EMPLOYED!!

It's official! I just signed with TiVo and will start working in a week and a half as a Statistical Analyst. I am very excited! Although TiVo has been around for a while, they are still relatively small, giving it that start-up company feel. The environment seems very comfortable and fun... possibly because it's the only place in the world where you get to watch TV as part of your work! I guess this means we can start going down our "list of things to buy when Rachel gets a job." We started last Friday by going to Costco and buying tons of food to fill our freezer. It's fun spending money you don't have yet. :) We'll be doing more of that this weekend...stay tuned for a post about a new car.

List of Things to Buy When Rachel gets a Job

Since Rob and I moved to California and have explored a whole new world of shops and restaurants, we have had many moments where we thought "we should buy that..." immediately followed by "when Rachel gets a job." So, I decided to start making a list of things to buy once I have a job as extra motivation to do well while interviewing. Here are a few things on the list

1. Car
2. Rehab for Elvis (there's a dog trainer out here who claims he can fix Elvis' social problems in one day... hahaha. If nothing else it'll certainly be entertaining.)
3. Rug for the living room (the one we have can't be vacuumed without unraveling parts of it)
4. Filters for the vacuum (since it's now full of string from the rug)
5. Fuki Sushi!! yum
6. Health insurance
7. Did I already say car?
8. ESPN
9. Patio set
10. New plants for the patio... sorry Gail... they died :( they were eaten by worms
11. Worm killer for the new plant
12. Barbecue set!
13. Steak for the barbecue set
14. Subscription to Ferrari magazine (see previous post)
15. Spanish classes
16. Grooming for dogs
17. Lasik for Rob (this is actually on the "things to buy when both Rachel and Rob have a job")
18. Jazz piano lessons
19. Keyboard
20. Kennel for Elvis
21. Thank you cards and about 10 pounds worth of brownie mix for the many many people who have helped us (with moving, rides, dinner invites, etc)

Married too long

Two weekends ago I started working on a puzzle. Rob and I both thought it would be a good idea for me to complete something... to give me a sense of accomplishment while job searching. We only have one puzzle. A 1000 piece landscape puzzle for ages 12 and up. Within one week I had completed about 3 quarters of the puzzle. The bottom part of the puzzle was not finished. Rob was excited to have a little time Friday night and said he'd really like to watch a movie and work on the puzzle (since he'd been watching me work on it all week). We sat down about 9pm to watch our movie and Rob looked at the puzzle and said "Let's just finish it... I want room to put my books on this table without worrying I'm going to knock off and lose puzzle pieces." Well... the bottom quarter of the puzzle is made up of many many pink flowers. Needless to say, we were up until 3 in the morning finishing this puzzle. Every time we thought about quitting, one of us would find another piece and then say "we're almost done." I think staying up all hours of the night on a Friday night finishing a puzzle may be an indication you've been married too long. Rob wants to know what 12 year old would do this puzzle.
I had to take a picture of it before I tore it apart... since it's probably the last time I'll see this puzzle all put together!

Mystery Package

This past weekend we received a package on our front doorstep. However, it was not addressed to us. It had our address on it, but not our name. Since we are renting, this happens fairly often. We usually just put a note on it for the mailman to "return to sender" or throw it away if it is junk mail...but this package was different... there was a small yellow icon with a black horse in the middle printed on the package with the word "Ferrari" written under the horse. Rob immediately turned into a little boy and asked me for a razor blade and some clear tape. He said "technically, 66% of the information on the package says it's mine," referring to the two lines that are our address (the other 33% is the name the package is addressed to...since Rob started law school, statements like this are not uncommon). He carefully opened the package and...

Wha-la! The Official Ferrari Magazine wrapped in bubble wrap! Aside from a check for $100,000, this was the next best thing to be dropped on our doorstep! The magazine came with a letter welcoming the "addressed" to the Ferrari club and offering them a subscription to the Ferrari Magazine... only $375 a year and you get four magazines. Oh and if you wanted you could also register your Ferrari's... but only up to five of them. (who are these people?) Since we usually throw away magazines we get at our apartment that are not ours, we decided not to send this one back. Merry early Christmas!

Update

Hey all~

Sorry it's been a while. Here's an old update. Our friend's Corey and Whitney and their baby Alex visited about a month ago and here are some pictures of their visit. We took them into San Francisco one of the days, but the highlight was getting to go to a University of Utah football game. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we didn't make it to the game until a little into the third quarter, but since Utah hasn't been showing up this year until halfway through the third quarter, we really didn't miss much. We had a lot of fun with Corey and Whitney and hope their smiling faces are convincing enough for all of our friends to come and visit. :-)

Copy/Paste

Hey everybody, in honor of my sitting bored in LexisNexis legal research training with a computer in front of me, I decided to just answer some comments on the blog. In doing so, I wrote enough that I thought I ought to just post it. I may need to provide some commentary though...here goes:

. . .

Things are great. It is warm and pleasant, although we all wear jeans and light jackets because we've become acclimatized to fast, are spoiled, and now think it's cold. We are stuck with 74 high 50 low until Christmas probably...ha ha. I wear gloves in the morning riding my bike in. Unfortunately, and as expected, I'm swamped and Rachel is taking looking for work as a full time job.

The pictures were taken a week before school started for the first years, so it was pretty quiet. We had the campus to ourselves, because the rest of the school is on the quarter system (including the returning law students) so we had the run of the place until September 21st! Now you can hardly walk without getting buzzed by a bike.

I should probably have just posted this response in blog form...ha ha. Sorry, we are trying to post more..we'll get better!

. . .

Other things of note (and pseudo-random thoughts):

• School is fun
• School is really, really, really hard, time intensive, relentless, and entirely intentionally overwhelming - Yes, everything you've heard about 1L year in law school so far is true
• School isn't overwhelming, at least for me, because of the courses, rather it's the extra's. I'm not only doing 5 full courses, I am editing for the Stanford Technology and Law Review, writing good practice notes and researching for a pro-bono affiliated with the UN Global Compact, attending panels that eat up the entire lunch break on any/every topic imaginable, attending trainings and networking functions at night, etc...
• School is really fun :-)
• We are now vehicle-less for the time being
• The job market sucks
• My Christmas break is entirely too short
• I'll be in school from August to June this year
• Biking to school is okay, but my walmart $30 I-don't-care-if-it's-stolen bike experiences incredible losses due to weight, friction, and general rattling
• I think the dogs love it here, but they don't like the neighbor
• My box full of grass idea for the dogs didn't work (dead)...but they still use it!
• Rocky Anderson of all people is coming to speak here in two weeks (eek)
  
• I will be listening to Steve Young and Chief Justice Roberts speak in the same day
• Rachel might go to Mexico!
  
• Rachel loves the Nordstrom Rack next to Home Depot
• Our favorite food is take out chicago style pizza that is literally 2.5 inches thick, or jing jing chinese...that really isn't all that good
• Elvis has claimed the couch as his own...which is bad
• Hanna may still be nuts, but has calmed down
• We live by Hulu...it's amazing...and plug it into our TV to watch it
• I read about 100 pages a night for all my classes
• Training is over

Okay, time to pedal home! Hope everyone is well and I've guilt-ed Rachel into posting more meaningful stuff soon.

...This has not been proofread, was typed while mainly watching the trainer in the front of the room, and was the diatribe of my wandering mind...sorry if it's odd!

Rob