The whole story

Got an e-mail from mom about the "restructuring" meeting they were called in to this morning:

This is one of the kinder restructuring meetings I've attended as these things go.

My severance package is 8 weeks - I can take the package and not come to work or I can come to work and be easily available for interviews and such. If a job is not found by April 3rd then I can use accrued vacation time to take personal leave. After that time I would be eligible for unemployment.

I will be given hiring priority for open positions for which I am qualified. There is one for which I am the obvious candidate but it is not a given.

Recruiting and career coaches were there to tell us what they can do for us and were encouraging about helping us find another place to be and that we would be receiving highest recommendations. There are six of us affected. Our building which is a rental will be vacated after April and other remaining staff will be shipped to other buildings.

I'm okay, I know the senior director of operations and that she will do everything she can to place those of us here who are being displaced. But of course, these things are not easy.

I am grateful for your love and support.

Martha

We're still trying to figure out how Emory's lost so much money, I think it's because they spend too much and have probably had students leave due to high tuition. Anyway, thanks to all of you for your prayers and happy thoughts and love-- the last day has been a nail-biter and while this obviously isn't the best thing, it's better than being immediately turned out in to the street.

Hitting Home... Again

My mom is going to be called in to a meeting tomorrow morning where she will be given her severance package. With five other people.

Yawn

I've been bad the past couple nights and stayed up late, which I really can't do tomorrow since I made enough money to head to Savannah and back! I'm really excited and though I wish I could trade cars with mom (my radio is busted and I have no CLUE which fuse it is that needs to be changed!) I know the panda can make it down there and back. She's good for the highway driving, didn't give me any trouble on the trip to Morrow, and I probably won't do too much driving when I get down there, so I'm not too worried. Next week is supposed to be warmer than our current subzero week, so maybe I'll get a chance to work on the exhaust and look at the MAF sensor, see what I can figure out-- for Jeremy, it's a $20 part. For me, of course, it's a $150 part... if it has to be replaced, it has to, but I'd rather not fork over another week and a half's worth of pay! Same deal with the exhaust-- David could probably help me replace it, but it would be SUCH an enormous project.

In other news, the Kellys invited me to go with them to the Charleston Food and Wine Festival and stay with them on the Barrier Islands. Bobby Flay will be there, so if I go, Em and I will have to go heckle him. It would be SO much fun, but it's the week I'm supposed to go see Jeremy. I guess we'll see if he has a job that he'll be working, and if so then I'll go another weekend. I mean, if spring comes and business picks up, I can drive down there Friday and leave on Monday which is the entire weekend, so I'm trying to talk him in to a job. He's not quite as bad as I am about getting fidgety and frustrated with nothing to do, but he's getting there!

I got my postcards for the save-the-dates today, which is super exciting! They're even prettier than they were online, so we just have to get the printer upstairs, get the template figured out, and print 'em out! There's a LOT of addressing to do, so that should keep me busy. I'll catch up on my tv shows and write addresses! Since it'll be a couple days, I'm going to go ahead and start addressing them on one side to be printed on the other side, that way I can just stamp and go! Yay!

As sad as some of the Cold Case episodes are, I absolutely adore the period music. It's pretty awesome. Especially the ones from the 80's and 90's.

Not much else going on, still trying to settle in to the new place, and still getting used to the fact that I actually have a place to put my stuff now! It's still mostly in boxes, it's kind of a strange feeling to have adequate space after living in compact, crowded space for five or six years... I miss my friends, even though Em's close, I just don't see her that often because of our schedules. I also don't really have the money to go to lunch with Laura every week like we'd like. As much as I loathe Memphis, I miss being so close to my friends. Oh, well, less than a year now and I'll have my own household.

Now-- more early 90's Law and Order. Oh yeah.

Oh, right, the organizing...

Now I just have to organize all my stuff in the new house... we're trying to figure out the heat because it's doing some strange stuff. Mine and Casey's side of the house is always hot, but Mom and David's side is always cold, which explains the thermostat wars we've been having the last couple nights. We think we're going to get a digital (programmable, hopefully) thermostat to put in so we know exactly what the temperature is-- right now, it's one of those tap the lever just so kinds that you can't really get any accuracy on.

I'm in a little better mood going in to this next week, but still anxious. I feel like my days are an exercise in futility at work, I just don't make that much money. If I make enough to do something to my car and do gas down to Savannah and have an extra $15, I may go to the brandy tasting. I may go anyway since dad's going and it's a nice neutral place for us to spend time and not worry about anyone getting bent out of shape. It's also nice to spend time with Jill, my boss, who rocks my world-- for the vodka tasting we got a free glass of our Prosecco (my FAVORITE of our new wines) which totally made my night! Emily might also get to go, so that would be fun. I need at least one night a week out, but I also can't afford to spend the money. I'll do Savannah this weekend (and may have to miss the staff meeting-- I mean, how often do I get to go to Savannah? Hint: Last time, I was wearing a green Girl Scouts uniform!), then Daytona at the beginning of March, and I need to get to Memphis hopefully by the end of March or April, but definitely in May for graduation-- All my babies are graduating! I can't believe my last little sis and my grand little are seniors!

