san diego

Arrive in Boston, June 19th, first trip to the city. Looking forward to working with CTC and Head on Fire, San Diego. Orientation is great so far, alot of good useful information. Just miss my baby.

It has truly been a while since I wrote a blog. Anyone who reads Laura's blogs, however, pretty much knows what I'm doing. My friends here in San Diego call Laura my "life partner" because we spend so much time together - living, commuting, working. Thankfully, we get along and haven’t killed each other yet :). I feel like recently most of my time has been spent in trying to overcome a lot of bureaucracy. …read more

Hi all, I hope that everyone had a great Halloween! Laura and I followed through on the Chipotle Boo-rito idea and I believe she will have the pics posted in her blog, so check them out! Besides that, work has been picking up quite a bit. It's nice to feel like I have a place in my organization now. I'm going to give a quick rundown of my most recent tasks: Training Manual Updates: Basically, taking new screen shots and writing explanations as our systems are constantly evolving. I'm working on the version for the end-users (service coordinators in our case). Laptop/Desktop Deployment: Setting up laptops for our co-workers to use at conferences for a computer lab they set up as well as for doing demos of the software we develop. System Testing: We had to check that transfered data was moved correctly from one system to another by spot-checking different residents' info. Also checking that links, titles, content, etc are correct and working within the system. Software Architecture: Continuing to develop the software for our Mentoring program including building forms, researching inputs and reports and working with the actual program functioning - watching the trainings. These trainings help us to see what kinds of activities go on and help us to make our forms more comprehensive and useful. Researching for Education project - Our company received a grant to build software for tracking AP and Honors classes/tests in San Diego high schools. The idea is to see if classes like AP, Honors, AVID, etc are adding to students' abilities to succeed (i.e., go to college, get a job, etc). So, that is basically it for me. I'm still working on my loan issues. No one seemed to be able to help. I wrote a scathing letter to my university with a referral from a past professor. Hopefully something will work out :-/. As far as the rest of life, things are going very well. I've been playing indoor soccer (highly recommended), going bike riding a ton, and doing some baking. Laura and I went to the Haunted Trail in Balboa Park (near our apartment in San Diego) and got chased by ghouls, goblins and creepsters running with chainsaws - good times. We even rode our bikes to visit this random, self-maintained topiary garden a few miles from our apartment. Some person turned their entire yard into a zoo full of topiary animals. Pretty nifty. Anyway, hope all is well! …read more

Hey everybody! First off, I tried to befriend as many of you as I could find on Facebook so if you did not get a request, it's probably because I spelled your name wrong, so find me instead :). Life in SD at Pangea Foundation is rockin'. Laura and I have been having a blast. In fact, tonight we're going country line dancing, woo hoo! We've been to the beach, Balboa Park, bike riding, walking around our little city and had all sorts of adventures in getting lost. We're working with a mentoring program right now, developing software. We are considered "software architects." How cool is that? This weekend we get to hang out with Andrea (from PSO) because she's heading up the AIDS walk. The goof troop is re-uniting! Our office is super-sweet. Everyone is helpful and really generous. We have taco Tuesdays and because everyone here is male besides us they bought 39 tacos last time..... we were pretty full. I think we even get a free trip to Disneyland sometime in the near future because the clients we serve all have a crush on our supervisor so he gets the hook-ups. But yeah, life is pretty sweet. I hope all is going well for everyone else! …read more

This is the first official blog that I have ever written, very exciting. I've been here in Boston for nearly 24 hours (another first) for the Pre-Service Orientation. It's been great-- great cruisin', great people, great sight seeing (following the Red Line, you know who you are) and, of course, great blogging. When I leave here tomorrow I will return to San Diego, CA where I was born and raised and will also be serving, although an hour or so away from home. Laura Hanley and I will be living and serving together at a non-profit called Pangea Foundation. The specifics of our duties are still under construction but I'm definitely excited for the possibilities! I'm looking forward to meeting other Vistas in the area and maybe even doing some "social networking" which has gotten a lot of discussion time at the PSO. …read more