Google Calendar... Don't Fail me now!

What's been going on lately you might ask? Ah not much.. let me just run through a few of them for you. Many have been top secret but are now legal to talk about.

• My partner in crime, my right hand and dear friend at UT resigned to become an Oak Ridge Police officer. Jeremy is doing good. and starts the academy this weekend.
  
• All the windows in our house have been ripped out and had new ones installed
  
• Tim and I lost years off our life blowing insulation in my attic. Pretty neat experience if you've never done it.
  
• Tim and wendy, our dearest of friends for several years have closed on their house, and will be moving back to NC next month.
  
• I found out BJ has the "cat whisper". (read his blog for the details)
  
• I interviewed with TTU about a job.
  
• Our cousin crystal has been miraculously healed of cancer.
  
• My cell phone screen died and i've been answering calls blindly (very dangerous)
  
• Today i resigned from UT to take the job at TTU starting on Feb 25th.
  

I guess when we decide to embrace change we do it full force. I've spent much time looking at the next 5 weeks deciding when i can take some vacation, when we can move tim and wendy, when i can start a new career, etc etc. The Google Calendar is always willing to help.

Tim and Wendy leaving will be a really sad time in our little worlds. Tim will be attending seminary online initially but they are moving back so he can be on campus very soon. Their house sold in like 6 days so things have sped up really quickly. Over the past few years many great stories have been birthed on lunch hour with tim, myself and the rest of the gang. Those days will be greatly missed. We will miss their open door policy at their home. Lots of eating out trips, and most of all Wenge's caramel corn. Luckily the mac does a good job of handling skype calls so i have no doubt that we will all still be in touch. Supposedly tim will be the first of our crew to make the jump to the iPhone. I welcome those days even more lately with the escalated crappyness that is the razr.

As for my job, well these are both sad and exciting times all in one. UT has been good to me, there is no doubt about that. They gave me a shot in IT land, they have given me flexibility and 7 1/2 years of experience. Jeremy and I have joked for years about "you go, i go" and that seems to be the way it has worked out. Without going into too much detail, i will say that IT at UT has not been ideal for awhile now. It has been bearable on two fronts. Flexibility is worth alot, and the people I work with are excellent. The people that i will be leaving behind are what make decisions like this hard. Having said that, I know that i'm not leaving the country and can still keep in touch with the good ones. This blog will help in many ways so that everyone can still read about the crazy happenings of our life. Combined with email, cell phones, text messages and paper if necessary i have no doubt that we can stay in touch.
I've always said i would not leave UT if the playing field was not even. All of the other jobs that were brought to my attention over the past years could not justify even sending in a resume. The TTU position, which found me, not the other way around has the same number of days off, sick leave, good retirement, insurance etc etc. The salary will be an increase for us, which given our one income scenario money never hurts. In other ways TTU as an employer had to deal greatly with long term outlooks. Even though UT is great, in the long term there is no where else to go. My spot will never be more than it is. TTU has potential of down the road stepping into a greater position on campus. Educational benefits also played a role for furthering my learning, and if i work there long enough 50% off the girls tuition sounds pretty good. By that time that will mean tuition will "only" be like 1.2 million a year. I will be working a great deal with BANNER over the next weeks and months as TTU prepares for its launch in the fall. On some levels i'm alittle nervous about the huge learning curve, and potential of being beaten like a borrowed slave till the fall. Although it will be a lot of work to get up to speed, on some deep level i welcome the challenge. I know it sounds crazy to welcome lots of work, but my brain seems to be collecting dust lately. UT Extension technology has come a long way, but has leveled off greatly and offers few challenges. Mostly the same issues repeated daily across 31 counties. All IT work is like this in some ways, but i welcome the challenge for now. Ask me this question in about July and i may give you another answer! Who knows.

Well this has turned into a Jones length blog, so i'll wrap it up by saying thats pretty much my life over the past several days in a nut shell. Verizon is going to have their way with me at the end of the month i'm pretty sure. I've spent way too many minutes sorting out insurance, retirement, annual leave etc between HR departments in Knoxville and Cookeville.

p.s. bignate come back to blogland soon.. we miss you. I'd like to say good job to jones and cammo who survived the new year blog trap. timbo is still on semi annual update schedule. later gators