Back at Work

First week down, 2,184 to go! Assuming I retire at 65, of course. (I don't really keep track of my remaining weeks. That would be weird.)

It was great to be back in the office. Everyone made me feel welcome and comfortable. Many of the people I worked with last summer are no longer at the office, so it was surprising not to see all of the familiar faces. My department is really small right now but I like it. Even though I'm working for an international company, I feel like it's just a local accounting firm. 

I have my own "cube" with three sides to it. There's a desk that goes all the way around and has a bunch of drawers of varied sizes. My chair is ok...I think I'll bring a pillow for my lower back, though. There are two overhead compartments that kind of look like those on an airplane. I have THREE monitors - two landscape and one portrait. I also have a laptop, so I'm good on screens if anyone asks.

I can see the mountains from my desk chair which is awesome. Last year I sat in a middle-of-the-room cube so I didn't have much of a view. Now I get to watch the sun rise and can see the snow creep down the peaks. 

I've been doing training this whole week, so I haven't been thrown right back into work yet. Basically I get to my desk, start training simulations, and do that for a solid 8 hours. It's a great time. Some of the work is just a refresher regarding the software I'll be using - I definitely feel like I have an advantage with that kind of stuff after doing the internship last summer. Other training work is much more difficult. It's like reading my entire corporate tax textbook over again, except in a more condensed form. That's what I'll be doing all next week, too, because of course I did all the easy ones first. Bad idea.

I've always had abnormal first days of work. I wake up thinking I have the morning under control and in less than two hours, something always happens that throws me a curve. This time was no different. On Sunday, Garrett and I drove the route downtown that I'd be taking every day to work so I could become familiar with it. I knew I had a parking pass to someplace called the EasyPark and we found the sign for it right next to my office. We drove into the garage to make sure our car would fit and I felt ready to take on the next day. Nothing was going to throw me off THIS time! 

So Monday morning, I get all business-casual-ed up and head to the office. The commute was a piece of cake and I realized that leaving 45 minutes early was probably not necessary. It took me 12 minutes to get to the parking garage. I knew from the day before that there were two entrances, one shorter than the other, so I picked the one closest to the doors to my office building. I got my little ticket, drove up the winding ramp, panicked because there were a hundred cars trying to navigate and I had no idea what I was doing, accidentally immediately went down the exit ramp, then popped back out on the street on the other side. It was like a really lame and embarrassing fair ride.

Determined, I went into the taller entrance and began the process again. Knowing I had time to waste, I drove around slowly and picked a nice spot by a light. I called my mom, hoping to not look like a strange person that sits in their car alone for a half hour in a dimly lit parking garage and instead simply needed to make a phone call. As we were chatting, I was fiddling with my parking pass and noticed the bolded words PARK STRIP at the bottom. I remembered from the summer before that people called a certain area the "park strip", but I assumed that was because there is a giant park - about 6 blocks long - right next to our office. So it's essentially a strip of park. The words lit a lightbulb in my head that perhaps people parked at the park strip. Maybe there was a parking lot by the strip of park. Do you follow? I wasn't sure I did.

I still had about 15 minutes so I retreated from the parking garage, somewhat shamefully. Luckily I had my mom on the phone with me to help maintain some confidence in my abilities. Downtown Anchorage is full of one-ways which are convenient when you know what you're doing, but I did not. I wound my way around a three-block radius from my office trying to find a spot on the supposed Park Strip just to give up and park where I did last summer: 6 blocks away in free parking. As I was settling into my spot and chatting my mom's ear off, she interrupted me to inform me I was late for work. On my first day. And I was still a six block walking distance from where I needed to be. So I was that girl speed-walking a mile to work on a Monday morning in ill-fitting slacks.

In other news, here's our couch:

Here's the forever shedding dog:

Here's my I-was-late-for-work-on-the-first-day picture for my building access card:

And here's how Remy has chosen to landscape our backyard:

Autumn Hikes + 25

Happy 25th birthday to Garrett! :D Due to our current financial situation, we spent the day running errands and unpacking. Cake was a must, though, so we celebrated with Betty Crocker and some rainbow sprinkles. 

We did secure our couch on Friday, however, so now we have a beautiful grey comfy number to sit on in the evenings while we watch our favorite shows on Netflix or Hulu (because we got internet, too!) It's our first furniture purchase together and we were both really excited about it. We went to the store, examined every couch, found one we liked, bought it, picked it up, moved it into the house, placed it where we wanted it, and now we sit on it! How grown-up of us.

We've done a little bit of decorating. We hung up a few pieces of artwork but ran out of picture hanging nails and hooks. I have yet to unpack the two "miscellaneous trinkets & keepsakes" boxes because we literally have zero surfaces to put any little treasures on. Garrett's already talking about building an entertainment center and a little corner table for the living room, plus some bookshelves of course, so that'll give us some more options. I hate to leave things unpacked after we lugged it all up here!

Yesterday our friend Bri came over to check out the house. Then we went on a hike/jaunt up Potter's Creek (I think?) trail and it was BEAUTIFUL! It was only about an 8 minute drive from our house but seemed more remote. The leaves are still changing over there so it was like walking through a cave of yellow. Fallen leaves covered the path and you could catch glimpses of the inlet from between the slender birch trees. We didn't run into any moose - hooray! We stopped at a look out point and it was a gorgeous view. It was a sunny afternoon so everything was lit up and all the colors contrasted amazingly. I'd love to go back when the tide is in - maybe to watch a sunset or the northern lights. Bri brought her dog, Thor, which was just what Remy needed. They chased each other almost the entire time and were off leash so she was pooped when we got home. 

