Wagons East

Our time in Washington is coming to a close. We have usually extended in our other locations. California was so great we spent six months there; I doubled my contract pretty early on since we knew we wanted to say a while. In South Dakota I covered a maternity leave, so my time there was a planned one assignment stay but it was longer than usual, closer to 16 or 18 weeks instead of the usual 13 weeks. In New York we had to extend because we could not get my car out of the icy driveway where it was parked. We only added six weeks there instead of another 13 because the winter was too much for us. And we spend six months in Indiana, because we liked it there and it was my first assignment, so I thought that extending showed that I was a good tech and that if a place was good to me I would be willing to stay a bit longer.

When we got our Washington assignment I knew that I wanted to move back east to see my family and even though it was not as east as I wanted, I thought Washington would be interesting. You always hear so much good stuff about the Pacific Northwest. We learned when we moved to Spokane that this is considered the Inland Northwest but it is still pretty great. There are mountains and it is nice and cool at night but warm and sunny during the day. There is less rain here as opposed to Seattle and Jesse and I have enjoyed the city. Spokane is bigger than the other locations we have lived but it is easy to get around once you figure it out and there is a lot to do. The food and beer scene here is very impressive and we have enjoyed eating our way around town. And as you could see in our other posts there are lots of great races to partake in.

My job ended up being a bit more interesting than I had anticipated. I have to do a lot more esoteric testing than I am used to and it is a lot more manual work. These are not bad things, they are just different and when there are only two people working night shift it can be a bit time consuming to do some testing so you could get behind. Working nights here is a bit harder also since the apartment complex that we live in has a bunch of energetic children around during the day, so sometimes I struggle to sleep enough.

I keep my profile updated with three different travel companies. There are a lot of them out there and it can get overwhelming to try to keep up with more than that. I like Aureus, Club Staffing and Fusion. I have worked with Aureus before for over a year and the last two assignments have been with Club Staffing. Both have been good to me and each has their pros and cons. With Aureus you keep changing recruiters but their housing department is great whereas with Club you have the same recruiter but I have had some hiccups with housing so it depends on what is important to you as a traveler what company you want to work with for your assignments.

Anyway all this leads me to letting you know our next assignment… we are headed to Mason City, Iowa! It is much further east and it will be a lot easier to see family. I even have a trip to go see my brother planned already. Plus my schedule is 7 days working and 7 days off. I will be working evening shift so I can at least sleep normal hours so that will make it a bit easier working so many days in a row. I am looking forward to seeing what Iowa has to offer. We are not too far from Des Moines or Minneapolis so we will be visiting both I am sure. We can get our route planned nice and early and start to make some other arrangements to do some fun stuff. We will be going to a traveler’s convention in Las Vegas at the end of September when the Iowa assignment ends so that will be fun. I like that I can buy plane tickets early since we know dates and locations for at least a few months. It is quite tricky to plan trips when you don’t know what airport to fly in and out of!

I will miss the mountains and the great vibe on the western side of the country but we have enjoyed the Midwest in the past and besides Jesse and I are pretty good at making any place we live a fun time! Plus I know we will be back this way, I fell in love with California and I already want to go back we just want to make sure we spend some time with our families in New York and Georgia before we do. Iowa here we come!

(107)