Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Fleeting Moments

Auntie writes:

As much as I absolutely love cheese filling, I need, desire, want, crave something new on your blog. When you have a moment away from the kids, motherhood, the husband, life, fill us in on your fabulous adventures at the convention, motherhood, life, savings, sex (wait, you're married), etc.

Sorry. It's been REALLY busy around here.

So mid-January Hubby gets to change departments. It's a good move, and one that's better for us money-wise. But he spent a week in Oregon training for the new position toward the end of January. That went well, but as he's getting ready to leave he gets postponed a day due to weather.

Meanwhile, I got a free trip to San Diego courtesy of Sony Online Entertainment. I know this is my Real Life blog, and I don't usually let my online gaming life into it, but in this case the two merged. SoE held a Community Summit, where members of their games' community and fan sites are invited down to give first-hand feedback on issues important to SoE. I've had a write-up in the works for this for, oh, two weeks, but the fact is it was incredibly well covered by Coyote and RadarX over at Ten Ton Hammer (as well as many other great folks). Let's just say that the SoE employees are possibly some of the happiest people I've ever met. You can really tell that they love their jobs, and they work their backsides off. If was an honor to be invited, and a privilege to meet everyone.

Nana actually came to Fairbanks to watch the kids for us for two days while I was gone, which was very nice. She was coming up to visit anyway, and she never gets to see the kids, so I think everyone won on that front.

That brings us up to Feb 4.

The morning of February 5 we get up and Kiddo is falling down all the time. His right leg won't support weight. There's no visible trauma or other symptoms, so the doctor fears a bone infection or something equally scary. Many x-rays and bone scans later, we determine that there's nothing wrong with the leg, he just banged the heck out of it on the 4th. It was a lot of panic for what turned out to be nothing, but I'm glad we checked it out.

Meanwhile, I had been working for a website called EQ2Flames. (Sensitivity Warning: There's no profanity filter on Flames, and people are quite blunt about speaking their opinions. Don't click if you're sensitive to strong language.) As a matter of fact, it was through Flames that I got my Summit invite. I got an offer to work at EQ2 Allakhazam, which is a very different type of fansite than Flames, and they offered me enough money to send Kiddo to preschool. So I changed sites. LFG, the owner of Flames, was extremely cool about it despite not being fond of 'Zam.

The next week we finally signed the refinance on our mortgage, which has been in the works since the first week of January. This refi wasn't entirely our idea: we had one of those old ballooning adjustable mortgages and our lender was getting rid of them. Since we're hoping to buy a house before the kids go to college it was a nice "dry run" for the mortgage-lending experience. Our credit is in good shape, the amount left on the note isn't large, so we actually lowered our interest rate and our monthly payment.

I'm actually having to refer to a calendar here... that was the 13th.

Valentine's Day I fed the kids early and hubby and I ate together without them, in front of a movie, all by ourselves! Pure luxury! (That's as close as you're getting to the sex part, Auntie.)

That Friday Hubby had a 3 day weekend. To understand the extreme significance of that you need to know that in his previous position he had split days off, and his new position rotates Saturdays: he works a 5-day, then a 6-day, then a 4-day week. We spent all of Friday the 16th doing major running around that had been hard to get to recently (I can't exactly run get his hair cut for him).

The 18th we actually had nothing happen. At all.

The 19th Hubby's vehicle attempted to die. We're pretty certain this is because we're getting a nice tax refund this year - as Nana says, never tell your vehicle you've got extra money. That was a $700 fix. Immediately after we got it home, it lost 3rd gear. Erg. Pretty much all the budget clearing we've done while we were really broke (and the rest of the tax return) is going to getting another vehicle, because the fix is more than the truck is worth. This is one of those cases where you save money by spending money. $200 a month is less than a $4000 repair. We're playing the one-car family game now, but since I stay home it's only a big inconvenience, not a problem.

That bring us up to right now. Kiddo's gone to bed (although he just interrupted me for a glass of water), Baby is falling asleep on my lap. Iron Maidens is playing at a local club (The Blue Loon) and hubby went to see them (the Loon's shows are usually really affordable). I'm going to go play some Everquest 2.

I'll try to update more often, Auntie!

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