The Graham Saga: Prologue

I decided not only for posterity that I should record our experiences this summer. They're actually quite amusing. I think it might turn into an okay book that I shall someday publish when Graham has become imprisoned for being the world's biggest douche bag and then I shall profit off of HIM for a change.

I need to preface this a bit. First of all, I suck at blogging. It's become a well-known fact, and I apologize. I'm better at facebook. But the fact remains that I am a decent writer, and I can't move from decent to good until I write more. In an effort to move in this direction I have tabbed blogger so I'll see it every day on my row of clicky buttons, right after the fail blog.

Second preface: I have a small child. This means I probably won't be able to write very much at a time. Maybe that will keep everyone on the edge of his/her seat, which is, of course, my goal.

Third preface: I really hope I keep steam for this project so it doesn't just end with this post, as it well might.

Ok here we go.

Our story begins early in the spring of 2009 in the apartment of Jill and Richard Gwilliam. Things are a bit hectic as the couple prepares for a new baby, along with the excitement of Richard finishing his semester at BYU and Jill trying to find and train a replacement RS Secretary. Added to the pile of things to do (which never ends, as we all know) is the looming thought of the upcoming summer. Questions in mind include whether Jill should try to work as the office manager whilst caring for a small baby and if she doesn't, who will, as well as whether to return to Dallas with McKay or follow Burt up to Canada.

Burt has been working long and hard to put together a pretty solid region of techs up in Canada. He's assistant regional manager (assistant to the regional manager) up there and as he is Canadian and has no problems entering said country he is actually handling a lot more of the load than his manager. But that's another saga for another day. Since Burt and Richard are Canadian, they have been handed a special opportunity to make a lot of dough this year. Enter Graham Wood.

Graham Wood has been in the alarm sales industry for several years and through several companies. At this point in our story this is what Jill and Richard understand and believe about Graham Wood: He was a sales manager for Apex. He did a buttload of accounts last year in his region and is going to do close to the same this year. One of his managers, Caleb, has never slowed down in production, and promises 2400 accounts this season. And here's the problem: Apex lost money last year because of how many reps they had selling billions of accounts for them. In order to make money they put limits on some of their managers. Graham's limit was 3000 accounts for his entire region. That's four offices like Caleb's that planned to do 2000-3000 each, so that's quite a pay cut. Graham decided that sounded like baloney and thought he would trot over to Apex's competition to see what kind of sweet deal he could get for bringing his entire team with him. Now, Pinnacle has been trying for ten years to catch up to Apex. No one quite understands why, but they're always a few steps ahead and Pinnacle just can't seem to hit the same numbers. So when Graham came over with his Apex crew, the owners of Pinnacle were ecstatic. Now here's a guy who can produce. The records show it and he's here saying it. He's a pretty sharp looking guy and there's just no way around that sales-rep rhetoric (aka he's a douchebag and everything out of his mouth is a lie) so they said sure, bring your team. We'll give you whatever you want. You want Canada? You can have it. The whole country. Just run amok. Ok, that's not exactly what they said, but pretty close. Graham Wood has whatever freedom he asks for within Pinnacle. There is absolutely no way around that.

Here's the problem. Richard is a trusting person. And his office with McKay in Dallas last year did about 1300 accounts. I'm sorry, but 2400 is a lot bigger than 1300. My trusting husband and his trusting brother got in cahoots with Graham about this whole Canada thing, and it's just gonna be so great. The whole region is going to be number one in the company, and Richard's office with Caleb is going to be number one as well. Money all around! We're going to be able to buy a house when we get back, and affording the study abroad in Germany will be a cinch. And I apologize to anyone who didn't know about the study abroad. Like I said, I suck at blogging.

By March the plans were all set. Richard and Jill (and Rachel) are headed to Calgary. It was kind of a mess, but through much diligent work and several road trips Richard was able to get a really good (I just typed gut lol...I've also been dreaming in German lately but that's another story) tech crew put together. He was planning to have 25 techs for his office of 35 reps, and was pretty sure they were all going to get 4 a day. I mean, 2400 accounts is a LOT. And Richard was ready for it. He spent hours on the phone with each tech as well as with BUNAC about visas and passports to make sure all his guys would be taken care of. And they were, and it was great. Meanwhile Burt was up in Canada recruiting up a storm of techs to handle all the work Graham's region would be giving them. And I was busy trying to pack with a newborn. You need a lot of stuff to survive for 4 months, and I was doing my best to bring just the necessities. But it was still a lot.

