{"id":1689,"date":"2009-06-27T01:16:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-27T07:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/27\/massive-update-2\/"},"modified":"2011-05-09T01:24:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T07:24:20","slug":"massive-update-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/massive-update-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Massive Update!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"border: 1px solid black; padding: 3px;\"><strong>Originally published at <a href=\"http:\/\/lalato.com\/wp\/?p=820\">Kickin&#8217; the new Kuh-nowledge<\/a>. You can comment here or <a href=\"http:\/\/lalato.com\/wp\/?p=820#comments\">there<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s been like 5 months since I had enough time to think, much less post anything substantive to the good olde series of tubes more commonly known as the internets.\u00a0 Well, I lot has happened in that 5 months.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s a quick rundown (with bullet points for <strong>emphasis<\/strong>)&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The puppy is now 7 months old.\u00a0 She&#8217;s big, but she was the runt of her litter so while she&#8217;s big, her siblings are actually much bigger.\u00a0 Kiko, the pug, had his 8th birthday recently.\u00a0 He&#8217;s due to have some tooth surgery, but is otherwise healthy.\u00a0 Lilith, the cat is going crazy, but that&#8217;s normal.<\/li>\n<li>How sly of me to post about the pets before getting to the really big news.\u00a0 Liz, my lovely wife, decided several months ago that things weren&#8217;t working out in her PhD program at Illinois.\u00a0 She did some soul searching and decided that a clean break was best.\u00a0 She needed to find a program that worked for her, and more importantly, she needed to find one where she could have a mentor.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Long story short, Liz opted to apply to the U of Utah in Salt Lake City.\u00a0 She was accepted and she starts this fall.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m glad that last bit got your attention.\u00a0 I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re wondering what I was wondering.\u00a0 This is not the best economy for Sam to go move cross country.\u00a0 What&#8217;s he going to do?\u00a0 And what about the house?\u00a0 This is the point in time where I must explain to you that there is a world of fairy tales.\u00a0 In this world of fairy tales things like serendipity, fate, and good luck mysteriously intertwine to make for all the happily everafters we often dream about.\u00a0 I could be cruel and say&#8230; &#8220;This is not one of those stories.&#8221;\u00a0 Well, cruel isn&#8217;t the right word for it because it would be a lie.\u00a0 This is in fact one of those stories.<\/li>\n<li>One day, out of the blue, my boss calls me and explains to me that my talents are underused in the Chicago office.\u00a0 Well that certainly piqued my interest because I thought the next sentence was going to be something like&#8230;\u00a0 and it seems we wouldn&#8217;t be needing your talents at all.\u00a0 You see we&#8217;ve had a few layoffs in the last year, and I thought my number might have been up.\u00a0 Instead, he explained that my talents would be better used in the Circulation Systems department.\u00a0 Not only that, but things had already been arranged and my new boss would be calling me with the details.\u00a0 I was sitting on pins and needles for a week until I spoke with my new boss, but the bottom line was better than I could have ever hoped.\u00a0 My new job wouldn&#8217;t require that I report to any particular office.\u00a0 I could, in fact, work from just about anywhere I wanted to.\u00a0 Sure, it would be nice if it was close to an office, but I could even work from home.\u00a0 I think you&#8217;re starting to see the fairy tale now.<\/li>\n<li>Around the same time, Liz and I decided to test the market and try to sell the house.\u00a0 We didn&#8217;t use a realtor.\u00a0 Instead we hired an attorney to handle the paperwork, then we listed our house on Craigslist.\u00a0 Yes, Craigslist.\u00a0 Within a month we had an offer on the house.\u00a0 Yeah&#8230; something like fate might be at work here.\u00a0 Initially, the offer was really good and we thought we might actually make a little money on the house.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the arcane art of house appraisals put the kaibosh on that.\u00a0 Sure, we&#8217;ll lose a little money, but considering the kind of money that people are losing on their houses these days&#8230;\u00a0 our $2K loss (from the price we paid, and doesn&#8217;t include money we put into the place) doesn&#8217;t seem so bad.\u00a0 Well, even fairy tales have their harrowing moments.<\/li>\n<li>So&#8230; on the second week of June, Liz and I, Liz&#8217;s old friend Shannon, and our pets got into the Penske truck and made our way west to Salt Lake City.\u00a0 It was a fun trip that was only slightly marred by the sad news about the house appraisal.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re moving cross country, I highly recommend the Penske truck.\u00a0 Cheaper than U-Haul and the truck was pretty spacious (we were able to fit our lives into a 16&#8242; truck).\u00a0 As an aside, I would like to thank everyone that helped us pack.\u00a0 We couldn&#8217;t have done it without you.\u00a0 Even if all you did was come over and hang out for a few minutes.\u00a0 It was great to have the moral support.<\/li>\n<li>A couple of months ago, I happened to make online friends with Madeline Boudreaux, an SLC local.\u00a0 If she didn&#8217;t know it before, she now has a friend for life.\u00a0 When Liz, Shannon and I arrived in Salt Lake City, Madeline offered to help us move our stuff into our new place.\u00a0 She enlisted her partner, Paul, who is a pro at this sort of thing.\u00a0 Well, with their help (and some very nice neighbors too) we were able to unload the truck in record time.\u00a0 Now that&#8217;s what I call a great welcome.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s the big news.\u00a0 Liz and I are now in Salt Lake City.\u00a0 We&#8217;re still unpacking.\u00a0 Sorry for the super long rambling post, but it was the only way to get everything out.\u00a0 If you know something about Salt Lake City, please share it.<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah&#8230;\u00a0 it&#8217;s really nice to live in the same city as my partner in life and love.\u00a0 I knew our situation was tough before, but now that I&#8217;m out of it, I can see it for the hell it truly was.\u00a0 There may be some aspects of Salt Lake City that I probably won&#8217;t like, but I can deal with that if it means I don&#8217;t have to make that long ass drive each week.<\/p>\n<p>Hugs, Kisses and All That!<br \/>\n&#8211;sam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published at Kickin&#8217; the new Kuh-nowledge. You can comment here or there. Well, it&#8217;s been like 5 months since I had enough time to think, much less post anything substantive to the good olde series of tubes more commonly known as the internets.\u00a0 Well, I lot has happened in that 5 months.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,4,15,16],"tags":[138],"class_list":["post-1689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-town","category-pets","category-travel","category-work","tag-salt-lake-city-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689\/revisions\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}