Tag Archives: Memphis

Deliverance…

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May 4th isn’t a day particularly noted in the annals of world history. To me, though, May 4, 2011 resounds with just as much meaning as July 4, 1776 or October 14, 1066. May 4th, you might remember, is the anniversary of my deliverance. It’s the day I got the long sought after call to end my long, unhappy exile in Memphis and return forthwith to my right and proper home in the great State of Maryland. I may have spent happier days, but I’m sure I can’t remember when.

It’s been a turbulent, chaotic, and altogether expensive year setting things right after they went so badly wrong, but I don’t begrudge it an instant of the aggravation or expense. It would have been a deal at ten times the cost as far as I’m concerned.

A year’s distance has softened the worst of the hard edges that surrounded my departure. In fact, some parts of my time in Memphis I can even look back on fondly now. Knowing that 90% of my problems there were attributable by a single individual is still a bitter pill to swallow. Then again, if it hadn’t been for that narcissistic prima donna I might be in Memphis still, rather than having fought my way back to the shores of the Chesapeake.

Every time I’ve gone away I’ve always managed to find my way home again. This time I’ve landed where I belong and it’s going to take a pry bar, a court order, and high explosive ordinance to get me to budge.

Doing God’s work…

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Sometimes I leave the office at the end of the day feel like I’m doing God’s own work. Other times I feel like I’ve spent the day beating myself bloody against a great stone wall. Nothing uncommon about that, I guess. The problem isn’t that there’s too much or too little to do, as much as it is there’s no moderating influence. Monday might be silent as a tomb and the next day you run with your hair on fire from the time you set foot in the building. That’s not a complaint (seriously), just a statement of fact. Still, it would be awfully nice if there was some way to smooth out the peaks and valleys on the demand side of the equation. When I figure that out, I’ll get busy writing my best selling leadership and management book and retire with a nice royalty check. Until then, I’ll just keep my head down until the winds shift.

Since I’m always the optimist, it’s worth noting that I still smile when I drive across the Susquehanna at 4:25 every afternoon. It’s worth remembering that no matter how strange the day has been, my days were always stranger in West Tennessee than this place could ever hope to be. The benefit of having been on the bottom looking up is that by comparison, everything else looks like ice cream and lollipops.

The joys of home ownership…

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Like pretty much everyone who purchased a house before 2007, I’m still trying to make my peace with the fact that my one time castle is worth about what it would have been had I bought it in 2002. It doesn’t quite make me want to jump off a bridge, but it does cry out for me to bash my head repeatedly against a blunt surface. I never expected my house to make me rich, but I had hoped it would, at least, have the decency not to make me poor. Since I had the foresight to buy just at the peak of the market, I’m doing my best to make peace with probably always having a house in Memphis… Unless it burns to the ground or otherwise gets smited by the finger of an angry God, the chances of being able to sell the place and just break even anytime in the next two decades would appear to be running somewhere between slim and none. That’s an obnoxious reality that I’m doing my best to ignore for the time being.

We’re a nation of 300 million souls and growing. They all have to live somewhere right? Surely at some point someone will be interested enough in a nice three bedroom, two bath house in Memphis to not make me feel like the prettiest guy in the prison shower when we get to the closing table.

Not cool…

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One of the last things I did before leaving Memphis was add an earthquake rider to my insurance policy. Memphis is prone to periodic rumbles after all and only being on the hook for 10% of replacement cost seemed like a good idea at the time. In Memphis, the next “big one” on the New Madrid fault system is one of those things you pretty much just accept as a possibility but don’t spend much time thinking about. Moving back east, the idea of an earthquake was even further from my mind. I know they happen here too, but only small ones that stay well below the threshold that most of us are able to feel.

Look, I know that everyone is playing this down, but the earth friggin’ moved and not in that nice calming way that it does all the time. The firmament became something less than firm. I’m not ok with that. It’s like rocky road ice cream suddenly tasting like liver and onions and everyone just deciding that it was no big deal. Not cool at all.

