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June, 2008
Oh, my, it's been a long time!Well, as I alluded to in December's blog, my job at Grace College came to an end. There was a reorganization, largely for economic reasons, and as they said in the old days in the Navy, I got caught in the bight of the line and swept overboard.
So tonight we had a bonfire, roasted marshmallows and made smores, then watched the fireflies over the soybean fields that surround us. Came in and tossed all my clothes in the washing machine as they contained in various proportions: fiberglass, poison ivy, sweat, smoke, grass stains and gasoline. (Gasoline had *nothing* to do with the smoke!)
How did we get here? Well, I spent my spare time and emotional energy this past semester finding a job. And where's "here"?
Marion, Indiana is a town of roughly 20,000 people just off I-69 northeast of Indianapolis. It is the county seat of Grant County, which also contains Upland, home of Taylor University. But that's not why we're here.
Marion contains the main campus of Indiana Wesleyan University, and we're tickled pink to be here.
After four (count 'em, four!) interviews, they offered me a contract. Now mind you, I was perfectly happy at Grace College, but given that we had to either move or retire with reduced ("early") Social Security, it was good to find a job 60 miles away and to sweeten the deal, my new salary will be substantially higher than at Grace.
Note that I said "main campus". Indiana Wesleyan University (hereafter referred to as "IWU", pronounced "EYE-woo") has adult education centers all over Indiana, two in Ohio and one in Kentucky. The revenue from all of these centers goes into first supporting those centers, of course, and then into bricks and mortar. The only building on the main campus older than 1985 is the historical landmark, the administration building of Marion College as it was known within the memory of old folks around here. A new 20-some million dollar chapel is under construction across the street from the building where my office will be. That building, oddly enough, was not built by IWU but used to be an elementary school until it was closed.
Well, good deal for IWU but symptomatic of a shrinking population. IWU is the main economic force here, followed by the GM stamping plant (fenders, hoods, etc.) and you know how GM is in trouble. There used to be a plant that produced picture tubes for TVs but that closed a few years ago because of cheaper imports and switching to flat-screen TVs.
At the southeast corner (lower right) is the burning barrel and site for burning brush. Hence the marshmallow roast this evening.
Brush? Well, branches. As I write, we have been here 3 weeks and there has been a storm every Friday. Last week there were 70 MPH winds on Sunday (follow-up to Friday's relatively mild rainstorm) that brought down many limbs, hence the brush pile. (Thankful for my chainsaw!) The week before we had a thunderstorm and the week before that tornadoes. Y'all probably heard about the flooding south of Indianapolis. The nearest part of that was probably 30 miles south of us. The national attention to that was relatively brief as they really got hit hard in Iowa, but many counties are federal disaster areas and the price of popcorn could go wild, as much of the world's popcorn is grown in the flooded part of Indiana.
The refrigerator that came with the place was old (used) and the ice maker wasn't working quite right, and it was refrigerator-freezer side by side which Kathy didn't like as well and it was supposedly under warranty yadda yadda yadda. Anyhow, on Saturday she found a brand-new last year's model 25% off at Sears so she bought it to be delivered in a few days when we settled the details of what to do with the old one. Well, when the power came back on about midnight last Sunday, there was a surge that took out the compressor on the old fridge. She called Sears first thing Monday morning and they had the new one out here by lunchtime. It's about as big as a walk-in closet with double ("French"???) doors and the freezer part is a huge drawer across the bottom. She jokes that when she goes to the nursing home she will take it with her. She can be buried in it and they don't even have to embalm her, just turn it on! (Hey, she said it; I'm just reporting it!)
Silly thing dings and beeps if you leave the door open too long; I'm not sure I like a fridge that talks to me. It had a lot to say when we retrieved the fridge and freezer stuff from Winona Lake yesterday and took some time loading it from the boxes. Speaking of which, we got half a beef just a couple of months ago. With corn prices nearly quadrupled over the past two years, beef prices could go crazy. Advice: it will probably become cheap for a short while; stock up because it will probably become scarce and expensive. You heard it here first!
