Yesterday, while waiting for my sweet potato cans to boil and seal, I went and looked at my phone. I had a missed call from some number I didn't recognize. So I called my voicemail and I had a message from Harvard Custom Manufacturing asking me to come in to an interview today at 9:30. So I called back and confirmed that I could come at 9:30.

When I went in today they interviewed me and made it sound like they wanted to hire me, but in the future when they had a position open. Well, they asked me to wait in this hallway, right by the receptionist. I started talking to her about life and work and other things. The guy who interviewed me came back out and asked me to follow him into another office, which I found out later was the human resource director's office. He talked to me for a while and told me that my credentials were really awesome, but I had no experience so they were going to have to pay me less than a regular engineer with experience. At this point I am going, what? Hire me? Then he said, we really want to hire you because you seem to good to pass up, what would you work for? I should have asked for something, but I really didn't care. ha ha. And his offer ended up being only about 3000 grand less than I was going to ask.

So you are now reading the blog of Harvard's newest junior electrical engineer. Yes!! I am an electrical engineer. I am going to play with wires and circuits and electrical things. I am going to help design the electrical systems for defense vehicles (airplanes, tanks, cars, helicopters... etc).

Praise God. He is so good to me. This job seems like it is perfect for me AND it is only five minutes from my house and it has the same hours at Jared's job (7-4)!! YAY!!

P.S. Did you know that Harvard has over 900 employees? I didn't. The building is HUGE!! They started as a division of Northrop before they became Northrop Grumman. And they work with Lockheed Martin and Boing and Northrop Grumman on most jobs. It is a job that I never expected to find on the Eastern Shore. I thought I would have to be in the DC area to find a job like this. I am so excited. I just have to pass my drug test. :)

Today I came to SU to check my email. I parked in the faculty parking since I figured, "I paid for the permit, why not use it?" The woman I parked next to got out of her car (after I started walking towards the building), looked at the front of my car, and walked back to her car. I am pretty sure she checked to see if I had a red parking pass and if I hadn't had it I bet she would have called the police. ha.

For the last two months I have challenged to not spend any of Jared’s money, or the little money that I earn at SU, on groceries. I have to find creative ways to earn grocery money. I have done a few sewing projects, helped clean Mrs. Shelton’s house before she left, and babysat my nieces and nephews. Also I have cut my grocery bill down to about $15 - $20 a week. This week I spent a little more because I was stocking up on several things we use a lot of (and that won’t go bad). Really the only groceries I need each week are all for Jared’s lunch: lunchmeat, granola bars, yogurts, bananas, oranges, pretzels, and/or chips.

So...what can you buy for $23.43?
I bought all of this.

As seen above, I bought:
* 10 Dannon Fruit-in-the-Bottom Yogurts ($4.00)
* 2 bananas ($0.36)
* 1 can of mandarin oranges ($0.89)
* 8 boxes of Stovetop stuffing ($3.92)
* 5 boxes of Jiffy corn bread ($2.00)
* 1 block of gorgonzola cheese ($1.98)
* 3 tubes of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls ($2.25)
* 4 cans of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup ($1.35)
* 4 can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup (1.38)
* 1 package of Always Infinity Pads (free)
* 13 cans of Swanson’s chicken broth ($5.30)

Original price: $65.69
I paid 35.7% of the original price (or for those of you that don’t like percentages, I saved $42.26). Also, note that I bought the nice brand for this price and not just the store brand. That is why I was so excited about my flour last week. Regular flour has a much better feel to it than store brand flour. Most things I will buy store brand, but real flour is so nice. I usually buy the store brand cream soups unless I can get Cambell’s for cheaper, as I did today (34 cents versus 55 cents (at Walmart))! Yay.

I love grocery shopping. It is so much fun. It is a big puzzle that I have to solve each week.

Example: I went to Food Lion (the sale ends today) and went through the line three times today because the chicken broth and cream soups were buy 1 get one free, but it was limit two. But if I bought a combination of six of those products I had coupons for another dollar off. So the first time I bought 4 chicken broths and 2 soups, the second time 4 soups and 2 chicken broths, and the last time 4 chicken broths and 2 soups. I had to buy 4 soups the second time because I also had a coupon for 35 cents off 4 cans of soup.

Oh, and did I tell you that Jared signed up at Wor-Wir to get the Sunday paper for Fwwwweeeeeee!!! I love coupons and matching them with sales. Plus, you can print off coupons online and match them together and save even more money. I can’t do it as well as some of these people online, but I am pretty happy.

