First Annual Brag & Gag Christmas Update
2008 November 29
It is again that time of year when families send out their annual Christmas updates. Not to be left behind, we will join this Christmas tradition of reminding everyone how awesome we are. We’re too lazy and cheap to buy stamps and mail them out so you’ll have to be proactive and read it here on our new blog – “The Lygers” (a mashup Ryan’s surname and Katie’s maiden name – Lyford and Swiger, respectively).
Since getting married on August 30th, we have settled down (albeit temporarily) in Arlington, VA. Our apartment has a lovely view … of the Hilton across the street. Ryan considered documenting the number of rooms with lights on each evening in order to perform a statistical analysis on their occupancy rates throughout the year. However, he then decided that would be far too much work and opted to watch some TV instead.
Katie has worked hard to “make the apartment livable” by buying such things as pretty colored placemats and bathroom cleaning supplies – items that Ryan had previously never considered essential to keep on hand. We also have enough pots, pans and other cooking supplies to choke a camel … all of which apparently are also essential to “make the apartment livable”. Ryan still doesn’t see how, but he does enjoy a nice home cooked meal nearly every night so he has learned to keep his mouth shut and stay out of the kitchen.
Upon arriving in Arlington Katie decided to lower the national unemployment rate by going out and getting a job. She didn’t jump right on it, though. The first month was spent sleeping until noon and watching many hours of the cooking channel. All of this was to “mentally prepare herself” for that thing everyone dreads – a full day of work.
Katie did eventually find a job – in fact she found three of them (apparently all that “mental preparation” actually worked). She is now a substitute teacher for both Arlington and Fairfax Counties and a part time teacher for an after-school mentor program. Ironically, Greenville, SC pays substitute teachers about 30% more than Arlington or Fairfax counties. Go figure. As a result she gets calls to substitute around 5:30am on many mornings. Ryan is still waiting for his body to adapt and sleep right through them, but until then will probably be grouchy and irritable from 5:30am onwards.
Ryan is in training with the State Department and will be until next summer. During his training he has learned several important beaurocratic skills which are important for any government position. These skills include, “waiting in line to get a badge”, “filling out reimbursement paperwork” (that one actually took three days of training), and “pestering HR relentlessly until they finally do the 10 second task they should have done in the first place”. Luckily most of that was the first few months of training and now Ryan has moved on to the “meat and potatoes” of training. He would elaborate more, but then he’d have to kill you. No not really, he just likes saying that. No seriously, he would have to kill you. No, no, he’s still joking … maybe… Luckily Ryan’s training site has Fox News playing 24/7 in the break room so he’s been able to keep current on all the important issues of the day – like what Joe the Plumber thinks about Obama’s foreign policy initiatives.
We will be spending our belated honeymoon in Antigua over the Christmas holidays. So, while much of America will be freezing their butts off, we’ll be drinking a neverending supply of pina coladas on the beach.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,
Ryan and Katie
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