Updates on various and sundry topics
So... what's happening in my world?
Musically: I've been down to the blues jam a few times this year. Got out to the backyard blues jam on Labor Day weekend - always a highlight. I even was out to see Pauline York's band play at a benefit show a few weeks back. There's a tie for the event that stands out the most, though - taking my then-girlfriend's 3 year old daughter to the backyard blues jam? proposing to my then-girlfriend at the blues jam in Plainfield? or going back to Lockport, to Carter's Place, the original blues jam that has been dwindling over the past 3 years or more? I guess since two of the 3 are 'repeatable', I'm going to go with the proposal.
Meanwhile, my drums are dismantled in my house while one guitar is put away there as well. The other guitar is in its case at my fiance's house. Which brings me to the next topic...
Home-life: Dating a single mother has its quirks. One such quirk is that I find it important to spend some quality time with her daughter on a consistent basis. As an example of how meaningful this is, a comment she made to her mom after learning that we were getting married and expressing her pleasure with knowing that I would be living there went something like this - "When will he leave me?" Not a 'when will he leave us alone so we can be mom and daughter', but 'when will he inevitably leave, just like my daddy did'.
So, with that heart-wrenching fact in mind, I started off trying to visit my then-girlfriend's house a couple nights a week after work. This required a lot of travel, involved taking the dogs back and forth on certain nights, etc. Until at one point, while my bathroom was being remodeled and my dogs were living at her house for 2 weeks, we decided that the dogs should pretty much stay at her place and I should sleep there, as well. I still have to go to my house every couple days to get mail, work on my house, etc. But I essentially have been living at my special lady friend's house for a few months now.
While doing this, I've been preparing to sell my house - having the bathroom remodeled, patching cracks in the ceiling, priming one of the bedrooms in preparation for painting, etc. It was a very slow process, made even slower by the fact that I was really only getting a couple hours on Tuesday, a couple hours on Thursday and maybe 1 day each weekend to work in my house. I've since hired a couple of landscapers to paint the place and have sped up my patching, spackling, sanding and general upgrading around the rest of the house. This weekend we're moving refrigerators (taking my 2 nice fridges to her house and bringing her not-so-nice fridge down to my place) and beds (taking my king-sized bed to her house and bringing her queen to my place). Once the house is painted, I'll arrange the furniture so that it looks like a single man is living there. The bedroom will look bigger with the queen bed in it and I will include all the appliances in the sale of the home.
So, clearly this all brings up another topic of conversation -
Relationships: I've been dating Amy since the beginning of February. That may not seem like a long time to most. But when you've dated as much as I have, you tend to know within a few months whether you've found a winner or not. I have so far had a grand total of 3 relationships that lasted longer than 3 months. One was a 5.5 year marriage, the other was a year-long fiasco based on lies. The third relationship is my one with Amy.
We've really taken quite a lot of time to do things that are important to both of us. She has already been to Pennsylvania with me 3 times. Her daughter made the trip with us once, as well. We flew back in November just to go to a Penn State football game, a chance for me to show her what it was like for me when I was in college, playing bass drum in the marching band. I've spent a lot of time getting to know her daughter and her parents. I've met several of her lifelong friends (and gained their seal of approval.) Her parents even came to the dirt track with us one Saturday evening to watch the races.
In summary, I am in the best relationship I have ever had. I have a true partner, one who 99% of the time is cooperative and working towards solutions. And the 1% of the time, she usually snaps out of it in 10 or 15 minutes. I can tell her honestly about my insecurities, needs, wants, wishes and expect her to try her best to address them. And she can do the same. It was with a great deal of satisfaction that I made her my bride-to-be late last month.
We haven't set a wedding date yet, but we are thinking sometime in the first half of next year. It will likely be a small wedding, as this will be both of our second marriages. (Not sure on the proper grammar for that sentence and I'm too lazy/busy to rewrite it.) I am very much looking forward to finishing off my house projects, relocating my remaining life from my house to hers, marrying her and having a family together. We have goals and plans for the next 24 months in place, with flexibility for unplanned circumstances. We have a 'philosophy' in mind for our spending and planning. We have discussed preferences for child-rearing and are actively adapting to each other in the raising of her daughter. It's a great place to be, really.
Also, as a result of this relationship and the latitude it allows me to do more things (because there's someone else to help feed my dogs immediately after work), I began to take Tae Kwan Do classes at the beginning of the month. I'm in my 4th week of the program, and I'm sore but enjoying myself. I feel better than I've felt in a while and I even showed a 1.5 lb. loss on the day after Thanksgiving (vs. a couple weeks prior). So it appears to be helping me lead a healthier lifestyle due to the cardio exercise (something my sedentary lifestyle was sorely lacking) as well as helping my flexibility, coordination, self-defense abilities, confidence, etc. I hope to keep it up for a year or two. Though I'm not sure how it will work once there are more children in the home, etc.
