How I Got Here.

As promised, I'm finally updating my blog with a post about San Diego, the move, and how it all started.

It sounds weird, but it was the ideal situation.  I had been pretty unhappy at my job at Apache in Houston.  I worked for Apache straight from college, and it was an awesome company to work for and a great job to get.  I started in the HR Department and then transitioned over to the operations side of the oil and gas industry into the Regulatory department, working with the engineers, etc.  While in the HR department, a lot of people were miserable and unhappy - the group was really dysfunctional.  There had been a lot of recent management changes, and that really stirred the pot.  People weren't happy about the changes, so the environment was really hard to be in.  I was so happy to get out of there into my "new and improved" department in Regulatory and learn more about oil and gas operations.  Little did I know, 6 months later, how utterly screwed up and dysfunctional my small department of 5 WOMEN was.  Ugh.  I had the privilege of working in 2 messed up departments for the same company.  Awesome.  I really don't want to divulge all of the dirty details, but those who know me and knew me during this time know how bad the situation was for me.  My personality and character was attacked, and overall, it was just a really hard time for me.  I am still scarred by some of the things that happened, or was said to me, or by the way things were handled.  My department was completely unprofessional, and I was way too trusting.  I learned a lot from that situation though, and I am SO.THANKFUL. to be rid of that place.  Literally.  Good Riddance!


Anyways, moving on...

As a short recap, Jeffrey has been in the Navy Flight School program for the past 2 years, training to be a pilot.  It's a 2 year long program and January of 2011 marked his 2nd year.  In January, he got his wings, which is a really big deal in the flight community.  They have an entire ceremony dedicated to the "winging".  A week or so before his winging is when he found out that he would be flying the MH-60R for the Navy (in short, you can call it the Romeo) which is the helicopter that he wanted!  That is also when he found out that he would be sent to the North Island base in San Diego (Coronado Island) for MORE training on his specific helicopter.  They call this portion of training "the RAG" and the length of it varies from aircraft to aircraft.  His training for his specific helicopter was to last anywhere from 10-12 months.

So, the ideal situation is that I got laid off with a pretty decent package the day before Jeffrey found out all of this information that would define his career (the helicopter he was selected to fly as well as the location he'd be going to for the Rag).  So one day, I lose my job and the next, Jeffrey finds out he got all of his first choices (hooray!) and that he will be moving to San Diego.  That in and of itself was more than the sign that we needed.  I may be repeating myself here, but my family has a house in San Diego.  It's their "2nd home", a vacation home if you will.  All of this was too good to be true.  Although I had been interviewing in Houston and was offered some pretty amazing jobs with some pretty amazing companies, everything seemed to really be falling into place in San Diego.  Jeff and I had seriously been talking marriage at that point, about dates, timing and everything.  I knew within that year, I would be moving to be with him, whether through the institution of marriage, or because of something like this.  It was an open door, an open opportunity...one that I couldn't help but to snatch up and take advantage of.  I had a place to live, I would no longer be long distance with my boyfriend (we had been long distance for the past 2 years...it was rough), AND I was offered a job with the company that I had wanted to work for out in San Diego.  It was the perfect timing, and too good to be true.  


So I accepted.  And here I am. :)