It may be Lincoln's Birthday to you...

But, in point of fact, it is also Rick's and My 30th wedding anniversary today. You would think that I would have some deep, philosophical comments regarding same. But, hey, I don't! It's simply amazing to me that thirty years has elapsed. Fortunately, Rick is still the most intelligent and most interesting man I know. Doesn't hurt that he's "cute" too... And so now we are working on our second 30-year term.
My new job is going well. The weather is cooperating. And I've discovered that since I started work, I haven't had time to take many photographs. I need to work on that.

Saturday night's all right with me....

I have just updated my blog with a new background etc etc and it seems the new format also allows me to add photos easily! Yay. Now I need to go to my photo archives and pull some recent ones to share.
This isn't a two-headed man, nor a two-headed husband! It's Jim being hilarious. It's one of his more endearing qualities too.
I've been messing with this blog for over an hour-- effectively squandering good writing time-- but this too shall pass. It's a nice Saturday night after a productive work week: week 3, in fact, in my new job.
This coming week we will be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. Anyone I've shared this with has congratulated me and us but I am more shocked that thirty years has gone by rather than it's been spent with Rick. When we first met, I told myself, "here's a man I wouldn't mind being with for a long long time.." guess my judgement wasn't so bad after all!

New Job

Hi all,

The latest news is that I have a new job! I've been hired by ADC Telecommunications located less than ten miles from here in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. ADC is "a world leader in providing global network infrastructure products (fiber optic cable etc.) and services that enable the profitable delivery of high-speed Internet, data, video, and voice services to consumers and businesses worldwide."

My first day on the job will be this coming Monday. My job title is, "Customer Contact Specialist". I have no idea what that really means but I'll let you know! I will be answering incoming calls from existing corporate customers: order taking and order tracking and presumably general problem resolution. Oh goody! If you are curious about the company, just go to their website at www.adc.com

Other news is that Daniel has enrolled in his first graduate level course. He called to tell me that he is almost officially a Grad Student. He sounds pretty psyched for it.

In the meantime, the nasty weather is heading our way. El Pasoans are braced for the worst and they surely are over-reacting. Just mention "near or below freezing temperatures" or "rain, sleet, freezing rain, or snow" and everyone seems to go into a major tailspin. We'll see. However, the total lack of bad weather driving skills among the majority of local drivers is legendary. The best advice is to stay off the road totally. They are predicting two to four inches of snow in the next twentyfour hours. Extraordinary for El Paso. Ho Hum for Midwesterners and New Englanders. But there you are.

Happy New Year to you too!

Hi all,
January 7th. The N.E.Patriots just whomped the N.Y.Jets. Oh well. Next weekend is the match-up between the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens. This creates a brand new family rivalry. We are ex-Colts fans and Dan now resides in Baltimore. Hmmm.
On the work front: I have revised my resume and I have an appointment tomorrow morning with the local Kelly Services representative to take a few screening tests and whatall.
We've had snow here in El Paso but nothing to compare with Denver. The locals are saying that it's colder than normal: highs in the 60's degrees and lows in the mid 20's degrees. Works for me. Below freezing keeps the mosquito and indigenous bug population at bay. Yeah.
CNN revealed that through a "signing statement" GW and his cronies (can't tell you who, it's classified)are now authorized to read your private first class mail without the benefit of a search warrant. Why oh why is no one disturbed by this??? How many more of our Constitutional Rights will be lost before anyone notices and starts to protest in a major way??
Oh a happier note: Senator Joe Biden has declared that he will be campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008. Just to make it more interesting.
So much for my current opinions and random thoughts.
Let's hope 2007 is a GOOD year. Rah.

Getting ready for Thanksgiving

Okay, okay, I confess: I forgot I even had a blog. Sorry! I was a little preoccupied with work and not play. And for all of that, effective November 10th, my (Kelly Services) contract employment at Cingular Wireless was abruptly terminated. The short version is that my initial supervisor left on materity leave and in the midst of the potential (now postponed) merger with AT&T, they hired a new supervisor and he and I did not see eye to eye. It was time for me to leave anyway and so I am not sad. I am liberated!

So, now I am catching up on some of the things I would have done back in March which include completely unpacking and organizing our home office space. Ah, boxes and files and paperwork. Plus, I do have numerous Christmas craft projects to complete.

