Final Grades

I got a 4.0 this semester! (No thanks to my french teacher, she would have given me an A- but luckily I already got an A in the class via Clep Test. *blowing a raspberry at teacher* So there!)

Ian passed all of his classes and qualifies for a certificate of achievement (or something like that) = an associated degree! We're planning on moving to Weber in the fall and that will make thing so much easier to transfer over. (According to his brother who is an advisor at Weber.)

It will also be nice to be closer to immediate family.

:)

Merry Christmas!

I doubt I'll have time to write another blog before Christmas, so here's my holiday blurb.

Good things are happening. Ian got his job at the beginning of the month. While it has been difficult to get the hours he needs because they send him home early when it's slow, he's happier now. 
I was offered temporary work starting next Wednesday!! I got the work with the first company I interviewed with, Conservice. It is only temporary, but has the possibility to become permanent employment in the future. I'm very excited and grateful.

The Lord has answered our prayers. Things don't always happen when we want them to, but in the Lord's time. 

The past few days have felt so blah. I've been sitting at home, checking job boards for updates (not much out there), and really just trying not to go crazy. Now I have something to look forward to!

I'm hoping we get a ton of snow for Christmas. We supposedly have a storm coming in on Sunday and another one might come Monday night. We shall see. I'll be glad for any snow we get, but I hope for a lot of it. I know people don't like to travel in it, but I can still wish for a beautiful white Christmas.

Money is still tight. I wish we were able to buy more Christmas presents for people this year, but I'm afraid we have to limit it for now. It stinks. I love giving presents to people. Oh well. Next year, right?

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays as well!

He got a Job!!

So finally, after 8 months, Ian got a job! He's working at Papa Jay's. It's a small sandwich and jerky shop located by Hastings here in Logan. So we'll stay up here and do spring semester before moving down to Weber. That makes things a bit easier. We won't have to rush out and find somewhere to live just yet. Thank goodness!

Finals are this week. We have our French final tomorrow morning at 7:30. Luckily it's going to be a toasty 12 degrees outside while we wait for the bus. That will wake us up!

I don't have another final until Thursday. Though I have an online one that I can do at any time. I also have a final project due by Friday at noon. Hopefully I can get that done by Wednesday and I won't have anything to worry about after my Thursday final.

Now it's time to get ready for Christmas. We just put our wreath on our front door and lights in our windows. We're going to do snowflakes here shortly to add to the front door. I want it to snow more. we only have about an inch. We want more!

Post Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving went well. I was a bit nervous, but everything turned out great.

We started the day off wonderfully by getting to spend some time with my sister-in-law Em and her hubby. It's been forever (a whole month) since we last saw them. It was nice to talk with them. Great news for them, they've made an offer on a house!! We're excited for them.
(I also found out my twin brother is also buying a house and they actually close on Dec 6th! Woot!) 
Then we headed over to Thanksgiving dinner at Ian's grandparent's house. We got put at the kid's table in the small dining room, but we didn't mind. We had excellent company and had fun talking to the younger cousin. (No one was under 16yrs old, so it was great.) The food was yummy, but I think I enjoyed the company the most. My hubby and his siblings then played round robin - a ping-pong game where the players form a circle around the table take a hit the move for the next player. They rotate around the table as they go. You get 3 mistakes til you have to sit out. Once the game is down to 2 players they must spin in place once before hitting the ball. I did not participate, but enjoyed watching. After going back upstairs and chatting for a bit, we left to go visit Ian's other grandparents for a bit. 
We didn't stay long, but enjoyed visiting with grandfather Allred. (grandma was sleeping.) We then said goodbye and headed down to my parent's Thanksgiving to see everyone there. 
They were done eating dinner but still had pie out. (This being 3 hrs after we had eaten we decided another slice wouldn't kill us.) So we had pie and talked for a while then headed home.

Like I said, not a bad Thanksgiving really.

