Family News - January 2000

Wow! Where can I begin? I guess the best thing to do since, I haven't updated these pages for so long, is to start when the major changes began. That would be back in March of last year. In March, we moved out of our home in Narrowsburg to an apartment in Port Jervis. We decided to move to Port Jervis because it was cheap, half as far from my work as where we were living and finally, because it was close to my parents and would give Matt a chance to spend more time with his grandparents.

That didn't last for long, though. Although I liked the job I had well enough, when I discovered that they wouldn't give me a raise, and I also discovered how far below the national average their pay scale was, I started looking for a new job. I posted my resume on the Internet and, after a lot of disappointing interviews, was contacted by a company called mpl2.com, who offered me a job as a contract employee. The company is located in Bellevue, Washington, all the way across the country from Port Jervis, New York. They offered me 50% more than I was getting on the job I had, which certainly caught my attention. When I found out that most of my contract work would be at Microsoft, I had to take the chance. After all, for someone in my line of work, Microsoft seems to be the best place.

My new job title, Writer/Programmer, describes quite well what I do every day. I work as part of the team writing documentation for Microsoft Active Data Objects (ADO), so I get to use all of my programming skills. What a pleasure! Every other job I've had has required me to use only one or, at most, two languages. Here I get to write example programs in Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual J++, VBScript and JScript. I can finally say what I've always dreamed of saying: "I LOVE MY JOB!"

Enough about just me... Warren and Matthew stayed in New York for a while when I first came out in order to go to my mother-in-law's 80th birthday party in August. Then Warren single-handedly drove all of our belongings and Matthew from New York to Redmond, Washington in a Ryder rental truck. I really think he deserves a hand for this one! I can't imagine driving 3,500 miles in a truck with a three year-old. And they got here right on schedule and with no mis-haps beyond a couple of scratches in some of the furniture.

We all love our new apartment, which includes two indoor swimming pools, an outdoor pool, an exercise room and two saunas. We have three bedrooms, so we've got a place for the computers, and Matt has his own room.

Christmas was a blast. We had company from home, my Mom and Dad, who spent two weeks with us. Between sight seeing and shopping, the time just sped by. Matt's favorite Christmas present was a Woody doll that is almost as tall as he is. The first thing he did when he unwrapped it was put it on the couch and try to sit on its lap! He also loved the play house we got for him. It's called the "Mega House" and it 5' by 5' by 5' and just about fills up one corner of his room. He plays in it all day long.

From now on, I'll try to update more often... say once a month or so. I had almost decided to give up this site for a while, but then I caught the bug again. Talk to you again soon.