AShapiro.net

New job, new home.

Aaron — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:34:33 +0000

We flew back to St. Louis last weekend to meet with a few people at work about jobs and to look for a house. Timing seems to be everything, a position came up the morning I was in at work looking for a job and it seems like a good match. They’ve already made me an offer I accepted, so I’m happy.

House hunting was a bit more difficult. On the first day, we didn’t find any houses we really wanted to buy. 1 had potential but the neighborhood had us worried. It was scary to not see anything in our price range after 10 houses. Second day went better, found a few nice houses (and many scary ones) but only one had most everything we wanted and was located in a nice area. So we put a contract in and things are rolling along. Home inspection is scheduled for later this week, that should be the last real hurdle and I don’t think it’ll be bad. Unfortunately, it seems they pulled the MLS listing as soon as we put the contract in and I never got a chance to download the realtor’s photos of the house before it was removed from the web. Oh well, I’ll post photos when we move.

So we’re definitely moving back to St. Louis and I can’t wait. Mica will be happy to be back closer to her family. We’ll both be glad to be back around all of our friends. I plan on getting back into the karate club as well, another thing I’m really looking forward to. It’ll be nice.

Moving, again.

Aaron — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:22:31 +0000

Well, we’ve been in Maryland for almost a year now. I’ve started working with my management to find a job back in St. Louis. As much as I love working out here, I hate living here. I’ve been offered a somewhat permanent position out here if we wanted to stay, but that’s not something we’d really consider. So it’s looking like we’re heading back to St. Louis, probably by the end of next month.

Site redesign, again.

Aaron — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 01:55:36 +0000

Well, it was time to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress and that means it’s time for a new theme. I’m still tweaking this one just a bit, but so far I quite like it. And I was able to put one of my own photos up on the top for the header. Let me know if you see any bugs or anything and hopefully I’ll be back to posting more regularly here again.

Aruba, in photos

Aaron — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 15:01:14 +0000

Well, the trip out to Aruba was wonderful. Did some wonderful diving, drove across the entire island toured much of the desert side on ATVs. Photos are posted in the gallery.

Airports

Aaron — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:51:37 +0000

Ok, slower morning at work and I haven’t written anything in a while, so this was a list I was working on with Monica a few weeks ago. The airports I’ve visited:

Lihue, Kauai
Princeville, Kauai
Honolulu, Oahu
Kahului, Maui
SeaTac
LAX
Phoenix
Tuscon
Salt Lake City
Denver
Albuquerque
Las Cruces
El Paso
Dallas-Ft. Worth
Dallas-Love
Houston-Hobby
Houston-George Bush
Oklahoma City
Tulsa
Kansas City
St. Louis
Chicago O’Hare
Ft. Wayne
La Guardia
Baltimore-Washington
Washington-Dulles
Washington-Reagan
Raleigh-Durham
Atlanta
Orlando
Miami
Grand Cayman
Port of Spain, Tobago
Trinidad

In 3 weeks we’ll add San Juan, Puerto Rico and Orjanestad, Aruba to the list. Not sure if I’m missing any others, I’ll have to think about it.

Home ownership

Aaron — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:13:38 +0000

Well, we’ve been in Maryland for 5 months now, we’ve had our houe on the market for 9 months and under contract for the past few weeks. We’ve had to drop the price $15,000 from what we originally asked and $10,000 from what we reasonably expected. We expected to close last Wednesday, the 31st of Jauary, but the pre-approved buyers had issues with their financing at the last minute. The contract has been extended, while the buyers are paying the accumulating charges, and we’re hopeful they’ll close Monday. God knows what we’ll do if they don’t manage that.

More photos

Aaron — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:15:16 +0000

Christmas photos - my parents arranged for my uncle, my cousin’s wife and her two kids to take a balloon ride the day after Christmas. The weather and fuel tanks permitted Mica and I to get in for a ride too, so here’s the pictures.

Mexico, Belize and Honduras

Aaron — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:53:56 +0000

Just got back from vacation. Plenty to write about, if I get a chance. For now though, here’s the photos.

Sick of being sick

Aaron — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 18:19:05 +0000

Well, Monica has been sick for the past 10 days or so, her parents were here last weekend and they were slightly sick, and I’m fianlly catching up with it.

Still, we did have a lot of fun last weekend. Finally made it to the Maryland Rennaisance Festival and up to DC. Visited the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the Washington and WWII memorials. Got some great photos I’ll get up shortly.

For now, I just want tea…

Gah, must update!

Aaron — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:26:58 +0000

Bloody hell, it’s been a while since I wrote here. I’m in my fourth meeting of the morning now though and it’s just a telecon, so I have a little bit of time to write.

So yeah, we’re getting settled into Maryland. Maybe a little too settled, we’re talking to some people out here on making this a permanent assignment. Don’t know if we’ll do it yet, but if the opportunity arises, I think we’ll take it.

Mica’s parents are coming out here this Thursday. We’re planning on playing tourist a lot this weekend. Hopefully get up to the White House, view the national zoo, the RennFest in Annapolis, Alexandria and Mount Vernon. That’s our plans, at least.

Work’s been going well. The a/c is currently hanging in the anechoic chamber, so it’s been very interesting. I enjoy working in there, so it’ll be an interesting couple of months. Seems like there’s always something new going on here. Working on base has been nice. It kills me to walk out of the hangar I work in and see the Cheasapeak.

Other fun things:

We had a double-homicide in our neighborhood. Domestic dispute, the estranged husband catches up with his legally seperated wife, shooting her in the leg, killing her boyfriend before killing himself in a standoff with police.
We made it to a Redskins game Sunday. They suck, but it was still fun.
We have season passes for Paramount’s King’s Dominion amusement park, as well as all the Cedar Fair parks (including Knot’s Berry Farm - maybe have to make a Cali trip?).
Only 6 weeks until our cruise (and second anniversary).

Ok, telecon is over, time to get back to work.