Category Archives: Life

Things to do…

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So we’ve officially gone directly from stressing about getting a job to stressing about getting through all the wickets to actually get there on time. It probably says something disturbing about me that I’ve sat down and started keeping track of those wickets using a color coded matrix. Of course this isn’t an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems like as good a way as any to keep track of the things I need to get done between now and June 4th. I’d anticipate in the next week or so this list is going to be alot longer than it is now. That’s fine. I’ve never shied away from hard work for a good cause… and my escape from Memphis is currently the best cause of which I am aware.

Today was a planned day off long before I got the word that I would be leaving, but I’ve tried to use it to good effect. Aside from the original planned trip to the vet, I’ve managed to set up appointments with two movers for quotes, changed some mailing addresses, started the process of changing my insurance coverage, talked to my sawbones about forwarding medical records, and even packed a few more odds and ends – before running out of boxes (again). That’s a reasonably productive day. I’m gaining confidence every moment that I’ll be able to clear out without too many issues.

Reception on the other end remains to be determined. It would be nice to have a house lined up and waiting when I show up, but the chances of that happening are slim to none. I don’t exactly have alot of time built in to the schedule to go poke around myself so I’m relying on the kindness of friends, family, and a slightly standoffish relator (at the moment) to point me in the right direction. Disturbingly, the most important features I’m looking for aren’t even something for me. I need a rental house that’s pet friendly and has a fence… because lets face it, trying to cram me, two eighty pound dogs, and a house worth of furniture into a two bedroom apartment isn’t going to happen.Neither is me running them in and out to a designated “community pet area” multiple times a night. So yeah, a house and a fence. Pretty much everything else is a point for negotiation.

There’s a metric crapload of things that still need done… and the clock is definitely ticking.

Just like that…

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I’ve had nine months to think about what this post would look like, but surprisingly it’s not one that I started working on in advance. Now that the day of jubilee has arrived, I find myself at something of a loss for words. How do I sum up the experience that has been finding my eject handle? Is it defined by the statistics? 273 days on the hunt. 91 days of frozen time. 385 resumes submitted. Sometimes I felt like I could count off the hours of each one of those days. Almost a year of complete confidence tempered by false starts and rejections. And then moments of unadulterated joy. Whatever the moment is, it’s not defined by the statistics.

I’m feeling very conscious of those who made the jump before I have. Of how much I miss them and how much I’ll miss a few of those I’ll leave behind. I’m conscious now more than ever of home, of family, and of friends from whom I’ve been too long separated. They say you can’t go home again. I’ve been away long enough to know that everything has changed – and that nothing that matters has really changed. I’m coming home and I’ll take it as I find it, changes and all.

There is plenty of time to go into specifics later. For now, let it suffice to know that tonight I will sleep the sleep of the vindicated. My great experiment in Memphis is drawing to an end. I’ve survived my ride on the crazy train. And I’m coming home.

When I sat down to write, I thought this post would be a valedictory. It seems my nerves are still too raw for that kind of triumphalism. Give me a day or two for the reality to sink in, though, and it’s a fair bet that you’ll be reading posts with some serious swagger.

Boxing day…

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No, it’s not December 26th, but it’s officially the day I’ve decided to go all in with the assumption that my time in Memphis is drawing to an end and that it is going to do so with great rapidity in the next couple of weeks. The fact is the more I can do now, before the crush of having an officially designated D-day, the better I’ll feel. There will be enough to do to keep two or three people gainfully employed once the actual paperwork hits my desk. As it stands now, the kitchen is the only room on the house that doesn’t have boxes stacked halfway to the ceiling. The obvious question is where all this stuff came from, as I certainly didn’t bring it all here with me (I ran out of those boxes very early in the process). Regardless, it’s all finding its way into temporary quarters safely tucked away surrounded by newsprint and bubble wrap. It helps that I’ve been slowly sneaking things into boxes since January, but now it’s getting real because we’re getting into the items that I’m actually missing now that they’re gone. The electronics are still all up and running. The kitchen is still fully functional. But in almost every other respect, this place is 75-80% ready for check out time.

When the word comes down from on high, who’s going to be ready? That’s right. This guy.  it won’t take long to pack out the clothes and few key odds and ends that I’ll be carrying myself. I moved here with a Mustang packed to the roof and I suppose I’ll leave in a pickup truck looking a bit like the Clampetts, but the important thing is I’ll be leaving… assuming (as always) that the paperwork gets done. I don’t know that I’ll ever get use to knowing, but not knowing. It’s damnably frustrating to spend so much time working from hints and allegations, but in the absence of clear guidance, I’ve elected to create my own based on my read of the situation and reports from well placed sources.