Richard was on the phone with Caleb every single day in April trying to smooth everything out and make sure things were going to go off completely without a hitch. There was a problem with the office manager situation, however. Caleb's rule is NO FAMILY. Too bad Pinnacle's rule is ALWAYS HIRE WIVES THEY WORK FOR DIRT. Also a problem is the fact that Pinnacle likes to hire all the office managers, but Caleb wanted to hire his. Oh well, that's not really my problem since I decided I wouldn't be able to do it with Rachel. I'll let Caleb sort that out.

While Richard was on the phone with Caleb, I was on facebook chat with Kristy, a friend from a few years ago when we worked in Portland together. She brought up a lot of questions about the office manager position, and I was able to answer most of them from my experience and direct her to the proper department for the rest. After a few weeks of chatting Kristy decided she was going to do it. She got signed up as the full-time girl with a promise that since Caleb promised so many sales in that office they'd be hiring a second girl to handle scheduling. It took a lot of convincing to get Caleb to be okay with the idea of Kristy doing the office, since her husband was going to be a tech and that violated his NO FAMILY rule, but he was mostly okay with it since she wouldn't be doing the scheduling. He planned to find someone else to do that and promised to have her hired and set up ready to go once the office opened. Every time Richard talked to him he asked if he had found a girl yet, and the answer was always no, right up to and including the week we got up to Calgary. I guess what you can infer from this experience is that Apex guys don't do much pre-planning for anything. Just post-planning, I guess.

And so it began. We were headed up to the best summer of our lives. We'd be living in a town house in Calgary, right across the street from a park and just down the street from Walmart. We switched some apartments around and Richard's sister and brother-in-law ended up just a block away from us, so I had someone to hang out with nearly every day. Things were going to be great. We packed up all our things and dropped off what we weren't taking at my parents' house and we were on our way. Rachel didn't really enjoy the ride, but I was sure things would be just fantastic once we got there. Problems? Sure, they'd be there. But they'd be managable. I was very confident that my capable husband would take care of everything he needed to and that this would be a great summer. He had a great relationship with the sales manager and they were already working well together. Kristy has a degree in office management, so I wouldn't have to worry about that at all. And after a bit of a struggle Marilyn and Danny made it through the border. All in all, things were looking great.

Please stay tuned for the next installment of "The Graham Saga" coming soon!

My Daughter

I have committed to several people on several occasions to update my blog more regularly. Maybe now that I'm not working for a few months I'll actually do it :D

World's biggest update: We had a baby! She's beautiful and we love her a lot. And for those who are interested, here is the story of the labor and delivery and all that jazz:

Tuesday I went to the doctor for my 39 week checkup and was told I was dilated to a 1. Woopee! Maybe I'll have a baby soon! I told Richard and he got really excited even though I was sure it was still a good week or two before anything would happen.

Wednesday (one week before due date) I went to work like normal, still feeling like I didn't want to be there for very long but not feeling anything too exciting. I left work early and came home and did my normal thing. I mentioned to Richard early in the day that I was having cramps and thought they might be contractions, but there were only like two of them and several hours apart so I didn't get too excited and told him not to. He left in the evening to go do an install and I played on facebook until the cramps kept coming back to the point of making me nervous. I got on google and looked up all these forums about what a contraction feels like and decided I was definitely having lots of them. I thought I should start keeping track just in case someone asked, but I really didn't expect anything to happen that night.

By the time Richard came home they were about 20 minutes apart and I was thinking about when to go to the hospital. Weird! Surreal! I was not at all expecting a baby that day. The whole thing was weird. We went to bed around 10:30 when they were still 15 minutes apart, but I of course couldn't sleep because they were getting closer together and actually starting to hurt a little bit. We waited until about 1 when they were 5 minutes apart and hurting pretty good and then went to the hospital to get checked out. My only complaint about the visit was that the nurse who checked me had short fingers. We were there for an hour and were told I wasn't dilating past a 2, so they gave me morphine and sent us home. I was very grateful for the way things turned out because really I just wanted to sleep and I couldn't because the contractions were so painful. We went home and I slept for 6 hours! It was very nice. Richard didn't go to school because we were sure we'd be back at the hospital that day.

