valenversary pics

in the interest of catching my pictures up to my posts, here are the flowers chris gave me and the valenversary cake i made him!

a surprise holiday!

this week has been particularly rough at my internship. i think it's a combination of me not getting enough sleep and some pretty manipulative/intrusive patients that have come in lately. i have often heard the advice from my professors "don't work harder than your clients," but i feel like lately i've been having to do just that. sometimes i have to act outside of my personality, being pushy in order to get information we need to help the patients. anyway, yesterday i was very much dreading my 3-11pm shift. for one, the people that come in for psychiatric emergencies after regular business hours are usually pretty severe cases. second, it was valentine's day! i'd been contemplating taking some time off, just to ensure that i'm taking care of myself and not becoming totally burned out physically, mentally, and emotionally.

so around 2pm my supervisor from the inpatient rotation called me to say that my supervisor on this ER rotation was sick and they were having trouble finding a replacement. they didn't feel it was fair to put the interns through that (working with someone not qualified to supervise), so she told me to take the night off. YAY! praise the Lord! this was seriously an answered prayer!

chris and i didn't have anything planned last night, because we were planning to celebrate "valenversary" tonight: monday was our 6 month wedding semi-anniversary and of course valentine's day last night. despite not having planned anything ahead, we had a pretty great night. we enjoyed a candlelit dinner of leftovers, chris brought me home 2 dozen beautiful red roses, and we snuggled watching father of the bride. i am so thankful for the surprise blessing!

just so everyone knows...

katy's original post below was a plain picture of the clemson logo. i resisted the urge to delete it entirely; instead i chose to put a big fat "no" sign through it. that's right: no clemson on this blog!

this is the only 1-a team we allow:

a glimpse into the future

so, as chris mentioned last weekend we went to greenville. it really felt like a sneak peek into our lives as of may '08. for one, we searched for apartments, which took us all over town. i'm definitely excited at the prospect of more home for our buck (or less buck for a similar home!). at the ge prom, i got to meet a lot of chris' coworkers and their spouses. some were super-friendly and wanted to make plans to hang out once we get there. on sunday, we visited a church in taylors (a suburb) where my pastor from my old church in augusta now preaches. we didn't see a lot of young couples there, but we also didn't go to sunday school or the contemporary service. and there are plenty of other churches closer to greenville we can try. it's definitely difficult starting over after living in atlanta for nearly 6 years. i feel in a weird position here in atlanta, knowing that we're about to transition and not wanting to get too comfortable or too involved where we're at. at the same time, i want to make the most of the last 3 months we have here! it's a conflicting feeling, but it reminds me of how God places us in certain situations as certain times for His purposes - and often blesses us through it (cf. story of esther). i find myself having to put my faith in Him more through this time of change.

speaking of the future, i've got all my application materials in to clemson! after i graduate from my counseling program in may, i'll have to take some additional classes once we move to sc due to different state licensure requirements. i'm not thrilled about going back to school right after graduation (rather anticlimactic), but i'm trying to look at it as a chance to meet friends and make some job contacts. chris is being a great sport about giving a portion of his paycheck to a rival university!

hot gas path!

in response to chris' penultimate post (i really just wanted to use the word penultimate), i am ready for the day he hands out business cards that read:

christopher golden, hot gas path

apparently people in "the biz" aren't phased by the hilarity of this description! does this mean chris is on the path to hot gas? i'm imagining bodily functions and wondering where the path takes you...

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!