Rebooting

A quick update for anyone who hasn't heard...

I'm in California now, San Pedro for anyone who knows the L.A. area. I burned out not long after the crash, and realized that life was on hold, spinning around in an endless succession of ordinary days. So I quit my job (they let me hire my replacement though), packed my wife and other assorted treasures into a van and headed back down the road that brought me East.

The drive itself is a blast, particularly when you have a companion and more than two dollars to rub together. The northeast isn't much to speak of, but once you're bouncing across the Ozarks listening to Coal Miner's Daughter on the classic Country station ("Oh, we have both kinds, Country and Western") it's all good. Oklahoma is still full of cows, north Texas is still one of the emptiest places on Earth that can realistically claim to be inhabited (someone must harvest all that corn), and New Mexico still looks like a Road Runner cartoon come to like.

Midwesterners are still as friendly as ever, they really do just seem to like people. In fact, the best night we spent was at the Travelodge in Elk City, Oklahoma. I'd stayed here before, except that five years ago the Travelodge was closer to the Interstate in a building now housing some dodgy sort of 'Budget Motor Lodge.' The Travelodge had moved into it's present home a year or so back when the Motel 6 left for a new building down the block. That's how the hospitality industry works in western Oklahoma I'm told.

I was told by the manager when we checked in. I assume he knows what he is talking about, his name was also listed on the plaque behind the desk as the franchises owner. Which was the kind of place this was. We weren't just staying in a hotel, we were staying in his hotel. He clearly didn't have much to work with, but the old furniture was at least clean, and the important bits all worked. How much profit can there be in renting rooms at thirty dollars a night? This was the sort of place where the desk clerk sold her (very nice) homemade quilts in the front lobby and insisted we at least eat something from the selection of breakfast pastries if we didn't have time to make ourselves some hot waffles.

This is why I hate so see urban 'sophisticates' bash red state populations- I like these people.

More on the trip another time... We got to L.A. safely and I did what anyone else would do in my situation, I took a long vacation. April-June were the first summer I had not worked in years, and probably the last. But it is tempting to quit work every few years to recapture that lost pleasure of knowing that all I have to do tomorrow is...

And now it is back into the job search. It's taking a while, because I am re-learning how to go about job hunting and because I am being a bit pickier about career moves. Ansoft was a place to work when I needed a place to work, but this time I'd like something a bit more. I'll be twenty-seven in a few weeks, and I'd rather not be in the same place I was when I was twenty-three.

(If anyone happens to be hiring, my resume is here.)

At the moment though, life consists manly of sitting on the porch with a bloody mary while I scan CareerBuilder for anything of interest. As long as the money holds out, and it will for some time yet, semi-voluntary unemployment can be quite pleasant.