James: September 2002 Archives
9-30-2002
Hello everyone,
This week our big push has been to fill up the dumpster that we rented. On Saturday we had everyone from Miekkas family, plus Jenny, come and help us out. We started at about ten in the morning and worked til about five. We completely filled the dumpster, and we are definately going to need another one. After that was full we started in on our Deseret Industries (DI) pile. I think we made seven trips to the DI. We got rid of five major appliances and a ton of other stuff. We are all very tired and sore now...
On Tuesday I will be starting my new job with Netmark Pro Int'l. I am going to be a Perl programmer. Netmark Pro offers tools to people and companies to help manage sales opportunities. Everything they do is web based. Some of the tools and services that they provide are: a web site front end that collects sales leads and provides a place for people to find out about the salesperson. Then there is an Admin panel that the salesperson (our customer) uses to track his sales leads. We have email managers, contact managers, email autoresponders, tools to manage up and down lines (a lot of our customers are big MLM or Network Marketers). Right now the big project is to completely rewrite all of these tools. I am going to be involved with that, I am also responsible to respond to bug reports that we get concerning the existsin software. I am definately going to be streched with this job. I am really looking forward to the opportunity to learn and grow. For those who are concerned, for where we are standing now the company appears to be pretty stable. We feel good about making this move and hopefully it will be a good experience.
Finally this week we have a new heater and air conditioner being installed. We are looking forward to having lower gas and electric bills... We also should have a new roof, windows, water heater and doors within the next few weeks.
Love,
Miekka and James
9-24-2002
This last week has been exciting for us. For those of you who don't know, James was offered a new job. He will be working from home doing computer programming. I was a little worried about him switching jobs in the middle of the employment crisis that is going on right now, but we have both prayed about it and we haven't gotten any negative feelings about it. So we are plunging ahead. He will be making almost twice what he was making at the school district (which will be really nice) and we will be able to deduct all of his business expenses from our taxes at the end of the year. I've been researching how to file taxes when you are self-employed and have come up with some good ways to lessen our taxes. I am so excited for James and for this new experience in his life. I've never seen him so excited about work, there was much forehead slapping and grinning after he was offered the job. He put in his two weeks at the school district on Tuesday, and has gone into "two week mode". That's what I like to call it anyway, it's when all the stress of your work leaves you and you just enjoy yourself for the last two weeks that you are employed. I think this last week has been one of the best he's ever had at the school district.
The dumpster has arrived and we have been throwing wood and trash in it since Saturday. The dumpster is huge, it's 22 ft long x 8 ft wide x 6 ft tall. We have already filled it more than halfway full and we are thinking that we are going to need another one just to get all the junk hauled away.
In other news on the house, we have a roofer coming this week or next week to reroof our house. Once they are done, we are going to begin doing the drywall in the kitchen and one of the bathrooms upstairs. We are trying to figure out the best way to get our kitchen done without being kitchenless for more than a week or so.
It's so exciting to finally have a bunch of things going on with the house. We are looking forward to having it done and looking as nice as we want it to. We hope that all of you are doing well and we look forward to hearing from you.
Love,
Miekka and James
9-15-2002
This week has been quite productive. James and I tore out all the built-up walls and drywall in our kitchen. Opa had built in his own insulation during the engery crisis in the 1970's, that meant that we had about 3 inches worth of drywall, insulation and boards to remove to get the kitchen back to it's original walls. Then we decided to go a step further and remove the original walls on two sides of the kitchen so that we could run the wiring and plumbing for the new kitchen that we have planned. It was quite the job, especially since Opa felt the need to nail each layer separately with a nail every two inches or so. But we got it all down in a relatively short amount of time. All the debris is now sitting in our backyard.
The backyard is the official dumping ground until our dumpster arrives this Saturday. We have three enormous piles of stuff from the torn out buildings. My whole family will be coming over on the 28th to help us throw all the junk into the dumpster. It will be so nice to have our backyard cleaned up before winter comes.
We also bought the paint to paint our entire upstairs, it was on sale this week for five dollars off per gallon. It will be a while before we can actually do the painting, but we figured that we better buy it while it is still on sale. I had quite the chore of picking out colors, luckily I had some help from Jenni and a few test quarts of paint to help me make up my mind.
On Thursday we went to Rachael Lyon's (Crook) wedding dinner. It was a wonderful dinner, we sat at a table with Aunt Mary and Uncle Mel, Mark and Todd Hicken. The dinner was held at the Lion House and there were tons of people there. Uncle Fred led the festivities with his usual flair and we were treated to a cute slide show of picture of Rachael and Joe growing up. It was the first wedding reception that James and I had been to since we got married; having experienced our own wedding it gave us a new perspective on the whole process. I think it's much more relaxing to be a well-wisher instead of the newly-weds.
That about wraps up our week. We love you all!
Love, Miekka and James
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9-08-2002
The house is officially ours now. The two images that are shown above are some of the outbuildings that are behind our house. As you can see they are pretty ramshackle and have lots of stuff in and around them. Our big project right now is to get rid of these buildings and to get the yard cleaned up. At this point we have completely torn down the green outbuilding and have about half of the second building down.
We have also started the preparations in the kitchen for remodeling it. On the walls and ceilings Opa had built up a layer of insulation and sheetrock and wood paneling. We spent eight hours yesterday (Saturday) tearing down the built up layer from the walls and ceiling, hopefully we can finish the rest in the following week.
We have been taking pictures of our progress, so as they are developed the pictures will appear on this web site. I recently added a new section to Photos that show some pictures of our backyard and other parts of the house before we started any of our cleanup efforts.
Besides working on the house James isn't really doing anything new. Both school (collage) and the highschool (work) are keeping him really busy. He found out about a local yo-yo club that meets once a month, unfortunately he missed it this month due to kitchen renovations...
Miekka isn't doing anything else either besides working on the house.
This site will be under continuous construction for a while. If you come across any links that don't work send an email to [email protected] . Enjoy!
James and Miekka Lance
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