I Know...

Been a while since I've blogged!  As Froggy reminded me.  (I already knew, Froggy.)

Anyway.

It's just been normal life lately, which is not what it looked like for the last 2 plus years.  We've basically rearranged a lot of things in the wake of Bill's job, the contract buy-out, his position being officially eliminated after he'd taken the buy-out and all the associated stuff.

One thing we are doing differently:  Bill's not looking for a job very hard at the moment.  Beyond me reading the Sunday paper with the employment ads, that is.  His original plan was to take April as the catch-up time since he had several restoration jobs waiting (pachinko machines all over the living room again!), but since then he's been getting very regular calls for restoration bids and quite a few of those calls have resulted in jobs.  More machines all over the living room!  Business on the parts for sale and dvds for the do-it-yourself restoration has picked up considerably.  The booth was not doing too much but then since about April 1st, we've had several dvds and pachinko ball sets sold.  In fact, pretty much everything has picked up since April 1st.

Which was his official last day of unemployment.  Can we say God's blessings?  I think we can.  And we do.  Often.

At some point, he will need to find a job.  But not yet.  In fact, we can go for several months and quite probably for the rest of the year before we need that to happen.  And possibly even later, depending on how well the pachinko business does.  We are NOT taking anything for granted.  But we do have several plans in place.

We went to a local art fair in downtown Tulsa last Saturday.  Actually, we went to two.  They run concurrently and are in the same area so that people can walk from one to the other easily.  It was a lot of fun.  We didn't buy anything, we usually don't, but we always enjoy it.

Otter went to the Renaissance Fair in Muskogee last weekend.  Muskogee is not really next door but it's not too far.  Well, the locals might think it's far.  But we measure distance by TEXAS standards, so it's not that far to us.  Anyway, J was dressed up as a pirate and Otter had a long red skirt with a black net overlay, and she had a black corset with a white short-sleeved blouse underneath it.  Their faces are in the pictures so I'm not posting them, but they had a good time.

Otter is finished up with her dental work.  The original estimate at the not-good dentist was about $7,200.00.  Our "old/new" dentist gave her an estimate of $3,200.00.  The final cost was actually just over $2,500.00.  And that included a few things that the not-good dentist simply missed.  Otter has also been officially put on full-time at her job.  Which means she now qualifies for their insurance plan.  She's on ours still for this month but that is fixin to change, she has been self-sufficient since October 1, 2013 but we still carried her on our health insurance because it is expensive and she was part-time.  She still managed to support herself on a part-time salary, but she did not really have a lot of extras.  We didn't mind covering her insurance, but now we won't have to.  She had considered moving to a different apartment complex way back when she knew that she was going to tell Roomie they needed not to be roommates any longer which would have been this coming July or August - based on the lease when they moved into the 2-bedroom unit.  Then Roomie pulled her stunt and moved out in October, Otter stayed in the 2-bedroom unit until the end of November and then transferred to her own 1-bedroom unit with a lease ending November 30 of this year.  She likes her apartment and the complex, it's pretty close to work for her and not too far from us.  But she was thinking that she might need a cheaper rent, since she was still part-time.  But now that she's full-time, she is most likely not going to move.  Which is fine with us, it was hard enough to recover from helping her move the last time!  :)

Memorial Day is this coming weekend.  IF it's not raining, we may grill some steaks or burgers.

OK, Froggy.  I blogged!  By the way, I also went to Braums for lunch today.  In case you are interested.