Not Such A Surprise to Ending to 2009

The entire day yesterday, at least for me, was spent completing the floor in the Rec Room for the New Year's party last night. Below is a picture of the room as it is ready for the bash:

I had one helper all day who followed me with the wax while I ran the stripper and prepared the floor. It looks like a brand new floor. We also set up all the tables and 124 chairs, and moved all of the furniture to the outside deck and arranged that for extra seating. It was after we finished that job at around 4 PM that I wanted to talk to our resort manager to get clarification on the work schedule. It seems that anybody scheduled to work Friday's was expected to work on New Year's Day. I met with Kate for about 20 minutes and resigned from my job. Surprise? We had a very good discussion about how I misjudged the scope of this job and how she expected a more experienced maintenance person. I related to her that too much of the job involved heavy lifting and very physical work and I anticipated light maintenance, and not the every day back breaking jobs I had been assigned. It was an amicable departure and she said that I would make an excellent Ranger at another park and she would be happy to be a reference for me. The good news is that she signed us in for the whole month of January on our membership, which means we don't have to pay anything to stay here through January.

Now we can get on with what's most important to us - finding something that we both can do at the same location. We will try to get reservations at the Western Horizon park in Palm Springs, at least for the first couple of weeks in February, which will take us through Josie's commitment at the flower shop in Palm Springs for Valentine's day. That gives us about seven weeks to finalize a plan. It is also getting close to a summer job to begin somewhere around the first of April. We'll see.

The year 2009 was a wonderful year for us. We were able to put the problems with the economy and our house behind us and start a new life style that we had been dreaming about for a long time. We learned a lot, made some mistakes, made some great moves, met lots of nice people that we will stay in touch with, had a lot of fun, spent the whole last half of the year working together and are energized to make 2010 an even better year. That's what it is all about...