A Little of This, Some More of That

I sure do miss this guy!

Ok, I have left my embarrassing story out there long enough. Now on to our latest adventures (and by latest I mean worth posting about).

My sister and her family came to visit us for the Easter weekend (I know that was a while ago). I have really missed this family, so I was thrilled to get to spend 5 whole days with them.

The family of six was our first over night guests here at the new and improved Denson Inn. I learned a lot during their visit.

The openness of the place is not conducive to drums, piano keyboards, and kids running all over the place all at the same time. Certain measures were taken in order to mitigate the noise after the first couple of hours they were here. Hide the plug to the keyboard, and tell the kids in order to play the drums, Paul's permission was needed. I wanted Paul present to hear the lovely soothing noises of drums throughout the house.

We also learned that our security system, Tomo, loved his little friends coming out on a regular basis to play/harass him in his back yard. He liked how easily it was to lick a face, and for the constant attention. I know many hours were spent just talking to Tomo.

(please don't judge my dirty windows... we do have a dog after all).

And most of all, we learned that we miss family! It so was fun to have family come stay with us and we look forward to many more visits to come.

Uncle Bob was right, since Paul and I moved to TX, he has seen a lot more family coming to Austin then ever before!

I will blame a job that actually makes me work, and our puppy's constant energy from keeping me from posting more on this thing. When I get home I usually play with Tomo, pick up the yard, play with him some more, fix dinner, and then depending on how worn out Tomo is, we go for a walk. Really that dang dog takes up a lot of our time.

So to avoid a dog story, here is an adventure from last weekend. Saturday morning I had to get some blood drawn. This required me to fast, so I decided to get it out of the way early in the morning because our Relief Society was having an activity later that morning (Yummy food was to be expected). After driving around the hospital and seeing that I would have to pay for parking (I think not), I decided to just park in an apartment complex nearby. Not knowing the location of the lab in the hospital, and as Murphy’s Law would have it, I ended up parking on the wrong side of the building.

After I got my blood drawn I decided to be adventurous and walk through the hospital and get to the other side without winding all around the outside of the building. I follow the exit signs believing that they will lead me to a true exit, but I am not that lucky (Again Murphy’s Law). Once I find what appears to be an exit, I notice on the door as I'm walking out the words, “These doors will lock behind you”. My brain tried to tell me to find another exit, but I could see the apartment complex where I parked from the door, and truly believed that the hospital wouldn’t be so cruel as to not provide a real exit.

I was mistaken. I found myself in what appeared to be a courtyard for the maintenance crew. There was no way of getting to the street because a huge wooden fence blocked my escape. The many doors that were leading back inside the hospital were all locked with the same mocking statement "These doors will lock behind you". So there I wandered trying all of the doors still having a smidgen of hope that the hospital knew stupid people like me would need an unlocked door to get back in through.

You know how you hope people aren’t around when you do something stupid like trip up stairs or squirt water out your nose? Well this time I would have gladly had 20 people laughing at me if it meant that one of them would open a stupid door for me!

I had a couple of options: Take a seat on the picnic table, and wait for someone to take a break (seeing as it was only 8 in the morning on a Saturday meant I would have to wait for someone needing a nicotine fix to let me in) or two, I could scale a fence. I am not a coordinated person so sitting and waiting for a door to open did seem to be the preferable option. But then again I was hungry and church functions always have good food, so my stomach won out.

There were two types of fences I could climb. One was your standard chain link fence, easy to climb if it weren’t for, all the pokey tips on top or the high voltage sign nearby. The other option was the wooden fence with very little hand holds to use.

How does one scale a fence and look casual while doing it? There was nothing casual or graceful about me getting to the other side that's for sure. It actually reminded me of a deer or a rabbit getting caught in a fence; there was a lot of thrashing and flailing and then once I was free I ran for my life.

Funny how the actual blood draw proved to be the least painful part of this story.

Paul and I decided that if you are going to go big, you might as well go out with a BANG. Not 18 hours after we signed our lives away for the house, we decided to add a puppy to our home. Why not right? We have a yard, we have two weeks of vacation, and we have warmer weather to stand outside and wait for the thing to do its business. Yes, you can definitely call us CRAZY!

Meet Tomo!

When we first got him we made a run to the pet supply place to find toys. We found this one toy with a rubber weight around a rope making it a excellent chew toy and tug of war device. Tomo loved it, and would shake his head really, really hard when playing with it making the weight hit his head. We thought it was hilarious and enjoyed the antics. While at the vet, However, they found hematoma's in both of his ears. I guess it is the equivalent of a boxer with cauliflower ears... too many punches to the head. The ears swell from the bruising and it takes a long time to heal. Tomo doesn't seem to be in any pain, although I think he misses the dangerous toy we took away from him. The vet said we could choose surgery to fix the hemotomas , but she also said doing nothing won't hurt Tomo either. Either way he will have some scarring. He will still be cute enough even with cauliflower ears. So now we call him HemaTomo, not to his face of course…jk

Tomo (Japanese for Friend) has proven to be a very loyal dog. We try to take him out to the drainage field by our house every night/ morning and let him off his leash. He runs ahead of us but is always very quick to return and keep his eye on us.

Tomo is still very much a puppy so there are a lot of "no's" and "ouches" coming from our yard, but he has still managed to win us over.

Look at that face? Who couldn't love that?

For most people a new house would be enough...

Right before Thanksgiving I received calls for three job interviews.

Back in September I had turned in 6 applications to the Texas Department of Public Safety for emergency management positions, and had only received 1 rejection letter. When I had word that I had three interviews, I felt like one of them had to pan out.

The first interview was for a grants coordinator position. It had been posted for a couple weeks and they kept pushing back the application deadline (I can only assume it was because they didn't have enough applications). I had been on the lookout for EMA jobs and I kept passing on this particular job because I wanted to do something different like work with disasters. In the end I sent in my application as "why not" gesture.

The other two jobs were right down my alley. They were in the disaster recovery section of EMA and they would be dealing with individuals needing assistance and local governments after a disaster. Lots of mucking around in the disaster field and even helicopter rides to boot. According to my interview board, Texas leads the nation in the number of disasters declared, making these two jobs very appealing.

Fast forward two weeks. I get job offers for all three positions! If I had only been offered one position it would have been easier since any EMA job was better than my date stamping mail mediocre job. But to have to decide multiple offers was a challenge. I am truly humbled that I even had this opportunity to pick between all three, and I have faith that I picked the right one.

As I was interviewing for the disaster jobs, the panel asked how I felt about traveling. I told them I was fine with that because I understood that disasters didn't just happen weekdays 9-5 in Austin, TX. They then asked how I felt about extended travel for months at a time. I guess even after the hurricanes here in Texas last year the Texas operations center is still open. Right now the OC is located in Austin, but with other disasters across the state, that might not always be the case. My heart immediately sank. I think I knew right then that I couldn't accept the disaster jobs if they were extended to me.

In the end I accepted the Grants Coordinator position. At first I was put off by the grant thing, but the more I looked at it the more I realized that I did have a lot of satisfaction with my grant work in Laramie (come to think of it, I was also put off of going to the University of Wyoming 10 years ago, and look how that turned out). I know this is where Heavenly Father wants me to be, and I am glad He gave me the opportunity to choose. Besides, I kinda like Paul and I kinda like all the time we get to spend together.

So starting January 5th, I began my position at the State Administrative Agency of the Governor's Division of Emergency Management, as a Grants Coordinator (Luckily for me I don't have to answer the phone like that!). Wish me luck!