It's the Final Countdown

Three long years ago, we learned that Daniel was going to be relocated from working in Hollywood, Alabama to two hours north in Spring City, Tennessee. We knew it was coming, but it still turned our world upside down. We spent eight months living out of suitcases, in and out of hotels and vacation homes during the week, until finally settling into our current home on Signal Mountain.

We both felt strongly that we made the right choice in regard to the location of our new home, but we knew it would be a difficult journey – Daniel's new position promised long hours, with a 70-minute commute each way. We were told the job would last about a year, so we hoped and prayed for the best.

To say it's been a hard experience would be an understatement. Jack went through a phase where he didn't believe that Daniel lived at our house. Which was kind of true. For months on end, Daniel worked 6-7 days a week, and sometimes weeks at a time without a day off. The hours were long. The commute was long. I felt like a single mom. We experienced a miscarriage in the middle of this trying time, and did our best to hold it together. Thankfully Isaac was born into our family a year later, but Daniel continued to struggle with having to work so much. He loved what he was doing but the long hours definitely took a toll on all of us.

Every night we say bedtime prayers with Jack and we would all pray that Daniel would get a job closer to home. It was excruciating when Jack began to put a voice to the things we were all feeling... Why hasn't God answered our prayers? Why does daddy still work so far away? Why is daddy gone all the time? Why can't daddy be home with us more?

As adults, we have experience on our side. This isn't our first rodeo. We have prayed and waited through difficult things in the past. It's much harder to explain to a child that life is full of waiting.

Most people have heard our news by now, but we are still excited! Daniel FINALLY got a new job. I won't go into how many positions he applied for, it's too demoralizing. But our prayers have been answered.

Daniel is staying with his same company but moving to corporate headquarters to join the Dam Safety team. This will be a big change from Nuclear, but the benefits for our family are beyond what we had hoped for.

Daniel's company is notorious for being slow at hiring people (even internally), so we were shocked to learn less than two weeks after his interview that he had a job offer. The company was still slow in making the transition (he got the offer when we were on vacation last month), but Daniel is FINALLY finishing his last week of work at Watts Bar! 

I don't think we will know what to do with ourselves starting next week. A 40-ish hour work week, with a 20-minute commute? What does that even look like? How do people function with all of that extra time? We CANNOT wait to find out for ourselves!!!
 

We Have a Date

We actually found out earlier this week that Daniel has received all of his security clearances. We are so very thankful for this news. They gave him the option to start on February 15 or March 1. We are opting to go with the latter. We are hoping to get the house on the market this coming week and Lord-willing, we will have an offer before he has to leave.

I can't tell you how grateful I am that he is able to start later. I was not (am not) ready for him to leave me here alone for an indefinite period of time. I know we will get through whatever we need to, but we are hoping that the separation will not have to last long.

Crazy Week

It seems like life always seems to be at one end of the pendulum or the other. In recent weeks I have had very little to work to do at work. But then this past week hit with a vengeance. Thankfully I prefer the craziness of having too much to do verses having little to do.

The week started with wrapping up the August issue of Inventors Digest. With the editor out of town, this made things tricky. I had some last minute craziness with Photoshop corrupting a good portion of my images as well as some other occurrences of Murphy's Law coming into play.

On top of that we have been preparing to pitch campaign ideas to March of Dimes (MOD) this coming Tuesday. As a group, this has meant extra meetings to hone in on the three best ideas and then more work to continue to tweak those ideas. The concepts are the MOD equivalent to the Red Dress Campaign for the American Heart Association... except our campaign revolves around awareness of what MOD is doing to make sure every baby is born healthy. Hopefully the presentation will go well and we will get the project.

I am also working on rebranding a non-profit organization called Harvester's International Ministries (HIM). They connect churches with indigenous missionaries in Africa and India. I am very excited to be working on this project. I have a presentation to them this coming Thursday so this week looks like it will be hectic as well. Like I said, I would rather be busy that not.

This weekend we are continuing work on the shower. We are on phase three - installing a Kerdi liner. Once this sets up we can start tiling... probably next weekend at the earliest.

Busy... busy... busy...

So I am procrastinating. I have a ton of work to do, but I am sitting here, catching up on facebook instead.

I have a powerpoint presentation to create for one of the partner's in my company to pitch at an investor's meeting at 10 a.m. Monday morning. I have midterm tests to create for the three classes that I teach. AND I also have a freelance project that I am doing for a friend... I really had not anticipated being this busy.

