Before the Blog: (Debt) Free at Last!

Wow - it has been WAY too long since the last update here, hasn't it? Sorry about that! So, what has been happening in our lives in the last eight months or so...

Picking up where we left off - in March, my immediate supervisor at work left the company, leaving me as the lead web developer. It was a pretty scary prospect, but the "field promotion" came with a raise, a week's worth of bonus vacation days, and a whole lot of overtime the first month or so.

After a few weeks, I was a starting to feel whole lot more comfortable about the idea. I have learned a whole lot (out of necessity!) and am infinitely more confident in my skills now, both in design and programming. I'm even picking up some server/networking knowledge along the way, too.

Thanks to my raise and overtime pay, Shrike's raise from last November and tax refunds (the real ones from 2000, not those stupid $300 checks - those went to an LGBT Rights organization), we had a fair amount of "found" money on hand, and by summer we were able to pay off my credit card debt, Shrike's car and Shrike's credit card - and we are now officially debt free!

We still put a few things on the credit card, but only what we can pay off when the bill comes - our new motto is "If I can't live in it or drive it, I'm paying cash!" We're now saving the money that was going toward debt and we're hoping to have enough saved up by the end of 2002 for a down payment on a house.

One of the high points of our summer was seeing Melissa Etheridge in Washington, DC, at the first show of her Live...and Alone tour. The show was incredible; it was in a very small theater, and we were on about the tenth row. I guess we didn't quite get enough, though, because we have tickets to see her again in BlueState next Sunday!

I'm sure many other exciting things have happened to us in the last several months, but none of them seem to come to mind at the moment.