holidays so far

it's been a while since our last post, so i'll catch you up on our holidays goings-on...we went to the farm in south georgia (chris' mom's side) for thanksgiving. we had a baked turkey and a fried turkey. christopher was in charged of the fried one, and it was delicious! i've already decided that in 30 years or so, whenever i'm responsible for taking over holiday meal preparation, i'm going to let him fry it up! it's so much faster and equally delicious. the next day while the boys were doing something with beef brisket (smoking, maybe?), i stayed inside with the girls and we made christmas mice- an idea mrs. cathy got from her friend. at the beginning of december, we had a christmas party with christopher's work at the very lovely westin poinsett. these are some friends that we actually know through church, lori & brandon, but the husband also works at ge. this month we also had a christmas party with our sunday school class. the boys didn't want a picture, but here is one of the girls: and finally, last weekend we did christmas with the golden side of the family. here is a picture of us: christopher, his two brothers, and his parents. kevin, his middle brother, just got engaged this month and this is his fiancee, andra! i have always wanted a sister!

the prom

this weekend christopher and i went to ge's annual salaried recognition event, aka the ge prom. last year was our first time going together, and we made the trip to greenville from atlanta. i didn't really know anybody there, but it was an intersting glimspe into the future. this year was more fun, since we had several friends there. liz was there with her boyfriend, scott, who works at ge.
our friends from church, brandon and lori, were also there. brandon works in a different group within ge. lori is an interior designer with fluor, and she's my local art buddy.we also got to spend some time with the guys (and their wives) from christopher's design group, shrouds. it's interesting to me how all the engineers identify themselves based on their group, all of which are named for technical parts/processes of a gas turbine: buckets, shrouds, nozzles, combustion...at christopher's group christmas party this year, one of his co-workers made a shroud out of rice krispy treats. i found it fitting that the prom was on pi day this year (3/14).

the theme of the evening was st. patty's day, so there were servers dressed as leprechauns. the food was pretty good, and they had some live music as well as a dj. it's always nice to have a reason to dress up and eat a free meal!

saturday fun

we just got a new computer (no vista problems yet, wes and blakely), so i guess that means i'll have to start posting again. actually i'm finally finished with my december to january work marathon, which means i might have some time to post.

work has been going really well lately. i had several big projects that i finished without any issues, and i'm blessed to have a job that i really enjoy. katy was very supportive of my working long hours for those weeks to get the job finished. i'm happy that i'm through with those, and i'm looking forward to a few months of more normal hours and having all my time free on the weekends.

katy and i had a pretty great saturday yesterday. the weather was beautiful, and we started out the day having breakfast at broadway bagels with our new friends blaire and tim. we're enjoying getting to know them and some of the other couples in our sunday school class. we sometimes think that we'll have plenty of time to visit folks out of town, but our schedules are quickly getting filled with greenville events. it's great because it means that all the time greenville is more like home, and we're developing some good friendships and getting plugged into church here. don't worry, there are still many trips to atlanta and elsewhere planned for the future!

after breakfast i ran some errands. it had been over 6 months (but still under 3000 miles) since i had had the oil changed in my car. it's definitely nice to have a 2.5 mile commute when your car is getting old. after errands katy and i drove to outlet malls at gaffney. we were going to exchange some things i had received for christmas, but katy certainly didn't mind the opportunity to go shopping for a little while. she did buy a dress for the upcoming ge prom, which we were happy to find out will be held this year despite the slow economic times.

we finished up the day by going downtown with scott and liz. we went to takosushi, so katy and i had the unusual combination of chicken nachos, lettuce wraps, and sushi rolls. while i've been skeptical about the theme for this combo restaurant, for me, the nachos and sushi combo worked. this beautiful saturday has both of us looking forward to spring big time.

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!

moving day...

once again it has been a long time since i've blogged (but not as long as erika!), and life has definitely been busy in the meantime. we are rapidly approaching our move date. it seems weird to say that we're moving in 6 days, and we haven't done anything to prepare yet. i'm glad the general is footing the bill for the movers. i haven't experienced it yet, but after the move i'll let you know how great it is to watch someone else move all of our stuff out of our third floor apartment.

i've been busy with work, katy's been busy with school - what else is new? still we've found time to hang out with plenty of friends that we will miss dearly once we move to greenville. the list includes, but is not limited to: dinner at alfredo's (i should write another "places we like to eat" entry on this one), tech vs. uga baseball game, tech vs. miami baseball game and steak n' shake afterward, dinner at little szechuan, lunches at canton cooks and artuzzi's, and dinner at clay's (earlier tonight actually). can you tell we like to eat? i definitely believe good friends and good food go together. we've got two last events planned for the weekend: genki (our fave sushi joint) with wes and blakely, and olive garden for lunch with our sunday school class. we will definitely miss all of these folks, and we hope to come back to atlanta early and often.

