Work, New Cat, Temple Pictures, Garden, and Moving.

Work

I've been busy with work lately, which is a good thing.  A man in northern Utah asked me to manage his house for him.  He's moving out of the country.  Then, another man who has eight apartments and lives out-of-state asked me to manage for him too.  So, this month I've spent a lot of time showing vacancies lately, and also responding to maintenance issues at the apartments.  I've actually been busy enough that I haven't been doing any more marketing, although I plan to pick up with that again soon.

Jeff is back to work, too.  He has been for a little while now.  He did get multiple job offers again, but one of the jobs offered higher pay and really good benefits, so he accepted that one.  It's with a company that most people have heard of.  Jeff doesn't really like the job very much, because it's taking a long time for him to actually get started doing programming, and he is bored.  That should improve over time, though.  He keeps finding out about new benefits--we already knew our health care would pretty much be free, but on the first day of work he found out they were going to give him an iPhone--and pay for his service.  (Cool!  Although Jeff is kind of disappointed because he really likes his Droid.)  Then, Jeff offered to work later hours so that he can work some hours with the Australians that are on his team...so the company gave him a credit card and said they will pay for his dinner every day.  Nice!

New Cat

I brought home a new cat.  I was showing the home that I'm managing to some prospective renters and I asked if they had any pets.  (The owner allows up to two, with pet rent.)  They said no--well, they do--they have cats--but they're getting rid of them.  "Oh," I said,  "Are they good at catching mice?"  I explained that we've looked for a mouser before, but people always list cats online saying they would be good at catching mice, or saying they would grow up to be good at catching mice, but I want a cat that already catches mice. 

They said, "Actually, they are!"

So we talked some more about it, and after I showed them the rental home, they invited me back to their house.  I met two of their cats, and decided to take the one who had more of a history of catching mice.  Her name is Kitty, she is 17 years old, and she has long fur that started getting ratty a few months ago.  She is sometimes really friendly and sometimes really aggressive.  Perfect.

So I brought her home, and let her out in the barn, and then I didn't see her again.

Jeff thought I was joking when I told him I'd brought a cat home, but it didn't really matter because she isn't really our pet, she's just [supposed to be] living in the barn and we're feeding her.  We'd talked about getting a barn cat before, so it wasn't completely out of the blue. 

And then, after a few days of Kitty being missing, I was out doing some work in the barn and I heard a meow that wasn't Paley.  I walked around the corner, and (!) there she was!  So I showed Jeff our new cat.  And I fed her.  Paley does not like Kitty.  Kitty is disinterested in Paley.

Temple Pictures

This week my Relief Society (ladies church group) did a "Wonderful Wednesday" activity.  The main project was making temple pictures.  The pictures are beautiful (and popular up here in Utah) but if you just go buy one they usually cost about $200, so although I've wanted one for a while, I haven't bought one.  For the activity they charged us $53, though, and that was totally worth it.

I invited my sister Jessica, and we each did pictures of the temples where we were married.  (Jess did Salt Lake and I did Jordan River.)  It was pretty easy.  Basically, what you do is mount a print onto a board.  Let it dry.  Texture the print.  Let it dry.  Paint your frame.  Let it dry.  Add screws and little metal things to the back of the frame.  Insert the mounted, textured print.  Tighten the screws.  Wait a day and add the bracket thing that lets you hang it.  Then hang it.

Garden

My garden didn't go quite how I planned, mainly because I was unable to get a fence up to protect my garden from goats.  So I never planted my garden.  But, after I abandoned so many healthy plants at my in-laws' house, my father-in-law planted anything that seemed like it might survive.  This resulted in a lot of produce, actually.  We've been picking and eating purple tomatoes when we go over to my in-laws' on game days.  And, I've had a couple of the Rich Sweetness 132 melons.  They're small, but they're pretty delicious.  A couple days ago, my father-in-law tore out all of my garden and harvested what he could.  Frost is coming soon, anyway, and I think he is planning to plant some trees where my garden was growing.  It was nice of him to let my stuff grow at their house.  

Moving

We're only sort of moving.  We've been living in the back portion of our house, and we've had the front part rented out.  The guys living in the front have been there for over two years, but now they're moving.  So we're going to move up to the front!  I think it will probably need new carpet, and a little bit of work done...but we plan to move in the beginning part of November.  I am SO excited to have a kitchen(!) and a bath tub(!) and a bigger office area(!) and a fireplace(!).  Jeff is worried that moving will be a lot of work, and getting organized will take a long time.  It kind of will, but I don't think it will be too bad, because we won't have to pack, or load things up in a truck, or anything like that.  We'll just take things and put them in their new places.  Easiest Move Ever.  Did I mention I'm excited to have a real kitchen?  Because I am.  We finally got an oven back here a few weeks ago, though, and that's already been excellent. 

We're busy and we're happy and these are the things that are going on.