I don't have any major expenses for the wedding coming up in the near future, but I need to be careful about making sure I save since there's going to be about $2k paid out between October and December. We've kind of come to the conclusion that I'll put my money towards paying down my bills and paying for the wedding, Jan and Marc are giving us some money that we'll use partially to pay for postage (insanely expensive, I tell you what!) and then put the rest in a high-interest savings account for our Singapore/Thailand/Japan honeymoon! Jeremy's money in savings will go towards paying for moving and a deposit on where we live, and then we'll combine our debts and try to pay them all off in the first 8 months after school. This should be utterly feasible with the exception of the student loans which could be done with in two years. Ambitious goals, but we really don't want to end up in debt. It might mean we won't have the fanciest place to live and we'll have to hold on to our dinky old cars, but we want to make sure we can pay for prenatal care when we have kids, give them a good house and get safe cars to drive them around in.

As for the wedding itself, I know TJ's (Trader Joe's) will give me a good price on the wine (sorry kids, no Nobul at the reception!) and there's a great place my friend Julie hooked me up with that will give me a phenomenal price on the beer (since I want to do all local brews- whooo Sweetwater!!) and I've been to weddings without a champagne toast before so I'm not sure it's necessary, and it would save us a couple, maybe a few hundred. I'm doing all the gifts for bridesmaids, family, and groomsmen by hand, and the parts that aren't by hand are either inexpensive or I can get a deal on them with Jill's distributor contacts. I got a Martha Stewart Weddings last night and I'm not that big of a fan; I liked the bit on bows, gave me some cute decorating ideas, and I did find a cool candy site, but everything was so expensive! Come on, this is supposed to be Wal-Mart's chic DIY queen! I think I'm just going to take it back to CVS and see what the other magazines look like. I also found a bunch of silver ornaments that my mom has packed away that are really cute and simple, so I've already got decoration! Next up, white tulle! HEY, DILL! WHAT TIME IS IT?!

As of now, and this will hold if we're living in Georgia, Jeremy's going to bake the cake, and I'm going to make some of Paula Deen's sausage balls and get my bridal party to chop cheese like there's no tomorrow! I think between Costco and the Farmer's Market I can throw a darn good party!

Anyway, it's bedtime. I'm trying to get to bed by 2/230a at the latest. I would like to work my way down to 1a, then to midnight. I'm thinking about getting a second job part time and need to get myself on some kind of regular sleep schedule! Hopefully, I can keep myself busy catching up on my teevee on Hulu (they're running this season of Battlestar Galactica!! Geek alert!!), running through my queue on Netflix, and organizing all the boxes that need to be unpacked!!

New House

One more day of moving and then we'll be in with the new and out of the old. There's still a ton of stuff to do at the Avery house, which I'm not too thrilled about, but c'est la vie. I have my own room now, which is sooooo nice. I also got one of the many chest/storage/table type things that mom has and it's supporting the TV and housing all of my subject/reference books that have now been happily divided in to genres-- Art, language, linguistics, sociology, psychology, theatre, and literature! We still have to pull in my chest of drawers and my vanity, but everything's kind of falling in to place. The room is strangely shaped and the window is like two feet off the ground, so I'm not really sure what the architecht thought they could do with it, buuuut that's ok. The only big problem is that the heat vents are in the ceiling and it blows directly on my bed and dries out my sinuses.

My birthday came and went without notice; I canceled the movie outing for tomorrow to Emily's dismay, but I just don't even want to deal with it. My mom didn't even bother to look for a cake at Publix since the Market didn't have one when I went yesterday.

I'm happy that I have my own space now, it'll make life easier, but I really want the next six or seven months to be over with so that Jeremy and I can get on to wherever we're going to be and start our own lives.

Sorry this update's not too cheery, but it's been a silly week. I really miss Jeremy and I hope he gets to come up for Valentine's weekend. I also hope I make enough money this week to do something to my car and also to get to go down to Savannah to see Sara! Jeremy might come up, but it depends on when Jan and Marc are getting down there for the conference, if they go Friday or Saturday.

I'll try to have something better to say soon, but for now... I'm going to put some clothes up and try to get back to sleep.

