Yankee in the Deep South

Here is is November 24, 2008 already. We've been in Ochlocknee, GA for a month now. So far so good.

We are in a branch at chruch and boy do we feel welcome there. Killian makes up half of the Aaronic priesthood quorums. Tatianna makes up a third of the Young Women's classes. And TaKayren and Perigrine are one fourth of the whole Primary.

It's been a different culture. Tatianna was her usual polite self to an older man in the Walmart and he asked her if she had taken Jesus Christ as her Savior to which she replied "yes" He then asked her to pray with him. She said she would and he prayed for her to be protected and guided. She found this to be a little weird. I told her "welcome to the deep south" People here are really friendly and genuinely so.

There are a few kids around us and the three youngest actually have playmates. They spend most afternoons outside playing until dark (6:00pm). It has been good for all of them.

I, of course, found a fabric/quilting store close by and our local Walmart has fabric so I won't be going through withdrawal any time soon. I know there is a Joanne's in Tallahassee but I haven't found a regular craft store as of yet. I am sure I will as soon as I take the time to look. I have taken a quilted table runner class that turned out really cute and I actually quilted it on my sewing machine.

I continue to be unemployed and draw unemployment. It averages to about what I brought home in a slow week at the cheese plant. I am waiting to hear when I start at the Peanut Plant in Bainbridge. He offered me a dollar more an hour than I was making. I will have less responsibility. Plus benefits and raises. I will basically be the assistant to the Quality Assurance Manager. A lot of paper work, some lab work, doing all the GMP Training, and all things dealing with holds, returns, customer complaints, and audits. I will be expected to sit on safety teams, haccp teams, etc. It's a fairly big company based out of Chicago, IL. They have 5 plants processing different types of nuts throughout the country. The one in Bainbridge does peanuts. I may not get a start date until after the Thanksgiving holiday though. I am hoping I will start soon though because it is getting harder to come up with two new employer contacts a week. The job market down here is not great. and with unemployment climbing I want to be working before it gets much worse.

Well that's about it for today.