Intro

Hello and welcome back, peeps!

A new blog for a new me and a new city. Yay. For all of you who followed me before, I'd say I've grown up quite a bit in the past 2 or 3 years and have left the crazy life that was the focus of A Redhead in Austin behind me. In Austin. I've saved that blog for myself but, sorry, it's a bit embarrassing for me to let y'all go reading it now.

But, I am still an utra-cool person and do awesome things. All the time.

So, who are the players? Well, there's me, for one. The redhead. I'm a nerdy transportation engineer who times signals and stuff. I grew up in MN and moved to Austin, Texas for grad school. I just moved to Salt Lake over the holidays and I am loving it so far. The consulting company I worked for in Austin was soooooo sad to see me go that they are allowing me to work from home. Part time!!! It is the best thing ever. I'm only required to work 24 hours a week and keep full benefits. Fortunately I'm working on a project that is just wrapping up. About time, too, since it's about a year old and should have been done last MAY. Things tend to go over budget when that happens. I'm still looking for a local job but am not in any rush. My hobbies are photography and cycling and sewing and, recently, crocheting.

My Manfriend is nerdy. Nerdy, nerdy, nerdy. And he is slowly learning to be less dry about the things he is nerdy about. He likes rocks and hiking and running and biking. He's also developing his handyman skillz, which is pretty awesome. He has run 3 ultramarathons (2 at 50 miles and one at 30) and only one marathon in his day. He just started this week to train for this spring's the SLC marathon, so that will be fun, for him. He grew up in central Virginia, went to school in Baltimore, and then joined the Army for four years. We met though eHarm soon after he returned from a year in Iraq. Lucky me didn't have to go through that! He got out of the Army and moved to Austin to start on grad school. We spent two years dating there before he started a PhD program here in the SLC.

So he proposed and I followed and now we're living together (gasp!). It's pretty awesome to have a roommate again. It's so much more efficient! The cooking and shopping and cleaning. And having someone else to let the dog out. And no more laundromats!!!!!!!

So that brings us to Jaelea, the best dog in the world. She is currently an 11.5-year-old miniature schnauzer. I picked her up at the Austin Humane Society on Sept. 18, 2005, just a month after I moved to Austin. I wouldn't call her a "rescue dog" since had I shown up 15 minutes later instead of the minute they opened the door, she would not call me "mom" right now. Basically there was a guy immediately behind me in line who wanted her. She was 5.5-years-old at the time so we treat April 18th as her birthday. Though she generally receives nothing for getting older. But don't pity her! She is very loved and gets to sleep a lot and Manfriend pets her constantly. We've been checking out the new 'hood and Liberty Park quite a bit in the past week. It's hard for her that I insist on actually walking but, sorry, I just do not find every tree and bush as exciting as she does. Also she is a Texan through and through. I've spent enough time with such people to know that they do not like cold. No, no, no. She's the same way but I've let her get very, very scruffy and she is adjusting but still enjoys being covered by a blanket at all times.

One other thing that shapes our lives: Manfriend and I are huge transportation cyclists. Cars = bleh. We try to limit vehicular travel as much as possible. This has not always been easy for me since my first job in Austin was bikeable but required my car randomly once a week and was very time consuming. My second job in Austin was perfect for the bike in terms of needing my car and predictable work schedule. But it was down this HUGE hill. Only 5 miles away but to avoid going up the hill, I took Loop 360 home and it added 5 miles and LOTS of mean traffic. So I only did that on Fridays when I could leave before rush hour. Anyway, we try to bike everywhere and love living in the central city and you will probably hear lots about that.

You will also probably hear a bit about our upcoming wedding. Labor Day weekend, 2010. Though don't expect lots of gushing. I'm more the ranting-about-how-stupid-it-all-is kinda gal. But we've secured a pretty awesome barn for the reception/back-up wedding site and have talked my parents into letting us hold the ceremony against the lake at their cabin in Wisconsin. Things I am not looking forward to: buying/wearing a dress and stressing about my family objecting to such a "different" wedding.

Other than that, I hope to fill these interweb pages up with stories of hiking and livin' it up in the 'hood. And my crafts. And us hopefully becoming gardeners and cookers!

Toodles!