Tuesday, May 13, 2008

leavin' on a jet plane


fortunately, i know when i'll be back again. i leave tomorrow morning for sunny temecula, california for work. temecula is a smallish town between la and san diego, so i'm hoping to see a few sights on my trip. i'm going to be there for a turbine test. this basically means i have to sit in a test trailer all day monitoring sensors. in other words, it's a lot of engineers watching computer screens and hoping nothing goes wrong. imagine nasa mission control minus the excitement of a shuttle going into outer space and cool phrases like "houston, we have a problem" and "the eagle has landed."

in any case, it's my first test and my first real travel with the company - so i'm at least a little excited. i'm going to try to make it to san diego on one of my off days (katy and i already discussed that if she were going she would choose to make a trip to la). i'll be back in sc on the 23rd, so i hope to update then. wish me luck!

Friday, May 9, 2008

life in 'south cackalack'

(chris' term for south carolina.) we are now south carolinians! though i'm sure chris will protest that this label is in letter only, not in spirit (he was, is, and always will be a georgia boy). anyway, i've spent a lot of time this week in greenville county offices but it has paid off - i now have a SC driver's license and our car tags! the people of south carolina seem to be in love with the palmetto tree, as it is on everything around here.

we're settling in our new place nicely. the move was definitely the easiest one i've ever had - thanks to the movers and me not having to rush back into school or work for a couple of weeks. we're in the suburbs but only a ten minute drive from downtown greenville...it's really the best of both worlds. we've been downtown a couple of times so far. last friday we went to main street jazz, which should have been called main street easy listening because the band was a little more poppy/mellow than we expected. last night we went to downtown alive which is something similar only it's on thursdays instead of fridays. well, we only sort of went to downtown alive. it actually got canceled because of some expected rain (which never showed), but we still went downtown to eat with liz and some of her friends. liz is one of chris' friends from high school who moved here a couple years ago. she was also one of the guest book/program attendants at our wedding and caught my bouquet.

while chris is working all day during the week, i'm learning my way around town - at least to the essentials like publix, target, and the mall. i never thought i would say that i'm almost tired of shopping! i'm just not used to having this much free time, and there's only so much i can do before i exhaust all of the stores in the area. it seems like things happen in extremes because i went from being uber busy with school & my internship to being super UNbusy now. i may even be slightly looking forward to starting my class week after next!