If you're curious, we're Al and Sue Johnson. We've lived in Virginia
for over 30 years but seem to think of West Virginia as home.
Since the circumstances seemed right, we decided to make it official and
move to West Virginia. Virginia was OK but the DC area is so crowded it
got hard to deal with. Everything, especially in a car, is
aggravating. We've started looking at other areas to live. I got laid
off and Sue is willing so this might be a good time. Morgantown was a
pretty easy choice so
we moved here. Actually to Bruceton Mills
about 15 miles east of Morgantown
Sue was a nurse with Kaiser Permanente. She spent several years
working in an emergency room before settling in with Kaiser. She
has finally moved here full time and is working for Amedisys.
They're a visiting nurse organization. We actually had to buy her
a used car because of the winters here. Seems like it snows every
day and its 11 degrees now. She has a used all wheel drive Subaru.
Until April 18, 2008,
I worked with CSC and did for 30+ years. Some of those years are
with companies ultimately bought by CSC. Most recently I've been a
Program Manager on an effort with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
I've probably seen the inside of more prisons that most of you.
Hopefully, anyway. Now that this effort has ended, I'm on the
job market. In three weeks, I was unable to find a new job within
CSC and was laid off. CSC has little regard for people in the face
of overhead rates. I put my resume here if you're
interested in reading about a PM that
also likes travel and photography. You can
right click here and
download the MS Word version if you'd like. If you are in the
need of someone like me, let me know.
The job search here is very frustrating. I'm having problems
finding jobs and even more trouble getting information back from
potential employers. I'll put more in the blog later.
We had a lot of work done on the Reston house. Upgraded bathrooms, new
carpet, new pant and other things too numerous to list. After
living there 24 years, we had to do something to fix it up. The
result didn't even look like out house. My
oldest daughter said she had trouble figuring out which room which
in the pictures I took. The process of getting there was fairly
painful. We had people in our house every morning and for the day.
Dust everywhere. I bought the needed material and hauled old stuff to
the dump to keep ahead of them. Schedules were missed and recovered
only with extra labor. Little things were done incorrectly and had to
be corrected. It was never ending. The work was to be done on a Friday
and didn't finish until Tuesday evening. The house went on the market
on October 1 so that cut it very tight. Hind sight says that was also
about the same time the housing market went into the toilet. We listed
the house for $495K and sold it 8 months later for $450K. We were still
able to make the move work out OK and have a very small mortgage. Now
if we can only find jobs in Morgantown.
If it were up to me, I'd probably be a photographer. I've had several
people tell me I should sell various pictures. The problem is that
there's been far less people saying they'd like to buy one. I'll keep
taking pictures for my own amusement and sharing some of them here. I
may be a better storyteller than photographer anyway. Just to try
something different, I put a store on Smugmug.com. After a year, I sold
9 copies of the same picture to a lady in California. Should be no
surprise that the store is closed now.
We probably still qualify as Parrotheads. We've been to 12 Jimmy
Buffett shows since 1996. For the past couple of years our travel
schedule has conflicted with his virtual beach and party in the parking
lot. We've
been going to Yellowstone National Park at about the same time as his
shows. We still like his music but have trouble working his shows
into the schedule. As much fun as his shows are, the reality of
the great outdoors is much better. Maybe next summer we'll make it
to Pittsburgh for a show up there.
We have two daughters but neither lives at home. Michelle lives in
Morgantown, WV. She's married and had her first daughter in
early May.
There's
pictures we try to keep updated on this site if you're interested.
She's a counselor with the VA. She's also a diehard Mountaineer fan.
The baby's first picture was taken in a blue and gold outfit.
Brynn is now 20 months old.
Angela lives in Park City, UT. At least sometimes. She's
more of a traveler than we are so you never know where she'll be.
She spent 7 months in Belize before coming to see us at Christmas.
Right now she's working hard providing child care for several people in
Park City. If you ever meet her, she'll introduce herself as
Moment.
When we have time, we like to camp and kayak. Not necessarily at
the same time even though we almost went kayak camping one time.
We've got enough backing gear to make it work but weather got in the
way. Our camping trips seem to take us to West Virginia.
Particularly Dolly Sods and the Big Bend area in Smoke Hole.
Kayaking finds us frequently in Chincoteague, VA or at Pohick Bay along
the Potomac River. We'll let someone else do the white water
stuff. We've both got two boats and enough gear to take guests.
Now we need to find a good place in West Virginia.
We're both avid West Virginia Mountaineer fans. We usually have
season tickets and manage to get to all the home games. At least
as long as they don't play many on Thursdays. We used to go on Friday
evening and come back on Sunday morning, making a weekend of it.
We've found rustic cabins at Chestnut Ridge Park and stayed in them.
The wood burning stoves keep us warm as it gets colder. We've
found that sitting around the fire outside makes it nice even when we
lose. Now that we live here, we only stop at Chestnut Ridge to
visit or for a bluegrass concert.
Well, there's a bit about us. I'm 61 as of August. Sue will
be 35 again this year, I imagine. I guess one of us has to age.
If you think you see us someplace, say Hi! We enjoy meeting new
people wherever we go.
Meet the Johnsons
