So, this weekend is a bit interesting. My company sent me (or rather, let me go) to an all-expense paid seminar put on by Price about air distribution, particularly some alternative delivery methods, and sound control. I left Thursday morning at 7:05 AM from Burbank, and will get back tonight (Friday) at 8:40 PM.
Now, that’s not really that abnormal, but this weekend is the Budlong company picnic, which happens to be two nights at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas (on the company), including a dinner at Planet Hollywood. Now, that’s Saturday and Sunday nights, meaning that after I get home from Phoenix in the wee hours of the night, I get to get up early-ish and drive to Las Vegas by 3 PM for our check in time.

In other news, more manufacturers should send me to seminars, feed me, give me free clothes, and douse me in free alchohol.

I, honestly, have never been so impressed by society’s potential for butchering names–that they are looking at–as I am today. Not only is my car deeded to Andrew and Molly Wilkerson (a fiasco that is still being worked out with Austin), today I received my new Health Insurance cards… for Andrew Williman and Molly Williams. Now, I’ve seen a lot of ways to misspell Wilkinson (the HR officer at my previous job even misspelled it “Wilkonson” on the resignation form), but Williman and Williams are new on me.

What bothers me isn’t that they get the names wrong… that’s an honest mistake. What bothers me is that they’ve got the correct spelling sitting right in front of them and they still get it wrong. Honestly, on something as important as a pink slip or a heath insurance card, doesn’t the spelling bear a second glance?

So, I’ve just finished up the first half of my third week working here at Budlong & Associates, Inc. As I mentioned on the Other Blog, I’ve worked here before, in a lesser capacity: then I was a drafter, now I am a designer. In reality, however, my duties are very similar to what I was doing right before I left in ’01. I have a few more responsibilities, but for the most part, I design (more than I used to), draw, and fix computers all day long (that last feature seems to be one of my more popular traits).

My boss tells me that he wants me to learn all three disciplines: Mechanical (HVAC), Electrical, and Plumbing, and all I can say is that I hope the electrical work doesn’t resemble Electrical Engineering collegiate work at all. I have it on good authority, however, that neither Sam nor Harold have touched KCL or KVL since they graduated, so I’m hopeful.

All in all, the new job is great. The people are fun, the location is good, and the work is challenging without being hard, and rarely menial.

In other news, Mollie and I are almost completely moved in to our new home, and very few boxes remain. The flat has a great kitchen (better than or equal to any kitchen in a house I’ve lived in), and even though it’s small and wallpapered, it has a certain “cuteness” about it, I’m told. Mollie keeps herself busy working out, scrapbooking with her sister, and generally being productive around the flat, and if you twist her arm properly, she might even post about her experiences some. We also take a lot of walks, under the pretense of keeping me in shape.

Today, I’m driving up to Santa Susanna, to visit Rocketdyne, of NASA repute. In the last decade, the facility has gone from belonging to Rockwell, to Boeing, and now to Pratt-Whitney, but back in the day, they made/tested rockets for much of the space program at the facility. They might still, in fact, I’m not too sure.

So, we’re back in Camarillo, and mostly settled into our (somewhat smaller) apartment. It’s not really much smaller than our apartment in Longview, but we’re pretty sure that the majority of the size difference was in the bedroom closet (in Longview we had a big walk-in closet, here we have a little thing with two sliding doors that make it impossible to organize, as Mollie has pointed out to me). As a result, we’ve got some boxes still here and there, but by and large things are coming together nicely to make it a nice living space for us, at least for the time being.

In other news, things out here are just weird. So many things that I remember from growing up here, and now I’m trying to sort them into their places in my new life, which is really completely different from my life in Longview, and a far cry entirely from my life in Camarillo before I left for school. As I said in “Life and Times…” on Isqua Istari, it’s not bad, it’s just weird, and it’s a lot of change. Change is good, or so they say, but it can be trying (and tiring), and we’re kind of still waiting for something to actually feel “normal” again.I start work at Budlong & Associates on Monday… more on that when it happens. 😉

If you want some pictures, feel free to check out the rest:

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This post is a little late, owing to the fact that when we got here yesterday, we were very busy and had some visitors. We are, however, home at our place in Camarillo, CA, busily unpacking our boxes and making the place a home, instead of a storage place with a lot of cardboard lying around. 🙂

We finished our trek yesterday just after 4 PM, PDT, and have been very grateful to my dad, my brother Matthew, Dave Twigg (friend and landlord), and Mollie’s family for their help with moving in yesterday, and especially to my dad and grandfather for driving out to Texas to help us pack and move.

More to come later!