Saturday, December 29, 2012

Christmas Card 2012.

Dear Friends,

An eventful year as once again passed us by. As usual, Alex and I are crazy busy and are trying to enjoy each and every part of it. At the beginning of last year, Alex and I celebrated a long and pretty awful year with a trip to Puerto Rico to go scuba diving. Unfortunately, that was marked with some issues and Alex and I ended up getting very sick halfway through our trip. So we canceled the rest of the time in PR and headed out to Orlando, FL where we spent the rest of our vacation enjoying Universal Studios, SeaWorld and the Kennedy Space Center. We got to see two of the space shuttles right before they were shipped out to their respective museums, which was pretty cool. We fed dolphins and I bought a bunch of Spider-Man items in the Marvel section of Islands of Adventure. Also Harry Potter Land is the best thing ever. Just saying.

After 5 years at a financial company, Alex decided he wanted to look for another job. He came across a start-up company that was advertising to NYU grads. It was to build a website called Hublished that takes webinars from experts and puts them all on one website with easy access and categorizing. Pretty much a youtube for expert knowledge. Alex is now the head programmer and works from home, which he is extremely happy about. The alpha-launch of the project happened the weekend before Thanksgiving and the founders are now searching for investors to fund the website. Hopefully you will all be able to Google Hublished by March when it is in it's beta phase.

I also decided to start looking for another job. This decision was on the heels of two robberies, a police investigation and numerous other unseemly things that happen when you work at a narcotics pharmacy that caters to heroin addicts. I ended up making the decision in April but was unable to find a better job until July. I dragged Alex to the APhA pharmacist convention down in New Orleans and tried networking with the chains to get interviews. It is very discouraging how little there is in terms of jobs in NYC with chain stores. Nevertheless, I did get an interview with CVS, however it also turned up nothing. In the end, one of the per diem pharmacists who was hired at 161st Street Pharmacy ended up becoming friends with me because she and I had both gone to the same pharmacy school. She recommended me for a position at Montefiore Medical Center's outpatient pharmacy. I interviewed there and was offered the position. I ended my 2 year stint at 161st Street on August 30th and passed probation on December 10th. I am officially part of a union and am working full time at a hospital.

Apart from the summer of job quitting, Alex and I enjoyed GenCon, our annual gaming convention. We played a couple of RPGs, Alex took part in several Warmachine tournaments and we once again bought a ton of stuff, including Star Trek Catan and a huge miniatures board game called Leviathan. We went there with several of our friends and had a blast. We are hoping to make this a tradition with these friends. Alex and I also spent a week in Chicago in between me quitting my job and starting my new one. We ate so much pizza and enjoyed spending time with a friend Alex has known since high school but never actually met.

Since we are both so busy with our new jobs, we don't really have any upcoming plans. However, we will be moving once again. This time to Queens. I hope this one is the more permanent place, but we shall see.

Happy Holidays, friends!!

Jennifer and Alex

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