I'm a Follett man, now

Today was my last day at IBM. It was fairly uneventful; I spent most of the day waiting around for it to end. All in all, I think I came out ahead, because as a going away present I was given a small, but very tasty, cheesecake.

For anyone who's interested, here's the job posting at Follett that I applied to. You can definitely tell that it was written by a programmer (and not an HR person), and that it was written by someone who loves what they do.

Stay tuned for Wendy's last day...

The Trip to Chicago

Recently, Wendy read in a magazine about a couple that, to pass the time on their flights home from vacations, would take turns writing down a memory from their trip until they had come up with 100 memories. We decided to give this a shot when returning from Chicago. Just so you know, it takes MUCH longer than you would think to do this. Here are some that we came up with:

10. Quinn, my new boss's 3 year old daughter, burping loudly during dinner, laughing, and saying "that blew my hair back!" (Andy and his wife Amy were appalled and are now trying to find out who taught her that.)

12. Accidentally banging my head on a shelf in our new townhome, right after the real estate agent said they were looking for someone who would take good care of the place.

37. Our waiter at Pizza Hut being very nervous and eager (it was his second day of training).

38. Hearing the supervisor at Pizza Hut tell an employee: "Can you change the sign outside to say Hoppy Easter? I know, it's retarded."

39. Driving by the Pizza Hut later and seeing the sign say "Hoppy Easter!"

49. Seeing a Stanley Kubrick look-alike at Lake Michigan driving very slowly around the parking lot in his truck.

56. Andy asking Wendy if she'd read any good computer books recently ("System Administration? Code Complete, 2nd Edition?").

57. Wendy lying and saying "Of course!"

59. Taking the scenic route back from Lake Michigan to Crystal Lake.

60. Getting lost on the scenic route.

76. Leaving the hotel room to go take pictures of McHenry and almost forgetting to bring the camera. Then getting to the hotel lobby and realizing we somehow still forgot to bring the camera.

100. The pilot on the flight back to Denver announcing that Illinois had beaten Arizona in overtime.

A tribe of superior men

Hello everyone!

So, Randy and I will be moving to Illinois in about a week. We decided that now would be a good time to start a blog where we can keep everyone up to date about what we're up to in the Land of Lincoln. (Side note: You may or may not be interested to learn that Illinois translates from Native American as "tribe of superior men." I was interested, but then I'm a dork.)

Randy has a new job with Follett Library Resources as a web application programmer. (Follett provides services, software, and books to K-12 school libraries.) I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing, but I think I may give professional writing a try.

We spent this past Thursday, Friday and Saturday up in McHenry looking for a new place to live. We found a townhouse that seems really great - it's comparable to our apartment now, but it has a two-car garage as well. Goodbye, ice scraping on winter mornings! I met Randy's new boss, who gave us a tour of Follett and went out to dinner with us, along with his wife and their daughter, and another of Randy's new co-workers and his wife. Everyone was very friendly, and I have a good feeling about Follett and Illinois in general.

Feel free to leave us comments or questions - we aim to please!