Life Comes Full Circle in August

As I flipped from July to August on my wall calendar at work I stopped and thought (for the 100th time) about how quickly this past year has gone. Especially since the prior year seemed to drag on at a snail's pace. As I was looking at my calendar and what I had planned for this month I thought oh wow, its been a year this week since I sold my house! And then thought hmm, actually it has been five years this week since I bought it! And then I tracked back in my mind to Augusts in between and further back and realized a lot of significant events have happened in my life in August.

Ten Years Ago - August 1999

Ten years ago in August of 1999 I started my first "real job" out of college. Wow - its hard to believe that it's been ten years since I finished my undergrad! I actually graduated in April but didn't find a job until August. In those months in between I was a receptionist at Standford Home Care and Hospice. The people there were nice, I only worked Monday - Thursday which gave me Fridays to look for a job and interview, but something about having an engineering degree and no job to use it at yet was somewhat unsettling. So, needless to say, when I started my job in August I was extremely excited! I remember my boss at the time calling me when I was on the way to 24 Hour Fitness with my best friend Garley and him letting me know I got the job as we were walking across the parking lot. I wonder if Garley remembers?

Curious about what I did? Well its something that takes about two seconds to cause someone's eyes glaze over with boredom. I was an Applications Engineer at a software company who made off-line CMM programming software. This company was a division of an industrial robot manufacturing company. Sounds exciting right? :o) Actually it really was. I loved that job, what we did, the customers we worked with, and everything I learned while I was there.

Proud Engineer in a Cube

If you look closely you can see me working on a
3D drawing of a 6-axis robot. Nerdarific cool!

Something else that came about that first week when I started that job was that I met my now BFF Kris who worked in our Farmington Hills office in Michigan. He and a few other AE's (that's the cool way to refer to Application Engineers you know) were in our office for the week for training. It was a fun week getting acquainted in the job and getting to know new people, and it was fun because that week was the birthday of the same year "birthday twins" Kris and Tamara!

Happy Birthday to you guys next week by the way!

And Happy Friend Anniversary Kris, you've been a great friend to me all these years and have been with me through good times and bad. Luckily mostly good, and I thank you for always making me laugh. Well, except for when you're trying to make me laugh by practicing your stand-up on me and then I don't laugh and then you get offended and rush off the phone with me... sorry!

Me & Kris

Five Years Ago - August 2004

So fast forward five years and now we're up to August 2004. What happened in between 1999 and 2004? Well, I moved to Arizona to go to grad school, working as an IT Project Manager at a mold lab (so random, I know), left to go work at a start-up MMORPG game company (yes, even more random), and was about to do something I had never thought possible at that age having grown up in San Francisco... I bought a house!

Working Hard at the Video Game Company

Wondering what MMORPG stands for?
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game!

Me & My Parents at My MBA Graduation

So back to the house, wow that was a hug event for me! I closed on the house on August 16th. It was a really exciting time and I felt proud to have reached that next level of "adulthood". Growing up in San Francisco meant that the dream of becoming a young home owner never even crossed my mind. Houses were going for close to a million dollars in the bad neighborhoods, and I never could have afforded a house or even a condo in a decent neighborhood. In Arizona though things were very different, and buying a small house or condo was something very normal for people in their mid-20s.

My Little House in Cave Creek

Soon after buying the house I also got my second dog Kona the Pekepoo. Can't say my first dog Mika (who was 1 1/2 at the time) was too excited to get a younger sister, but after a couple YEARS she finally warmed up to her and now they're a close little ying-yang pair. A week after buying Kona I then started my first job in Marketing at a dental company in Phoenix. And so my life in the world of dentistry began! I hear from many people there is only entry into the dental industry, no exit. I'm still not sure if people say that with warmth or fear. Hmm.... undecided.

Kona My Pekepoo (Pekingese/Poodle)

One Year Ago - August 2008

So after working at the dental company in Phoenix for 3 1/2 years it was time to move on and I took a job at a larger dental company and moved out to San Diego where I currently live. A couple months after I moved out here and after many trips back to Phoenix to have my house painted, yard relandscaped, and miscellaneous things fixed, I finally listed the house in April.

Well, in April of last year the housing slump was already sliding belly first down the slip and slide mat, and my chances of getting out of my house and breaking even were slim. Many months of stress piled upon more stress, I was able to sell the house! I truly think it was an act of God that everything happened the way they did on the timeline that they did. While it felt like eons were passing as I paid the mortgage on an empty house while also paying to live the California lifestyle out here in San Diego, the whole listing and sale process actually went pretty quickly in comparison to what was happening on the market.

I closed on the house sale on August 1st almost exactly five years after I bought the house. Kind of crazy how that happened! That was one of the first things I thought of when I flipped to the August page of my calendar this week when I thought about what I was doing this time last year. And then I thought about what I was doing in August the year before, and the year before that. And then I thought, its time for another blog! To the computer! Haha. So here I've been.