The main move, by the way (the day we moved the cats), was done by a local outfit. Movers estimated like $3000.00 to move us, but this outfit charges by the hour, as in 3 men and a truck $85.00 an hour plus mileage so we moved all the heavy stuff for under $800.00. We're still bringing down odds and ends like my model trains and pieces of our Christmas display. We try to get a pretty full pickup load each trip. Trips are down to once a week to cut the grass. Hope the place sells soon! A former student of mine is "house sitting" for us, which suits him fine as he is working for Zimmer (orthopaedics -- artificial hips & knees) this summer.
Bookcases had to come in the window.
Church
We've started attending a Baptist church, big church in a little town. Sweetser, IN has about 850 people when everyone is home. Liberty Baptist Church (located logically on Church Street) has a membership of several hundred. Needless to say, many of the folks live in surrounding communities. The pastor's messages have been very good and we are generally pleased with the Sunday School. And it's only 3 miles from our house. Had the pastor and his wife over for dinner; she and Kathy are like old friends already. Seems good, so why look further? Stay tuned on that.Geek stuff
I'll be teaching an intro to computing (C++ and general info) as well as Machine Structures (with assembly language) and Distributed Computing. Now don't ask how I got into computer hardware so deeply. Just think about the Living Christmas Tree back in Lynchburg where I ended up being in charge of the hardware the last two years we were there, and the course I developed at Heritage College where we put together logic circuits on boards from Radio Shack, and then the Computer Hardware course at Grace. It all sort of like Topsy, "jest growed".Can't get DSL out here, but it turns out that we are the very last house on the TV cable line so I now have a shiny new cable "modem" (bridge, actually, but nobody knows what that is) on the desk. UPS is mounted on the wall along with the router and a power strip. APC guarantees that UPS up to $15,000.00 of equipment. In light of the refrigerator incident, I'm glad of that. And I make frequent backups.
(Bridge? Yeah, well "modem" originally meant "modulator/demodulator" and applied only to "dialup" on phone lines, but has now come to mean "box that has blinky lights and connects to the Internet" in the popular vernacular. Hence "cable modem" means "box that connects to the TV cable, has blinky lights, etc.")
New House
You may have seen my "new house diary" elsewhere in these blogs, from our move to Winona Lake. Well, moving is always an adventure. Property here is fairly cheap. We could have afforded a new house near the campus, but we have to consider our Christmas display, as in where to store it, how to display it and where to park the audience. We could have bought a really nice house in a subdivision, but nearly every house has a pool, one has a tennis court, one has a half basketball court, and we didn't figure that they would appreciate the traffic we generate at Christmas time. Hey, brand-new 2600 square feet for $168,000.00 can you beat that? And only a mile from work!But instead we bought this "farm". Tonight we watched the bonfire die down and the fireflies start up. There must be a bazillion of them. Bought a new John Deere garden tractor / mower on credit (that hurt!) and it takes about 2 1/2 hours and $10.00 worth of gasoline to cut the grass. Then trimming the edges shoots the rest of an afternoon.
The electrical system here is downright scary. Someone wired around the mains coming into the house. The wiring in the brick building on the south side is a real mess. It contains our well pump, and the wiring looks like black spaghetti. We have an electrician coming who will put in new mains to the house, new breaker boxes (plural!) for house & outbuildings and so on. Hopefully he can figure out where that extra circuit goes because it will be deader than a doornail when he cuts off the old power. (Unfortunately, I think that the freezer in the garage is on that circuit!)
The house itself is about 100 years old, with additions built over several generations. Living room is almost as large as our previous one. There are several bedrooms: our bedroom, guest room, sewing room, computer room and library. Library also has the *only* TV set. Computer room has TV cable for Internet hookup only. No, I am not complaining; I don't have time to mess around watching TV. 200 channels and nothing worth watching except the DIY channel and sometimes Mythbusters or a movie. Most everything else is junk, especially the politics. (Can I vote for "None of the above"? I noticed today that the local "Hoosiers for Hillary" headquarters has a For Lease sign on it.)
16x34 brick building with the well pump will become the "train shed" where I can set up my model trains. 30x30 barn is great for storage and also I'm building an electronics workshop a.k.a. "man cave" in it, 8x12, insulated, heated and air conditioned, with workbench and cupboards. There will be a workshop (mostly woodshop) in the main part. Most of this for working on Christmas stuff. Roof is about 18 feet at the peak and the main doors open to 14 feet wide and 10 feet high. Building my "man cave" is keeping me busy, and there are a lot of tasks around the house as you can well imagine.