It is a good thing that I love what I am doing, because I constantly seem to be doing something.

Everyday Edisons Weekend

The past 3 days have been a bit of a blur - was I really just in San Jose, California??? I actually had a really good time at the Everyday Edisons casting call and feel very well bonded with all of my co-workers.

As you might have read in my last note, this past Friday, 40 of us headed out of Charlotte, NC for San Jose, CA for the second of 5 casting calls for Season Three of Everyday Edisons.

This was my first one, so I really wasn't sure what to expect. I ended up doing a little of everything. I spent the morning taking pictures - my favorite was an inventor who was dressed like Elvis. I also spent time being a runner - this means taking paperwork from people who made it through round 1 down to our attorneys to make sure that patents were in order and that there was no legal issues. Following this I spent time with the attorneys helping them catch up on paperwork. I spent time being a gopher. And in the afternoon until early evening, I helped in the studio where approved contestants were filmed on a set with the final judges.

I really enjoyed the whole process. I was able to help in a lot of different ways as well as talking with all of the inventors. I would love to share some of the ideas (both good and bad) but I am not sure if I can or not...so I will hold off for now.

I had an excellent time. Yesterday was a 12+hour work day so I was pretty tired. Today was another travel day and I am wiped out, but happy to be home. Just wish I had a little more time to explore San Jose.

Next month we are off to Dallas, TX...

My Exhausting Day

I am in San Jose, California and feeling very out of it. This morning started with a 4:30 a.m. wake up followed by a quick shower and hurrying to the airport.

Leaving Charlotte was uneventful. Connection flight in Dallas proved more exciting. Our flight had problems. We waited an extra hour. The plane was fixed. We boarded. Then were told the problem was not fixed and to deboard. More waiting followed. Finally we got a new plane and were on our way to San Jose - a couple of hours behind schedule.

Once in San Jose, we made our way to our hotel. Which is incredibly nice and in the heart of SJ. We had a little while to check-in before reconvening to go to the convention center to set up for tomorrow.

After setting up for the casting call for Everyday Edisons, we had more free time before a 7:00 (PST) dinner. Dinner was at a little Italian place that we rented for all 40 of us. Lets just say it was a little small and I am sure we were breaking plenty of fire codes.

It is now 8:20 p.m. Pacific time and I am about to drop dead because it is 11:20 p.m. Charlotte time and I have now officially been awake for 19.5 hours.

Conditioning

In the past three weeks I have come to realize something about myself and it is not pretty. The reason I left my job over one year ago to pursue freelancing had a lot to do with how poorly my direct manager treated me.

Now, one year later, I am working for an amazing company and I am just starting to realize the impact of working for a crappy boss. There have been so many times over the last couple of weeks, where my new manager has said, "Hey, Cheree, when you get a chance, I need to speak with you."

My first response to this statement is to panic and try to wrack my brain to see what I did wrong. Then I am in shock when my manager has a simple request or wants to praise me for something. Or is just understanding of the fact that I have never done something before and wants to point me in the right direction.

I hate the fact that I allowed another person dictate how I respond to people or things.

I generally consider myself to be a confident person, but this is new territory for me. I had no idea that I had been conditioned to respond in such a negative manner.

I am so thankful that I am no longer with my previous company and even more thankful to be with a company that cares about its employees and wants to work to make everyone stretch and grow as much as possible.

Still Adjusting

I am still adjusting to the craziness of my new work schedule, but I am loving everything that I am doing. I really love teaching - but the prep work has proven to be very time consuming. I think if I teach another semester, if will definitely be more enjoyable and less time consuming outside of school.

Working at Enventys has been great. I am learning new things and being able to contribute to such a creative group is a blast. I feel very blessed to have both of these opportunities.

Being able to play wii at work or use IM as a form of communication with my co-workers is also nice.

Next weekend almost everybody from work is headed to San Jose, CA for a casting call for Everyday Edisons... maybe in the future I will get to go on the casting calls as well.

First Full Week

This week has flown by. Some parts are a little overwhelming and having a cold has not helped, but overall I am very excited about the future.

I have a lot of stretching to do. The most overwhelming task that I feel the least equipped for is our product-naming sessions. We have had two so far and we are all expected to show up with lists of possible names for new products that are in the lineup. This is an area that I definitely need to work on and hopefully will get better at this with time.

My cold is easing, but it has been no fun to have a head cold all week. Hopefully I will get over it this weekend.

I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend... after I clean the house and go buy groceries.