Beware the Ides of March...

Ok, so work isn't doing me in like Caesar yet but something else is looming the horizon:

Next semester's classes.

What better way to spend two summer nights a week than by taking Accounting followed by... Statistics! Kind, gentle folks those Willamette schedule makers are not.

That just had to be put down somewhere official. Hopefully more over the weekend. It also seems strange this year that I didn't even watch a NCAA tourney game tonight. First time in as long as I can remember that I have zero connection with the tourney. Guess I must be getting old or something :-)

Brian

Just Did It!

Just to announce that as of Wednesday, March 14th, Brian will be back in the land of the employed! And not only that, but at his first choice company: NIKE.

Like over 40% of the employees there have done, he is starting as a contract worker and planning/hoping to leverage that into a permanent position at the end of the project. Evidently that's how Nike does a significant part of its hiring.

We're excited to be taking this next step towards finally being settled somewhere. Thanks to all for the support you've been giving us in this process.

Now he just has to figure out whether he can bike to the light-rail station....

Becca

(Note from the actual employee-to-be: I'm really excited about the opportunity. I'm overqualified for the position I'm going to be in but everyone has said just "get a foot in the door" and impress. This gives me a low-risk opportunity to do just that. Plus, the actual position allows me to do a little bit of good for the world: I'm going to be working with marketing and community outreach for the Nike factory stores helping run their grant programs. In speaking with my boss to be there is going to be a definite opportunity to expand my role as I prove myself. Expand it enough and they won't be able to get rid of me :-))

Midterm Report...

Excuses, excuses... we all have them but none of them are really good enough for not posting. However, here's a few things that have kept us busy over the past 10 days or so:

• I finally took the GMAT. I'd been conditionally accepted as long as I received an acceptable score in the first semester. While I didn't do as well as I hoped, I did well enough to stay in school. In fact, the folks up at Lake Wobegon would be proud.
• I elected to stop my marathon training. I'm still running but to put in that sort of commitment while in school and looking for work just wasn't going to happen. However, before I bailed, I did get the opportunity to race a 25K in the mud with my friend Mark and his friend Tony.
  

(before: this won't be so bad...)

(after... yes it rained over an inch before the race started and didn't let up)

• The course was such a bog, I finished 31st out of over 230 people averaging 8:50(!)/mile.
  
• We moved! After almost two years, we again have a place to call our own. We spent the weekend unpacking and trying to get things organized. It feels REALLY good to have a place to call our own, even if it is just a rental.
• School. Right, the big white elephant in the corner. We're just past the midway point of the first semester and I'm surviving. I'm really quite thankful that I had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the rigors of academia on a more flexible timeline before going back to work. It's allowed me to adapt without being completely overwhelmed. Both classes are interesting and most of my weekend is spent either at the library studying or meeting with study groups to discuss the work, etc. At least the study groups are giving us the opportunity to get to know one another; there is only so much socializing you can do on your 30 min dinner break and usually people are too beat/ready to go home when class ends at 10pm.
  
• That being said, I've got a laundry list of work that has to get done this weekend, so much so that I'm contemplating having a bathroom installed in our office :-)
• Becca's consulting continues to go well, but exhausting. Hopefully in the next month or so she can wrap up her work and actually start to look for work out here in Portland!
• As for my job search, it continues. I haven't had as much time to work on it the last week or so but some of my previous efforts may be bearing fruit. I don't want to jinx anything yet but I might have semi-exciting news to report shortly. Let's put it this way, when it rains, it friggin' pours.

More from the new Davis compound soon!

Brian

The glamorous side of consulting work...

Boston Scientific has a huge product launch coming up March 1st (on the project I've been working on ) so last week and next week are chock-a-block stuffed with full-on launch meetings. I came out to Minnesota Feb 19th and I'm not heading home until March 1st, spending the time living at the Hyatt and the Marriott.

After a full week of sessions I was looking forward to relaxing over the weekend and getting out to spend time with my Minnesota friends. Instead, at about 5 or so on Friday I got hit with some sort of nasty bug and have pretty much spent the 24 hours since then in bed (interrupted only by having to check out of the Hyatt and move myself and my stuff over to the Marriott). The highlight of that time? Ordering chicken broth with a couple of mahtzoh balls, some toast, and 7-up (the only food I thought I could keep down) from room service and getting charged $31. Gotta love hotels....

This picture was actually taken in a train station in China suffering from the flu after 3 hours of sleep but I think it nicely captures my current mood.

Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed in a week or so...

Becca

Thoughts from a big rock

A couple of people have written lately mentioning our lack of output and saying that they missed all the new posts we were putting up when we were traveling. In particular I know I’ve been remiss about writing, so I guess it’s my turn. Besides, I’m in a particularly reflective mood at the moment.

