In the months since moving to Newburyport, my dearest husband Jeff has
tried any number of techniques to get yours truly to take up writing rather than, as he likes to put it, “sitting around all day and eating bon-bons.”
These have included: hinting, openly suggesting, flattering my writing skills, insisting, and now finally, bribery.
From now on I will have to earn my weekly “allowance” by writing something, anything. I get paid one whole penny per word, which means in order to earn the full 20$USD, I will have to write two thousands words.
Only 1,900 more to go.
17 October, 2004
Life, Work
Today I drive up to Andover, MA. Tomorrow I start my new job as
Sales Engineer for Sentillion.
I’m just a little apprehensive. I’ve done the whole move thing
countless times before. And I’ve started quite a few new jobs in my
day. However, I’ve never done it quite like this: I’ll be living out of
a hotel for the first month of work. Granted, I’ll be able to come home
on the weekends. And we’ll be joining he Watkins Clan in Cancun for the
Family Reunion the first week of November. But it all seems a little
overwhelming.
On the positive side, the research I’ve done about some of the
surrounding towns lead me to believe we’ll be pretty happy there. One
of the apartment complexes that we like (at least from their Web site)
is Museum
Square. Within one mile of the complex, there are 16 pizza joints,
2 public libraries, a bookstore, and a half-dozen brew-pubs. It’s also
within walking distance of the Massachusetts commuter rail station,
from which we can catch a train to Boston. On the other hand, I’ll need
to walk two or three blocks to get to a park to walk Augustus–I’m not
fool enough to think he’ll give up his daily walks.
As soon as I get a new mobile phone, you can count on an email with
the phone number. But until then, I’ll be largely incommunicado: my
service plan doesn’t cover Massachusetts, and I’m unwilling to pay the
horrendous roaming charges. Email, however, will still work fine.
12 October, 2004
Life, Work
I have in my hot little hands a one year contract to provide
software development services to Sentillion Software. So, at last,
I’ll be back at work in the software industry; this time actually
writing software.
Sentillion is located in Andover, MA. While I’d been targeting the
southern NH area, this is almost as good. Andover has some significant
things going for it:
- Close to the border of MA and NH: many people who work in
Andover live in southern NH.
- Close to Boston
- Close to an REI store
- Close to an Apple store
- Reasonable cost of living (keep in mind I’m still comparing
against Manhattan and Jersey City)
- Close to cool historic towns (Lowell, Lawrence, etc.)
My first day is next Monday, 18 October. Unfortunately, I’ll be
living out of an hotel until we’re able to find a new apartment. I’m
not looking forward to breaking our current lease, breaking our cell
phone contracts, and dealing with all the other miscellaneous issues
relating to moving. We just went through all this in April.