Another change (for the better) in our lives

For the past six months or so, I've been working here in Huntsville, and traveling back to visit my wife every month or so. Not the greatest situation, but our house in Sugar Land just wasn't getting sold. So recently, we received an application to lease the house for a year, and everything about the potential lessors checked out well. We advised our agent we were amenable to this, and at about the same time, received word that our other house in Tennessee was going to be rented by my cousin's oldest daughter and her husband. Great!

We found a house to rent here in Huntsville, and scheduled the movers to show up and get all our stuff here. That's supposed to start tomorrow, 2/24. I'll fly back to Houston and we'll drive back here over the weekend. Our stuff will show up in a day two afterwards. The only hitch in this giddy-up is that the lessor's company is balking at our rent amount, so we must wait while they evaluate some comparable rent amounts to see if it will all go through and get approved. Keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well.

A big change in Egypt

I have travelled to Egypt many times on business and once for pleasure. On each trip I have been touched by the hospitality and gentility of the people. I have never felt unsafe in Egypt. During most of my trips, at one point or another, traffic was stopped and held at rest while Mr. Mubarek took a ride to get from one place to another. I was often struck by the sheer disregard for the business of running Cairo, for the inconvenience caused to 20,000,000 people because one of them decided he needed to get a caramel latte at the 7-11. Or whatever the reason was.

I believe Mubarak was for the most part a benevolent dictator, but a dictator nonetheless. I am glad he realized that a graceful exit was the most advantageous.

I hope the upcoming elections are spirited and provide some choices for the Egyptian people. I hope to go back again someday and enjoy their smiles, their culture, their history. They added an important chapter today.

The Holiday Season

So Thanksgiving week was great. We flew into Denver, spent a week in the mountains at the Beaver Creek Lodge in Avon, CO. We didn't ski, but had a lot of fun cruising around and seeing snow and mountains and stuff. Larry smoked a turkey, and we ordered another from a local catering company, and we bundled it all up and had our feast at Chris & Jenelle's house in Eagle. Chris is Larry & Amy's son. C&J have a son named Nathan who is just two, and gave us an opportunity for some grandparenting time. It was interesting being at 9 to 10,000 feet above sea level, you get out-of-breath a lot sooner, and you exhale a lot more water vapor because it is so dry up there. So we tried to drink more water.

We came back to Houston, and I flew back to Huntsville the next day. After three quick weeks it was time to come back for Christmas. This felt a bit more relaxing, and quite a bit warmer than beaver Creek or even Huntsville. It actually snowed there after I left. We got each other a Wii for Christmas, and have been experimenting with the different sports programs. It is a lot of fun, and you can actually feel like you've been playing afterwards.

We had some moving companies come over to give us estimates to move back to Tennessee. All three majors came in within 10% of each other, so we will have to make a decision in a few weeks, once we figure out if we are going to sell or rent the house out with a management company. Right6 now, we are planing on moving our stuff at the end of February.

After a couple months on the job...

So here I find myself 10 weeks or so into the new job. It is still a lot of fun, I remain amazed each day how similar the actual tasks are to what I did for the big jet engine company. I like Huntsville, and am anxious for my bride to join me. Not as much travel right now, and that's okay with me too.

This business of trying to sell a house in Sugar Land, TX is frustrating. Everyone who looks at the house loves it, but still no offers. No complaints about the price either, so our real estate agent says don't lower the price.

A few weeks back, I moved form the Extended Stay Hotel to the basement of my friend Bob's new house. So the comments at work have been somewhat predictable, but humorous. We are sometimes referred to as Felix & Oscar, me being the latter. Other times I am simply the Troll, what with living in the basement and all. Makes no difference to me, as living here is infinitely better than the hotel. Bob and I get along pretty well, as we have known each other since 1974. Hard to believe that's longer than a lot of marriages.

