Why does metal expand?

We have a lovely heater. It works very well and in such a small place it creates a toasty warm atmosphere despite the leaking doors and windows. Yet I am annoyed at it most mornings. . . There is a trigger switch for the electric lighter on it that ensures that it can not be opened unless the door covering the fan/heater portion is closed. All good and well, yet when the metal door expands and contracts, which it does a lot in this drafty house, it moves just far enough away so that the contact doesn't happen. Thus sometime in the night it stops working and we wake up in the morning freezing and cold. Luckily for me Jason wakes up about an hour before I do . . .so I wake up nice and toasty. :) I love my husband.

Well, my book is coming along nicely. If only I didn't have any responsibilities or cares in the world and could lock myself in a small room for a while it would be a lot better. As it is I've got about 40 pages done. (For a normal sci-fi book this is roughly 1/4 to 1/5 done. The good thing is that I've only been writing on one time-line and I'm a little less than 1/2 way through it. This is the shorter time line too, so I'm assuming that I'll have plenty of material. At first I was trying to write both time lines simultaneously, but I figured out pretty quick that trying to switch my mind back and forth over 200 years of history was pretty difficult. Instead I chose to stay with the first group all the way until I'm done with the important part of history that they have and then I'll drop them like butter on a griddle and pay attention to the meat of the story. I still want to weave the two story lines because they are intended to mirror each other in some ways, but we'll see how that works out.

I also got a call a week or so ago letting me know that Galusha is literally squeezing me in. They made a place for me despite the fact that they are already overloaded. Not only that but I will be learning how to do auditing. This has always been a dream of mine as it is a large part of forensic accounting, but I didn't have time to take the auditing class (and I heard it was a waste of time) so I figured I had lost the opportunity. When Jeff suggested it I was shocked. I told him, "I'm really green in that area, I have never done it at all."
He told me they knew, but if I was willing they would show me the ropes and teach me everything I needed to know. I am thrilled. I'll be working under Fred, one of the partners, and he's a great guy.
As soon as we had that set we started working on the other important details like, where to live, what to take, how to get there. . . All of this meant that we had to cancel our trip to Boise, which nearly devastated us all, but since we'll be nearby for the next few years I'm sure we'll find opportunities to visit.
I started apartment searches the next day and every place I called was completely booked up. I posted a wanted ad on craigslist stating that we needed a place for four months in IF and got a reply that made me cringe. (asking A LOT more than we wanted to pay). We still had time, and most of the apartments said they might have people moving out in December, so we still had options, but I decided not to stress about it any more and just focus on the moving details (and getting the house finished!)
Then a few days later I got an email from a lady who said they had a house in Blackfoot to rent (about 45 minutes away). I called back more to get information rather than because we were really interested. The conversation went something like this:
"Hi, I got your email about your house in Blackfoot, what were you looking to rent it for?"
"Well, um, do you have any cats or dogs or anything?"
"No, it is just my husband, my three year old and myself."
"Oh! I have a three year old!"
"Oh that's cool."
(in the background) "Honey, what are we going to rent it for?" giggling, and then she comes back on, "What do you think is fair?"
"Well, how many bedrooms is it?"
"4"
"Oh, that's definitely out of our price range. We were looking for something small."
"How does $500 sound?"
"Um, you can get a lot more than that for a four bedroom house, some of the 2 bedroom apartments were going for 700!"
"Well, we really would like someone who can make sure our pipes don't freeze and stuff like that, we're trying to sell it, but we're too far away to maintain it until then."
"And what about utilities?"
away from the phone, "honey, what about utilities?" back to me, "we'd pay all of them except garbage, and if you wanted phone or internet or anything you'd have to take care of that."
"Wow, really? We'd love to rent from you!"
And thus I will again be driving 45 minutes on ice . . . every day . . . all winter long. . . curse you Idaho.