in the midst of all this business, i'm really enjoying life. work is enjoyable, and i thankfully haven't had too many other after work responsibilities. we're looking forward to being totally out of school and going on weekend trips and having generally all around good times. God has blessed us so much in this busy transition time, and we're looking forward to a lazy summer in greenville.

to end the post, a funny new (to me) website courtesy of angela and joseph: stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. definitely funny, so check it out.

reboot

once again, it has been several weeks since our last blog post. i'm sure you're not even reading this because i haven't posted in so long. i told myself this wasn't going to happen, but i guess i have gotten busy with my new job. speaking of which it's going very well.

we had an excellent january. we started a new life class at church - we're taking dave ramsey's financial peace university. it's a very practical financial class that's helping us to learn how to budget and invest better and to in general become better stewards of the blessings god has given us.

it snowed twice in january. certainly a rarity, and i'm sure most of you know this because you also live in georgia.

i've been pretty soaked up with politics for the first time in a while. throughout most of college i was pretty apathetic about politics - this probably had something to do with studying all the time and not having time to be interested. i'm not so much excited about any particular candidate, but it's really interesting to hear all of the different policy opinions, both informed and uninformed.

in other major news - we went to the ge prom last weekend. it's not really called the ge prom, but that's what everyone in the office calls it. it's a yearly event for all the salaried employees in the greenville office. everyone gets dressed up and heads out for a swanky saturday night. ge throws in food, drink, music, and dancing. this year was a mardi gras theme, complete with masquerade masks, beads, mardi gras characters, and other assorted decorations. my highlight of the evening was the jazz combo and the unending pile of jumbo boiled shrimp in the buffet line. a close second was seeing how badly some of my coworkers dance (esp. when they have drank away their inhibitions). sorry we don't have pictures because we forgot the camera.

i promise it won't be so long until my next post.

the times they are a changin'

so it's been about three or four weeks since our last post. i was hoping we wouldn't go that long between posts, but the christmas holidays made it inevitable. but a lot has changed since the last time we posted.

i'm now working for ge energy in greenville, sc. i started back on december 17, and i'm hoping it doesn't end for a while. i co-oped with ge when i was in undergrad, so it wasn't all that crazy starting a new job. i already know a lot of people, and i know the workplace, but now i have to think about all the other full time things like benefits, travel expense reports, and pensions (not so bad!), and employee evaluations (yikes!). best of all, i no longer have to work for gra pay! it is kind of different to think that my career will never end until i retire. this is in stark contrast to co-op rotations when i got to work for 12-16 weeks and then go back to the stay up late, sleep late lifestyle of a college student.

so what am i doing you ask? my official label is "engineer/technologist" (i like the sound of technologist), but really i'm a mechanical design engineer. i'm working in the shrouds group of the hot gas path component design group at a gas turbine design and manufacturing facility. katy finds the term "hot gas path" hi-larious, and maybe you do too. call me a dork, i just never thought about it being funny in all the time i've worked there. if you want to know more, feel free to ask - but i'll have to do some drawing.

katy and i will continue to live in atlanta until may when she finishes up her grad studies. i'll be working out of the office in marietta most days and out of the office in greenville every other monday and tuesday. it's definitely nice to work close to home and be able to work with my colleagues in greenville if i have any big questions. the move to greenville is definitely bittersweet. we're very happy to have gainful employment and new life challenges in a new city, but we'll also miss atlanta and our dear friends here. i've been through college, marriage, and many other growing-up experiences while living in atlanta, so it will always have a special place in my (our) hearts. still, we have some friends in and near greenville, and we'll be happy for lower rent, clean air, and less dense traffic!

in other news, i'm drawing dangerously close to the completion of my thesis. the new job has placed a damper on my desire to write in the evenings. but my advisor wants me to be done in a month or so, and i'm happy to have the accountability/motivation. i really have until sometime in april to submit the thing, but i prefer to go ahead and get it done without cutting it close.
t-minus 10 pages and counting.

we had a really good christmas break - we did christmas with my family, katy's family, and both of our paternal extended families (i had to miss out on katy's extended family due to work). highlights of the break include: me, my brother, and my dad working in the cold on my car, not figuring out what was wrong and still having to take it to the mechanic, my whole family seeing national treasure 2 together, the christmas eve service at the retirement home where katy's dad works, all of the food, and watching football with my dad and brothers. maybe katy has some others, but those are mine.

last thing in this post - funny story from christmas eve. we opened presents with katy's family on christmas eve. katy's dad received the game catch phrase. if you don't know the game, you just try to get other people playing to say the word on the screen without saying that word yourself. so anyway - katy's dad is trying desperately to get us to guess a word. his clues range from "kind of a redneck way to say chewing tobacco" and "slang for chewing tobacco" etc. after guessing, dip, snuff, chew, etc. we could never figure out the answer. here it is:


chewbacca! i think that was the hardest i've laughed in a while. anyway, i hope y'all are doing well if we haven't talked to you lately. happy new year!