Today, I need to work on my sketchbook for history of interior design and Ian has a job interview in an hour and a half. Still looking for work. *sigh* The holidays are going to be rough without an income.

Searching

So it hit me this week that maybe my husband and I are asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking why are we not finding jobs, maybe we should be asking ourselves if we ought to be moving somewhere else. Somewhere where we can get jobs. 
A few months ago I felt inspired that we should look into study abroad, get away for a while, show Ian my mission...etc. But Ian has to have his GPA up to a 2.75 in order to do that and truthfully he's struggling. So i don't think it's going to happen. So I asked myself, why? Why did I have this overwhelming feeling of needing to travel somewhere else to go to school? What if it wasn't an urge to go abroad, but just to change where we are attending school?
We started looking at a few options close to here. At first we were looking at the University of Utah. But they really don't have a degree program that works for Ian. (I'm assuming I just wont continue if we do move.) We also were looking at apartments in the Salt Lake area and we weren't impressed with anything we saw. 
So we started looking at Weber State. They have an interesting pre-physical therapy program, you basically make up your own program. It's kind of strange to me to do it that way. We talked to my brother-in-law who actually is an advisor there and he explained it a little bit. We also were looking at apartments in the Ogden area and found some that looked promising that aren't too far from the campus. I just don't know if that is the right move for us yet or not. 
One thing that has to change is this no job situation. We can't keep living off of the charity of others. I love my family for the help they give us, but it makes me feel so guilty. Ian has now had sixteen interviews and turned in about fifty applications. It's kind of depressing that nothing has happened yet. It's been seven months since he lost his job and two since I left mine. I still don't regret that decision. I've still got my sanity, even if I am very stressed about our finances.
We'll keep praying about it. And, of course, we'll keep looking for a job here until we make the decision to move.

On to November!

So for those interested, I didn't get the job. :( I got an email a week later saying they only had 20 positions and they interviewed 50 people. But they'll keep my resume on file in case they need me. Bummer. I'm so annoyed with this economy. It's never been this difficult for me to find a job before. (I started looking long before I quit Convergys.)
Ian still hasn't had any luck. He had an interview last week that really had him excited, but once again, 1 position and over 20 applicants. He didn't get it. It's hard to see him struggle with this. And I must admit, it's hard having no cash flow at all. I feel guilty buying milk or fresh produce at the store. (We're eating into our line of credit doing so. literally)
Christmas is coming up fast. I don't know what we're going to do. Maybe we'll be able to sell some textbooks back and get a little Christmas money. We'll see.

I'm going to get slightly political here, what with only 3 days til the elections and all. I really hope that Romney is elected president. Our unemployment rates have only gotten worse since Obama took office. He can't blame that one on Bush. I'm tired of all the empty promises. (from all candidates really.) Why can't someone actually make changes like they said they would?
I was talking to my father-in-law about the unemployment rate. He said that while the number looks relatively low (compared to other countries) it's actually quite skewed. It's a small number for people my parent's age but in my age group the number is closer to 30% unemployed or underemployed. (For those who don't know, underemployed is when someone has work, but still isn't earning enough to pay for basic needs.) Logan is a college town and there are a lot of people my age here. So the odds aren't too great for finding a job. Unless you're desperate and want to work at a call center. But then, they don't care about their employees at all so most people quit within the first two months. (if that.)

5 more weeks for this semester. I'm stressed about one of my classes, but it's not too bad. I am worried about Ian's grades though. He's struggling in French. He also has a hard time with his tests in Biology and Chemistry. We figured out that he'll need a B+ average in order to raise his GPA high enough for us to do study abroad next fall. I don't know if it's going to happen though. But I'll keep trying to help him in any way I can. I think that some guys brains just aren't hardwired for taking tests. He's really good at memorizing useless information about games, movies, and other stuff, but when it comes to school he has a hard time remembering things. How can I help him change that? There must be a way to use the memory he has for random stuff to his advantage. I just haven't been able to figure out how.
With french, we've put sticky notes all over the place in our apartment with french vocab on them. We've also made flash cards and put different verbs up by his computer. It's an uphill battle some days though. *Just as a side note, I don't understand how he was able to go through jr. high and high school without ever taking a language class. Davis high, you failed! We were required to take a full year of language at my high school in order to graduate.  