Really the only area in my life that isn't at all 'on-track' (literally) is my racing. I had to park my car at the end of the 2005 race season after moving into a more expensive house, paying huge legal bills and then racking up debt trying to make Mary and her kids happy and then get her the hell out of my life. 2 years later, I am not much closer to being ready to race on my own. I've probably cut my debt in half and doubled my Q1 irregular income (tax refund and bonus check). But it would still take me a year or two of tightening the purse strings in order to get back on track. Fortunately, Amy is very much interested in me continuing to race. So I should be able to cut that time-line down greatly by a) selling my house and b) moving to pay off short term debts aggressively while at the same time contributing to her household expenses. It may not happen in 2008, but it might. I know that I will be paying for my motor in Q1. The rest is up to how fast I can sell my house, how much I can get for my house, how much I can pay off of my debts and how much room there is in my budget come March of 2008.
One other update - Work: I quit my job at Unilever in June after accepting a new position. Unilever had been good to me for 3 years. But in year 4 they started pulling some shady maneuvers. I got promoted in 2005. But in 2007 they took away that 'pay grade'. I kept my salary, but I was nearly capped out on any pay raises. Also in a couple years my bonus percentage would revert to the appropriate % for the 'new' demoted pay grade. On top of that, they made a decision that anyone earning a 'satisfactory' performance rating who was in the top 1/3 of their pay grade would receive no annual pay raise.
I fought the battle with my HR and department leaders, spelling out my case cooperatively and without affixing blame. In the end, they chose to do nothing to help right the wrong. So it was with no small amount of pleasure that immediately following our final conversation about my pay grade and pay raise, I moved directly into a private meeting with my direct supervisor where I gave my 2 weeks' notice.
June 25th I started my new job, working for a company that manages the supply chain of certain items used in the world's largest quick service restaurant chain. I'm now responsible for maintaining the pricing and supply of such items as dessert toppings, pickles, yogurt, salt and pepper packets, cookies, etc. It's interesting work, and I get to take home some pretty cool products (bags of shredded cheese, frozen partially-baked cookies, etc.). I have some issues in my direct supervisor's management style. But I am learning how to manage her. And I'm delivering results that are seen by the owner of the company and the customer. Oh, by the way, there are 12 employees. It's a very small company. It's a completely different world from my prior employer and it's 120,000 employees worldwide.
So... that's the update. I apologize for the length, but a lot has been happening in the past year and a half.
If you want to see some photos, hop on over to my myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/asa_dachi
-asa
Musically: I've been down to the blues jam a few times this year. Got out to the backyard blues jam on Labor Day weekend - always a highlight. I even was out to see Pauline York's band play at a benefit show a few weeks back. There's a tie for the event that stands out the most, though - taking my then-girlfriend's 3 year old daughter to the backyard blues jam? proposing to my then-girlfriend at the blues jam in Plainfield? or going back to Lockport, to Carter's Place, the original blues jam that has been dwindling over the past 3 years or more? I guess since two of the 3 are 'repeatable', I'm going to go with the proposal.
Meanwhile, my drums are dismantled in my house while one guitar is put away there as well. The other guitar is in its case at my fiance's house. Which brings me to the next topic...
Home-life: Dating a single mother has its quirks. One such quirk is that I find it important to spend some quality time with her daughter on a consistent basis. As an example of how meaningful this is, a comment she made to her mom after learning that we were getting married and expressing her pleasure with knowing that I would be living there went something like this - "When will he leave me?" Not a 'when will he leave us alone so we can be mom and daughter', but 'when will he inevitably leave, just like my daddy did'.
So, with that heart-wrenching fact in mind, I started off trying to visit my then-girlfriend's house a couple nights a week after work. This required a lot of travel, involved taking the dogs back and forth on certain nights, etc. Until at one point, while my bathroom was being remodeled and my dogs were living at her house for 2 weeks, we decided that the dogs should pretty much stay at her place and I should sleep there, as well. I still have to go to my house every couple days to get mail, work on my house, etc. But I essentially have been living at my special lady friend's house for a few months now.
While doing this, I've been preparing to sell my house - having the bathroom remodeled, patching cracks in the ceiling, priming one of the bedrooms in preparation for painting, etc. It was a very slow process, made even slower by the fact that I was really only getting a couple hours on Tuesday, a couple hours on Thursday and maybe 1 day each weekend to work in my house. I've since hired a couple of landscapers to paint the place and have sped up my patching, spackling, sanding and general upgrading around the rest of the house. This weekend we're moving refrigerators (taking my 2 nice fridges to her house and bringing her not-so-nice fridge down to my place) and beds (taking my king-sized bed to her house and bringing her queen to my place). Once the house is painted, I'll arrange the furniture so that it looks like a single man is living there. The bedroom will look bigger with the queen bed in it and I will include all the appliances in the sale of the home.
