six months

the past six months have been, well, stressful.

i've said that rule #1 is to never talk about work, but i will say this one thing. in january we got a new boss. she is great and i am learning a lot and i trust her decisions. but a lot of times when a new boss comes in who does things very differently from the last boss, the changeover process leaves a number of casualties in its wake. and there have been a number of casualties. which has made the work environment unpredictable and stressful.
enough about that.

last december i saw the way the housing market was going, and i saw what mortgage rates were, and i decided that it was now or never for me to buy my first house. i fell in love with a 100 year old adobe brick craftsman style house on the Wood streets in riverside. and it was in my price range! and that was the beginning of my six month housing saga in which i learned about the criteria for an FHA loan (the house can't be in need of any renovations or structural improvements, which left my dream house in my dreams) and that dealing with banks for a forclosed home is the biggest pain in the ass in the entire world. i made an offer on a 6 year old home in downtown riverside on january 19th of this year, and sparing all the boring details, i finally closed escrow almost six months later. as of this last friday, i am officially a homeowner! and since my 33rd birthday was this last thursday, i'm calling it my birthday present to me.

i would be more excited, except this all finished up 3 days before my departure for Ukraine. i won't be able to move until i get back. so it doesn't even feel like a reality yet.

so right now all the excitement is that after six months of training and waiting, my team is leaving for Ukraine tomorrow morning! we are all SO excited. we're spending the next three weeks at an orphanage, and we'll be spending that time playing games and singing songs and doing crafts and possibly doing skits. your basic summer camp stuff. but in Ukraine. all my bags are packed and sitting by the door, and i'm just waiting. waiting. waiting. i'm not the world's most patient person, so all this waiting is not easy. i'm ready to go NOW.

i'm not sure how much internet access i will get while we're there, but if there are any updates you can read them here.

see you all in july!