We will be joining our Small Group friends, the Ruebusch's, for Thanksgiving dinner at their beautiful (adobe style hacienda) home in New Mexico. Looking forward to this! They've requested that I bring my apparently legendary homemade cranberry sauce and some vegetables of our choosing. Bottle of wine (fruit of the vine..) and we will enjoy a pleasant meal, I'm sure!

Then, ta da, it will be December. (Don't forget Dan's birthday on the 5th) and then we will be off to Utah for Jon and Amy's wedding. This will be yet another opportunity for a Rudnicki clan reunion. Even Dan will be in attendance from the eastern-most outpost in Baltimore. After which, we will be continuing on to Washington state to visit Tami and John and "The Grandkids". Hope I can find where I have stored my previous winter garments before we leave! Not much need for thermal underwear in West Texas.. he he.

Be well, and hopefully I'll blog again before year's end.

September

Hi all, today is Ruth G. Rudnicki's birthday. Sing Hallelujah in her honor. Amen.

That being said, it's now September. The rain in El Paso has temporarily subsided.

News from Dan in Baltimore is that his girlfriend of many many years called him to break up with him. What's the worst thing for any Mother is feeling helpless to assist a) because it's not appropriate to intervene, b) because he's thousands of miles away, and c) because my advice is irrelevant. My ability to listen and sympathize was all I had to offer. He will survive. (And how WOULD Grandma Ruth have responded??) Fast forward a week--> he miraculously (his opinion) has three "first dates" with three different women this weekend. Unsolicited attention which will help to heal his wounded ego and rebuild his self-esteem.

Around here, Rick and I are participating with a small group from St. Mark's Methodist church as an offshoot from our Alpha Course. We continue to meet on Wednesday evenings to study out of The Purpose Driven Life book. We have been rotating between each of our homes and enjoying a great meal together before we tackle the assigned chapters. It's been simply fabulous "fellowship". What can I say?

Last weekend, Rick's daughter Tami and her husband John came to visit on their way home from a wedding in Missouri. We spent two days together and had a great visit.
If, and I say this with little confidence, the photo I just tried to add comes through, it will be three faces: Jake, Kaitlyn, and Austin. Tami and John's children and OUR grandchildren! Woo Whoo!

For lollygagging on new posts. I'm in 2nd place, Amy.

Hi there everyone. As Jon said, there are only six people who read this. Amy hasn't posted since April 18th and I haven't since April 23rd. Ouch. Well, Jon, I won't be able to keep up with my brother Jim, but I'll give it a shot. Much has happened since April. Dan is in Baltimore. Dan has a cool apartment in Baltimore. Dan has a "new" car--> a fabulous 2005 Mazda RX-8 which he loves a lot. Rick is traveling to visit his mother and sister in California so I have the house and the computer to myself! Along with the chores and laundry and dirty dishes. And with all the flooding in and around El Paso, we have the requisite leak in the roof as well. My employment contract through Kelly Services has been extended until the end of the year. This will keep food on the table at the very least! Hope to go see "Snakes on a Plane" while Rick is away, and watch a ton of major league baseball on television too! Tomorrow: Kurt Schilling vs. Andy Messina. Gotta love that. Bye for now.

Hear the wind blow

Hear the wind blow

photos

Springtime in Texas and other random news

Hi there, I am hoping that two photos will upload successfully. The first would be the signpost at the Dell City Junction filling station where we stopped to stretch our legs en route to Carlsbad Caverns in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The second would be me standing next to what the Carlsbadians call Lake Carlsbad, but which is really just a temporary flow restriction along the Pecos River. Yes, we were both West of AND east of the Pecos on that day! We visited the Carlsbad Caverns which takes you 800 (eight hundred) feet underground. Wow. Amazing cave formations in a huge huge cave; almost as large as the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (for those of you Los Angeles-ites). Other great news, since Murphy prevailed since my last blog: Dan is not going to Davis. He has, yes he has, accepted a generous offer of real employment at the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Huge congratulations to Dan! He has one week left for classes. One week for finals and then we all play "Freebird". And at his direction and choice, he is not participating in graduation ceremonies from Purdue but he and Erin will be flying out to visit us in El Paso in mid-May. M O M is delighted and already counting the days. Will take time off from my job, which by the way is still at Cingular and still wonderful. Be well all of you Blog-ites. If the photos don't upload, I will try again to maneuvre through this Byzantine system.

