The first week of the journey

On Dec. 20, I bid a fond farewell to my coworkers in Indian Head, Maryland.  A few days later, I bid a somewhat choked-up farewell to my apartment in Waldorf, MD.  While my wife and I may not have especially liked the apartment or the management company, it was still home for the last four years.

The reason we're moving is pretty simple.  My wife is being relocated to Texas, and my paycheck couldn't support both of us in the Washington DC area.

Closing our apartment in Waldorf left me with nowhere that my name's on the lease.  We're currently "living" in my wife's New Jersey apartment (and by "living", I mean take-out food, surrounded by boxes, waiting for the next stage).  Our two cats went to my in-laws' home for Christmas and will be staying there until we head for Texas in mid-January.  Once we get there, we'll be staying in a hotel for a month while we search for an apartment in our landing zone and I search for a job in my field.

You'd think that finding a job for a Mechanical Engineer would be easy in Texas.  After all, there's so many industries that involve engineering there.  Unfortunately, the holidays are a lousy time for a job search, plus the "Fiscal Cliff" crisis has everyone wondering what their budget will be next year.

At least I'm finally seeing some snow fall here on December 26th.  It's a sight I've not seen all that much of, living in Maryland.

In between my welcome post and now (all of five minutes), I asked myself why I'm posting this online rather than just writing a journal or posting status updates to Facebook.  I'm not really sure why, actually.  I've started to set up this blog several times, but always pulled back before today.  Whatever the reason, I hope you all enjoy the writing to come.