Thanksgiving and SNOW!

It has been a while, a belated happy thanksgiving to all of you. Karen was out of town for the week before thanksgiving and she flew back to Bloomington on thanksgiving morning. I decided to cook a whole turkey stuffed with citrus fruits and herbs... surprisingly it turned out pretty well for my first try!



We had a "mild" fall (according to all the locals) and winter finally hit last week. We got 5-6" inches of snow last Friday! It was pretty, but it made work not so fun. We spent the whole day removing snow from cars and then moving them out of the way for the snow plow. Here is a photo from when it started:


And here is Karen cleaning off the car later that night:


We'll see how long she smiles when cleaning off cars, we're supposed to get some more snow tonight. Christmas is coming soon!!!

Happy Halloween!

Another month has come and gone. I'm sorry that I haven't posted, but daily life doesn't seem interesting enough to write about. We did have a few visitors here, which was very nice. My parents flew into town for a weekend and Karen's parents followed a couple weeks later. They DROVE from Virginia, a 12 hour trip. We really enjoyed having both sets of parents here, hopefully they will come back again soon.

We also celebrated Karen's birthday in October. I ended up having to work all day on her birthday, but did bring home an ice cream cake from DQ. Yummy. We also went out for a nice lunch on Sunday at a nice Italian restaurant in town.

This past week we drove to the Chicago suburbs for Karen to present at a conference. Afterwards, we spent the day hitting Ikea, REI, and some other stores that aren't here in Bloomington. While at Ikea, we picked up our Christmas tree for this year. Since we didn't want to unpack too much stuff, we're going compact and simple this year. I never thought we'd have a "tree" that fit in a 1" thick box!

september is almost gone

I haven't posted since there hasn't been much going on. We've both been busy working and adjusting to the new routines. We were planning on going to the Illinois State football game last night, but rain ended that plan, AGAIN. We ended up going to one of the professor's house and we watched the game there on tv. It was another high scoring, double over time game, too bad we didn't see it in person.

I missed the first night of ice time in the curling class because I was busy wrapping up the paperwork for a car sale. Hopefully I will make it there this Tuesday night... My parents are coming into town on Thursday night, it will be great to see them!

not much going on

I went for a 20 mile bike ride on Thursday, out towards the wind mills that are east of town. It is pretty amazing how big those things are. We're having company over for dinner tonight, a couple of the professors are coming over. We've been hard at work in the kitchen all afternoon.

We were able to record the Georgia football game yesterday so i could watch it after work, too bad they lost. We were excited to see the James Madison upset Virginia Tech, Karen is very proud of her school.

Tuesday night I get to try my hand at curling, we'll have our first class on the ice. I'll report more later...

SOLD A CAR!

I sold my first car today, a new mazda cx-9! It is nice to have that milestone behind me now!

We had our first visitors over the weekend, my Aunt Debbie and Uncle Steve came up Saturday. Karen took them on a tour of campus and we went to a cornbelters baseball game after I got off of work. Unfortunately, we didn't dress appropriately for the cool evening and we left the game in the middle of the seventh inning. The cornbelters were behind 3 - 2. I was bummed in the morning when I checked the paper and saw that they tied up the game in the 9th and won with a walk off homerun in the 10th. Oh well, that just reinforces the fact that you never leave a game before it is over!

It was nice to have guests in town, ya'll should all come up and visit! Curling class starts tomorrow night, several people have questioned why I'm doing it, but I'm excited to try it.

so much for football

We attempted to go to the football game tonight, but the weather had other plans. Thunder, lightning, and a lot of rain sent us running for cover in a nearby building before we even bought tickets. Word worked its way to us that the game was postponed and possible would be cancelled due to the weather. We hung out in the stair well for a while before deciding that it wasn't going to end anytime soon, so we came home.

In other news, it looks like I am going to try my hand at a new sport. The Parks and Rec department is offering a "learning to curl" class starting next tuesday night. I enjoyed watching it during the olympics, so why not try it?



Karen has found a shopping buddy and they are making a trip to Ikea tomorrow after a 3 hour faculty meeting. The drive will be 1.5 hours each way, almost all the way to Chicago. I hope they find some good deals and bring me home some cinnamon rolls.

a new routine

Now that we are both working again, we are starting to fall into a routine... which is a bit surprising since my schedule is pretty crazy: Mon 8:30 to 8pm, Tues 8:30 to 5pm, Wed 8:30 to 8pm, Thurs off, Friday 8:30 to 6pm and Sat 8:30 to 5pm Sunday off. That means that I don't have to work tomorrow, except for the "Honey do list" that Karen created for me. At least I should be able to squeeze in a bike ride too.

We're going to the Illinois State Redbirds home opening football game tomorrow (Thursday) night. That should be interesting, I know it won't be UGA football, but hopefully it will be fun. We're going with a few other professors + their families, no tailgating planned as of yet.

