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Sunday, April 08, 2012

Water under the bridge...

March 13, 2007. Oh. My. God.
The last entry in this blog. It seems like a lifetime ago. So much has happened in the interrim.

I have changed jobs twice, moved three times, and my daughter has grown from age 4 to age 9. My father-in-law passed away, and our dog Gertie had to be put down.

Happy Easter, By the way!!!



We moved from Bakersfield in the spring of 2010 to Hermiston, Oregon. The goal was to get away from the smog and crime. Hermiston seemed nice at first, but we gradually began to realize that it wasn't for us, due to the poor public education system. We moved to Northern Idaho two weeks ago.

So far it seems a great deal better than what we have experienced in Hermiston. For one thing we were able to buy our dream house (an REO) for a reasonable price. We are now the proud owners of a 3700 sqft house on 5 wooded acres. I finally have the shop I always wanted, and Corie has her craft room. We had deer grazing in the back yard yesterday evening.




Even though it's only a couple hundred miles North of Hermiston, the weather is drastically cooler and wetter. We had snow flurries here yesterday, although by afternoon it was motorbike weather.

We have a new puppy named Bridget. She is another dachshund, all full of life and energy.

The new job is going quite well. I enjoy most of the people that I work with, and this is one of the better-running facilities I have worked at.

I am preparing to start home-brewing as a hobby, after a fellow at the previous job got me interested. This is really quite counter-productive to my other hobby, weightlifting. It will be interesting to see which prevails. Probably the less painful one!

Grace has grown into a highly intelligent, intellectual young lady, and a voracious reader, which is part of the reason we re-located. The schools in Hermiston were failing "No Child Left Behind", which I consider to be a very low hurdle. Grace had tested and passed the Oregon "Talented and Gifted" (TAG) program, but the schools had no money available for that resource. Grace was stagnating, since the school was focusing all their efforts on getting the mediocre students to pass the test.

Below is a photo of Grace playing miniature golf while we were at Oktoberfest in Leavenworth, Washington.

I will go on a rant about the socio-economic situation in Hermiston (and probably most agricultural areas) in a later post. Suffice to say we are in a happier place now.

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