Oops forgot to share about Dan (again)

Now, keep in mind it isn't "in ink" yet but we are almost sure that Dan will accept the offer: he's been accepted into Graduate School: The Department of Physics at the University of California at Davis (between San Francisco and Sacramento). How cool is that?

I've got Amy beat by two weeks

Hi all, I do have Amy beat by two weeks maybe more. (Forgive me Father but it's been..) six weeks since I last blogged. he he he. The news of the week is that I have a job! Oh, okay, I did have a bit of help in securing said job. I applied at Kelly Services. Mind you, this in and of itself requires a snazzy resume and an interview and several skills tests. Then they sent me on an interview and I was selected (the lucky winner!). I started at Cingular Wireless' Transaction Processing Center in El Paso last Wednesday. Not retail but corporate. I'm one of dozens of temps hired here to help as they merge with AT&T. All of AT&T Wireless'accounts payables must be processed here and incorporated into Cingular's paradigm. And that's my job: I work the exceptions that get kicked out by the data entry drones for insufficient or inconsistent information on the invoice which prevents payment. And so I sit in a nice new building in a nice new cubicle and rejoice that I am not standing outside in the midst of 50mph winds and dust/sand storms. That being said, when the winds die down and Rick and I go for our evening walks, the sunsets are spectacular! Did I say that the people of El Paso are friendly. Yep. They are. We are happy campers. And I am happier now that I have a job to keep me from getting bored with cabin fever. Or would that be hacienda fever? And the paycheck never hurts.

Dan News

Hi, back again. Two postings in a single morning? Woo whooo! Dan just returned from Baltimore, Maryland, and reports that he had a really really good job interview with the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University. He won't hear back for two weeks though. It would be totally awesome if they offered him employment upon his graduation! Not the least of which reason is that then Mom and Dad's cashflow would be substantially improved! ha ha ha. When he becomes financially self-supporting, then we will have accomplished a major goal in our lives.

February, yeah, already!

Hi all, I used to adjust the font and size of my blog postings. Now I am getting lazy. Sigh. All is well here in El Paso. I have made the promise (to myself and others) to get out with my digital camera and record the sights. We'll see. The State of the Union address was last night. Adequately delivered; beautifully written (I only wish the speechwriter got more credit for it..) and the Democratic response was excellent. 'Nuf said on that!! We have unpacked numerous boxes and seem to have made a recognizable dent in the seemingly overwhelming task of moving into our new apartment. Yes, we are in a nice little apartment. And contrary to conventional wisdom, it suits us fine and is just where we need to be for the time being. The pool and hottub/jacuzzi and the sauna are nice fringe benefits as well. And "no yard work" a big plus. Um, apologies for this flaky posting. My thoughts are scattered, but oh well. More coherent narrative in the near future. Hold that thought! I am just trying to keep up with Cactus Jim.. and he sets the bar pretty high. Ha ha, love to all. Patsy

And the fruits have it!!

Happy New Year to all! We left (departed, abandoned, relocated from) Germany on Sunday, December 18th. We flew to Frankfurt, then to Chicago, then to Indianapolis. Lufthansa is fantastic when it comes to creature comforts in flight; however they lost one of our three pieces of luggage somewhere between arriving at O'Hare and catching the last leg (must have been United....) to home.
So we muddled around between Spencer and Kokomo for a few days to see friends and whatall. Then we drove back down to Spencer to spend Christmas with Daniel. We bought a dorky (no, really it was kinda cute) Christmas tree at Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve, decorated it up, cooked us a mess of WhateverDanielWanted food and celebrated a Bryant family holiday.
Dan returned home in a snowstorm and we packed up again to drive south to visit friends in Alabama. Then, after three days there, we packed up and took a road trip west to Texas. Let me tell you: Mississippi and Louisiana were far prettier than I expected. Central Texas, specifically Midland, Texas, is pretty desolate and God-forsaken, no matter what GW says. El Paso is BIG and BUSY. We are trying to settle in here. Hope to sign a lease at the Peartree Apartments (Go Fruit!!!); our new residence will be a unit on Bartlett Drive. Truth!! And, no promises, but I will try to update the blog sooner than later. Only other relevant news is that Dan got a perfect score on the Quantitative section of his GRE's. Go figure. Lol.