Mary & I are looking forward to our next time together, which will be Thanksgiving week. Thursday the 18th, I fly to Houston, and the next day we fly together to Denver. That Saturday morning we will drive to Beaver Creek CO in the mountains and spend a week at a time share we exchanged for. Our friends Larry & Amy will join us for part of the week, and it should be a great time. It will be significantly colder than either of us have experienced in a long time, for fun at least, but that will add to the magic I am sure.

Maybe by that time, we will have some progress on the sale of the house. Wouldn't that be cool?

A week into it...

It has been just 9 working days into the new job. I'm enjoying it, even completed my first business trip. All my colleagues are very focused, intense on the project. I was initially frustrated by the lack of a computer, i.e., unable to communicate via email, understand my calendar, look up phone numbers, contact the customer. But all that's behind me now. Things are going well.

Its going to be a bit of a wait for payday though. My previous job paid once a week. A nice steady flow of cash. This one pays twice a month, on the 10th and the 25th. I started on the beginning of the pay period on the 17th of August, but my first paycheck will be the 10th of September. Good thing we had a bit of cash set aside.

Its also a bit of a drag living in a hotel. The Extended Stay Hotel chain is actually a pretty good deal. Its about half or even less of the big guys, and while its not so fancy, it is clean, and the folks running this one in Huntsville are really nice. This weekend, I'm going to drive up to TN and pick up my cousin Jackie, and go visit the folks renting our house outside of Knoxville. Afterwards, we're going to have a catfish dinner at Allison's Catfish Restaurant in Friendsville, TN. Some reviews have it as expensive & greasy, but we've always had a great meal.

Leaving Sugar Land and SE Texas

For a variety of reasons which I will try to explain, I decided to quit my job in Texas, and accepted a new job in Huntsville, Alabama. I have worked for the jet engine testing equipment company for almost two years. It has had its frustrating moments, and one of those recurred just a few weeks ago. So I sent a text message to a friend who was starting a new job/project in Huntsville. I was venting more than anything else, but his response was overwhelming. He needed someone with my talents and was willing to pay for it. So within just a couple weeks, I was offered a position at a significant increase in pay. I accepted, and started in the new position just one day shy of three weeks of the first text message.

Reason #1: 60% increase in pay
Reason #2: Allows us to move back into our house in the Knoxville TN area.
Reason #3: Job requires contact with USAF to work on a flight test/qualification program
Reason #4: Leaving a politically charged situation behind, probably exchanging for a new one

We have put our house in Texas up for sale, and it will sell quickly, we hope. Once that happens, we will move our stuff back into the house in TN, and I will commute on the weekends. Since my new job requires some travel, my bride would have had to suffer my lack of presence anyway, at least now, she can have a bit more money to start the projects of which we both dreamed.

Is this what is coming?

For the last couple years, and even for some time before, our economy has been struggling. The biggest news lately is that we are recovering. But unemployment is still very widespread, as high as 20% in places like Michigan, but I think it is even worse if you consider under-employment.

Our elected officials are merrily creating more legislation to cope with all our issues, and what isn't so obvious is that they are creating more and more jobs. Each time a government agency is created, criticized, strengthened, it adds more jobs. That's why they can say the economy is improving. And its in their best interests to do so. Why would government workers vote for a candidate who was going to eliminate their jobs?

Our war efforts actually fit into this scenario as well. Not so much from the soldier's point of view, but from the money the government is creating to support the soldiers and the war efforts. Want to make a lot of money? Go to work in Afghanistan or Iraq as a contractor. Want to make an obscene amount of money? Start a company that sends people to Afghanistan or Iraq. There is so much of this going on that the government auditors can't even keep up with the fraud waste and abuse of the handful of contractors who are just trying to cheat the government. But I do think the vast majority of the contractors who are in that side of the business are trying faithfully to do their jobs in a fair and equitable manner, and take care to do the right thing for their employees, the soldiers, and the native civilian populations.

But I digress. Where is this going? If everyone becomes dependent on the government for a job, isn't that socialism or communism? If private industry sees manufacturing and heavy industry disappear, we are left with the service industries remaining. Does the whole country need to be run like AMTRAK? I could see a future where the only non-government job was standing behind a counter flippin' burgers.