Taxes... ARGH

I really severely heinously dislike taxes. I do my stuff online at HR Block and there's a little window in the upper corner that reads out your refund as you plug in the numbers. I started on one and as I put in my W-2s (a total of $11,000 for the year) and my 1099-R (401k distribution), my refund went from over $1,000 to $800 and then when I plugged in my $1,000 in medical expenses for the year... It went down to $323!!!

Seriously? Really? I mean, I'm already insulted enough by the fact that I'd have to be making $6-7,000 to qualify for welfare or any type of assistance from the gov't to whom I have dutifully paid my taxes since I was 15 and now you have to tell me that since (with taxes and medical expenses deducted) I make $9,000 to live on for 12 months, you're not going to give me any of it back? Oh, oh, and lest we forget, the EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) laws were changed last year, so since I'm not 25-65 it doesn't matter that I'm poor. Apparently they assume my parents are still supporting me?

ARGH!

People wonder what's wrong with our country, and I promise I'm not going to rant, but this has to give some kind of minor HINT as to what the deal is.

/rant

In the end I'm getting a fairly decent refund, it'll pay for the deposit on the wedding and hopefully a little more since it'll sit in a high-interest savings account until October, but it still just drives me up the wall that we (aka, the lawmakers) have such a skewed idea of what poverty is. We want people living in filth and dying because they can't afford medical care before we'll offer a helping hand. And, if you've paid taxes for almost 10 years and asked for nothing... oh, well! Wayne got fired and was making $275/week on unemployment. I work three days a week and don't make that.

/really end rant...

I didn't get much sleep last night, my brother was up and I finally had just been up so long I stayed up-- then I had an allergy issue and had to take a Benadryl so I don't think I made much sense when Jeremy called at lunch... I ended up sleeping until 2, so I didn't get any packing done, though it was raining so I wouldn't have been able to move it anyway. Work was really slow, though I did get the macadamia nut encrusted scallops and chocolate bread pudding (two of my favorites!), and basically the day ended up being pretty rotten which is kind of the story with my birthday every year. Except last year, I want to go back to last year. Jeremy made me some crazy brownie concoction, we got Papa Johns, watched Burn Notice, and he gave me my beautiful earrings (which have come off twice since-- both for surgery).

Apparently my birthday present is in the mail (from Jeremy) and he's more and more sounding like he'll come up for Valentine's day-- he says he won't if the weather is bad, but the weather was pretty rotten at Thanksgiving and he still came up. I'm also looking forward to going down to Savannah (at least, that's the plan) in a couple weeks to see Sara! I love both Savannah and Sara and haven't seen either in several years, so it ought to be a great weekend. Jan and Marc are headed down to Florida for a conference that weekend, so Jeremy doesn't know if he'll come up and meet us for Friday night or not.

Anyway, I'm gonna see if I can't get a couple bags packed up before I go to bed since I'm watching a House Hunters in Austin! Oooh, maybe I can use part of my refund to put towards my ticket to the best bridal party EVER this summer with Dill and Osso Buco by Casey! Yeehaw!

A little something

So I'm seriously considering starting up my own custom cards business. I hand make most of my special events cards and while Christmas got a little out of hand this year (as I custom-tailored each card for each family), almost all of the cards usually end up pretty sharp and darned cute, I think. I don't have the capability to do anything super fancy, but I can do some nice, hand-made cards and get the envelopes to go with them from like PaperDirect (if I need special colors) or something. I could sell them on Etsy and possibly market them to some of the boutiques in Decatur-- have some stock designs and then offer custom type stuff on a website? Plus, the materials aren't that expensive and since I only work part-time, my time isn't all that valuable...

I don't know, what do you guys think? I know there are lots of you who come by, but nobody ever says anything! Well, with the exception of Em who left a note last night :)

Things are going along here, I ordered my save-the-dates tonight and I'm really excited! Hopefully I'll have them out in the next week and a half/two weeks. The template that I ordered ($3 to save myself hours of screwing around with layout in Microsoft Word? Hells yeah!) is downloadable, so I can go ahead and figure out fonts and layouts and all that sort of thing before the actual paper gets here so I'll just print 'em out and address them on slow nights at work, maybe have Em over to help with the rest.

Work hasn't been too bad, and I have my car back which is a huge weight off my shoulders, so now I have to replace the Mass Air Flow sensor and plug the exhaust leak, which will hopefully get done by mid to late February so I can drive down and see Jeremy! He's also talking about coming up here for Valentine's day weekend, which would be really sweet. I have to work Valentine's night, but there's a good chance the dishwasher won't show up, so maybe he can make himself useful during that time and do some dishes... hey, it'd be an extra $30-50!

I'm finally exhausted enough to fall asleep without tossing and turning (not that I wasn't exhausted when I got home, but mom was still packing so I ended up waking up a little bit which was awful), so I'm going to hit the hay and try to prepare for the whirlwind of packing tomorrow morning...