August Recap

 

Well, today is the last day of our first full month down in Texas. Officially we’ve been down here 47 days, and let me tell you, the longer I’m here, the faster things seem to be going.

How are things going?

Glad you asked!

The house is in a good place. We’re about 99 percent unpacked, with about 90 percent of everything in its right place. We bought a sofa and two swivel chairs from a neighbor for our living room. We bought two new bed sets for our daughters, and a new bed frame for ourselves. A table and pictures for the foyer. Everything seems well with the place. The girls have their own “apartment” upstairs, but we all gather from time to time to watch a TV show together after dinner.

Oh, I just had an ADT alarm installed, and can control everything – a doorbell camera, a rear driveway camera, video recordings from both, the alarm itself and the panic button – all from my phone. So we feel safe. Not that we didn’t before: it’s a safe neighborhood. However, that safe neighborhood comes at a price, as we just got a letter from the HOA to replace two dead bushes at the side of our home or be fined. Oh well.

The girls are slowly but steadily adapting to their schools and schedules. We met all their teachers on two separate nights. Little One is taking an astronomy class, and they have star parties every Monday after a New Moon. Guess where I’m taking her next Monday! In the evenings when I’m cleaning up the kitchen they like to take out their bike and electric scooter and zip up and down our quiet streets. We do have two community pools, one of which has a volleyball court, Patch’s latest obsession now that she’s on her middle school team, though we only have been there once. Patch’s first volleyball game is tomorrow night.

Me, I’m getting by. Applied to thirteen jobs to date – lucky thirteen! – and have spoken with two recruiters. Had two interviews with a major soft drink manufacturer down here, but despite me following up, they haven’t reached back out to me. I think I might be overqualified – that’s the message I picked up during the second interview. I am waiting to schedule a phone interview with another company I reached out to, this one in health care, which is more aligned with what I was doing up north. They emailed me stating they were very impressed with my resume, but we’ll see.

To keep from going stir crazy I think I’m going to resume work on my space opera novel. I started outlining it last fall (up to 16 pages worth) and worked on it off and on until the logistics of the move in April took everything over. It’s calling out to me, so I think I’ll break out that outline, fatten it out some more, and start composing some sections in no particular order (ever ambitious, I wrote seven story lines into this novel, so, similar to how movies are filmed, I see no particular importance to write the novel in exact chronological order).

I started off walking and working out religiously, but may have overdone it. I’m not a kid anymore. Indeed, sadly enough, it seems half my daughters’ teachers are young enough to be my children. I took yesterday and today off, but tomorrow I think I should resume walking, maybe a mile or a mile and a half, instead of my usual 2.5, and maybe do some stretching instead of lifting the dumbbells. It helps with the attitude, the mindset.

Speaking of religion, we joined a local church down here. It’s actually a huge church, perhaps three times the size of the church we left up north. But we’re happy with it. We were actually selected to bring up the gifts to the altar two weeks ago, in front of a congregation of probably five or six hundred people. The church itself is new but retains a very reverent vibe, mixing traditional sacred art and design with the southwestern architecture so prevalent down here. Patch is looking to be confirmed this year, so we’ll have to investigate that now that we’re members.

The wife has been steadily growing in her new job. She’s making great coin, so money’s not a worry. She’s been out bonding with her team as well as her boss, and everything seems to be going well for her. Actually, we haven’t had a bad experience down here. The neighbors we’ve met have all been wonderful. Everyone’s been so nice. I think in 47 days I’ve only been honked at once on the roadway – a daily occurrence back north up in Jersey.

Book-wise, I wrapped up Frankenstein a few days ago and am finishing Keegan’s WW2 book on naval warfare this afternoon. I’m still adhering to my reading plan of a few weeks ago (now halfway done, by the way), but I think I’ll supersede Symond’s World War II at Sea with a book about Texas history I picked up for a dollar in a thrift store I went to with the little ones. And maybe chase that with the Asimov book, The Stars Like Dust, I picked up last Saturday.

More to come …

 My two dead bushes. 

Patch’s room making a cameo on the second floor.