Takin' a ride

It has been a couple weeks since I started work at the new job. This evening, after I'd settled back a bit, I got a call from a coworker to meet for pizza and a beer. Cool enough. We had a nice conversation, and then we went outside and he asked if I wanted to see a bit of Houston. I said sure, so he pointed to his car: a bright blue Viper coupe.

It has been a while since I've driven or ridden in a high performance sports car. And this is the real deal! A V-10 Engine with 8.3 Liters and well over 500 Horsepower. I snuggled in to the well bolstered passenger seat, and away we went. I didn't notice it before, but most of the lights at night seem to blur in long horizontal lines. Houston just streaked by in bursts of effortless and high-G acceleration in this ride. It was very much fun, and I'm glad for once that I wasn't driving. In fact, I think the Viper just may be more car than I can handle, at least when the accelerator is pushed down vigorously. We went around all four leaves of a clover-leaf interchange. There may have been another car attempting to keep up, but when we left the intersection, he was still on the second leaf. The tires never even squealed. I had a thought during one particularly exhilarating accel, that this is what a golf ball must feel like when it leaves the tee.

My coworker asked if I wanted to continue the evening and bar-hop a bit, but I declined, as I my fun-meter was pretty much pegged out at that point. My Toyota Avalon felt a bit stodgy as I drove back to my temporary housing.

Starting again in Texas

As noted in my previous posting, I have unretired, and have started my new job in Stafford, Texas, a suburb just southwest of Houston, certainly part of the greater metropolitan area. After a very nice trip to Milwaukee, the wife and I came back to Tennessee, and spent the week continuing to get organized for this transition period. I left for Houston Monday morning, and got here Tuesday mid- to late-morning. I reported to work, and spent the day in-processing. I know it would be better if I could spend more time with my wife right now, she has an awful lot on her shoulders. She is trying to get her late aunt's house ready for sale, keep our house in show-able condition, go through things to prepare for our move, and all the while, run herd on our pack of three dogs. I try to talk with her as much as I can. This may be the first time ever that I will actually use all the minutes on our cell phone plan.

I must say, the Houston traffic is incredible compared to our rural little town in eastern TN. Even after work, at 7:00 PM, it was still bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go. Amazing. But this evening, at about the same time, it was flowing much better.

We had our first inquiry on the house in TN, just a nibble, really. A realtor asked about showing the house sometime soon. It has been almost a month since we listed the house, so we are a bit hopeful, perhaps overly so, about this.

The new job is going well, there is a lot to learn, with new systems, new procedures, lots of new names and faces. But I am excited about it. I started on my first proposal today. It is for a customer I started to court late last year, and we have progressed to defining and pricing some very specific tasks. And my first business trip is starting Saturday afternoon.