Out of Work

So last March Ian was fired from Convergys. As I had previously posted I was working there and hating life. So, after much prayer, a couple of inspired visiting teachers, and a ward conference, I quit...

It's been stressful. We're eating up our reserves. (literally.) And trusting in the Lord and had amazing help from family. It's not been easy, but I'm so glad I did it. I needed out of that depressing place. 

On the bright side, I did have an interview last week. It went well. Now, just waiting to hear back from them. Ian continues to look for a job. He's had a ton of interviews but no luck so far. (Another interview tomorrow.) We counted up all the applications he's turned in and found 44 job applications and about a dozen interviews.

We'd appreciate your prayers. And thank you for them too! I hope that one of us gets a job soon. 

Banzai/Halloween Hair

Just cut my hair again. Also changed the color to purple (though the camera almost makes part of it look brown. Weird.) Though I will be going back to red soon after Halloween. I liked red better.

My Red Hair

So that's what it looked like right after dying it. It was a very red. It was funny trying to explain it to my mom on the phone. I finally had to say, "It's not red as in the natural hair color, which is really more of an orange. It's red like the crayon."

No one has really disliked it apart from one family member. And it has been a lot of fun to have some color. Do i plan on keeping it this color? No. In fact my hair has already started growing out and i have about half an inch of blonde roots. It's not fading nearly fast enough! It's supposed to last 4-6 weeks. But I guess it does depend on the hair that is dyed as well as how often the hair gets washed. *sigh*

I am planning on dying my hair purple in October for Anime Banzai/Halloween. So I'll probably post that too. Just for kicks and giggles. ;)

Why I hate my job right now, and why I'll be quitting reason #2.

I'm posting my schedule for the past two months as well as what I have been scheduled to work so far for this month. You should be able to see exactly why I'm planning on quitting.

 

  

 Yup, only one Sunday and Saturday were scheduled off. In three months! That's ridiculous. When I spoke to my team leader, she sent to to talk to the site scheduler. He basically said he was sorry, but the schedules are put together by someone in Florida and he has no control over them. BS!
It's more like they don't care.
When I first started working there the policy was that if you don't want to work Sundays, you can get a schedule where you only have to work maybe one a month. What a lie! Their actual policy is that the top performers (sales) get to have free pick for whatever schedule they want and the rest of us get the left overs. I'm tired of it!
When I quit, I'm bringing a print out of this with me so I can show them why I'm quitting.

Roots

So I dyed my hair 2 weeks ago and guess what? I can already see a quarter inch of my blonde hair growing in. Sheesh. It grows fast! I'm glad this is only semi permanent hair dye. I'm expecting it to fade, so it doesn't bug me too much. I can only imagine what someone who paid $50-$60 would feel. Never planning on going that route. :)

I've got a picture of my hair, I just need to post it online. I'll make sure to get a pic of my hair growing in blonde as well. Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a hair blog. I'm not that brave!
Though I could rant about old ladies saying mean things about my hair, but I won't. ;p

This week has been going well. My hubby and I both applied for several jobs. (He actually applied for a few more than I did.) We keep praying that we'll both find something soon. I found out that a lady I visit teach has also been looking for a job for the same amount of time as my hubby and still hasn't found anything either. It made him feel a bit better knowing that it wasn't just him. Though it didn't stop his grandmother of accusing him of not wanting to find a job. Ouch, yeah I'll admit I was really mad about that. Granted, I'm the one who has seen him filling out applications each week and crying because he so frustrated that he hasn't found anything yet. It's not easy to see your hubby cry.