Thursday I just slept all day. Richard was so nice and helpful and really ambitious about being productive instead of just sleeping like I was :D We watched a movie and I was actually able to sleep through most of it and then a few hours afterwards, so really I slept most of the day. We had called a bunch of family to tell them I was having contractions, so my mom stopped by around 5 to see how I was doing. At that point I was really wishing my water would just break so I could go to the hospital and have drugs, but I knew it wasn't going to so I was just dealing with life. Well right as my mom got ready to go I had a contraction followed by a weird popping sensation and then wetness and another MUCH worse contraction. So we went to the hospital :D

We got there and I don't think there was any question in anyone's mind that I needed to get to a birthing room because I was definitely in labor. My nurse was amazing and just got busy right away ordering me an epidural and getting me all hooked up to the monitors and everything. They didn't even check to see if my water had actually broken until the epidural was coming. It was fairly obvious though because she came in as I was changing and she saw my pants were soaked (and I was dying). Contractions HURT!! I think it was just under an hour before I got the epidural, and that was the best moment of my day. Wow. After that I just slept and relaxed while my body did all the hard work. I went from a 4 to a 10 in less than 4 hours. My doctor had another delivery at the same time in a different hospital, so it was kind of touch and go as to whether he would actually be there or not. They called him as I finished dilating and he was on his way so we started pushing. Well, I started pushing and everyone else helped count and watch the monitor and whatnot. The doctor came after 3 pushes, and I pushed 3 times with him and then out came my baby! It was only 20 minutes of pushing, and Rachel was born at 10:33 p.m.

One of the best parts of the whole experience was watching Richard become a father. He was counting while I pushed and he stopped suddenly and said "Love! You can see her head!" He was so excited and happy and then she was born and he just freaked out. He was so happy and so in love with his little daughter. He held her all night while I was healing and sleeping and just loved every second of it. I think he got less sleep in the hospital than I did because of how helpful he was. He snuck off on Friday morning while I was sleeping to buy me a beautiful boquet of flowers. He told me later that we probably shouldn't spend money we don't have, but he said I deserved it :D

We were able to leave the hospital on Saturday afternoon and we've just been adjusting and enjoying each other at home since then. I'm so amazed at the human body and the abilities it has for creation and healing and growth. I love watching my baby grow each day and seeing her develop her senses and habits. I'll love it more when she figures out how to sleep at night instead of during the day, but we'll get there :D

It's been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely tiiiime

Ok so I fail at blogging.

I got a new job. Well, first I went back and worked for the lovely Kim until she hired Eliza's third replacement. This one looks like she might last ;) I like working for Kim but I also get tired of it really fast. Once she hired Amanda my position changed to that of filing clerk 2 hrs a day to work around my other job. This eventually became somewhat ridiculous to me, because once Amanda was trained Aubrey had nothing to do and I was doing her job. So I managed to sneak away just after Christmas, which is an improvement from the last time I worked for her. She hired me strictly for March, and I worked halfway through April. So I'm well pleased this time around :D

Anyway my new job. I work for Raser Technologies, who you've probably never heard of, but someday you will. We are a geothermal power company, which is the next big idea in renewable energy. We have well pumps that pump water from under the earth up into a turbine where it is heated then cooled then returned to the earth. Somewhere in that the steam turns into energy which we will be selling to Anaheim once everything is up and running. In the meantime we're about $57000000 in debt. How do I know this? Because I work in accounting. That's right, I'm putting my English major to good work and processing invoices day in and day out for the next few weeks. It's good times :D

So I do a couple different things. I get the mail & sort through to get all the invoices. I open the invoices and stamp them for processing. Then I make copies. Then I try to match them to their purchase orders, which are in a different department and are usually a few weeks behind. Then I send them up to get signatures. And that's all I do. Mostly it's a lot of copy making. I also help Wendy with whatever she needs, which right now is calling people about accruals. I still don't know what that means, but I can call people no problem :D

Ok that was boring. On to more exciting news: I GOT MY PRAXIS SCORES!!! That's another story...

