Christmas Form Newsletter 2009!

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2009 AND HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010!!!

Last year, Christmas 2008, I sent my Christmas Cards out early, and used a photo of my new house in Christmas Card with a House on it. Then I started receiving Christmas Cards from everyone else and all of your Cards started talking about your children and what they had been doing for the year. It made me wish that I had children of my own to brag about too and since everyone was asking me all kinds of questions about my roommates, during the holiday family get-togethers, I then thought that I could save myself a ton of time talking about my roommates if I could just get them all into one Christmas Card before all of the holiday parties. Well, it turned out to be a much bigger chore than I thought that it would be, so I didn’t get it done until after Christmas, so most of you should be getting your Christmas Card with this Form Letter about New Year’s Day, 1/1/2010!

The Roommates…

Tom Flandro is renting the MasterBedroom Suite. He is 38 years old, almost 39, served a Mission in Corpus Christi, Texas, and works for Boeing as a Stress Analyst, working on the new 787 DreamLiner Luxury Airplane, making sure that the airplane can handle the stresses of mother nature. Tom drives a dark red 2006 Ford Mustang is always talking about trading it in for an electric car. Tom has recently started dating Amy Silver from Auburn. Amy’s cousin is quite popular, as her cousin, Stephanie Meyer, as written the “Twilight” Novels. Amy has 4 beautiful children, Nathaniel, Cori, Brooke and Tonya Silver.

Ben Cervantes is renting Bedroom 2. He is 26 years old and is currently the only Roommate young enough to attend the Halls Lake Young Single Adult Ward, here in the Lynnwood Washington Stake. Ben is a local boy, from the Everett area, as his family lives nearby. Ben is half-Filipino and half-European decent and he served a Mission in Guatemala, so he knows more Spanish than Tagalog (the main Filipino dialect). Ben is a Manufacturing Technician at Boeing, meaning that he installs the wires in the 787 DreamLiner Airplanes and works Swing Shifts, so his cool light metallic green Mitsubishi Eclipse doesn’t fill up the parking at our house when most of the rest of us are home. Ben continues to go to school as he wants to be a Software Developer and spends most of his time working on Web Applications for the iPhone.

Ryan Francis has been renting Bedroom 3, but is moving out by 12/31/2009, to Syracuse, Utah, where he wants to be closer to family, attend more classes at the University of Utah and try to find more work with computers, I think as a Network Administrator, if I remember correctly. Ryan is 33, almost 34 years old and has been working at the University of Washington on their computer systems for the Physicians. We will really miss having Ryan as our Roommates as he has filled the house with his incredible voice, tools, and furniture. Yes, Ryan is an Opera Singer and January 2009 he played the part of Figaro in “Le Nozze de Figaro” (which means ‘the marriage nuptials of Figaro’) an Opera by Amadeus Wolfgang Mozart, as well as another Opera in Bremerton. The futon couch and love-seat are Ryan’s as well as most of the Home Entertainment System, but Ryan has said that he will leave us the futon couch. Ryan has a ton of tools and equipment from the Marine Reserves, which everyone is always asking me to borrow and I have to keep telling them, “It’s not mine, its Ryan’s.” Yes, Ryan will truly be missed!

D. Matt Williams, age 35, has recently moved into Bedroom 4. Matt just moved here from Avon, Indiana, where his wife, Amber, of 10 years marriage and their 3 children, Kindsey, age 9, Carson, age 5, Kourtney, age 2, almost 3, are still going to live. Matt left his job in Indiana for this contract job at Boeing as a Manufacturing Technician, where he just completed training, and will start after the New Year on building the 787 DreamLiners, probably working on the winglets, since he has experience with that. Matt doesn’t know how long this contract job will last, so that’s why renting a bedroom is perfect for his situation, so that he doesn’t have to get locked into a certain length of time contract, like the Apartment Complexes do. This is the same thing that Greg Isham, from Queen Creek, Arizona, did in 2007-08 while renting Bedroom 2, until he was transferred to Hawthorne, California, by Boeing. Matt joined the church about a year ago and has finally been getting the New Member Discussions by Elders Smith and Merrell 2 of 4 Missionaries serving in our Ward. Matt has been driving his friend, Eric’s Dodge Ram truck (that doesn’t fit in our driveway), he friend, Eric, has also left family in Indiana, for a contract job with Boeing, but Matt will have to purchase a vehicle after he comes back from Indiana for the holidays, so if anyone has an old, small car for sale, Matt’s looking.

Bedroom 5 is empty at this time, but it in are a single bed and a desk with my old spare computer for guests to use during the holidays for anyone that needs a room to rent, furnished or not. (This is one of 4 beds that I can furnish in a bedroom, the other 3 beds that I own are in use by Tom, Matt and I.)

I, Dan Candland, am in Bedroom 6 in the basement. This works out better for me than the Master Bedroom Suite, as I have more privacy in the Basement and space for my Home Office and massive Baseball Card Collection. It really is like my own apartment, except that I share the kitchen with everyone else. My white 2006 Saturn Ion 3 car just hit 50,000 miles this month and the value of the car is dropping like a rock, since Saturn has decided to give up on business. Even though it is only about 3.5 years old, the car has lost about $3000 in value these last 6 months. It is worth more than I owe, as I have already paid off ¾ of the loan, but I recently refinanced the auto loan, so instead of having it paid off in June 2010, I have got payments scheduled through the end of 2013 now. Let’s hope that I find work soon, as I have already refinanced everything and am barely getting by now. Thinks still look bleak on the job front as I have heard that another Software Test Engineer friend is losing his job on 12/31/2009. Sounds like the Software Engineering industry is still laying Americans off and if they are doing any hiring, it will be in India. I have been trying to get into University of Washington – Bothell campus, to get my Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Software Systems, however, they have had a flood of new students and reduced number of classes and teachers, due to state funding. So requirements are now harder and they are saying that I now have to take 5 classes before I can transfer in from Highline Community College, in SeaTac, WA, where I got my AA Degree in Computer Science in 2007. When I called UW-Tacoma they are still only requiring me to take Calculus and Statistics before they will let me transfer to there, so I will probably try to go to UW-Tacoma and then transfer to UW-Bothell, but first I have to take those 2 classes, and they are NOT offered at night anywhere at any Community College in Puget Sound. So if/when I do sign up for them (which I don’t know how I will pay for them) I then if I get a job, I will need to quit or Withdrawal from the class. Depending on the time of the semester that I get the job, I might not be able to simply “withdrawal” from the class, making this a much harder decision. I haven’t seen any Calculus or Statistic classes for “Online” only class either, but I haven’t looked everywhere for that. In any case, much to my disappointment it doesn’t look like I can possibly go to UW-Bothell until at September 2010 at the earliest. In better news, I have found love…



For more details about Dan's love life, checkout "http://danandjan.blogspot.com".