Jason was also quick to act on our news. Because I would be starting rather soon in January he gave his last day as Christmas Eve to his boss who was saddened and surprised, but not as distressed as Jason had anticipated. They had a great conversation and Jason walked away with a new respect for the man and gratitude that he hadn't laid on a guilt trip or anything.
We figured the last week in December and the first few in January should give us ample time to complete the repairs to this place and move up to Idaho.

My mom agreed to let us move in for a few weeks so that we can completely empty this place so the work will go faster. I hope it will make life easier for us. However, that gives me just under three weeks to get everything packed and moved to her house, run a large yard sale, and complete the wiring, fixing, patching, painting and cleaning of this place. I'm still hoping to get our deposit back even though we're breaking contract. I figure we moved in when it was dirty and nasty and under construction. If we move out and it's not there's no reason he can give for keeping it. :(

Bitsy has been in rare form recently. Apparently the terrible twos were merely a precursor to the real trials. She's pushing every limit right now. I know that most of it is due to the stress she's feeling from us because of the move and all the fun stuff we've been going through the last month or so, but that doesn't make it any easier to handle in the moment. She's amazingly smart and incredibly aware of everything that's going on. She continually astounds me. I will be interested to see how Jason does as Mr. House Husband for the next few years. (We've committed three years to Galusha).
I think he'll go through the same transition I did and then find a happy medium. Those two have always had more in common than she and I have so I don't doubt they'll buy a go-cart, fix it up, and have many happy days together.

Did I mention that Galusha offered us more than we had anticipated in wages? In all we should be able to leave college with about 1/8th of our current student loans. If we can suck it up even more we might be able to pay them off completely. Pray for our terrible spending habits.

Speaking of spending we boosted the economy this last week as Jason and I took Walmart by storm at 12:00am on Black Friday. I thought they did a great job. The doors were open for anyone to come in and shop, but the registers didn't ring up a single thing until 12:01.
We got everything we went for . . . and much much more. I found clothes for Alisabeth that will last for a few years, jamies and a new beanie. I found a few new nice shirts/sweaters for me for work and we got Jason some new (actually new instead of just new to him) jeans. I think that's the first time in at least two years.
We also go tupperware for everyone and their sister, a cute picture frame collage and toys galore for my little girl. Then I threw in a new electric razor for Jason since he can't find replacement blades for his old one.
All in all we walked away with a huge haul. I am glad to because between this and Toys'R'Us we have actually completed our gift purchases for Alisabeth for the next two years. . . literally.
And that's about all our excitement, sorry no pictures. Alisabeth drained the batteries with one of her photo shoot marathons.

Connections

For those who want to hear me rave you can join my most recent post on my other blog. It is called Don't be offended, so read only if you can do that:
http://flan-thoughts-dont-be-offended.blogspot.com/2010/11/tool-analogy.html

A normal post will come sometime soon.

Astounded

This week marked a few cool developments. First: My pride and joy.
Alisabeth was sitting in the back seat in her carseat, I was in the passenger seat and Jason was driving. Robyn was in the back seat too. Suddenly she starts naming the relationships of people. "Robyn in sitting next to me, and Mommy is in front of me and Daddy is in front of Robyn. We're sitting in a square!"
I was shocked. I've seen her name off shapes when she can see them, but for some reason being able to place herself within a large 3-D space and see the spacial relationship seemed a little advanced. I couldn't find anything online for when this normally happens, but I'm dang proud of her either way. When we got home we tested her again and this time she moved into position before telling us that she and we made a triangle. What a girl!!

On a not so happy note, a little over a week ago a woman pulled out and stopped in my lane causing me to T-bone into her. Luckily and thanks be to God, there was no damage or injury for us. The other lady was a little sore because she saw us coming but instead of moving she just braced herself. Her car would be totaled if she tried to turn it in. I hit straight into the side bending the passenger and driver doors to the point where they will not open. Sadly it was a gift from her sister after she lost her house and everything she owned recently so there's not really any option but to crawl in through the passenger side.
She called her insurance and the police before I realized that we had no damage or injury so we had to give lots of statements and denials of claims. It was lots of good fun. I was so mad that it had happened, but grateful that no one was injured, it could have been a lot worse if I hadn't had time to slam on my brakes.

