Good News Finally

Hubbs has found out that he can hold a railroad job again. Hooray! He still can't work out of the local yard yet but can work out of a yard an hour and a half away.

Anywhere is better than nowhere. LoL. So that means we can start adding $$ to our sad little savings account and start paying off our debt again. Plus we will have our health insurance back. Yay for no more State Funded help!

He took off to the lake with a few friends this weekend so I am at home alone with the boys until Sunday. I needed something fun to do so I am going to practice my cake making skills.

Monk Man is turning 5 in May (OMG) and wants a Sponge Bob birthday. And he REALLY wants a Sponge Bob birthday cake. That is what I am going to attempt to make this weekend. I think I am going to try a sponge cake (boxed if I can find such an animal) and cover it with home made fondant.

This is the recipe I am going to try:
To make your own fondant, melt 16 oz. of marshmallows, with 2 tbsp. of water in the top of a double boiler. Stir until the marshmallows melt. Sift 4 cups of confectioners' sugar into a large bowl and pour the melted mixture in, stirring the mixture until it forms a ball. Turn the mixture onto a clean flat surface, covered with additional confectioner's sugar and knead until the fondant forms a soft, but firm, ball. Add additional sugar until it is no longer sticky, up to 3 more cups. Wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for at least 24 hours before using.

Super tough thing to try. Never worked with anything other than tub frosting and even that comes out looking like shit. LoL I will post pictures (good or bad) if I can find the camera.

Oh, and one other thing...........The bathroom has 2 coats of paint on it finally. Now all that is left is painting the ceiling and the trim white and finishing the tile/grout work. Almost done!!!!

Stupid Railroad

Ugh! I am so frustrated with Hubbs' job, I could scream.

They are taking his retention board away on Monday.
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For the non-railroad people: The retention board is for the guys (and a few girls) that don't have enough seniority to hold a spot on one of the regular boards. The retention board pays a small wage plus keeps the health insurance available. The people in charge instated the retention board a few years ago so all the new people with low seniority wouldn't quit.

At the time the retention board was instated, it was cheaper to pay these employees to stay employed with the railroad than it was to let them quit and have to hire and train new people. Well, now YEARS have gone by and it is no longer cheaper to keep the retention board.
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Shit.Shit.Shit!

Hubbs has to chase work again. The only problem with that is, there really isn't much work to chase. It is going to get really bad the first week of January. That is when the railroad is going to cut jobs nation-wide.

Luckily, Hubbs has almost 3 years under his belt. He will be able to work somewhere, just not here. Don't know where, don't know for how long, don't know much of anything.

To be able to work our local railroad station, you would have to have a minimum of 6 years seniority starting next month.

In the past, when the economy goes down the shitter, the railroad is the last to be hit and the first to recover. I don't see a recovery happening any time soon.

Uhhhhh........I just lost my train of thought.

Anyway, Hubbs faxed in his request for 21 days of unpaid leave. That will take him into next month so hopefully he can figure out a place to go that he can stay at until he can work the local station. If he can work it at all.

Our station has a 5 year primary recall. More railroad lingo: Primary recall is an amount of time that you HAVE to be available to work that station. So that means if Hubbs goes to, say Iowa again, and our station picks back up enough to need him, he HAS leave Iowa and come back here.

After his 5 years are up, he can go anywhere in the network and never come back if he doesn't want to.

The only thing that is keeping us from picking up and moving to somewhere he can hold a job is this stupid primary recall. Well, that and my job.

If, in January, things really look like I think they are going to look, we might be moving. Not sure where yet though.

These are the places we have been discussing:
Trinidad, CO
Sweetwater, TX
Denver, CO
and a few others that I cant remember.