Last weekend we didn't do too much. We did go to the "sweet corn and blues" festival in downtown normal. Live music and as much corn as you could eat for 50 cents an ear. It was super sweet corn, living up to the event name. One of the downtown eateries was also serving ribs, they were finger licking good too. Other than that, not much going on. I'll let you know when I sell my first car!!!

Flat tire

Today was my week day off from the dealership (since I will have to work saturdays). This morning it was a beautiful 60 degrees in the morning, definitely not like GA! Karen and I ran some errands and then she went to school for office hours. I decided to dust off the road bike and head east towards the big wind mill power generators that we can see in the distance.

The roads here are so straight, once I got on the main road I didn't turn until I decided to turn around. That point was determined by a flat front tire, I swapped in my spare tire tube and then headed back to the townhouse. I didn't want to get stuck further out if I got another flat!

As for work, my training is officially over and I will be on the sales floor tomorrow. I decided to go the custom route on business cards, see below. Let me know if you are looking for a car!!! I can help out on Mazda, BMW, Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge and Chevy vehicles.

Peoria trip

We decided to go explore Peoria, IL on Saturday. It is about 40 minutes northwest of Bloomington, not too bad of a drive. We drove around and weren't too impressed with what we saw. We found our way down to the river front, but it wasn't all that great. Basically a sidewalk along the river and a couple restaurants. Perhaps we were spoiled by what they have in Savannah, GA.

We did eat at an Old Chicago Pizza and Beer restaurant. They had a nice appetizer plate that we split, it included cheesy garlic bread, pepperoni rolls and Italian nachos. The nachos were pasta chips with cheese, pepperoni and Italian sausage. Very good...



Work calls for us tomorrow morning...

first week at work

Not too much to report tonight, but thought I would make a post anyway. I've been at the dealership everyday this week, sitting in the training room Monday - Thursday. Today we rearranged most of the cars on the lot and I was given the keys to a few vehicles to test drive so I can become more informed on the products.

Next week, the training will wrap up and I'll start working on my brand certification. Each brand has their own online training process, so I'll be taking it one at a time. Since I'll be working on Saturdays (probably the best day to sell), I will try to really enjoy tomorrow!

Karen's classes start on Tuesday, she's been working hard to get everything ready to go! We went to a picnic last night with all of her coworkers, they really are a nice group of people. Now, if I could just get some of them to come buy a car from me...

Sunday night

It's Sunday night, tonight's snack is yellow watermelon... yes, you read that right, a yellow watermelon. We tried growing some a year or two ago and they didn't work out. We saw some halves for sale at the store and decided to give it a try. It tastes good, but when it is cut up and in a bowl, it messes with your brain. It looks like pineapple, but tastes like watermelon.

We had a nice weekend, we went to the house of one of Karen's coworkers last night and had a good time talking with people. This morning we went to church and then went to the "third Sunday market." It was kind of a cross between an antique, arts/crafts, farmers market and a flea market. There was a little something there for everyone, I saw a few traffic signs that would look good in a garage.

I had promised some more pictures of the town house... here is the front room, which has our dining room table, Karen's desk and our washer/dryer. The townhouse came with a washer/dryer so we decided to save some future moving effort by leaving them in the front room. I didn't really want to have to wrestle them out from the basement.


Speaking of the basement, did I mention it is full? Here are two shots of the basement:



In other news, I've been out and about looking for a job. I dropped off resumes at the local engineering firms and residential design build firms. As expected, I received a lot of "were not hiring but we will keep your info on file" responses. One design/build place did call me and I interviewed with them last week. We had a great discussion but the job wouldn't involve any design, it would be pricing and sales. I considered it, but in the end, I couldn't get past the hours, the pay and the fact that I wouldn't be doing any design. During the peak 8 months, the hours would be M-F 7 to 7 and Saturday 7 to 3. In the off season they go down to a normal 40hr week. That worked out to working 60% more hours for 33% less pay.

With the limited number of companies where my LA background would be helpful, I have been looking at other job opportunites. I haven't seen too much that I seemed qualified for, so out of curiosity, I went to one of the local car dealers to fill out an application. After finishing the forms, I ended up interviewing with a couple of the managers. The following day, the HR people called looking for some more info and they asked me to take an online personality test. Friday they called and offered me a sales position. I start training tomorrow morning, we'll see how it goes...

Drivers Licenses

We are officially Illinois residents now, we acquired our IL drivers licenses this morning. We had been putting the task off for a while, as out of state drivers are required to take the written exam. Karen out did me on the test, getting a 100%. I missed one question, due to over thinking it. Oh well. Next stop, license plates!

Welcome to the Corn Crib

Our real estate agent invited us to go to a baseball game last night with him and his wife. The city of normal has a Frontier League team called the Normal Cornbelters and they play in a brand new facility called, of course, the Corn Crib. This season, the team record is 32 W - 41 L.



