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This has been a stellar month for me. My last day of work at my old job was July 1st. On July 2nd, Chris and I left for our vacation. Upon our return, we celebrated our 4th anniversary.

It had been a great six years at District 211, but an opportunity came around that I could not pass up. And so I started my new job at Maine Township on Monday. I am the new Assessment and Database Manager for the district. It is a brand new position, which gives me an exciting opportunity to mold the position. At this point, I am expecting that I’ll be data mining standardized test scores and pulling reports for others. I will also be helping to consolidate the various data stores, or at least trying to get them to talk to each other and share nicely. I will have to wait and see over the next year whether or not I’m on the mark.

Before I start on Monday, I am going to finish my longest period of relaxation since before I started at 211. I have not been working for more than two weeks now, and it will be almost three weeks by the time I start the new job. During my time between jobs, I went on a family vacation to Tennessee with the in-laws. Because we (read ‘I’) did not want to deal with a ten hour drive straight to Gatlinburg, we decided on an overnight stay in Louisville, almost exactly halfway between here and there.

We stayed at 21c Museum Hotel, just two blocks away from the Ohio River in downtown Louisville. The hotel doubles as a modern art museum with works from living artists. In each room, there is a 42-inch LCD television and an iPod dock stereo with alarm, plus an iPod stocked with music. We dined at Proof on Main, a restaurant attached to the hotel. It has a very trendy atmosphere, with great food at affordable prices. After dinner, we tried to head down to the river, but the street we walked down had a fence that prevented us from reaching the river. We didn’t feel like putting in too much effort, knowing that we’d be back in a week. So, we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep.

The next day, we headed to Bowling Green, the home of the National Corvette Museum and the Corvette plant. We saw the only "Threes" Collection, including the ultra-rare 1983 Corvette. Chris went through the museum faster than I did, because I stopped frequently to view the displays. I took a lot of pictures, so check them out.

This post has taken a few days to complete, so I’ll save the rest of the vacation for another post or two. Check back to find out how much hiking can suck and what I thought about Rafting in the Smokies.