On a lighter note, we got to go see family yesterday. :D It was a lot of fun to see my in laws and their kids and two grandkids. We also dropped by my parent's house and visited them for a while. Then we came home and watched the Fellowship of the Ring til 2:40am. (I forgot it was that long with the extended version! Oops.) Good thing we have afternoon church! Though that changes next week and I'm so HAPPY!

2 weeks til my 1st anniversary! It doesn't feel like it's been a whole year. :)

Dying our Hair

I have red hair and I used to have blonde. Yup.
It's not natural red, which is really more a shade of orange. No. It's RED. Like the crayon color. My mom called it scarlet. The company we bought it from, Manic Panic, calls it Infrared. We like it alot. (Ian has the same color.)
I also bought a dark purple, which has a cool blue tint to it, and we got Ian a dark forest green too. :) It's just a bit of fun. That and we can see how it works out before Anime Bonzai! (Now we just have to figure out which characters to be for the con...we have no idea!)
I might post a picture, might not. I haven't decided.

Hating My Job

I work at a call center in my little college town. Truthfully, the job isn't terrible. But there are certain aspects which have been annoying me. This annoyance has only been increasing. Being a  member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) I firmly believe that in order to keep the Sabbath holy, one should avoid working (for a wage. Of course this does not include charitable works. How better to worship the Lord than through service, right?)

Anyway, my job has only given me one Sunday off in the past two months! I'm tired of not being able to go to my own church/ward. It's annoying and people start wondering if you've become inactive. That and my hubby misses going with me. And I likewise miss going with him.

Another annoyance is their sales policy. When I was hired their policy was that we offer billing help and tech support. If we happened to get sales, great for us we get a bonus on our check! Then it changed to an attitude of, 'They can get 40 sales in a month, why can't you.' And now we have a minimum number of sales per month that we're allowed to scrape by with. I an no sales person. If someone wants something, then I can definitely help them add it to their account, but I don't feel that t.v., home phone, and internet are needs. They are wants. Expensive wants at that.  I also don't feel like I can sell something to a person with crappy service. "I know your services haven't been working for a week, but why not add a home telephone line for just $19.99 a month!" Nope. Can't do it.

Today I got a verbal warning because I'm not selling enough. Yup. I'm in trouble because I don't offer crappy service to people. (Especially in Texas.)  My boss is an awesome person and I know she is only doing her job, but she politely pointed out that I have one month to get four sales before getting a written warning, then who knows how long after that before I'm termed. Yippee skippy. I've never done badly at a job. Never. This is a first. A new low for Jessica.

Not only am I stressed about helping my hubby find a job after the same call center fired him four months ago, but now I have to worry about losing my job too. 

I didn't tell my boss that I'm putting in applications elsewhere. I actually think they prefer people quit on the day they plan on leaving. Then they can avoid people with bad attitudes messing with their systems and what have you. *sigh* 

Pray I'll find something better!

Laziness

Of late my hubby and I have been in the bad habit of going to bed after midinght. This then causes us to sleep in far too late in the mornings. My hubby doesn't seem to care, but it drives me bonkers only having a few short hours in the mornings before having to leave for work.
It also makes me feel incredibly lazy. I really need to change my schedule. Though I keep telling myself, and him, that. It still hasn't been really happening. I'm such a computer junky.
Truthfully, we have been watching anime every night and that's been keeping us up. We've finished Soule Eater and 2 discs of D. Gray Man(which we started this week.)
Wish me luck!

Summarizing Sucks

This is a screen shot of the first page of Chapter 8 in Alcatraz #3: Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia by Brandon Sanderson. I love these books. And so should you. :)

Over-all Update

Things here are going well. I'm just working on some projects for school (well not today of course.) I'm trying to decide if I should continue with my 2nd bachelor's or not. It's been a bit of a struggle, but I think  school is keeping me sane right now.

Married life is good so far. We're trying to decide whether or not to stay in our current apartments or move somewhere else. They'll be raising the rent by $15/mo next school year. We're not certain if we mind enough to pack everything up and move or not. (Moving is the pits!)

