Rather than necro'ing an old thread I figured I'd start a new one!
Some of you know me, some of you don't. Needless to say, after a 2nd "vacation" from the GDF I'm back again.
Why was I gone?
It pretty much came down to projects vs free time. With life getting so busy I found myself on-line less and less, even during "work" hours.
Lets see, what have I done in the last year and a bit.
Oh, my promotion to LT at the firehall. Went well for.... a few months. Then I ended up returning my silver bars. I'd been an LT twice before, as an acting/temp promotion, but a bunch of factors outside of the department eventually resulted in me taking a step back to being a regular firefighter again. The biggest one being that Mrs. 26 and I purchased a 2nd house across town, so I had to change stations to one that already had a full compliment of officers. No big deal, though, as I can comprehend the big picture and learned a long time ago that every cog in the machine, from recruit to chief, plays an important part.
On that note, Mrs. 26 and I did buy a second house. We managed to leverage our accumulated home equity into a 2nd mortgage and purchased a fixer-upper with the hopes of fixing it up and flipping it for a profit. We moved out of our 1st house and into the 2nd house (renting the 1st one out to cover the mortgage cost) and spent the last year renovating the 2nd house. New bathrooms, siding, roof, landscaping, floors, paint, kitchen, etc, etc. Did 90% of the work myself, which was one of those life long/character building experiences. Needless to say, I'm a better designer than I am a plumber!
Anyway, we've since moved back to our original house and just sold the 2nd house. Between paying off the 2nd mortgage and the expenses we put into renovations we turned a modest profit. Being the forward thinking adults that we are we put some of the money towards bills, some towards a long term Educational Savings Plan for the kids (should they decide to go university or college) and are setting some aside for a trip to either Mexico or Europe. I'm a bit torn at the moment since part of me wants to be somewhere sunny and warm where I can drink rum and cokes for breakfast/lunch/dinner; but another part of me has this "thing" for history and castles, and if there are two things Europe has a lots of it's history and castles! (anyone have any suggestions?)
Work has been alright. The economy has been slowly improving over the last year, which is good. I'm still working as a Pre-Press Technician at a print shop so I still spend more of my days fixing other people's work than actually designing. Ironically enough a client I did work for at another shop tracked me down and wants me to do a bunch of work for them. I worked on a rather large postcard project for them years and years ago (60 different layouts) and they want to expand and do more. The crazy thing is they're still using my original layouts from a pre-indesign era (IE, pagemaker!!), so it has been rather interesting looking over some of my "ancient layouts" and facepalming about how bad they are from a pre-press perspective!
The twins are growing. Hard to believe that they're five now and going to school. They love every second of it and are both absorbing information like sponges. They both made the honour roll last month for reading. They're both reading at a grade two level right now and they're only in kindergarten (hence why we decided to start an education fund for them)!
So yeah, that's been the reader's digest version of the passed year or so! With the kids in school, the 2nd house selling, and everything else I suddenly found myself with more free time; Not sure where my next "life project" will take me!
Some of you know me, some of you don't. Needless to say, after a 2nd "vacation" from the GDF I'm back again.
Why was I gone?
It pretty much came down to projects vs free time. With life getting so busy I found myself on-line less and less, even during "work" hours.
Lets see, what have I done in the last year and a bit.
Oh, my promotion to LT at the firehall. Went well for.... a few months. Then I ended up returning my silver bars. I'd been an LT twice before, as an acting/temp promotion, but a bunch of factors outside of the department eventually resulted in me taking a step back to being a regular firefighter again. The biggest one being that Mrs. 26 and I purchased a 2nd house across town, so I had to change stations to one that already had a full compliment of officers. No big deal, though, as I can comprehend the big picture and learned a long time ago that every cog in the machine, from recruit to chief, plays an important part.
On that note, Mrs. 26 and I did buy a second house. We managed to leverage our accumulated home equity into a 2nd mortgage and purchased a fixer-upper with the hopes of fixing it up and flipping it for a profit. We moved out of our 1st house and into the 2nd house (renting the 1st one out to cover the mortgage cost) and spent the last year renovating the 2nd house. New bathrooms, siding, roof, landscaping, floors, paint, kitchen, etc, etc. Did 90% of the work myself, which was one of those life long/character building experiences. Needless to say, I'm a better designer than I am a plumber!
Anyway, we've since moved back to our original house and just sold the 2nd house. Between paying off the 2nd mortgage and the expenses we put into renovations we turned a modest profit. Being the forward thinking adults that we are we put some of the money towards bills, some towards a long term Educational Savings Plan for the kids (should they decide to go university or college) and are setting some aside for a trip to either Mexico or Europe. I'm a bit torn at the moment since part of me wants to be somewhere sunny and warm where I can drink rum and cokes for breakfast/lunch/dinner; but another part of me has this "thing" for history and castles, and if there are two things Europe has a lots of it's history and castles! (anyone have any suggestions?)
Work has been alright. The economy has been slowly improving over the last year, which is good. I'm still working as a Pre-Press Technician at a print shop so I still spend more of my days fixing other people's work than actually designing. Ironically enough a client I did work for at another shop tracked me down and wants me to do a bunch of work for them. I worked on a rather large postcard project for them years and years ago (60 different layouts) and they want to expand and do more. The crazy thing is they're still using my original layouts from a pre-indesign era (IE, pagemaker!!), so it has been rather interesting looking over some of my "ancient layouts" and facepalming about how bad they are from a pre-press perspective!
The twins are growing. Hard to believe that they're five now and going to school. They love every second of it and are both absorbing information like sponges. They both made the honour roll last month for reading. They're both reading at a grade two level right now and they're only in kindergarten (hence why we decided to start an education fund for them)!
So yeah, that's been the reader's digest version of the passed year or so! With the kids in school, the 2nd house selling, and everything else I suddenly found myself with more free time; Not sure where my next "life project" will take me!
^^ Barn fire with 200 bales of hay (real call). Luckily we managed to save/rescue all the horses that were stabled inside before things got out of control.
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