It's been a while since I've written, I know. Not much has happened since I last wrote. I'm not working at Waldenbooks anymore. Dan's still dealing with stress at his job. Okay, I'll give you more information.
Dan's current job title is Knowledge Engineer. Prior to his promotion he was an Author. An author is one who writes the flows to be put in the databases. A knowledge engineer is one who designs the flows to be written. As an author he found himself doing a lot of designing on his own because his KE wasn't doing his job. So when he got the promotion he started getting paid for doing stuff he was already doing. The promotion came when several of the KEs were either promoted or transferred to other departments. This left about 3-4 KE positions open... and only Dan to fill them. AOL finally hired 3 people to be trained as KEs, but in the mean-time Dan was still having to do both KE and authoring.... plus, he got to take his turn with the training process. In a word, the hiring made more work immediately (though hopefully it will level off in the long run) and it wasn't helped that they started getting rid of other authors. Why don't they hire more authors you may ask. Because they intend to switch soon to a system where less authors are needed. So Dan's been a little stressed with work lately. On the up side, he's managed to talk his boss and coworkers into letting him have an hour and a half each Sunday to attend sacrament meeting. This past week made it 3 weeks in a row :).
As for me, I'm not working right now. I really didn't want to have to play with another Holiday season in the retail environment. With the extra time on my hands I thought it would be good to consider going to school to pursue training in areas I've been interested in. With the help of some friends I've kinda narrowed down the areas I've been interested in. Massage Therapy (and/or possibly Shiatsu) was suggested by myself, and encouraged by my friends Dina and Genaphur, Veterinary Assistant was mentioned by my friend and former boss, Natalie, and Physical Therapy Technician was suggested by my friend (and sister) Sandy. Sandy was actually the one that bullied me into taking the first step (Thank you). I'm signed up to start an Introduction to Massage Therapy class starting Monday the 13th (I would think that Monday the 13th would be worse than Friday the 13th... at least Friday the 13th is at the end of the week). I'm also thinking of trying the Introduction to Shiatsu class in November. They are both 6-week, 18-hour classes. I'm also signed up to go to Apollo College this afternoon to get information on their Veterinary and Physical Therapy Technician coarses. I'll let you know how things go.
Well, I've bored you enough. I'll go through the rest of the family quickly. Echo still spends most of his time hiding from the evil air conditioner and laying on the couch waiting for you to pet him so he can bite you. Siren can't get enough of her Koosh balls and being scratched on the back (she'll bite you if you stop before she's done with you). And while Scout still loves her plastic toy and football, her latest fascination is water being poured slowly down the drain. I think that about covers everything. Love to you all.
- Karen
