I got a new job today. My current one is only guaranteed to last through June, at which point the owner might be hanging up his hat. So, I worked out a plan with the owner's wife: I'd find a new job that paid as well or better than what I'm making now, and still continue to do my current job on a part-time, mostly-from-home basis. My workload has been drastically reduced of late -- as y'all can probably tell from the amount of time I've been spending on the Internet during business hours :) -- so I think I can do all that I'm doing now in about 40 hours or so a month if I'm not distracted. So, I think it'll work well as a part time thing, for which I'll be paid as a contractor, not an employee. (Note to self: Figure out self-employment taxes.) So, I'll have that income plus this new job. Which seems interesting, they really, really wanted me, and they seem like nice people. Hopefully the job will be fun and will keep me busy. Much as I like surfing the web, it doesn't really make the time pass quickly. I'd much rather be too busy for the Internet when I'm at work.

Anyway, I had figured that finding a job that paid as well as my current one does might very well take me until June. Little did I know that it would take about...two weeks. That's amazing in this town, so I can only hope that this is a sign that I'm doing the right thing. I hope. I pray. I guess we'll see. Then again, I was told that if I hate it I can always go back to the job I have and at least have something until June.

Then, while I was at work and securing new employment, Frosty, her two boys, and a friend of Frosty's cleared the snow off the roof, which turned out to be a gargantuan job that took all afternoon with four people working on it. When I said that there was three feet (One meter, for you non-US people) up there, I was not at all exaggerating. In fact, there might have been more.




This is Josiah, Frosty's 14-year-old, starting on the entryway. Mind you, Josiah is about 5'6" tall. So, you figure out the depth of the snow up there. :)

Frosty, similarly swallowed by snow. And, just 'cuz, here's Luke, who's 12 and about 5'2", demonstrating just how much snow we have on the ground. Mind you, this was before all the stuff that was on the roof got dumped on the ground:


Pretty wild, huh? They did a good job, though. Cleared off everything that was up there, even the inches-thick layer of ice lurking beneath the layers of snow, so it's down to the shingles again. And it's noticeably colder in the house tonight, though that could be a function of it being, according to the Weather Channel website, -10F out there currently, which is quite a lot colder than it has been lately. Probably it's because it's a clear night. (Thank God!) But that layer of snow was nice insulation, potentially roof-damaging though it was...

But guess what? There's another storm moving in starting tomorrow night that is supposed to last on and off through Tuesday. No word yet on total accumulation predictions, but... Well, we might be up on the roof again sooner rather than later. Then again, since clearing the roof made the snow banks on the sides of the house not much shorter than the roof -- You can't see out of most of the side windows anymore -- if we have to clear snow off the roof again, God only knows where we'll put it.

At this point, you have to laugh about it all or else you'll totally cry and/or want to kill someone/something. :) And I guess we're not alone. There's a realtor's office on the county road that I drive to get to my house. I noticed tonight that their outside sign read: "Just listed...but you can't get there." Ah, yes. Colorado humor. :)

And I guess that's about it from me. Yay new job. I think... :)