Other People's Kids

The Big Surprise

Tonight I went to The Boss' house and tendered my resignation, effective the end of business two weeks from today.

That is the reason I've been...distracted. The original plan, you see, was to move to that town I've written of here before. I had already mentally packed my bags, since there just aren't that many software jobs outside of towns of a certain size.

Except that that's not true anymore. I began to look around and realized that there were several possibilities within a sane commuting distance...and I have a lot of good experience. I'm pretty hireable, as these things go. So one night while I was scouring the web, The Wife points me to an ad in the Minnesota Job Registry (or something like that) for a software engineer located only about 15 minutes away. Seemed too good to be true, but what the heck. I fired off a resume and promptly forgot about it.

It was after several interviews a couple of hours away that I received a call back on this job, and was I still interested? Sure. Let's talk.

We talked. We haggled. We got to know each other a little bit. Today I accepted the job, and I start October 9. I even get a 5-day weekend between jobs. What could be better? Dad needs help shingling the cabin, and I need to spend a long weekend working on the cabin with Dad.

I get a long weekend at the cabin working with Dad on a project. I get a new job, one that promises not only a retirement plan (one of the biggest lacks of my current job) but a higher salary, better all-around benefits, much more room for advancement and more interesting work.

I get to stay living in the most wonderful countryside on the planet outside of a Disney theme park. I get to stay in the house we've busted our asses fixing up for the last year and a half. We get to keep our wonderful social network, one like I haven't had since I was a kid. We can finally comfortably officially join the church we've been attending where we are already pretty much fixtures.

We get to keep fostering the great kids we have, and we get to keep our new-but-growing reputation as a good foster home for teen and younger girls. I get to keep dreaming of the time when I'll be able to afford to get our boatlift fixed up and in the lake with a dock and a boat on it, and I can fish when I get home from work in the summer.

I love my life. And now I get to keep it.

posted by Dan @ 9:03 PM