We had awesome first baseline seats right behind the dugout. There were dark clouds around the crib, but the rain held off until the 8th inning. We decided to leave due to the rain and the fact that the Cornbelters were up 4 to 2. I opened the paper this morning to see that the Lake Erie Crushers tied it up in the 9th and the game ended up going 13 innings, resulting in a loss for the Cornbelters. We had a good time and will definitely be heading back for another game.

Here is a bad camera phone picture from our seats. Our small digital camera has died, we need to buy another so I don't have to keep posting these bad pictures!

Outdoor theatre

Karen figured out that the Bloomington Park and Rec department does a couple theatrical performances each summer in an outdoor theatre. Even better for us, since I'm jobless, the performances are free. We went last night to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The cast was a mixture of kids and adults, probably 90% teens and under. The show was OK, but you have to keep in mind that I've never been a huge fan of musicals. However, I did enjoy watching a show outside on a beautiful summer evening.

So far, the weather hasn't been as hot and humid as it was in Athens. We've been here for almost 2 weeks and have only seen it rain once and there has always been a nice breeze. I'm sure I'll be cursing that breeze once winter time comes.


Here's a poor camera phone picture of the bandstand where they do the performances. Considering the fact that it was outside, they still had a lot of lighting and wireless mics on a lot of the actors.

pedal time

Karen had meetings at ISU today, so I had some time to run some errands on my bike. I've been wanting to explore the Constitution Trail, a bicycle and pedestrain path that goes North/South and East/West through town. It was very nice to be able to ride from one end of town to the other without having to ride on any major roads! We can ride from the townhouse to the ISU campus without getting on any major roads... now I need to get Karen a bike!

For those of you who are curious, here is a link to a map: http://www.normal.org/Files/trailmap.pdf

I had a couple revelations:

1. This area isn't as flat as I thought, there are a lot of slight ups and downs, but still not the big hills like Athens.

2. I didn't realize how bicycle unfriendly Athens was, until now.

TV over the fire place...

Who says you need a new flat screen tv in order to put it over the fire place? Our clunky crt tv fits just fine over the firplace in the town house. The cable guy was a little surprised that there weren't rca inputs on the back of the tv, so we've had to route it through the vcr. Old school technology here at our house. Perhaps this is the time for me to get a new tv???


I'll post more pictures of the townhouse soon, please note that we had nothing to do with the paint color selection.

Did someone say corn?

We went to the farmers market on Saturday in downtown Bloomington and had to try some of the local corn. What can I say, seeing all that corn while we were driving up made me hungry. This one was called "Peaches and cream" and was very tasty. There is another farmers market tuesday night in Normal, we might visit it to see what they have to offer there.


Here is a picture of the loaded moving truck, needless to say, it was packed to the roof. I wasn't too thrilled when we pulled up and saw the rusted out car next door, but all of the other cars in the parking lot are much nicer. I guess we should plan on having a winter 'beater' car too once winter rolls around. It is going to be hard to watch our cars rust away.


I dropped off a few resumes this afternoon at an engineering firm and a couple design/build companies. I'll make another round of deliveries tomorrow.

we're here!

It has been a crazy couple weeks, but we've had some time for some fun too. My schedule opened up enough where we could make a quick trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina for a couple days. I guess I was stressing about the move because I was wide awake one morning, so I went out and took some some rise photos.


The movers called and said they were coming two days early because they wanted to try to avoid the GA heat by working two mornings instead of one long day. It ended up working out just fine, even though we were no where near ready to go when they arrived. The moving truck that was bigger than our house:


Then we hit the road:


We are officially in Illinois. I know texting while driving is illegal, what about taking pictures? Got Corn?


We arrived safely in Bloomington on Tuesday afternoon, a big thanks to my cousin and his family for providing us with dinner and a bed in the Nashville area Monday night. Breaking the drive up into two days made it very easy to do, although I definitely think we could do it in one day if we had to. Our stuff arrived on Wednesday and the guys unloaded part of it and then finished Thursday morning. They had driven most of the night, so we were happy to let them unload in two days (as long as we had a bed to sleep in!). These movers were awesome, nothing like all the horror stories that you see online. More to come later...

Two weeks from today

Welcome to our blog. I'm hoping to keep this up to date in order to allow our friends and family to keep up with what is going on in IL. For now, I will continue my avoidance of Facebook, we'll see how long that lasts. Who knows, unemployment might drive me to join.

It is hard to believe, but in two weeks from right now, our GA house will be empty and we will be on the road to IL. This is my last week at work and we have a lot to do around the house before the movers get here. I had no idea how many cardboard boxes it would take to pack up our 3 bedroom house. Every time we pack a box, we uncover stuff to fill three more. I'm trying to sell some stuff on craigslist, but I'm not having too much luck so far. It definitely would be nice to have a little extra money in our pockets when we move.

Here we go...

-sd