Just got home from a Habitat for Humanity work day.  I’ve never been involved in a house at such an early stage of the construction before.  We showed up to a concrete pad and a bunch of lumber and spent the morning putting up the walls and framing out the house (the walls were all pre-constructed but had to be placed and nailed together).  My arm is going to fall off before the end of the day, I’m sure of it.  I was pretty pleased, though, at how long I was able to keep hammering!  We got all of the walls up and almost all of them capped before breaking for lunch at 12:30.  At 1:00, a whole bunch of reinforcements showed up, even though we had finished most of the work.  All that was needed was plumbing the structure, and the guys who knew what they were doing said there was only about another hour of work.  So, I went ahead and took off, along with the rest of the early crew.  I may try to go back and work on this one again so that I can see the progression.  The earliest I’ve ever come in was at the sheet-rocking inside / painting outside phase, so this was pretty interesting.

This evening I’m going to attend a going away party for a member of my law school class.  She was the woman I studied with and hung out with the most at school.  She was the first in our class to make partner, and a year after that, she decided to take a government job with regular hours.  Now, she’s heading back to Lubbock to become a professor at Texas Tech.  Yay for her!  A bunch of our class will be at the party, and I’m looking forward to catching up with some folks.  In the meantime, I’m for a shower and an ice pack (for my shoulder)!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but I’ve been busy.  My last day at my job with Software Spectrum was April 30th.  Our new parent company, Insight, decided to move all of the legal function to its corporate HQ in Tempe, AZ.  Since I have no interest in living in Tempe, I’m officially out of a job.  Which is not as bad as it sounds – I had lots of notice and a nice severance package, so I have plenty of time to search for something I’d really like, although I’ll be on a tighter than usual budget until I land something new.   And I’m hardly alone – fewer than six of our executive level people have survived the purge this year.  So, anyway, I’m out of work and searching for the next adventure.

Part of the severance package is outplacement assistance from a company that specializes in “career transition” (whether looking for a new job or for a new career), and I went to their orientation session just out of curiosity.  They’ve got a very systematic method for helping you determine what you’d like to do in your next job and teaching you how to *productively* search for a new one.  I’m going to work my way through their program and see what happens.  In the meantime, I’m working on enjoying some time off (which is hard for me because I can’t remember the last time I had any significant time off), getting some stuff done around the house, and discovering things to do in this town that can be done during normal working hours of the week.  I’ve been amazed how many people are out there not working during the day.  I shouldn’t be, because lots of people work shifts, but I just haven’t thought much about it these last several years.

Taking care of MCC’s girl dog this weekend, as well as my maybe-sick boy cat (bladder infection).  It’s just *so* much fun getting a pill down boy cat’s throat!  The girl dog is much easier!