So, clearly this all brings up another topic of conversation -
Relationships: I've been dating Amy since the beginning of February. That may not seem like a long time to most. But when you've dated as much as I have, you tend to know within a few months whether you've found a winner or not. I have so far had a grand total of 3 relationships that lasted longer than 3 months. One was a 5.5 year marriage, the other was a year-long fiasco based on lies. The third relationship is my one with Amy.
We've really taken quite a lot of time to do things that are important to both of us. She has already been to Pennsylvania with me 3 times. Her daughter made the trip with us once, as well. We flew back in November just to go to a Penn State football game, a chance for me to show her what it was like for me when I was in college, playing bass drum in the marching band. I've spent a lot of time getting to know her daughter and her parents. I've met several of her lifelong friends (and gained their seal of approval.) Her parents even came to the dirt track with us one Saturday evening to watch the races.
In summary, I am in the best relationship I have ever had. I have a true partner, one who 99% of the time is cooperative and working towards solutions. And the 1% of the time, she usually snaps out of it in 10 or 15 minutes. I can tell her honestly about my insecurities, needs, wants, wishes and expect her to try her best to address them. And she can do the same. It was with a great deal of satisfaction that I made her my bride-to-be late last month.
We haven't set a wedding date yet, but we are thinking sometime in the first half of next year. It will likely be a small wedding, as this will be both of our second marriages. (Not sure on the proper grammar for that sentence and I'm too lazy/busy to rewrite it.) I am very much looking forward to finishing off my house projects, relocating my remaining life from my house to hers, marrying her and having a family together. We have goals and plans for the next 24 months in place, with flexibility for unplanned circumstances. We have a 'philosophy' in mind for our spending and planning. We have discussed preferences for child-rearing and are actively adapting to each other in the raising of her daughter. It's a great place to be, really.
Also, as a result of this relationship and the latitude it allows me to do more things (because there's someone else to help feed my dogs immediately after work), I began to take Tae Kwan Do classes at the beginning of the month. I'm in my 4th week of the program, and I'm sore but enjoying myself. I feel better than I've felt in a while and I even showed a 1.5 lb. loss on the day after Thanksgiving (vs. a couple weeks prior). So it appears to be helping me lead a healthier lifestyle due to the cardio exercise (something my sedentary lifestyle was sorely lacking) as well as helping my flexibility, coordination, self-defense abilities, confidence, etc. I hope to keep it up for a year or two. Though I'm not sure how it will work once there are more children in the home, etc.
Really the only area in my life that isn't at all 'on-track' (literally) is my racing. I had to park my car at the end of the 2005 race season after moving into a more expensive house, paying huge legal bills and then racking up debt trying to make Mary and her kids happy and then get her the hell out of my life. 2 years later, I am not much closer to being ready to race on my own. I've probably cut my debt in half and doubled my Q1 irregular income (tax refund and bonus check). But it would still take me a year or two of tightening the purse strings in order to get back on track. Fortunately, Amy is very much interested in me continuing to race. So I should be able to cut that time-line down greatly by a) selling my house and b) moving to pay off short term debts aggressively while at the same time contributing to her household expenses. It may not happen in 2008, but it might. I know that I will be paying for my motor in Q1. The rest is up to how fast I can sell my house, how much I can get for my house, how much I can pay off of my debts and how much room there is in my budget come March of 2008.
One other update - Work: I quit my job at Unilever in June after accepting a new position. Unilever had been good to me for 3 years. But in year 4 they started pulling some shady maneuvers. I got promoted in 2005. But in 2007 they took away that 'pay grade'. I kept my salary, but I was nearly capped out on any pay raises. Also in a couple years my bonus percentage would revert to the appropriate % for the 'new' demoted pay grade. On top of that, they made a decision that anyone earning a 'satisfactory' performance rating who was in the top 1/3 of their pay grade would receive no annual pay raise.
I fought the battle with my HR and department leaders, spelling out my case cooperatively and without affixing blame. In the end, they chose to do nothing to help right the wrong. So it was with no small amount of pleasure that immediately following our final conversation about my pay grade and pay raise, I moved directly into a private meeting with my direct supervisor where I gave my 2 weeks' notice.
June 25th I started my new job, working for a company that manages the supply chain of certain items used in the world's largest quick service restaurant chain. I'm now responsible for maintaining the pricing and supply of such items as dessert toppings, pickles, yogurt, salt and pepper packets, cookies, etc. It's interesting work, and I get to take home some pretty cool products (bags of shredded cheese, frozen partially-baked cookies, etc.). I have some issues in my direct supervisor's management style. But I am learning how to manage her. And I'm delivering results that are seen by the owner of the company and the customer. Oh, by the way, there are 12 employees. It's a very small company. It's a completely different world from my prior employer and it's 120,000 employees worldwide.
So... that's the update. I apologize for the length, but a lot has been happening in the past year and a half.
If you want to see some photos, hop on over to my myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/asa_dachi
-asa