I took the Praxis in November and understood from EVERYTHING I read on the website along with everything the proctors told me that my scores would be snail mailed to me in about four weeks. There was something about viewing them online, but they would also be mailed. Sounds about right, except that four weeks came and went and I never got my scores. Sometime around Christmas I checked online and I could view my scores and I found out I passed, but I didn't have time to print them because I was just checking my email on my way out the door. I figured I'd print them later. I didn't think the link would die after one use, but it did. So I just figured I'd wait a few more weeks and see if my scores ever came.

Two weeks ago I finally called the Praxis people to ask when I'd get my scores. They told me that since I registered online I could only view my scores online, they wouldn't be mailed to me. Huh? I looked online while I was talking to the person and it said my scores would be mailed to me. I told the guy that and he was very helpful when he said "oh yeah we need to fix that." The bottom line is that I could view my scores online for one month, which ended the day before I called. So I was completely out of luck and my only option was to pay $40 to have my free test scores mailed to me. Ridiculous. I told the guy that I'd checked online every day for a month and the link only worked the one time, and he said "Well that's too bad, but you should have called us yesterday. Today I can't help you." So I hung up and started crying. Hey, I'm pregnant.

So Richard called them back and talked to a non-stupid person who worked it out so they could mail me my scores, which they should have done in the first place. And I got them yesterday! I can finally get certified as a teacher!

Other updates...Richard is trying to get into a study-abroad program to Vienna for the fall! How cool would that be? He's trying to work it out so I can come with the baby too. I really hope that works out because 3 months without a husband would stink a lot.

So many happenings, so little internet...

Alright. Now that we FINALLY have internet in our new place, I shall make a post.

So. I was laid off last week, and I've been trying to get a new job ever since. Do you know how hard it is to get a job for 5 months? Especially when you're trying to find a receptionist-type job. Oh well. I had an interview today and I applied to a few other places, so hopefully something will happen soon. In the meantime, I started working on a baby blanket! It's going to be nice :D I went with purple instead of pink because I just don't really like pink. Plus I know I'm going to get enough pink stuff from other people.

We moved to Provo a few weeks ago and that's been really nice. Free rent is always a plus, but living with my entire family just wasn't really working. Now we're closer to school for Richard and closer to Sam's Club for cheaper groceries and closer to my work, if I ever have a work...Plus we're in our own place for pretty good rent, and that was the whole idea.

Ok my media player isn't working. When I have it minimized on the toolbar the screen doesn't pop up anymore to tell me what song is playing. Any suggestions?

We've been kind of anti-photos lately - we've moved enough times in the past year to have lost several key elements to our electronics collections, the most mentionable being the charger for our camera battery. Add that to the fact that we lost it when the battery was dead...yeah, no pictures for a while. But I finally got a charger off ebay, and we're back in business :D Now I just have to figure out how to post pics on here...
Ha! Figured it out I have! Have at you! And another!




Ok that was adventurous.

Anyways so now that we have our own apartment we want to have game nights and dinners and things over here. So give me a holler if you're interested. And please give me at least one more day to find a couch first :D

General Konference usw

I am officially studying German again. If you want to talk to me in German or know someone who does, please feel free.

Ok so I got a job. I work as a processor for Lexis Nexis. Basically I look at people's job applications and click buttons all day. It's actually quite fun. I really enjoy jobs that make me feel completely productive. I enjoy subbing, but also don't because I just read the whole time. I don't enjoy being an office manager because my work is complete in just a few hours and I have the rest of the day to do absolutely nothing. I hate that. I like what I'm doing now. Today I didn't even get everything done because the other guy was gone so I had to do his work too, which takes priority to mine so I fell behind. But I love knowing that I'll go in and have lots to catch up on before all the new work comes. I love being productive.

Conference was so great. We were taken completely by surprise when Richard's whole family came down from Logan for conference. We spent both days at Julia's house watching conference and playing games. We also made some amazing food. If you like salsa, give this a try:

Chopped tomatoes
Chopped onions
Chopped cucumbers
Chopped mangos
Chopped crab
Cilantro
Shrimp
Lime juice
Salt
little bit of ketchup

It's amazing. Eat it with chips or even just chow on it alone. Being the pregnant woman that I am I think I ate more of it than anyone.

