Where do we go from here?

After returning from Spain, we spent 2 weeks with my brother Bob and his wife Jenny. During that time I had two interviews with eBay and we drove all over the place looking at apartments. We found several that would have fit our needs but there was one in particular that we liked especially well. We put in our application and surprizingly they accepted us!

So back to Texas we flew. We spent a week with our best friends Tim and Denese Durr in Woodville. We rented a couple big 26 foot moving vans, loaded up all of our belongings from our 2 storage units and drove the 1400 miles back to Salt Lake. Here's some of the highlights of the trip:


April in her truck out in front of the Durr's house. Getting ready to start the long journey back to Utah.

Me anxious to get the journey over with!

We spent way too much time AND money at gas stations along the way!

Along the open road in Kansas. Notice the orange cones keeping us in a single lane. We LOVE road construction. April did manage to take out one of the cones back in Oklahoma.

April took this picture of me driving through Denver! Can you believe she actually risked her life in heavy traffic just to have a cool pic of me on the blog? She's awesome!

Pictures of our visit to Spain

Since our return to Salt Lake about 2 weeks ago, many people have questioned whether April and I were ever actually in Spain. (J/K) To rectify this we are posting a few of the digital pics that we just got back from the developer! We'll add more pictures of our brief visit to Europe in a future post when I can find them on April's computer.

This is a view of the hotel pool taken from the balcony/patio of our room. Yes the room where we were confined for over a week!

Off in the distance, about 2 kilometers beyond the trees is a beach. But who needs a beach on the Meditteranean Sea when you have a lovely pool like this one?

Here is a photo of April standing on the little bridge at the pool in the early evening.

I tried to get her to pose here for me during the day in her swimming suit.. but she sternly refused!

Our room is the lower row of lights.. second light from the right.

This is a sculpture near the beach in the town of Cambrils. It was taken from a little restaurant across the street where we enjoyed a slice of Spainish pizza and a coke on our first afternoon in Spain.

April eating pizza. Mmmm yummy!

And in all fairness.. here's one of me eating some pizza.

Life Changes Fast

What a whirlwind this past two weeks has been!

As you can imagine, we've been feeling like we're been in a tornado and had our entire life swept up and displaced. To add to our woes of unexpectantly leaving Spain, we learned yesterday that our house in Texas was broken into. Someone ripped out all the light fixtures, and ceiling fans. And the dishwasher and oven/range were stolen. They also spread horse manure all over the front porch and kicked in a bay window in the dining room.

Even though we were all moved out and had no intention of returning to the house it is heartbreaking to us to hear this news. We feel violated and abused even though the house is no longer really ours.

Yet in spite of this we do have good news to report. I have already had two interviews with eBay and I hope to be given an offer of employment with them sometime in the next week. My former friends and associates there were very excited to learn that April and I were planning to stay in Salt Lake and I was looking to come back to eBay.

We have spent the past couple days looking for an apartment or home that will be big enough to hold all of our "stuff" and still be within our very limited budget. We looked at several apartment communities throughout the valley and finally chose one with spacious rooms in a quiet development. We explained our financial situation to them and asked them to consider us as tenants. They called today and said they would accept us. We rushed right over and gave them our deposit. The apartment won't be available for us to move in until August 28th but that will give us time to fly to Texas, rent a truck (or two), load our things and return to Salt Lake. I'm guessing that I won't be starting at eBay until September 1st so the timing will be perfect!

Our new home has 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, a garage and patio and it has cathedral ceilings. Almost best of all is that it's a one level development with no one living above us or below us. I'll give you all more detail and post some pics as we move in!

Where's Jerry?

I know most of you are wondering if we dropped off the edge of the earth. In a way.. yes we did. Let me bring you up to date:

We arrived in Spain on a Tuesday and were told that we wouldn't need to go to the office until Thursday. Our assistant, Fedrico, drove us to our hotel in Cambrils and we checked in and unloaded our bags. Then he drove us down into the village and we walked around through the shoppes and restaurants. We had a pizza at a little place overlooking the beach. It was great!

Then it was back to the hotel and we managed to stay awake until around midnight. We wanted to get our bodies used to the time in Spain and avoid as much jet-lag as possible.

We slept until around 10 a.m. the next morning and Fedrico picked us up for a tour of the project we would be working on. We also spent some time discussing how to organize our offices and made lists of what equipment we would need.. how many desks, chairs, etc. and where everything should go. Then we went shopping for some things that we needed for ourselves. We had a late lunch at McDonalds, and went back to the hotel.

That evening, Mel and Robert had a meeting with the client to finalize some details of the project. On the following morning we got a call telling us that Mel and Mitchel (another associate on the team) would be meeting with us for lunch the next day. It was at lunch that Mel told us that the client was backing out of the contract to hold an auction. We were stunned. Mel told April and I that we should just wait it out for a couple days while everyone determined what we needed to do. The following day we learned that another meeting with the client was scheduled for the following Tuesday afternoon.

We tried to enjoy the weekend but because the project was cancelled we didn't have Fedrico at our disposal with his car. Our Hotel was about 2 kilometers from the beach and about 4 k from the village. It was a little too far for us to walk there and back so we stayed in our hotel room and watched Spainish TV and did sudoko puzzles. At some point during the weekend I went down to the pool and got a desent sunburn on my chest and one side of my legs. It's not difficult to burn in only a few minutes when your body hasn't seen sunlight for 20 years!

We eventually learned that the client did indeed want to cancel the project and the hotel informed us that he would not be paying for our stay there beyond the 31st. Robert put us up in a small apartment of his in the nearby town of Calafel and we spent two uncomfortable nights there. The only bright point was that we were now only a block from the beach.

I will interject here on the beaches.. they are some of the finest beaches in the world. The area is known as the Gold Coast because of the golden color to the sand. It really is gorgeous! However, one must be cautious. The Mediterranean is known for having nude beaches and family beaches. It's easy to avoid the nude beaches but the family beaches can be treacherous too.. as it's not uncommon to find topless sunbathers on the family beaches. We avoided this situation by visiting the beach in the early morning hours when they weren't crowded. We had the beach mostly to ourselves and with others who wanted to avoid the crowds.


On Saturday the 2nd we returned to the airport and boarded a plane back to the USA. We arrived in SLC late on Saturday evening. Bob picked us up and we are currently staying at his home. Sunday was spent getting through the jetlag ritual and today I started looking for work. We are at the moment homeless and unemployed.

Now you know where Jerry is!

That's our story and we're sticking to it!