Today I got paid for the first time by my new employer. They pay monthly (like my employer two employers ago) rather than every two weeks (like my previous employer). Given the transition time, that meant more than a month since the last full paycheck. Plus Brandy was not ever able to go back to work after New Year’s because her back just would not allow it. So she was not getting paid either.

(Had I not mentioned that? We had tentitively planned on her quitting in February to concentrate on getting the house ready for sale anyway, but when it got to the point where she had missed three weeks of work and there was no end in sight as she still couldn’t be up for more than an hour or two at a shot, she went ahead and told them she was not coming back… at this point, more than a month after her back got aggrivated, she is once again mostly functional, but still not to the point where she could do 8 hours a day at a desk job.)

Anyway, this last month was pretty tight because of the paycheck gap. But more so, the last two years were almost always tight because first in 2004 there was the one month gap between jobs that time around, then there were extensive moving expenses that were paid out of pocket and only later reimbursed, then there was savings for the down payment on the house, then there were moving in expenses at the new house (and many other things needed at the new house like washing machines and furniture and such) and then that is about when (cough) issues started happening with the inflows of cash being significantly less than had been planned on, and then there was a huge tax payment (because I had underwithheld in 2004) and then there were (cough) even more issues with getting even less cash inflow (significantly less once again) than expected… etc. So really, things have been in one way or another, to one degree or another, “tight” since about February 2004. I of course blame this 95% or more on what I was coughing about above. We were budgeted (primarily meaning our choice of which house to buy) in a way that was fine for what was promised, but which was barely sustainable with what was actually delivered, which was very significantly less.

As of this morning for the first time in essentially two years, I feel like I can breathe some… We can’t go crazy. We’ll be paying both rent and utilities for me in Washington, and mortgage and utilities for Brandy and Amy in Florida for the next five to six months. So expenses for the short term will be much higher than what will eventually be “normal”. But there is enough to deal with that and with a few things (like a new computer) that have been delayed for years now.

We’ll still have to plan and be careful (not TOO many large discretionary purchases… me ordering the new computer to replace my five year old G4 Powerbook will probably the only one short term) but for the first time in it seems like ages, we won’t be worrying about the small purchases, and if we can even afford to order a pizza without putting us at risk of not making the mortgage. Or having to go to the coin star to make sure there was enough to pay for food for the week. Or having to get loans from family or friends to pay for needed household maintenance that could not be put off. It hasn’t been exactly THAT tight the entire time, but it definately was more than a few times.

It is good… VERY good… to be able to breathe a bit again.

This field trip was almost a year ago, but Amy just got around to posting some pictures and her captions a few weeks ago. Then she threw in some random pictures from more recently as well. It’s posted at my .Mac site since that was easiest for her to do quickly. In any case, here it is.

“VIEWING” MEMORIES

A FEW MEMORIES SAVED FOR ME AND OTHERS. TO BAD YOU WEREN’T THERE TO SEE THEM UP AND PERSONAL .

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six….

Treo number six (the first 650 rather than 600) jumped in the pool then recovered then jumped in a bucket of mop water, then mostly recovered.

But it was indeed a “mostly recovered” it would periodically reset itself randomly. And that seemed to be getting more and more frequent, and sometimes it would just lock up completely and need to have the battery taken out and put back in to go again. With all the resetting every few minutes it was draining battery very quickly and I was missing calls. This is all probably because when I let it dry after the mop, I only let it dry a few days, rather than a couple weeks like after the pool incident. All the instructions about drying phones that get wet say you really do have to allow a couple of weeks to get everything completely dry (especially when you can’t completely disassemble it). When I turned it back on there was still visible water in the screen. Oops.

Anyway, I lived with that for almost two months, but this is why I now have the cheap insurance that Sprint offers with their phones for a few bucks a month on your monthly bill. Eventually (about a week and a half ago) I decided that enough was enough, and it was time. A single phone call and a $50 deductible later and a new (refurbished) Treo 650 was on the way. Over the weekend when I was back in Florida I switched over. So I am now on Treo Number Seven.

By the time this one is, um, done, maybe the Treo 700p will be out. (I have no interest in the Treo 700w). We shall see. I shall try to avoid pools and buckets of mop water for the moment.

One more post for today though. Yesterday (Friday) just as I was getting up, Brandy called me to let me know that Nacho had died overnight. Narcho was a very old budgie. When I first got her she was already a number of years old and had a big fatty tumor. She refused to eat when I first got her she spent two of her first three weeks with me at the vet. But then she got better, and she did well. I’m not even 100% sure when it was that I got her, but I suspect that the year started with a 1 instead of a 2. OK, I just looked it up…

It was June 1998. I still had Moira and it was right after Kiwi died. Nacho had been a breeder bird and was already a grandmother and several years old, but after three clutches had decided she didn’t like boy birds any more and would peck them when they came in her cage, so the breeder didn’t want her any more, so I took her. When Nacho was so unhealthy her first month or so with me, I honestly did not expect her to live very long. Instead, she got better, lost a huge amount of weight (she was a really fat bird when I first got her) and not only continued to live for another seven and a half years, but outlived Moira and Pinky and Brain who at one point or another all shared a cage with her. (And she outlived Kiwi too, but Nacho never met Kiwi.)

She was a grumpy little bird and didn’t like human attention. But she and her cage mates got along well. As she got older, her current cage mates (Cheese and Skittles) would sometimes help feed her or preen her. They took good care of her in her old age.

She was a good bird. Goodbye Nacho. :-(

The last Friday before I left Florida I spent all day at Amy’s school volunteering. My main accomplishments were picking up all the broken sharts of pots in their BioDome which had fallen when the shelves fell over. (The kids had put nothing on the bottom shelves and all the heavy pots on the top shelves, and the shelves were barely strong enough to hold the pots anyway.) After picking up the broken ones, I attached five of the shelf units together for added strengh (although in my opinion still not enough) and reorganized all the non broken pots onto the shelves with the weight in a better distribution.

After that I weeded their experimental marshland. Well, I cut a bunch of plants down with a kitchen knife. I’m sure they have grown back by now.

And then I went to the library and hung snowflakes and shelved books.

It was an exciting day.

But I liked the result of the reinforcing the shelves and restacking the pots.