I am still alive

Sorry for not posting recently but I've had quite a bit going on. Starting a new job, going on vacation, coming back and returning to work, buying a house, severe weather, AND moving into the aforementioned house. Add in one huge surprise here in the last few days and (needless to say) life has been crazy recently. I've shunted some of the lower priority items waaaaaaaay down the list. Such as this blog...

Anyway, the job is pretty much the same as it was when I was up north; forecasting the weather with a few additional duties involved. What are the new duties you ask? Well, I get to decide who/if we need people to stay thus I have the power of granting overtime/comp time. I also now have signature authority for our managerial staff if they are unavailable and the others who have more tenure than I are not here. And I guess the fact that I can chose how to distribute shift duties also comes in nice. This is definitely a position that as one of my friends put it: "You are the first one that gets blamed if something goes wrong and the first one that gets praise if things go well". And I am still having problems adjusting to being called "Senior" Forecaster. I'm not THAT old...

Vacation was nice; we headed up to South Fork, Colorado for some much needed fishing and relaxation time. Unfortunately I was playing around with my camera and left it on the wrong setting so quite a few of the pictures didn't turn out like I wanted them to. I did manage to see how well my camera can take pictures of the Milky Way and stars in general however. As for fishing, Dad and I ended up at Poage Lake which is located at around 11,700 ft and caught our limit of trout for the day (including my 15" lake trout!) while scaring my family and Jill to death at the same time. You see, we were only supposed to go find the lake and then go back to the house for lunch. However, the fish were teasing us and we ended up staying there for 6 hours. Mom was about ready to call the police when we came down the mountain and finally had cell phone reception...oops! Our time was well spent; the fish were mighty tasty and I've learned how to grill fresh trout.

Back here in the South Plains - I did finally close on a house and the movers came a week ago to unload and unpack all my stuff. The day before I was supposed to have Suddenstink Suddenlink come and establish my cable. This fiasco started when the person pulled up to the house, never got out of the car, and then drove off. When I called customer support, they said that the service tech tried calling the house (NOT!) and with no answer he left. Upon informing them that I was there and gave them the number of the truck that came by, they said it was their error and that they would fix the problem...a WEEK LATER! And then they claim that my cable modem is a rental (I bought that thing 5 years ago), it is overdue, and that they are going to send my account to a collection agency. I'm about ready to be done with them and switch over to DSL. (Rant mode off). ANYWAY, mom came into town for a couple of days to help organize things and did an outstanding job; I've actually got room to move around now. Also, a H U G E thanks to my friends the C's for keeping some of my lawn care items and bringing them down this past weekend. Besides bringing me those items, it is always good to spend time with such good friends. (Post Edit - Suddenlink came and got everything hooked upa. However, my cable modem was fried so you guessed it: I had to buy one from Suddenlink. What a racket...)

And then there has been the weather. Two weeks ago we had 6 days of rain around the region and we netted about 7 inches at the office. Fortunately, the Hub City has been doing some drainage work on my side of town and there weren't nearly the problems there used to be. Yes, drivers still were idiots but at least they didn't have to deal with whole roads underwater; just a couple of intersections had deep water. I had nearly forgotten what heavy rain was like up north; we just didn't get it very often. The only bad news was that I found out my Exploder has a couple of leaks around the doors as the weatherstripping is old and not sealing the door as tight as it used to. If I didn't need to get that 7" lift, 37" tires, new rear axle, SYE, and other goodies for my Jeep, I might consider a new...meaning used...pickup. We'll see.

To close things out on a really high note, there was a surprise that totally came out of left field. My girlfriend had been trying to find a job here in the South Plains and had resigned to keeping her job down in southeast Texas for another year. However, she received a surprise call asking if she was still interested in a teaching job in this neck-of-the-woods. After dealing with an idiot apartment complex, still dealing with the previous employer, and a quick move, she has arrived here in my town and is trying to get settled all while starting a new job. Be praying for her because she is under just a little bit of stress right now and my shift-work schedule certainly doesn't help matters either.

Awlrightythen...time to get back to getting the last of the boxes unpacked and finding all the various nooks and crannies to put stuff!