I'm Officially a New Mexican!

I've been a huge slacker with blogging over the holidays. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years! Quick recap of ours: Ryan and I took a road trip to Utah (this Christmas was Ryan's family--UT, next year is my family--FL) for Christmas and unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures! Yeah, that's probably something I really need to work on. Anyway, it was a very busy trip and we were able to visit with lots of family and friends.

Now that the holidays have come and gone, I finally decided to become an official resident of New Mexico by switching out my drivers license. Ryan did his right away when we moved down (so responsible!), but I just kept delaying for no apparent reason--maybe it's my inner rebellion against conformism or something. Anyway, Ryan said it was a very painless process and that I should not take the risk of not updating my license in fear of a potential penalty fee. Taking his word for it, I decided that I should be a good denizen of New Mexico and get it done.

Needless to say, my experience was not smooth and easy like Ryan's. I even went to the less crowded MVD. After filling out the same form 3 times, getting my picture taken 2 times, answering the same redundant questions about another 4 times (address, height, weight), going to the MVD 2 times in a matter of 2 hours (they had to close for lunch in the middle of my license being processed), and roughly 2-2.5 hours of wasted time waiting (especially when I think of the hours as billable rates for work!), I FINALLY got my temporary drivers license! Talk about inefficiencies! I even began analyzing the flow process while I was there. (Maybe I should have presented them my assessment and billed them for my time) Thankfully, I do not have to renew my license for another 8 years...

It's FINALLY beginning to look a lot like Christmas in NM!!!

It snowed all day long today! We had woken up to a few days with a light dusting of snow last week and I wanted to take a picture of it, but Ryan said the "snow" wasn't picture-worthy--especially when it all melted by 10am. Today is different though. It has been snowing all day long. Not the big snowflakes we usually see in Utah, but there is enough snow to cover the ground and for me to sweep the snow from our steep driveway. Believe it or not, sweeping the snow from the driveway is a first for me! I have been lucky to not have to deal with snow removal until now. I remember when my dad would shovel snow when we lived in Maryland and it always looked fun since he did it in such a neat and efficient way...now from personal experience, it is not as fun as it looks. Here's some pics (since I think it is now picture-worthy!)and, from the looks of it, I think I have to go out and sweep the driveway again. And we might just even need to invest in a snow shovel if this keeps going!

New Mexico snow!!!

Snow from our balcony!

The Piano Obsession

For our 2nd anniversary, Ryan bought me a baby grand piano off of craigslist. I have been trying to get back into piano and have been obsessed with learning 2 songs written by Michael Nyman (the songs are on the playlist)--both from a movie called "The Piano". I haven't seen the movie, but the music is mysterious/intense/passionate. It really is an obsession since I play it everyday, trying to get further and further through the songs.

As I play, I often wonder what the history of our piano is. For instance, who played on this piano? How often was it played? What was the hardest piece that was played? The person we bought the piano from said that it was 90 years old. I don't know if that is true since I did some research about Steinert pianos and came across an article about various clues that date the piano. On our piano, there are 2 stickers on the back by the National Association of Music Merchants, which dates this piano to 1919 at the earliest. And then there is another clue about the tuning pins base section alignment, which may actually date our piano post-1925.

At any rate, the haunting pieces are an obsession not only during the waking hours as I relentlessly work through the pieces, but the melodies even seep into my dreams...

Extreme Home Makeover--Jamison Style

Since we are now homeowners, we have been immersed into the world of home improvement. Our new favorite stores are The Home Depot and Lowes. The people there in both stores have been such a help for us novices/"weekend warriors" (seriously, a Lowes employee in the paint department called us that). The first two areas we worked on were the garage and bedroom.

For the garage, we have put an epoxy coating on our garage floor and primed and painted the walls and ceiling. Here are the "before" and "after" pictures of our garage:

Before After

Ryan has grandiose plans to put in movable cabinets and a huge workbench and tool cabinet, but that will be a gradual process. We had to have a professional come out and install the water softener since we have really hard water out here. Ryan and our neighbor took a shot at it, but after hours of trying and countless trips to Home Depot and Lowes, we had to call in the professionals.

For the bedroom, my first project was to make a tuffed headboard. I saw this project on HGTV and they made it look so easy (as always). It took about 1/2 a day and it went much more smoothly with Ryan's help (the tuffed buttons were a pain!). Ryan was also able to install his first ceiling fan (more ceiling fans to install later in other rooms...). The pics above our bed are beach scenes (which I really miss) and were taken by my brother, Ben, who claims that I need to wire him money for his photography services. Ryan kinda thinks our room looks like a hotel room and wonders if I am having traveling withdrawals...

Before
After

I am in process of tackling the huge 2-story wall in our entranceway. This has been a decor issue for me. Any ideas??? I ordered a 47" console table to put there and I bought 3 huge canvases (24"x48"). I was thinking of painting them as an abstract triptych to break up the white space. However, I am struggling to find inspiration for these canvases as well.

Empty entranceway :(

Halloweentime

Last Friday, we had our friends, Tim and MyLyn, over to carve pumpkins. We got addicted to pumpkin carving from my cousin, Kin and his family, in SLC who always hosted an annual pumpkin carving party and we decided to take this tradition with us to New Mexico! Here are the results of our pumpkins:

Pumpkins: MyLyn, Tim, Evelyn, Ryan

My cat pumpkin wasn't completely done when everyone was finished, so I had to work on it for another 1/2hr or so:

Ryan and I decided to take our pumpkins outside to see the "full effect" at our first attempt in Halloween decorating (can't see the spider web across our front door):

What About Ryan???

Now that you have gotten an update about my career, it's time to talk about Ryan. I told him that he should explain his job instead of me because once he starts talking about engineering, I sort of glaze over and my mind begins to wander and think about other things like "hmm, what should we make for dinner?". Since Ryan has gotten use to this reaction, he gave me a brochure that discusses the purpoes of his department:

After reading the brochure, it still doesn't quite explain what Ryan does since it encompasses a plethora of engineering software terms and gives a very vague depiction. However, when asked about Ryan's occupation, I just take the little phrase in the middle of the brochure: "Modeling and Simulation". Maybe some day I will suddenly have the "A-HA moment" and understand it, but I'm not holding my breath. I am just happy that Ryan enjoys what he is doing. As what a former professor once said, "select a career that you are good at and that you love to do". Based on the few months that Ryan has been working, it seems like he is following this advice.

"Well, what would you say...you do here?"

You gotta love "Office Space" (the edited version of course) and "Dilbert" to try and convey what consultants do since we have such a "cryptic" job description. Ryan found this in the newspaper a few weeks ago and said that this is what I do:
And another one just for fun from my brother, Ben:
Naturally, consulting is much more (and obviously more legitimate) than the various stereotypical depictions! (Although, I must admit, that like the consultant in "Office Space", there was a time when I did ask someone what they did in the organization.)

Posing this same question to myself, "what do I do?", here's the basic summary: I am now an independent consultant and I assess patient throughput issues through data analyses and create presentations based on findings/recommendations for hospital systems on a needs basis. Since becoming an independent consultant, I haven't had to travel lately and work comes in peaks and flows, but a lot less burnout. And I guess you can add the fact that I have more time to write more posts :)