We also got most of the boards up in the house and all of the external wall's outlets finished. Two circuits done, and a third in place when we work on it tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get the bathroom done tomorrow and then we only have to figure out how the heck we're supposed to get to the hallways and the heater and swamp cooler. Those are going to be boogers. We'll probably also get a few more of the patches done. Hopefully we won't have to open any more walls, I'm tired of cleaning up mold.
After that we'll move everything away from the walls invite all of our closest friend in the area over and put up all the drywall and mud and tape them in the same day. We're going to save the painting for after we move out, that way we don't have to worry about messing it up while we're living here :)

Lastly this week marked the start of a prequel to the book I wrote last year. I started it because I realized after finishing the first book and starting the next that it didn't follow well. It lacked an understanding of the planet's history and made it impossible to grasp the significance of what the main character was doing. So I dropped it and stopped writing. Then just the other day I needed something to keep my mind busy so I started thinking about the story again and there it was. I started writing yesterday and I already have 16 pages. I LOVE when inspiration strikes. After this book is done I'll need to go and revise the first book so that the details match more closely and possibly rewrite a bit of it to connect the ideas better and then I'll write the third book. Once they're all done I think I'm going to try to send them to a publisher. I figure they can only say no, but with three books written it's a better bet than a lot of beginning authors. They'll need a lot of editing, but I've heard most books do.

Jason is having a blast with his new position. For those who didn't know he was demoted and his pay was cut by more than $800 a month because of a bad phone call that the general manager happened to overhear and a few not favorable customer satisfaction surveys. His manager was surprised when Jason told him the pay wouldn't be enough, but eventually we had no other choice than to accept it. So we're cutting back significantly and doing what we can to suck it up until January at the earliest. We've also prayed a lot and we're going to fast forward our 5 year plan. We were going to settle for 5 years and then send Jason back to school for Computer Networking, but with all that's happened so far the automotive field just isn't looking great so we're going to head back to school early and complete a bachelors for him.
The part of all of this that I love is the fact that though the demotion upset him, he didn't let it stop him. He's turned it around and basically proven to them that they made a mistake by upselling the heck out of everything and taking every opportunity to improve himself. He is outselling the guy they chose in his place and basically kicking butt. I feel bad for them only because they're going to be hurting when he leaves in January or March.
Of course there is a downside to the new plan too: it entails me going back to work. We prayed about it a lot, and we'll also be moving back to Rexburg, which I am super exited about. Although I hate winters I REALLY miss the atmosphere of a small town. I loved the friends we made there as well, and though most of them have graduated and moved there are a few left, and I have no doubt we'll find more.
We've already contacted my old boss who has assured me that if he doesn't have a position that he knows of several other firms who do that he will refer me to, but he refused to give me any names until they're sure they can't offer me anything. :)
My mom was devastated and Jason's parents (though they didn't tell us directly) didn't like the idea but all three sets of parents are supportive and hoping for the best for us.
If Galusha can offer me a job we'll be moving in late January, if they can't we'll wait until April because Jason won't start school until then at the earliest. It's going to be another interesting roller coaster.
A friend called and we laughed that we were both begging for the day when we'd get a steady paycheck and now that we've got one we realize that all steady paychecks are not the same. Especially with the rental market as it currently stands.

Other than that we're doing well. We made it through another week and our pretty princess is at the top of her game. We got an amazing sale at Toys R Us and walked away with gifts for the next 3 years for an average of $7 a game. I'm most excited about mousetrap and twister, both of which are personal favorites of mine. (of course they're both 6+ but we'll see what we can do to introduce Twister earlier :-)