Boy will I be pissed if this thing falls apart now.

That’s progress…

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I had a vague hope for most of the day that the powers that be would intercede and pass the word before close of business. It would have been nice to spend the weekend in something other than a state of definite maybe. That might over-state the situation a bit, but the clock is running and almost everything involved in this process is time sensitive. The longer it takes to square things away here, the more of a headache it’s going to be to start getting things lined up on the other end. Until they officially put a mark on the wall, I’ll remain stuck somewhere between reality and happy illusion – and there’ll be a hard limit on how far I can and can’t prepare. Can I pack every stick of stuff in the house? Sure. But I don’t know if that means I’m going to spend the next two days or two months surrounded by boxes and making dinner every night in the one saucepan that I didn’t pack. I can’t make any definitive plans to get a house full of boxes from here to there. Maybe more difficult is that I can’t start making any decisions about where I’ll be unpacking all those boxes once they get to wherever they’re going. I’m getting visions of way too many nights hanging out in a not quite mid-grade extended stay hotel. It won’t take me long to close out on this end. That’s the beauty of planning your exit for the better part of the year. The issues that are bedeviling me tonight are all about what happens after the Mayflower truck pulls away from Memphis. I know I can torch that bridge when I get to it, but for someone who lives his life by a plan, it’s the kind of uncertainty that can keep a guy up at night. If there’s any up side, it’s that I seem to have gone from being paranoid about the job itself to only being paranoid about what it’s going to take to get from here to there. That’s progress.

That sound you hear…

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Since I had them scheduled anyway, I decided to keep two interview appointments I had made for this afternoon. All I can say is that I hope I didn’t disturbe anyone with the strangled gurgle you heard coming from West Tennessee. That was surely my ferocious choking during a job interview with a federal department that rhymes with Domeland Obscurity. It. Was. Painful. I’m only blessed that I didn’t really have to listen to myself give the answers. Once I realized I’d completely lost the bubble, I stopped listening to myself and was focused on keeping my answers as short as possible in order to put the interview to rest with some semblance of dignity. Lord. It was just brutal.

The first question was ok. The second question is where the wheels came off. I don’t even remember what the topic was… and halfway through answering, I realized that even as I was giving an answer, I didn’t remember what the question was. The answer ended up being a series of vaguely interrelated partially developed thoughts as I mentally groped for the thread of the conversation. Needless to say, I never found the thread and never recovered my equilibrium after that. Running out the clock was really the only option I had left.

I knew I was in the deep grass when the panel leader closed up with “Thanks. I think you have some adequate answers there.” Adequate. Wow. Ouch. At least I didn’t drool on myself. Without a question, that was the most painful 25 minutes in recent memory. It was a shitshow tempered only by the fact that it was the second of back to back interviews and the first went remarkably well. It’s the carnage of that second one that’s going to stick with me, though.

Dog’s life…

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I’ve been a dog person basically forever. I had dogs as a kid, but they were mostly the outside chained to a box variety rather than the sleek, clean lay at your feet kind. One of the first things I did when I moved out on my own was get a dog… admittedly, a dog that would soon develop a brain tumor and go quite mad, so perhaps that’s not a great first foray into pet ownership. After that false start of my life as a dog owner, I had a long stretch of apartment living and a cat who was much more suited to the long hours I was working and commuting into the city every day. She never looked at you disapprovingly when you didn’t get home on time.

With the move to Memphis and a job that didn’t involve a ridiculously long commute and the overhanging threat of spur of the moment trips to whatever disaster ravaged part of the country was the hot topic of the week, the natural thing to do was get another dog. That’s where Winston came into the picture… because lets be honest, that’s a face you can’t say no to, right? If one dog is good, of course, then two dogs must be better. I had planning on bringing home a second dog after Christmas. Having a puppy amidst the chaos of the holiday and the accompanying 30 hours on the road didn’t seem like a great idea. That was before the flyer went up on the office wall. A local family had an “accidental” litter of labs, mama didn’t survive, they were being hand fed by the owners, and eating them out of house and home. If the pups weren’t taken by the end of the week, they’d be going to the shelter the following Monday. The Shelby County shelter isn’t one of the nice ones you hear about and since I like animals much more than I like people as a rule, I thought I’d just go have a look at the litter. Just a look. I don’t want a puppy until after Christmas after all. Of course I came out of the house with a 12 pound lab tucked in my coat. She was the only chocolate in the litter and stayed on my lap until we pulled into the garage. I wasn’t set up for a puppy, didn’t have the toys, gates, food – any of it – but that’s when Maggie made her arrival. A Lady Margaret to go along with Sir Winston.