Since I don't have internet at my house now, I only check blogs, facebook, and my email about twice a week. I logged on to facebook today and I noticed that it had started making suggestions of who I should talk to (or as they say "reconnect with").  I thought it was sort of amusing when they suggested that I talk to Matt Robins and my sisters more, but today they really made me laugh.  And I realized again how stupid and pointless facebook relationships are. 

I mean honestly, do they need to tell me to talk to my husband. There should be some sort of feature on facebook that senses when you are married to someone and it knows that probably you speak more in person that online.  I am so thankful that I live in a real world and not a digital one and that my husband and I can communicate face to face instead of through an artifical means.

I love you Jared, but I am not posting on your wall today because facebook told me to.  I will give you a hug when you leave for work and when you come home.  I will have dinner waiting for you when you run out the door to your next job. I will clean our house today and wash your clothes and put them away.  :)  I don't think I need to message you on facebook to let you know I love you.  Plus, you won't log on to your account for another week or so.  I'd rather let you know now.  :)

Anyhow, being removed from the internet makes most of its uses seem so dumb and a waste of time.  I am thankful I don't have internet at my house anymore.

*edit* Oh, and as you can see I am not friends with Mr. Howard in a digital world either.  I didn't even know he was on facebook until today.  ha. 

I am pretty excited because yesterday I found flour at Super Fresh for only $1.50 a bag and if I bought ten bags I received five dollars back. So really they ended up only being $1 a bag. The normal price is $3.13 a bag. You might say that ten bags of flour is a little excessive, but I have gone through five bags of flour since I married Jared. Plus, I am selling my Mom four of those bags. So basically I should have paid $31.30 and I paid $10. I saved $21.30. That is one third of the price!! Yes! I wanted to buy 20 bags, but I don't have enough space to store that many. I hear bread goes on sale at Christmas and Easter too, so hopefully I can restock on more then before the summer rolls around.

Tomorrow I am babysitting the niecews again. I watched them Monday and we made an apple pie. :) That was really fun. Tomorrow I think we are going to build a fort and maybe make an obstacle course. Won't that be fun? It sure beats having our brains sucked out by the television.  I would bake something, but I am only going to be there an hour and a half this time.  I don't think it allows enough time for clean up.  Maybe it will stop raining and we can dig a hole in the ground outside.  :)  I am making a list of ideas.  We are going to have a lot fo fun in the next few weeks.  Next time we bake we are going to do pizza.

This is a new flannel baby quilt that I am making.  I love the purple dots on boarder!!  It is so soft and wonderful.  :)  I am planning on finishing quilting it today or tomorrow.  

 I have made two new aprons out of this material. This is a close up of the bottom and the ruffle.  They are both full aprons and so much fun for Christmas.  I need to think of more people to give them to.

 

These are a few of the things I have made this week:  thin crust pizza, chocolate cake truffles, and apple muffins.  My favorite thing I made was gingerbread thin and chewy cookies.  They were so good.  Yum. Yum. Yum.  I think people are going to get a lot of baked goods for Christmas this year.

I am going to babysit the nieces and nephews today (there should be a word, like sibling that covers all of them... maybe niehews or niphews or nephces).  I might get some pictures if they aren't too crazy.  ha.

I have been without internet for four days now and I have accomplished so much.  I do miss blogging though.  Jared is at work tonight and so I came over to my parent's house to eat dinner, visit, and check my email.  I thought I would write a blog post, but now that I have started I can't think of anything to say.  

Jared worked every day last week (poor Jared) at both jobs and Saturday at Target.  I really wish I could find a job... But I am so thankful that at least Jared has work.  I like teaching my one lab a week at SU.  It would be really neat if they would hire me full time or some other school or maybe an engineering or science job.  My brain feels like it is turning to mush!!  I need to do some math and calculations and my baby science students aren't helping me at all.  ha.  I taught two of them unit conversions today because I felt like I needed to inform them of the better things of life.  I don't think they cared or thought it was quite as cool as I did. 

I throw in these little interesting things, like why polymers can be melted down and plastics just burn, when I am teaching and they just stare at me.  Sigh.  It was a minute rabbit trail...  People are so lazy.  What happened to going to college to learn and learn all you can?  Drink it in people!!  You will only be there for a limited time and someday in your life you will look back and wish you had learned something.  I loved learning.  I wish I could still take classes.  It is too bad they are so darned expensive.

I'll try to get my laptop to SU this week to post some pictures of my house and my life.  It isn't too high on my list of things to do, but maybe I will get around to it.