close today

The house is now ours. We have keys and everything. After a much more painful buying experience than either the buying or selling process that we had in San Diego, thing finally came together today, a day late, with the sellers showing up at close over an hour late. It was par for the course. The original plan was a split close where we would sign everything and leave, and then they would arrive and sign the rest of the documents. Jason and I were thinking that having to interact with the sellers would take all of the fun out of close, but having the sellers there meant that we were able to get keys before we walked out the door.

Needless to say neither Jason nor I were really excited about the idea of going to work the last day before the Christmas holiday after closing on our new home. Jason arrived at work to learn that the LAN was down and that most everyone had left. I had very little to do at the office and was happy to have Jason pick me up just a few hours after I arrived. We meandered home, stopping at Whole Foods along the way to pick up something interesting for dinner. The radiccio is slowly cooking down before it gets put in the oven with the veal roast that we picked up. We are both certain that we will have things to complain about once we move to Somerville, but right now we are just excited about having our own space, especially our own kitchen.

Tomorrow we are going to go by the house, do some cleaning, and put the rugs down on the floor so we can figure out what kind of colors we might want to put on the walls. The plan is to move January 12. We will keep you updated on the house warming party. The guest room will be ready for anyone who wants to visit.

Season's Eatings

And the Lord said, "yea, at the time of the pentecost is when ye shalt eat like unto the great whales of the deep, and achieve no satisfaction until thou hast laid waste to all pastries."


Maybe not a direct quote, but the eating has so far been of Biblical proportions. I (Jason) started a new job at CitiStreet last week and in addition to Thanksgiving, various roasts, cookies, and vacation eating, there has been a holiday food bonanza at the workplace. I'm not as svelte as I once was, and I've been working out feverishly to counteract the holiday effects.

The job:
I'm a tech writer at CitiStreet, the retirement division of CitiGroup (and State Street, but I have no idea how the partnership breaks down). This one dropped into my lap after one of their HR people scanned Monster.com for resumes and I had put one up awhile back. This was also the most promising contact I had ever received from Monster--most others were asking if I wanted to join their insurance company. So that was a nice surprise.

I was working at Irrational Games at the time, in a contract QA position. I liked the people there well enough, but it would have been a tremendous effort to make something work out. Plus the game industry is much the same as I remember. Long hours, lots of information bottlenecks, and roomfuls of manly sweat odors. Thanks, but no thanks.

Anyway, this is the position that I was looking for out here. I should be happy for awhile, especially since there's lots of room for growth and learning great software packages.

New York:
We took a trip to NYC a couple weeks ago. Here are some pictures:

first snow

Just in case any of you were wondering, it is now snowing outside of my office window. Better than the sleet that was coming down when I was walking from the train to the office. In true New England form of "if you do not like the weather, wait 10 minutes, it will change," it was close to 70 degrees on Friday.