Today we're heading up to Mammaw & Bill's for Garrett's belated birthday celebration. Other than that, we're just savoring our last day of relaxation before we both head to reality tomorrow! I can't believe my first day of work is less than 24 hours away. It's been over a year since I received my offer and the last 365 days have been spent getting ready for tomorrow. I finished up school, took the exhausting CPA exam, got my butt up here, and now I'll be walking through the doors as a full-time employee. Crazy! Here's to being a full-fledged adult! 

Goodbye Gypsy Life

We found a home! It’s a pretty weird story, actually. I was looking on Craigslist for houses all summer, starting in May. I looked at least every day just to get an idea of what to expect. I contacted some rental companies and private landlords but everyone told me it was too early to look. I didn’t expect anyone to hold a place for us for two or three months, but I was hoping someone would say “but I do have a place that’ll be available October 1^st…”. That never happened.

One day in June I got experimental and decided to post an ad on Craigslist about needing a place in the fall. I wrote a little blurb about our situation and gave a few details about what we’d like, not getting my hopes up. A couple days letter, a woman contacted me saying her family was moving into a new house but would like to rent out their old one. She told me it was 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms and recently renovated. It had a two-car garage, a backyard, and a wood-burning fireplace. The monthly rent was at the high end of our price range so I was hesitant to pursue it much further. She said it’d be ready by October 1^st and that we’d keep in touch. A few weeks went by and I kept scouring Craigslist for other options. It was looking pretty bleak. Anchorage has a large university and I noticed that the closer we came to September, the crappier and smaller the places got because students were snatching up rentals left and right. The price tags were nice, but we didn’t want to settle this time.

Last summer, we lived in a moldy basement in a scary part of Anchorage. It kind of put a damper on our experience in Alaska because we never wanted to relax at home. I didn’t feel very comfortable. Garrett and I made a goal to find somewhere that we would be happy calling home.

The woman that had contacted me – let’s call her Sandy – got ahold of me once more to ask if we were still interested. We were still a month away from moving so I was seriously at a loss of what to do. Should I just say yes and get it over with? Or should I hold out a bit longer to see what else popped up in the next few weeks? Around that same time, a woman from the office I’ll be working at emailed me. She told me she was also a licensed Alaska real estate agent and offered to help us with our house search. Excited about having professional assistance, I told her yes and she immediately started attending showings and contacting rental companies for us. She looked at places almost every day and would report back to me about her impression of the place. It was so nice to have someone who could be there when we couldn’t!

I decided to ask her to go check out Sandy’s place because I had only received a handful of photos – and they were taken during renovation. She agreed and was able to do a walk-through with Sandy’s husband. She really liked it and reported back with raving reviews! I later discovered that Sandy and her husband were really counting on us to rent the place. They had stopped searching for renters after talking with me because they got the impression it was going to work out. I never knew that – I thought for sure that they’d still be looking for people to rent it out because the rental market is so competitive for small family homes. Once we realized that we probably weren’t going to find a place better than Sandy’s and that they would happily rent it to us, we decided to move forward. After we got to Alaska, we drove down to meet with Sandy’s husband in Anchorage and tour the house. We sealed the deal and set our move-in date to October 1^st!

The house is SO cute. It’s older – I think he said it was built in the 80’s – but they spent a good amount on renovations. There’s crown molding throughout the house, even in the bathrooms! The carpet is new and the walls were recently painted. The windows were replaced last year, which is great news for our heating bills! All of the appliances are brand new, except for the dishwasher, which is a whopping one year old. The floors are high quality laminate wood, the fireplace is stone, all of the light fixtures are new, the kitchen cupboards were stripped and refinished, and the countertops are only a couple years old. The bedrooms are good-sized and the master bedroom has a walk-in closet. There’s only one full bath but it was beautifully done and has a jetted tub! It came with a brand new washer and dryer and all the doors were either replaced or refinished. The locks were changed and they left us an area rug, a dresser, and a mock fireplace radiant heater as well as a stand-up freezer and a wall TV mount. I feel like we won the lottery! Granted, we are paying a fortune to live here.

We got the keys on Wednesday but had other important things on the brain, too. We had to find Garrett a work truck ASAP and were having a lot of difficulty doing so. I’d been scouring Craigslist (welcome to my life this year) for an old Ford Ranger because Garrett said it’d make the perfect work vehicle for him. Surprisingly, there were a ton of them around Anchorage but either they had 250,000+ miles on them, were only RWD, or were way too expensive. By Wednesday – after over two weeks of looking – we were starting to get worried. He needed one by this Monday because I will be taking our Pathfinder to work for my first day (ah!). He test drove a bunch on Wednesday but nothing seemed right.

We’re also in the process of buying a couch because we have absolutely NO furniture. I’m currently sitting on the floor of the living room against the wall next to our space heater because a) we can’t get the thermostat to listen to our demands for heat, and b) I have nothing to sit on. So as we were waiting in the furniture store yesterday, Garrett was searching Craigslist on his phone and found a little Nissan pickup within our budget. He called the guy and was told that he was on a list of people waiting to check it out. The seller told Garrett he’d call him back in an hour if it was still available. An hour goes by and Garrett is stuck on this truck, saying it’d be perfect and that he was going to “freak out if some jerk bought it”. Garrett couldn’t help himself and called the seller back. Apparently the people ahead of him never showed up to look at the truck, so Garrett said we’d be right over. We got the cash out of our account (because who can say no to cash-in-hand, right?!) and scurried to check out the truck. It WAS perfect! And the seller must’ve liked Garrett because he accepted the cash offer, signed over the title, and off we went! We named him (with my dad’s help, of course) “Ole Lu” – short for hallelujah because HALLELUJAH WE FOUND A TRUCK!

So now we have a truck, a house, and jobs. Now we just need some furniture!