Office Space

I have my very own office now.  I have rolodex and a couple of little potted plants in my office.  

I don't think you understand how grown-up I feel.

For those who may not know:  Things worked out really well when we made the move to Albuquerque, and I was able to transfer to a different office of the company I was already working for.  As it turns out, the Albuquerque office has even more work for me than the Tucson office did, and I was able to come on full-time basically as soon as I wanted to after we had moved in.  And I've been with the company long enough now to receive benefits.  Benefits!!  I've never had a job with benefits before.  Needless to say, all of this is fantastic.  It's kind of crazy how well this move has worked out.

I'll be in the office for a while until the Highway 491 project starts back up in late March or so.  I'm actually kind of excited about this as it provides a normal-person's daily schedule for a while-- something I've not had in a very, very long time (maybe ever?).

And did I mentioned that I have my own office?!?

Rainbow bomb

The other day while driving through downtown Albuquerque, I took this photo from my car window.  At the top of one of the new loft complexes, probably ten stories up, I can only describe this as the coolest and happiest graffiti I have ever seen.  I hope they leave it up there.

Salty goodness

Last week after our POD arrived with all of our furniture and boxes, I was so excited to be able to make real food again that the kitchen was the very first thing I set about unpacking.  Then I baked some bread.  Not just any bread, mind you, but pretzel bread.  And it was delicious!

I usually find excuses to put salt on my bread.  Because I love salt.  The great thing about this bread is that it totally fulfills my salt-overload cravings.  Here is the recipe that I followed to make the pretzel bread.  I followed the recipe exactly, and ended up with about 12 sandwich-bun-sized rolls.  And instead of regular coarse salt, I used some rosemary-flavored salt (yes, and it is amazing).  Josh and I ate the rolls with our pasta dinner that night, and I've been using them for my sandwiches at work all of this week.  I had thought they would turn out much smaller than they did, so I wasn't expecting to be able to use them for sandwiches, but it turned out to be a wonderful unintended outcome.  I definitely will be making these again and again.

Snow? What is that again?

Albuquerque sits at about twice the elevation of Tucson.  Higher elevation means more snow.  I'd all but forgotten what snow looked like after my five years in the Sonoran desert... and I've got to say, though I truly do love the extreme desert or southeastern Arizona, I'm pretty excited to be back in place that has a true winter.  Once we've unpacked all of our boxes, I'm looking forward to taking my new snowshoes up into the hills for a test run.

Not a bad view, eh?

This past weekend, Josh and I drove up the Sandia mountains to check out the ski slopes.  From our house, it only takes 45 minutes to get to the parking lot.  I started skiing back when I first moved to NM for college, and have always loved it.  I've missed being able to ski regularly while living in AZ, and am thrilled to have the opportunity to ski more often now.  Josh, on the other hand, hates skiing.  He's tried it a couple of times, and just never got the hang of it.  So, this weekend he decided that he would try snowboarding for the first time.  I think we were both a little nervous that he would also hate snowboarding, but all turned out well.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous, the snow was great, and the slopes weren't crowded at all.  Josh took a private lesson while I made a few runs down the mountain, and after an hour or so of test runs, he was ready to tackle the bigger slopes with me.  He's already planning to go back again next weekend, and I'm certainly not going to argue.  Maybe next time I'll make him carry the camera all day so that he's not the only subject of all the photos.

Success!