Eight Years

Today is my eighth anniversary of working at my current company. Sometimes it is hard to believe it has been eight years already; other times it is hard to remember what life was like BEFORE this job.

Anyway, I thought a little "then and now" might be fun in honor of the day...

(minor update...blogger didn't seem to like my table, so I eliminated it)

THEN: Laura and I had been together about one year.
NOW: We've been together 9 years and are working on year 10!

THEN: Laura and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the far north side of Chicago. See aerial shot. I can't recall the exact address number anymore. Ours was actually the courtyard building a little further west than the point shown on the google map. Scroll eastward to see how near we were to Lake Michigan! We were on the verge of moving since my commute to a job in the suburbs was inconvenient.
NOW: We live in a suburb about 60 miles west of Chicago, in a two bedroom house. Seeing as that house is now for sale, we are clearly on the verge of moving again.

THEN: My company had fewer than 20 people in it.
NOW: Well, we grew to about 116, then were acquired by a huge company at the end of last year. So instead of being one of 20, I am one of thousands.

THEN: I had just left my job at Arthur Andersen for this new position.
NOW: Well, Arthur Andersen has had a bit of trouble since then and doesn't really exist in the same form it used to.

THEN: We owned one dog, Bailey. He was not quite one year old. This picture is actually from a few years later...our photo album of puppy pictures has gone into hiding:

NOW: Our pet family grew to include Xena the cat and Cricket the terror...I mean rat terrier/chi mix:


THEN: My home computer was a Macintosh LC III with a 160 MB hard drive. I had never heard of high-speed Internet access. I think I used AOL.
NOW: My home computer is a laptop with a 40 gig hard drive and I am running out of room. I use DSL to connect to the Internet and can't imagine using dialup again. Or AOL, for that matter.

THEN: The Hawaii gay marriage case was in the news.
NOW: Everyone has forgotten about Hawaii. Massachusetts is in the news. I shouldn't say that everyone has forgotten about Hawaii -- many people (like my mother) are convinced that same-sex marriage is legal there. It isn't. The state amended their constitution to prevent it.

THEN: I had just recently bought a Dodge Dakota pickup truck, without paying much attention to minor things like gas mileage. Hey, I hadn't owned a car for four years at that point, so I never even looked at the price of gas!

NOW: I now drive a Honda Civic and grumble that the Toyota Prius was impossible to get last year when I traded in my truck. I rarely miss the truck, although I did need to invest in a roof rack to transport the bikes (yes, it does reduce the mileage a bit, but it isn't that bad).


THEN: I was not yet an aunt.
NOW: I now have two adorable nieces, ages 6 and 4.

THEN: I weighed [mumble].
NOW: I lost a bunch of weight while training and riding in an AIDS ride (in Montana!). After my riding dropped down to normal (rather than obsessed) levels, I gained it all back. So now it is pretty much where it was eight years ago.

THEN: I had really long hair.
NOW: I have short hair. I don't know why it took me so long to chop it off...life is so much easier now

I'm sure I could come up with more if I really tried...