I turned 35 last week and for some reason that milestone wigged me out a lot more than any previous ones did. Maybe because it marks the point where you leave the late-twenties/low-thirties demographic, maybe because at this point pretty much all of my peers are having (or have had) babies, or maybe because there’s really no way of escaping the fact that at 35 you’re pretty much an adult. Like Brian, I had spent so much of my life being the youngest one of the group, the precocious one, the upstart, that I just can’t seem to get my mind around the fact that I’m now one of those older people I used to hang around with.

As Brian mentioned in the previous post, I haven’t really started much in the way of job searching not only because I’m pretty busy doing the consulting and commuting thing, but also because I really have no idea what I am looking for. But one of the things I’ve come around to in all of this birthday pensiveness is that while I may not know what I want to do with my life when I grow up, I’m getting a better fix on who I want to be.

I’ve learned a lot about who I am and what’s important to me and what makes me happy over the past three years. Given all that we've experienced and done that's not surprising. But I've been really happy about the changes I've seen in myself so far. The trick, as ever, is to actually apply that knowledge and make choices based on them. (Stopping commuting every week and working 12+ hours/day would be a good start.) I’ll let you know how that goes…

More news from the luuuv nest once we’re settled….

Becca

Being busy isn't any excuse for not posting...

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, here's what Becca and I have been up to as of late:

• The big news is that we have a place to live as of March 1st. We found a townhouse in SE Portland about 2 miles from J&L's. Their hospitality has been fantastic but it will be nice to have my own office and a kitchen where grilling meat and drinking a Mt. Dew will not be endlessly heckled. The house is in SE Portland and could end up being a potentially long commute to some job locales but in the short term we elected to go with a great place in a nice neighborhood with the other things we wanted: groceries & stores within walking distance as well as a close proximity to running/commuter bike trails.
  
• Becca continues to be very busy with her consulting with Boston Scientific, splitting time between Portland and Minneapolis. It's not an ideal situation by any means but it also is a paycheck that allows us to have a slightly smoother reentry into Oregon life. Plus it's further reminding her what she does and doesn't want from a job.
• I'm quite busy with school. I even got back my first case analysis for my Marketing Strategies class. The analysis, which started as a steaming pile of... stuff, eventually turned into a A-. However, I'm also writing this entry in an effort to procrastinate on my second analysis. Good to see that some parts of being back in school come back easier than others.
• Becca is keeping busy contemplating all the varying nesting techniques she can use in our new townhouse. :-) Needless to say she's very excited about having a place of our own again for the first time since May 2005. Yes in the end it will have been almost two years since we've had an actual home of our own.
  
• My job search continues to go. I made a conscious effort this time to focus on networking and more company research than just finding jobs I like and applying for them. As a result, it feels like it's been a longer process; there is only so much networking you can do in a given day vs. time intensive tasks such as writing cover letters, etc. However given my somewhat narrow scope (sports business first, online marketing second) it's been extremely helpful. I have a few possibilities floating out there so hopefully something will allow me to get my foot in the door sooner than later.
• Becca hasn't really started looking for work yet; partially because of her current consulting and partially because she doesn't know what she wants to do. The good news is her background is such that finding a job is likely going to be a very quick process for her!
• Oh and if the hectic schedule of job hunting and school wasn't enough, I decided to put my body through the grinder again. I'm currently training for another marathon, with the likely target San Diego in June. I've also got an eye on breaking 3:10 and therefore qualifying for Boston. Not sure if the training is going to hold up given the general chaos of life but for now I'm giving it a go. Sure I have to shave a good 15 minutes off my time from two and a half years ago but I figure the 20 lbs. I've lost is at least worth 5 of 'em.

That's it from here. More writing soon. I'd promise but I'm not a big fan of breaking promises :-)

Brian

A drawback of working at home...

There are admittedly plenty of positives of working out of the home. Casual dress code, "flexible" hours, a crazy greyhound with questionable digestive issues always wanting to go for a walk, etc. However, it also leaves you wide open for...

Jehovah's Witnesses.

J&L's place is full of windows, which usually provide tons of natural sunlight but in this case left me nowhere to hide. The two men in their 60's were nice enough (well the one was; the other was definitely wanting to do some convertin') but it was like trying to get two car salesmen off the front porch. They were obviously trying to get in the door but between myself and the dog we had the entryway pretty well blocked. I did tell them I'm take one of their pamphlets, which are related to this website.

Just a random little story for the day. We apologize for not updating the site a little more often. Becca and I are both working on entries so hopefully we'll get something new up soon. In the meantime, enjoy the works of a Dutch Master.

Brian