$1000 lunch

Back in March, I flew to Texas for an interview with a multinational energy company. They seemed to like me, but delay stretched into delay and nothing came of it. Then, a few days ago, they called unexpectedly and asked me to fly back to TX next week for another "interview." The interview consists of me meeting the recruiting coordinator at 11:30, having lunch across the street with three employees at 12:00, and taking the limo back to the airport at 2:00. Since there was no morning flight that arrived early enough, though, I'm flying in the night before.

Based on the e-receipts I've gotten, the company will pay over $1000 for this lunch meeting. I'll burn a day of vacation for the privilege. The good news is, they say I should find out very quickly afterward whether I get the job. If I do and if I accept, it will be a huge change for the family to move from Utah to eastern Texas. A Texas-sized change. I'm keeping both eyes open, but I'm looking for opportunities to advance my career. The company seems like a good place to work from what I've learned so far, but still, Texas is a whole other country.

Between work, school, and internships, I've lived at least briefly in OR, CA, UT, CO, IN, PA, and CT. The South is the gaping hole in that geographical c.v. Culturally, Texas isn't quite deep South, but it was a Confederate State.

In contrast, my wife is from Kansas City, but she was born in Memphis, where her mother was raised and many of her relatives still live. She also lived in Houston for several years as a child, so she knows better than I do what to expect. And yet, I enjoy exploring new cultures and places, and I think it's much easier to do that by "going native" than by taking a vacation. Bring on the grilled armadillo and deep fried Twinkies??

Visiting Grandma

My parents travel quite a bit, and when they're out of town, I usually try to check in on my 90-year-old grandmother at least once. Last night, I stopped by with my older son, and we saw a flock of about 20 birds on the lawn behind her house. They were pretty good-sized, maybe the size of a pheasant. I think maybe they were a type of grouse, but I'm no bird expert.

We were visiting, and my grandma started talking about the sororities they had when she went to college, and how she didn't like them much because the sorority girls tended to look down on everyone else. In any case, she was from a small farm town, it was the Depression, and she couldn't afford to join a sorority, either. She commented, "Once, we were passing by one of the sororities, and we saw a girl hanging out the window with no clothes on!" She then added matter-of-factly, "Blaine [my grandfather] watched that window pretty closely after that."

I love little stories like this and hope at least my older children will remember knowing their great-grandmother. Her stories of growing up in the Depression are more relevant than ever today, yet so far removed from the experience of my children (no running water, refrigeration, etc.).

Still here

The reports of the death of this blog have been only slightly exaggerated. The reports of our family moving, however, have been somewhat more premature. Not only are we still here, but we have no immediate plans to move. That is, our Realtor, after only six weeks as our listing agent, told us that we should cut the price by 40k if we wanted to sell the home. Since that would mean essentially walking away from the home with no equity, we told him to hit the road, and we terminated our listing.

So, we've begun the process of getting emptying out the storage unit and unpacking some of what we'd already boxed up. We have sufficient storage space in our basement, but we had moved out a lot of stuff to stage the house. We'll be closing that out soon. It's a bit sad that things didn't work out, but happily it also means we don't have to worry about showing our house at a moment's notice anymore. That was very stressful for H, with four young kids in the house, as you can imagine.