We made cinammon rolls while the men were at Priesthood, and the kids were quite helpful. They each got their own little loaf of dough to pound flat and spread with butter and brown sugar, then they cut out their own little rolls...most were not entirely round or symmetrical. But very yummy :D

I loved all the messages from conference. Another pregancy symptom is sleepiness, so I did sleep through a few talks. But I am allowed to listen to it online at work AUF DEUTSCH so I'm getting a nice recap every day of what I missed and what I didn't that I get to hear again. It's amazing to see the Lord's hand in the lives of his servants and our leaders. I loved the simple faith-promoting messages that most of the speakers left with me. I just felt so peaceful afterwards, and I have a lot of life changes I know I need to make based on the messages I heard. IT was all so amazing.

Richard has decided not to decide on his major yet. He got into a very difficult math class and realized that maybe math isn't for him. He's going to shop around a bit and see what he wants to do. He's planning on getting into the Seminary teaching program once he's a junior. That's really been his plan all along, the whole Bachelor's degree is just a front. So we'll see how that goes. His cousin just got a job as a Seminary teacher, and we're really excited for him. He majored in English, so I had a lot of classes with him. But Richard really just wants to teach the gospel, and I think he'd be fabulous, so we're going to make this work out :D

We found a house we wanted to buy. It was a HUD home, so there was always the possibility that someone would bid on it and we really didn't want to (it costs $1000 just to bid, and you don't get it back if you lose). The day after the bidding closed it was still there, but then the next day it was gone. I was really sad for about a week. I had big plans for that house. But oh well. Something better will come along, I'm just sure of it.

For those who may be interested, I will be participating in a fabulous concert in a few weeks. We'll be playing on 21 Oct in Nephi and 24 Oct in Spanish Fork. I think it costs $5 to get in if you have a student ID. It's going to be a really great concert. I'm very excited :D

Ok I know I had more to say than that. I guess that's what I get for not posting very often, eh?

Working

Since we've been in Utah Richard has been going to school full time and doing homework when he's not in school, and I've been subbing occasionally while looking for another more permanent better paying job that has a more structured schedule. It's actually the most enjoyable job for me right now, and after today I really almost feel like becoming a real teacher. I still have to learn German before I can do that, but we're getting there.

Anyways I've had a headache with Pinnacle trying to get hired at corporate, and I just sent in my resume for the third time and I guess we'll see what happens there. I also have an interview for some office type job tomorrow, and I just got recruited to a data entry job in Orem which sounds very likeable as it ends in March...perfect timing no?

So that's that side of life. Other than that, we're living with the parents and not really enjoying our tiny bedroom. If any of you Provo-ites see a house for sale for under $100,000 you should tell me about it.

Oh and I'm still pregnant. Today is the first day of the second trimester! I'm 1/3 of the way done! And I'm still not really showing. Maybe I'll post some pics once I am. We'll see :D

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Ok so sometimes I forget I have a blog.

We're back in Utah! I love it here. We're living with my parents and EVERYONE else, so it's a pretty full house. We're pretty settled, just as long as none of our DVDs go missing in the next few months.

Richard is going to BYU. It's very exciting and pretty stressful for him right now. This is his first time doing full-time college and he's taking some pretty tuff classes. His first few days really sucked with all the homework and catchup work he had to do, not to mention how unused to 6 hours a day of calculus homework he has been. But today is better, and he's really enjoying all his classes and loves being busy all day.

I just got into the Nebo Philharmonic Orchestra this week. It's so exciting! I haven't been in an orchestra for 7 years, and this one is so great. I'm really glad he put me in the 2nd section because we're playing really hard pieces that I wasn't really expecting or ready for. I'm excited for our concerts. It's a really great group and my cousin and Rosey's sister are both in my section. I'm so happy to be in an orchestra again. I haven't had an excuse to play my violin for so many years that now I have a very long list of excuses to NOT play. I miss it a lot. So I'm glad to be jumping back in full force :D My fingers and back ached after the first rehearsal. Back to normal :D

Other than that...I'm almost through my first trimester. Which isn't really that exciting since my first trimester wasn't that bad. I was never sick and the only reason I know I'm pregnant is I'm absolutely starving all day. I just ate a huge bowl of cereal and I need another one. I'm really excited to be getting ready for a baby, though. Once I start showing I think I'll feel more pregnant though :D