Happy April 1 - Sue

Hi and Happy Spring to everyone...though it sounds like winter is going to return again this weekend. Today, driving my new route to work, was the first morning in nearly three weeks that I could tell that it's beginning to get light a little sooner...it's been so cloudy most of the past few weeks, it's seemed like driving in the middle of the night... more on that later...

We've gone from getting Grandma settled back into her condo in October, to getting Joe graduated and moved into a house of his own the first of February. I guess that seems like a lot of time in between events, but it sure has kept us busy. Graduation was the Friday before Christmas. Joe chose to go through the ceremony, so we were happy about that. UNO really has it down to a science and they ran, I think, 700 kids through the whole thing in just a little more than an hour! There was ankle-deep slush all over downtown Omaha (graduation was at the Civic Auditorium) and I marveled at the young lady graduates trudging through the stuff in their skinny heels and open-toed shoes! I guess we'd have done that once too. We had a little open house at our place afterwards for the in-town relatives, and I let Grisanti's Italian restaurant supply the food...a great decision! So, he's done, and the signed document came in the mail a few weeks later, along with his letter of Congratulations for making the Dean's list his last semester! .... He's been looking at houses off and on all summer and we just thought it was too soon. His lawn mowing business lends itself to all kinds of equipment though, and he had outgrown our garage to the point where his Dad had to park his truck on the driveway all summer. So he started getting more serious about a house in early December.. He did all his looking on the internet, of course.. and we actually only physically looked at two, and one of those we bought! It was a foreclosure, in our neighborhood, on our street... about 8 houses from us! I think he was a little concerned about that to begin with, but it's already working out well. With a foreclosure, you basically buy it 'as is'. We had it inspected and it didn't turn up any major defects, so we felt good about that. And we knew there couldn't have been anything too major wrong with it, like a fire or something, or we surely would have known about it. It had been heavily smoked in, so we tore out & replaced all the carpet, gave it a fresh coat of interior paint and just did a lot of washing and cleaning. The yard was pretty overgrown, so Joe is looking forward to working on that. He's already torn out several bushes and trees in the front and built a retaining wall, and is planning on tilling up the front yard and starting over on it. I hate to see the kid doing such hard, physical work, but he really seems to enjoy it and takes pride in the outcome, so that's really what you want from a job. He has a roommate who's helping to pay the mortgage, so this will be a great experience for him, in learning to stand on his own two feet...

John and my brother-in-law, Larry, and about 15 other guys returned Sunday from a fishing trip to Northeast Oklahoma, where they were fishing for spoonbills. This was the weekend of the big snowstorm in Kansas City, so they were less than optimistic about how the trip would turn out. It was cold, and they did get wet, but they also caught their limit of spoonbills, so I guess the weather was only a minor irritation when you're having such good fishing luck!

After more than a year of planning and looking ahead, my company finally made the move to our new building the middle of March. Out of all the open land they could have found in the area, they chose a spot headed to Blair, NE!.... The building is beautiful and way more extravagant than most of us have ever worked in before...but it's also kind of lost the charm of our old, cramped quarters where 'everyone knew your name'. Now we're under orders to 'not eat at our desks', 'don't talk too loud', shop people can only come in the office when absolutely necessary... stuff like that.. The first couple of weeks were absolutely nutz, with everyone having their own opinions, wanting things, asking questions, brand new phone system, security system... and they all came to my office looking for answers... But each day gets a little better.. It's just a whole new experience for most of us. The closest places to eat are at least 3 miles away... (our old building was at 132nd and L... you could throw a rock and hit a dozen places to eat, shop, run errands, etc..) Most of us have been bringing lunch, but gradually people are starting to venture out and explore the neighborhood. I told John tonight, that today at lunch I went to find a bank, and drove up to the drive thru where there was a big sign plastered on the window explaining that if you wanted to cash a check, they required a photo ID (with a big picture of a drivers license on the sign). They don't have those kind of signs around Millard!! I try to hit the interstate shortly after 6:30 am for the 20-minute drive (it used to be like three minutes), to get ahead of some of the traffic. But then I've also been making myself leave around 4:30 and that helps with the evening rush hour traffic too.
And I guess that's about it. A couple of Joe's friends are getting married this summer, so now that's beginning... Since we no longer have any money to retire on...you've heard the joke about the 401k now being a 201k.... I guess we'll stay home and not take another great vacation this year. Glad we have our New York memories to get us through!

love, Sue