That’s a long way of getting to my point, but it’s important to understand the context here. After another $250 vet bill yesterday, another round of ear drops, another follow up later in the month, sometimes I wonder why we put up with these animals that leave hair everywhere, occasionally poop in the floor, cost a small fortune in medical bills, and eat a holistic blend of all-natural, hypoallergenic food. I live here and pay the bills, but the place has mostly gone to the dogs. They might run me into the poorhouse, but these Memphis dogs are probably the best thing I’ll take away from my time here.

Who’s down with OCD?

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Yeah, you know me. One of the perks of having mild OCD and a pervacive impatience streak is that when the issue is pressed, I will find something for myself to do to stay occupied. Things not going great at home? Launch myself into a new project at the office. Things not going well at the office, lay down stone edging around every flower bed in the yard. You get the idea. Tonight’s overpowering need to do something in the face of not yet being able to do what I really want to do has conveniently led to mowing the grass, starting the laundry, pondering what to blog about while I washed dishes, spot cleaning the kitchen, and a brief game of fetch. Not necessarily in that order. Now, of course, I’m doing the actual blogging. So if nothing else, at least more waiting has led to increased productivity. Still, I’d be happier with less productivity and more packing.  That’s not to be this weekend… which is probably just as well since half of everything in the house is pretty much still sitting in boxes from my false alarm back in January. I haven’t had the heart to unpack it just to turn around and pack it back again. This hasn’t been the way I planned to spend my Friday night, but I’m thankful for any distraction my slightly addled mind can come up with at the moment.

Marking time…

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Whomever decided that patience is a virtue should be clubbed about the head and neck like a baby seal. I can only assume that anyone who thought sitting around quietly waiting for something to happent to them, must not have had much worth waiting for coming their direction. Yet, here I sit; anything but patient and without the first thing to do about it other than continue sitting here waiting. That and railing against the virtue of patience, of course. I suppose they can make me wait, but there’s no power in heaven or on earth that can make me like it… or even want to like it. Gratification has been sufficiently deferred and I want it now, damnit.

Yes, if you’re wondering, it feels better now that I’ve said that. I’ll be busy marking time if anyone needs me.

Higher ground…

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With the Mississippi on the way up, I wouldn’t say we’re necessarily abandoning our position in West Tennessee, but we are making preparations for a tactical retrograde to positions on higher ground. If flooding along the Mississippi and its tributaries gets somewhere in the vicinity of the worst case scenario, my office will be at least partially underwater, roads and bridges leading to the base will be impassable, and there’s some disagreement about whether entire swaths of the county could see their power turned off for 1-2 weeks. That last part begs the question, who in their right mind builds the main electrical distribution panel for a city on the wrong side of the levee? Yes, I’m looking at you MLGW.

Looking at the FEMA flood maps, I can’t foresee any circumstances where the house would be in any direct danger from flooding, aside from the possibility of stormdrain and sewer backup – there’s a happy thought. The biggest risk for me seems to be the possibility of multiple days with no electricity. In the grand scheme of bad things than can happen, I know that being without power isn’t even close to the worst of it. However, if you’re a dedicated technophile, being without the juice even for a few hours can be cause for developing nervous tics. A week or more? That’s enough to fill your heart with dread.

Being forewarned, as they say, is being forearmed and plans are being put in place that would give me the opportunity to pull up stakes temporarily until something approaching a civilized level of public services have been restored. Assuming that the word is going to come down making this a reality the real questions then becomes – When and for how long? If it looks like a situation that will last more than a few days, the logical answer is to pack up the truck and head east. Sure, I could get a hotel alot closer, but the thought of spending an indeterminate amount of time in a hotel room with two 80 pound dogs doesn’t seem ideal. Then again, leaving the house undefended in a city like Memphis, with no electricity (and therefore no alarm), and hoping it hasn’t been looted and pillaged while I’ve been away doesn’t sound appealing either. For some reason, I don’t think the fine citizens of Memphis would respond to natural disaster any better than those of New Orleans did.

I plan to stay in place as long as I have two things: electricity and an open escape route to the east. When either one of those things seem to be in danger of going away, then I’ll be in the wind and headed for high ground.

Progress…

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If anyone is following along at home, tonight’s update is just a brief note to say that this morning’s interview went well. That is to say as well as an interview can go when the prospect of the interviewer being able to make an offer anytime in the near future is completely unknown. Like all my other sit downs with selecting officials from across the Mid-Atlantic, this office is also subject to my nemesis the hiring freeze. That unfortunate circumstance notwithstanding, I’m comfortable that I delivered the best pitch possible… and now we’re back to the waiting game. That’s progress.