is HUGE!


This is the gym, which is open 24-hours:
All of the units have a washer/dryer included in the unit:

I've got two more interviews tomorrow, and I'll post some sort of update afterward.

Tallinn - Latest Photo

I couldn't resist pulling this photo off of Matt and Deneal's family blog. This is our niece Tallinn, who is almost four months old now. Every time I see this picture I am blown away at how adorable she is. Matt and Deneal are in for a tough time, I think. How could they ever resist saying no to that face?

Changes

Since Tom and I first got married, we knew we probably wouldn't stay in Utah for the long term. As most of you know, we decided to make this year the time for moving on and moving away. There are many more opportunities for both of our careers in Washington state (and being close to most of Tom's family and the beach doesn't hurt either!), so we've been trying to get everything worked out so we can get up there. My massage license is taking much longer to process than I was originally told it would (I haven't been in school for 10 years, why would it have occurred to me that May would find the health department crammed with new graduates' licensing applications?), but the plan is still to get up there as soon as we can. Many of you have asked about our timeline, so here it is to our closest estimation:

July 8-12: We will be heading up to Washington for some massage interviews and spending a bit of time with family there. We aren't actually moving at this time, just making a quick trip to take care of business.

July 17: This will PROBABLY be my last day at work here in Utah, as long as the new estimate from the health department is correct and I am licensed and legal by then. My boss is being great and extremely flexible with me. She's letting me work as long as I can, so I'll get the chance to train the new therapist they just hired before I go.

July 17-25: We're hoping to be moving to Washington somewhere in here. We will probably be somewhere within an hour or so of Seattle, but until the job situation is settled, we're not even sure about that.

We're really excited about this change in our lives, although we will miss our friends and family here in Utah. We will keep everyone updated with our new address and phone numbers when we get them (yes, I'm actually going to change the phone number I've had for about 15 years!). I hope that after we finally get settled into our new place we can get back into the rhythm of keeping up our blog and living normal lives (okay, I don't think we EVER come too close to normal, but you know what I mean).

-Amy

Summer Graduates

Summer graduated from North Sanpete High on May 22. We sat up near the top of the bleachers where there was virtually no air flow as we watched the ceremony. Luckily the proceedings were pretty short so nobody went away with heat stroke




Summer will start school at SUU in Cedar City this August (where she has scholarships that will cover everything but her housing). She's planning to go into English/Drama teaching at a high school level. We're all very proud of her and hope her grand plans don't wear her out too much :P