Big week in our house.

This past week was a big week in our house.

First thing Monday morning I quit my job. Yep you heard right. I haven't been completely satisfied with my return to architecture and HATE the commute. So I have been pursuing getting back into the Facility Management Database Support world, preferably on a contract basis. This week I also signed a contract with Gilbane for 20 hours a week, that no doubt will blossom to more than I want! I also am going to be doing some work for Washington Group on a contract basis that I hope will also grow to be steady part time involvement.

Mike got full-time busy this week on a contract he got for finishing a house about 10 miles south of us for a man that bought the house sight unseen off the internet from Baghdad. The house has a very nice layout and is completely finished on the exterior and only rough framed on the interior, so this is the perfect winter job for him and will keep him busy for 3 months or so, not to mention how this will help out his financial situation. He has a number of other small jobs in line as well, so he feels pretty good about his workload right now.

And if that is not enough big news, I finished my Ski Patrol training and am now a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the Snow King Ski Patrol. Of course I will only have two patrol days before the ski area closes for the season, but I feel much relief to have completed it. Now it only remains to be seen if it was all worth it in the years to come! I really hadn't realized when I joined that it would mean an entire ski season that I could not ski with Mike. (Of course there was that day three weeks ago in Deer Valley... Nice! But I digress).

A visit from Irvin Perry

One of the bigger events of the year in Jackson is the Dog Sled Race, especially noticable if your office manager is an ex-professional dog sledder, volunteers on the committee as race secretary, and generally kind person that cannot say no to anyone. This race started last Friday in Jackson for an evening short 4 mile kick off race. Then they tour around with a race in Lander, Pinedale, Alpine, Kemmerer, Evanston and Park City. 300 miles total. We went to the festivities on Friday evening and then volunteered to house a musher on the night they were in Alpine. That got us invited to an excellent pot luck (fun) and we were assigned to house Irvin Perry.

Irvin was travelling with his wife, Yoenne, and Dog Handler, Christie, and they were from Inuvik, Northwest Territory. If you don't know where that is, it is at the end of the road, literally, where the North American Highway system ends in the North. We stayed up late with them chatting and enjoyed a big breakfast before they were off to run the 60 mile leg Wednedsay. A very interesting evening and morning. Their 23 dogs stayed in the truck! (They left the other 22 at home.. and they do this "just for fun!").


I guess this race hosts the best dog sledders in the world. Irvin said there was no way to touch the top 5, but since up to 12th place pays out more than the $1000 entry fee, the other 15 teams were competing for those 7 spots. They were fairly disappointed with their showing so far.