reepicheep's journal

[reepicheep]

Week 7 and 8: https://becomingsee.com/biosquare/week7and8

[enigmaT120]

Reepicheep if you see this I hope you are safe from the fires... if you still live at that intentional community then I think you must be close.

[Cheepnis]

I also hope you are safe and that all is well. Any progress on the Tiny Home?

[Egg]

Hey reepicheep. Been quite a while since you posted. Hope everything is okay?

[reepicheep]

Hello all! I live! I appreciate the check-ins and support -- somebody even sent me money a couple of times, with me posting zero content for months, which I was shocked by.

Here's the blog post which is basically just a video.

Here's the email update subscribers got:

Hello all,

Contrary to all the rumors, I have not disappeared. Progress on the house has been slowed by external events -- basically the zombie apocalypse that unfolded in Portland. I evacuated to Idaho for a few weeks during the worst of the smoke, and then when I came back we moved the house from Tigard to my handyman's front yard. His kid started school again, which is all online thanks to the other apocalypse, and so his ability to help me has been diminished to just a few hours in the afternoon every day. 

Still, we've finally gotten over the hump where nothing seemed to happen for weeks on end, and we've accomplished quite a bit in the last few couple of months, which you can learn more about by watching the video I posted on my blog.

I'm also having some professional success. [Community] (where BioSquare will eventually go) hired me on as their "Bookkeeper" almost a year ago. In truth this was a glorified administrative assistant role; mostly I was supposed to scan things and email them to our real bookkeeping firm in Eugene. However, I've been learning more and more about bookkeeping in the last year, and my organization even paid for me to take a Quickbooks class. Our firm in Eugene has reduced what they charge us each month thanks to me taking on more of the work, and I've been given a raise.

And then a couple of weeks ago, the bookkeeping firm we've been working with hired me on to help take some of the communications and scheduling burden off of their current employees. It is, again, not quite bookkeeping, but definitely bookkeeping-adjacent, with the opportunity to do some payroll and to develop my skills further, with room for more down the line. The firm is a small operation, only three (now four) folks, with people working there for years seemingly happily. There's plenty of work, even in the current economy, my new boss seems to treat folks well, compensate them fairly, and the work is mostly in service of a number of non-profits and small businesses focused on environmental remediation work in the Eugene and Lane County area, which makes my hippy soul happy.

I did not expect to discover bookkeeping as a viable career in my 30's in the midst of a pandemic, but I find the work challenging, interesting, and the amount of time I'm giving both to the new job as well as to [Community] seems sustainable. Plus, a remote desk job in my heated bedroom is a nice complement to the physical labor I'm putting into the house, with the windows open, the rain pouring down outside, and everybody still wearing masks while we drill holes in stuff and try to stay warm.

I hope my readers are as well as can be reasonably expected under present circumstances. Safe, warm, healthy -- these are blessings, and not everyone has them.

See

[reepicheep]

@Egg, @cheepnis, @enigmaT120, how are you three doing? What a holiday this is...

[DutchGirl]

Weeeeeee, you're back. Good to see you again!

[enigmaT120]

Yay! It's good to hear from you, I was worried. I thought you were still down there east of Eugene where one of the big fires was.

I'm doing adequately as usual. Sold some timber to pay for a new road to Weyerhauser property so I can have logs hauled out that way rather than over my driveway bridge. So I'll have about 1600 seedlings to plant this winter. Plenty of firewood laying around though.

What are those clamps on your PEX? When I replaced the water lines in my house with PEX I was able to borrow a Wursbo (something like that) expansion tool. It opens up the end of the pipe for long enough to stick the fittings in, then the pipe goes back to it's normal diameter. Pretty cool. The tool is really expensive, the fittings are cheap.

Anyway glad you're doing well and got away from the smoke!

[DutchGirl]

What developments in the US. The capitol being stormed by the country's riff raff. It's really sad. And I'm guessing, reepicheep, it's something you feared happening. Or something similar. I hope you're holding up?

And how's the house getting along? Maybe with the holidays you've not been able to work as much on it as in normal (ahem) months, but I hope you're still seeing progress.

[Egg]

@Egg, @cheepnis, @enigmaT120, how are you three doing? What a holiday this is...

Hey reepicheep. Sorry, I totally missed your update. The answer to your question of how I'm doing is also my excuse for not seeing this - just had another kid in Dec so bit of a maelstrom of kiddo-admin. Really glad to hear you're well, though . Like some of the other posters, I was starting to worry.