Other than that, things are going great. School and work are the same stressful situations as usual, but we just keep smiling. We just keep reminding ourselves that we wont be here forever. :)

Doubt

I realized that I really am not looking forward to school this week. It was nice to only have to worry about work and my husband. I didn't realize just how stressed I was because of school til I started thinking about it again. All this stress cannot be good for me!

I keep asking myself if I should be working on a 2nd bachelor's degree or not. I don't want to use it other than in the capacity of mother/wife. Is it worth the student loans that I'll have to repay? *sigh* I don't know what to do. If I stop going to school for more than a semester, then i have to start paying back my student loans.

On the other hand, if I keep going to school, then I'm just building up more student loans which will need to be repaid in the future, who knows if we'll be any better off then? It seems easier to be able to pay them off now, while there are only two of us. But, that can change so quickly.
I don't know what to do. This is no fun. :P

Too Much of a Good Thing.

That's right, I think I'm getting too much sleep as of late. It's been too nice to be able to sleep in this spring break, but I fear that I'll get used to it and next week, it will be particularly difficult to get back into the swing of things.
I took a nap today, I'm not used to such a luxury. Usually it's off to school, then directly to work, come home to have dinner and do home work, then go to sleep. No extra naps allowed.

Chopping the Hair

So I decided to cut my hair a few months ago and have been waiting for the weather to warm up to do so. I did it today. We'll see how I feel about it in a few days, for now, I really like it. It feels weird, but it's cute.

Wearing Thin

Spring Break is next week and it feels as though it will never come. Granted it is Wednesday, so at least we're half way done with this week. There are just so many assignments to work on. I feel like Bilbo when he says this, "...I'm old, Gandalf. I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel... thin. Sort of stretched, like... butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday..."
I feel like I'm going stir crazy. Today Ian and I got off of work early (they over staffed the place and needed to send some of us home.) So we decided to go walk around the mall, just so we wouldn't have to go straight home again.
*sigh*
Oh well. Maybe we'll go somewhere for spring break next year?

Birthday Woes

Just kidding, I had a great birthday. I went down to my parent's for breakfast. My dad made dutch oven, mmmm. It was greasy and gooooood. Then we ran down to Marie Calendar's to get my Boston Cream Pie!! We made our way back home in time to have my sister-in-law/bff come visit! (Complete coincidence! But a great present none the less!) After wasting the afternoon doing absolutely nothing, we went to the Olive Garden for dinner. Like I said, awesome.
(Granted I did get food poisoning that night, but that happened on Sunday, not my birthday.)
My wonderful hubby got me a Tardis cookie jar, which we're using to store his sonic screw drivers, and a poster of the painting done by "Vincent Van Gogh" of the Tardis exploding. (this one is cool for another reason, it came all the way from Birmingham, UK!!!)

Stressed - Sort of a Rant

Life has been so crazy of late. It's been the usual push at work. Get a sale, every day. But don't increase your handle time. Make sure you don't go to break at the wrong time...etc. etc. There is always that push.
Lately, school has been adding a lot to my stress. I had a homework assignment for ethics due Wed, a paper and a presentation due Friday in another class, and we just started working on our shirt and pants in sewing.
Sometimes I just want to scream or something. i need some positive way to let off some of this stress. Two more weeks til spring break! I can do it!
Not to mention, I just caught that same cold i had a month ago. Stupid bugs!
Happy birthday to me this week. :p Hopefully the weekend will go better. I just want it to be Saturday already! 

Sick

My husband shared his cold with me. Meh. Usually I think sharing is nice.

So my voice is out of wack, my nose can't decide if it wants to runny or stuffy, and my lungs are trying to jump out of my throat. No bueno. I'm only going to sacrament meeting today. I don't want to get one of the several new moms sick by way of her husband. I have no idea how contagious this cold is. It's going to be obnoxious having a cold the first week of this semester though.

I hope this cold goes away quickly. I hate being sick!