It's Daniel's Birthday!! and other news

Photo in his honor. This spot is in Dellbruck. Dan thought it was funny: Food For Fun.

And, it was on this day, December 5th, twenty-two years ago, our son Daniel was born. And ya wonder why ya feel old? Duh.

Other news, um, we fixed the problem we had between our computer and our digital camera and Kodak Easy Share's upgraded software. So, for those of you who process visual better than verbal.. I will be adding new photos on the blog. Yeah.

With two weeks remaining in our assignment here in Germany, we are getting down to the wire quite literally. Last time to the city, last time to the market (well not yet), last few loads of laundry. Don't need to buy more dishwasher detergent or Musli cereal or eggs or butter.

As we were riding into Koln on the tram, Rick remarked, "I am going to miss riding on the train." And also, he queried, "How do you say 'good bye' to a City??" I know the feeling. Koln has been such a good friend and it will be hard to say, "good bye." I suppose "farewell" would be more appropriate since we hope Rick may end up being the Delphi ambassador to Germany for any problems here that require someone's physical attention (send me send me! he will say).

I am not looking forward to the knot in my stomach that I know I will have when we hand back the keys to our landlord and turn in the rental car and climb on the airplane headed for the USA. Unless you have lived overseas, you don't appreciate the differences; and, sad to say, not everything in the USA is "better". It's such a shame that we have been trained to think so. So, I am going to embrace diversity and I will try to encourage others to think both locally and globally. The trick is to weave the two together.

Aha! THIS is Koln Karneval held at Heumarkt on November 11th every year.
And this is tranquility in the form of Bevertalsperre
(talsperre means reservoir)
Germany. Promise kept. Photos posted.
Will try to teach Amy how to do this..

To my A M A Z E M E N T

The Blog god has mercy! Read this and then the next two postings. It seems that the first delicious one WAS published after all. I give up!!!

Frustration mounting

Well, to cap it off, I composed a perfectly delicious rant about my frustration with our realtor in El Paso and then the Blog god replied that my post could not be published! something to do with specific html format missing-- things about which I am completely clueless.
Rats and Darn!!

Revert to watching television (Leslie Caron in the 1955 film version of the story of Cinderalla, entitled "The Glass Slipper") which was more fun.

And the sun is out, so how can one possibly remain pissed off! It's honestly a lot of work to keep the flames of rage burning. Lol.

My recommendation to all: do not try to buy a house from 5,000 miles away. I don't care what they say; the internet is good but not that good.
Still waiting for contracts to be e-mailed to us here for signatures. They will arrive one day; or they won't. We may get the house, or we may not. Who can say???

And my original quote from early this morning from a play written by William Congreve, entitled "The Mourning Bride" is:

Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd.

Correlative passage, also often misquoted, from the beginning of the play:
Music has charms to soothe a savage beast.

Strangle a realtor, go to jail

The original quote went like this:

Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd.

Those who have been in communcation with me lately will understand the source of my frustration. (hint: it Isn't with Rick). I am trying to sublimate my feelings of complete helplessness by resorting to literature.

The previous descriptive selection is from the closing line of act III of William Congreve's The Mourning Bride, first produced in 1697.
The Mourning Bride is your usual king-orders-beheading-of-enemy-prince-upon-finding-he-is-secretly-married-to-king's-daughter-but-gets-it-himself-in-a-case-of-mistaken-identity-resulting-in-another-mistaken-identity-with-subsequent-suicide-by-poisoning-revolution-and-reunion-of-happy-lovers tragedy.

The first line of the play is another oft-misquote:
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast."

Perhaps I just need to invoke the first line of the play? However, I will wait until a bit later; our downstairs neighbor doesn't really need to hear Metallica this early in the morning, right?

I'll do the Metallica thing to vent, then put on the soundtrack of March of the Penguins to sooth. Probably could soak in a hot bubblebath too.
Whatever it takes. Claudia, oh Ms. Coldwell-Banker, please please please don't fail us here.