I am gainfully employed!!!!!!!

I got a job. The job that I really wanted too!!! I am oh so very excited. I will be working for Franklin Covey, the day planner and organizational tool company. How completely appropriate since I'm such a great organizer. :) The past two and a half weeks have been so slow and long because it's just been the waiting game. Waiting to hear after I send out resumes, waiting to hear if I got a second interview, waiting for the interview times, waiting to hear back after the second interview. I was going a little crazy with all the waiting. Today I decided to walk down to the grocery store and on the way back my phone rang and it was the wonderful woman from Franklin Covey offering me a job. It was funny too, cause she sounded all nervous when she told me the salary, like it wasn't going to be enough, but it was more than I had been expecting to make in this area (since the cost of living is so much lower than in the philly area). So, I'm very excited and very happy to be employed.

Other than that SLC continues to be a lovely city to live in. I'll try to post more now. I've been avoiding post because the only thing I had to talk about was job search stress and I didn't want to jinx it.

Skiing "out west", aka "trying to kill myself"

Okay folks, coulda warned me just a bit that skiing out west not only is totally different, but that the concept of green circle out here is TOTALLY different from the concept of green circle back east. I accidentally went down a green circle/blue square and fell for the first time skiing in probably 12-13 years. The last time I remember falling skiing was when Sarah's dad dragged me down a blue square that I was SO not ready for and I ended up falling and sliding backwards down the mountain about 20 feet. I think I was about 13 then, maybe 14. I did about 5 runs down the green circles and called it quits. Not only had I had quite enough of the scary green circles, but it was also blizzarding out, so that was a little new for me too. I think it's been a REALLY long time since I've been skiing while it's snowing. It let up very briefly while I was up there today, but then it was windy and snowing like crazy again. It made for lovely ski conditions, but not so lovely visability. Luckily I had my motorcycle goggles with the prescription glasses insert in them with me, so those were great. But, all in all it was fun. I will definately go back, hopefully one day when it's not blizzard conditions out there.

Other than that, not much going on. Hoping to hear from some people about jobs tomorrow, we shall see. Think happy thoughts for me. I think I picked up a little good karma today when I gave some people a ride up the mountain near the ski resorts. They were going to do some crazy hiking and backcountry skiing. I'm not entirely sure I understood what they were doing, something with telemark skis. But, they were grateful for the ride. Although I may have used up all that good karma when I got my rental skis for free because I asked if the guy had seen my roommate around.

I may never leave....

Okay, other than the whole not having a job thing, which will hopefully be shortly remedied, I may never leave SLC. I have found a city with good fish tacos, excellent sushi and four real seasons. I may be in heaven. Except for all the mormons. Not that I've had a problem with a single mormon yet. They've all been really nice and polite and helpful. So have some non-mormons. My roommates are great people. So far things are going pretty well. Like I said, just need to get the whole job thing worked out. Anyone got any suggestions on lighting a fire under these hr people?

I live in Salt Lake City!!

I found a place to live yesterday and I slept there last night. Actually I'm typing from my room, so I guess it's here, not there. :) I found a room in a cute house in a nice neighborhood called Sugar House. It seems to be the liberal eclectic part of town. There's a Wild Oats grocery store close by, a $1.50 movie theater that shows second run movies, an amazing sushi place and lots of other fun stuff. It's very exciting. Now all I have to do is find a job. I've applied to six jobs already and hopefully I'll hear back from them soon. A few of them sound really good, a few just sound good enough. So, cross your fingers for me.

Okay, so beyond that, I'll finish up a bit about my trip. When last we spoke I was in Santa Rosa, NM. From there I did pretty much just drive and drive to Arizona. With one little detour through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park. That's pretty cool, really beautiful desert and trees that turned to stone. I think I got a lot of good pictures there. Now I just have to find the nearest Ritz Camera to get them developed. Or some other decent film developing place. Okay, just checked, there are Ritz Cameras here in SLC, YAY!!!!!

I got to the Grand Canyon area round 8:30 Thursday night, so I just found a place to sleep. The Best Western outside the park was very reasonable, since it was off season. They also had a very nice jacuzzi which I took advantage of. The room was decent too. In the morning I got up, got some breakfast (free continental of course) and headed to the canyon. It's pretty cool looking. Definately something everyone should see at least once. I drove around and took some pictures. I didn't really do much hiking or anything, since I was alone and I'm sure that someday I'll drag someone back there, hopefully a future husband and children.

Sidebar: Our washer seriously sounds like it's going to take off for interstellar travel any minute now. Definately can't do laundry at night.

Anyway, left Grand Canyon for the long and GORGEOUS drive to Bryce Canyon area. This country just has some of the most amazing and varied beautiful landscape. I just love driving around the country. I had never seen this part, so it was just an all new awe inspiring journey. Absolutely amazing. Most of what I was driving through was a huge Navajo Indian Reservation in north eastern Arizona. It was amazing country scattered with these little Indian shacks and towns and such. Not very useful land in terms of farming, but ranching seemed good. Although it seemed like mostly the Indians made their money selling crap to the tourists in the summer. There were A LOT of roadside stands set up.

Got to Bryce area around 5:30pm, got a room at Ruby's Inn Best Western, then went and took some more pictures at Bryce. There was a dusting of snow laying around the area, which looked very pretty. The sun was also beginning to set, so that added some nice lighting effects. However, it was REALLY windy and VERY cold, so I didn't stick around for actual sunset. I went back to the hotel, had dinner, went to the indoor pool and jacuzzi and then went back to watch several episodes of CSI before falling asleep. Saturday was just a lot of driving to SLC and then getting to SLC and trying to get a hold of someone with a room and then finding a hotel room when I didn't find a room in a house. Sunday I found my room, moved all my stuff into it and built a futon bed from Wal-Mart. That and watched bits and pieces of the Oscars and then applied to several jobs. I felt very accomplished when I went to bed.

People are leaving North Carolina in droves...

Seriously folks, something wierd is going on with North Carolina. People are leaving the state in what must be record numbers. In terms of out of state plates in every state that I've been through on I-40 so far, I've seen significantly more North Carolina tags than any other. Most of these tags have been on cars being towed behind UHaul trucks. Many others have been cars or trucks so loaded with stuff one can only assume they have left North Carolina for good. Anyone have any thoughts on this subject?

Besides the strangeness of the quantity of NC tags I've seen, nothing particularly odd has happened yet. This morning I went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. It's the memorial to the Oklahoma City federal building bombing that happened on April 19, 1995. It's a really beautiful memorial and a very interesting and sad museum. I stopped reading all the info about 2/3 of the way through the museum because it was just too depressing. And that was also the point where they started talking a lot about finding McVeigh and Nichols and their trials and such. I remember a lot about that part, so I didn't need to know any more. I was there more for the facts about the bombing. Anyway, from there I just drove and drove through the rest of Oklahoma, the panhandle of Texas and into New Mexico. Now I'm staying at a campground in Santa Rosa, New Mexico which happens to have wireless. So, I'm sitting in the truck typing this. Very nice.

Tomorrow I plan to just drive and drive again and hopefully make it to the Grand Canyon area. I'll either stay in Flagstaff or drive up to the Grand Canyon where there is a hotel just outside the park entrance that is fairly reasonably priced.