I remember feeling the chair move under me and then standing up at my desk watching the lights sway above me. I remember the overwhelming feeling that my equilibrium was just a touch off as the world lurched. I’m not embarrassed to admit that was the point where I bolted for the door. I think you’d all be surprised at the speed with which this fat man can move when he has the proper motivation. It’s for the best that there were no women or children between me and the outside, because I learned this afternoon that when faced with imminent peril, I have no intention of slowing down until there was blue sky and not five floors of concrete above my head. Realistically was anyone expecting me to be the selfless hero directing others to safety? In this case, I think the infantry motto, “follow me,” is the more appropriate course of action… even if I did pause long enough at my desk to pick up my iPad, phone, and building ID card. Just because I’m running for my life doesn’t mean I’m willing to drop off the grid or be stuck in an endless line of people with no ID cards in the morning.

Being local…

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Although I’m one of the last in, I think I’m actually one of only two native Marylanders in the office. As far as I can tell, everyone else has come to the north eastern corner of Maryland from their pre-BRAC homes in New Jersey. For years now, I’ve spent a good portion of my free time griping and complaining about how jacked up things were in Memphis and just how different and therefore bad it was. I’m realizing that these people are in the same boat, though in a different location. For them, it’s Maryland that’s strange and different… and nothing here is right. The traffic is jacked up. The network blows. They’re still working on the building when it was supposed to be done six months ago. Crime is terrible. There’s nothing to do and nowhere to find their favorite food. Everything I ever said about Memphis, they’re saying about Aberdeen… though I sort of chuckle when I pass by and hear someone complain about driving the whole two and a half hours to get back home. If nothing else, it’s fun to watch them get worked up.

Especially when you know they’ve got it all wrong. It must be terrible to be this close to the center of the universe and not even know it.

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.

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.

Incubation period…

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As of a couple of days ago I’ve been running my Hail Mary play to get out of Memphis for seven months. I dropped my first resume in the files on August 22nd, so you can check my math and make sure I’m doing it right. Seven months is what I’ve come up with… and in that time I’ve drilled exactly 276 dry wells. I’ll drill 5 more tomorrow and five the day after that.

This great escape can be left to incubate for another seven months, but know this – You can cut me off from the civilized world. You can torture me with powerpoint until I’m tapping out briefings with bloody stumps of fingers, but you cannot break my spirit. My voice shall be heard from this wilderness. I shall be delivered.

Still haven’t found what I’m looking for…

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If you would have told me back in August when I decided it was time to pull the plug on my Memphis experience, that I’d still be firing off resumes on the first day of spring in the following year, I simply would never have believed you. The irony of coming here in the first place was that I’d alwayherdsrd that getting back to the DC area was easy because no one from outside the area had any interest in going there. That may or may not be the case, but I’ve found that in most cases for jobs inside the beltway the typical number of resumes submitted for consideration is somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 with some running north of 500. I’ve got a healthy level of professional self confidence, but the odds get pretty long when you start talking about numbers like that.

There are still a couple of “maybies” out there that I haven’t written off yet, but it’s definitely slot slower going than I remember the last job search being. The department’s hiring freeze extending over the last two months, of course, hasn’t helped. The personnel office points only to the most recent memo that calls for the freeze to be reevaluated by April 1st to decide if it will be extended or to announce how hiring might be handled moving forward. It’s not reassuring that the hiring system will get back to something approaching situation normal any time soon, even if it starts up again in April. With a two month backlog and a notoriously slow process to begin with, things could be ugly for the forseeable future.

There doesn’t seem to be much to do now other than to continue piling my name onto as many heaps as possible and hope it turns up at the top of one of them. The federal government’s a big place and something will come along eventually, but this exercise in patience is wearing very thin. In hindsight, I’m sure this experience will be character building or something, but in the moment it’s enough to drive a man around the bend.

Homeowners Confederation…

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It seems that there are now enough lots in the subdivision sold to warrant the handover of the homeowner’s association from the builder to the actual homeowners. Actually, it’s not the builder… Two of them went bankrupt trying to build the place out, so we’re actually dealing with the a holding company who probably can’t get the place handed over fast enough.

Usually I wouldn’t bother with these meetings, but in the interests of trying to hold the usual extremists at bay, I figure showing up is the least I can do. Given the level of neighborly involvement here, I fully expect this to be a homeowner’s confederation rather than an actual rule-making or enforcement body. Once I’ve assured myself that the couple of activists aren’t going to run away with things, I plan on going back to ignoring 99% of what goes on here.