Great Indoors

Today was the first day in a while that I spent mostly indoors. I started a new job and I will begin to post some pictures of our house, hence the title of this post. First of all, I want to thank everyone for all the good wishes for my first day. It went as well as expected, though I still am really missing the people I left at Western Air Maps. I do ultimately think this is a good move for me professionally. I have my own cubicle and was given a whole tray of new office supplies, a book shelf and a filing cabinet for my own personal use. The downside of this is that my computer was just ordered on Friday and it won't be here until Thursday at the earliest. I am thrilled to be having a new computer ordered just for me, I just wish it was here so that I could get my cube in order and not have to be in the way of my supervisor at his desk.

The company I work for is called Woolpert, Inc. I am acutally working at a branch of Woolpert; their main headquarters are in Dayton, Ohio. Therefore, we have to constantly keep in mind that all business correspondence must be done by 3 pm moutain time to be answered by 5 pm eastern time. I was able to start on a project on my first day, which is pretty cool. Training can be long and tedious for both the trainer and the trainee. I am NOT doing secret work at the moment, therefore I can talk a little about what I am doing. Basically, I am mapping small airports and all possible obstructions that fall within FAA guidelines for landings, take-offs and misses. It is pretty cool, but I have to be much more detailed and can't draw anything more than 6 inches above or below the actual height of the object. I am definitely not used to being so detailed!

Right now, it seems that at Woolpert, the employees leave home at home and work at work. There doesn't seem to be any Friday happy hour traditions or gatherings outside of work. I can't be sure if this since it's only my first day, but the "family" atmosphere of Western Air Maps just isn't there. I miss that a lot. People here stay in their cubes and don't interact much. Also, I'll have to get used to working later into the day. Right now, they don't want me at work until at least 8:30 until my computer comes and I'm used to being at work at 5:45. I really tried my hardest not to go in today until 9:00 am as instructed, but I just didn't know what to do with myself and got there at 8:30. In Kansas time, that's 9:30 and I would have already been working for 4 hours!

I think that's probably enough about work for now. I have had many requests for pictures of the house and I think it's put together enough so I took some pictures and will post them now.

The front outside view of the house. It has a two car garage and a covered walk to the front door.

Double-wide front doors. This made the movers' job easy! I love this house because of all the open space and overhead natural lighting everywhere. It has a total of four sky lights, one right over this entry way.

The main living room. It is a lot bigger than this picture gives credit, and where I am standing, one side of a double sided fire place opens up to the living room.

The other side of the fireplace. We have it set up as a second living room facing the fireplace to cozy up during the winter.

The guest room where I hope many of you will be staying in the near future!

Our huge closet with cedar flooring. It opens up off of the master bathroom.

Part of the kitchen with some of our new red kitchen stuff out. It was so fun to finally get to open and use our wedding gifts!
Finished basement. We don't have enough furniture to put anything down there!

Office with both Matt and my desks in it. Technically, it's a third bedroom, but we don't have that many beds so we made it an office.

Pongo has a fenced back yard and has already made friends with the Jack Russell terrier behind the fence. Here, he is "talking" (or howling) to his new buddy.

Matt and Pongo chilling on the bed in the master bedroom. We are having to get used to sleeping with lots of light because there are two skylights right overhead!