Friday, November 1, 2013

Life updates

Hola everyone!

Happy Halloween, I have been super lazy about updating this blog as my work laptop did some weird encryption that prevented me from transferring files from my SD card.  Today I flew into Hawaii for the weekend and apparently Waikiki's Halloween is the 2nd largest halloween party in America.  Had no clue but will be out and about and photographing the craziness after I send off a couple of work emails.

I had a (fairly) recent trip to Nicaragua, where I boarded down the Volcan Cerro Negro at a high speed considering I was in an orange prison jumpsuit and volcano ash is made of pumice.  Details to be up soon.

Work has been absolutely batsh*t crazy lately and my life has been a combination of running from place to place, attempting to connect to the internet and be productive for 30-45 min spurts at a time, and catching cat naps wherever.  Seriously, I sleep about 4 hours a night, drink like a 5 hour energy, two Venti Starbucks iced lattes, and that Mio Energy stuff each day.  I am at the verge of serious burnout.

Anyway, enough ranting.  I have some great news which several of you may have heard about.

1) I am officially a property owner!  I don't know how to explain this, but being a single person is actually kind of tough.  Things are expensive, like rent, hotel rooms, just things you can share with someone else if you cohabitate.  This is especially hard to justify if you are only home like once or twice a month.  In SF, a 1 bedroom is like $2600/month.  Am I going to spend that much to stay there like 6 days a month?? No!  And if you are over 30 and make a pretty decent living, you'll understand that I'm a bit past the stage of living with roommates.  You want to develop assets, start preparing for retirement and medical expenses.  Then, compound this by noting that I am a single female and have to negotiate, pay for, and take care of everything myself.  So...  I chose to purchase a small condo as a rental property in HAWAII! Because you all know I love it so much.  Hawaii has a high rental rate, I have someone to manage all the details for me, and I can also stay in it when on the island.  If you are headed to Waikiki and want a reasonable place to stay (it's in the process of remodeling right now), send me a note! 

2) I have officially accepted a consulting position in Australia!  It is an internal position so I am moving from my firm's US practice to their Australian one and this will happen in December/January. This was not easy as I had to prove I had experience they couldn't find in Australia.  I am VERY EXCITED.  SO EXCITED I have been bursting at the seams the last two weeks as we went through the offer and negotiation process.  The position is in Adelaide, which is in South Australia and a smaller city, which I'm not terribly concerned about because I will still be required to travel for work (remember I am only home a few weekends a month) and Adelaide happens to be the gateway to wine country!  Also I'm not really interested in dealing with a big city.  If I wasn't going to Oz I had decided to move to San Diego next year, so it fits my bill.

That's it for the moment! Big news, totally excited, and pics from Nicaragua and Hawaii Halloween to be up soon!