Bye Texas, Hello Alabama

It was a hard decision to make, leaving family, friends, and home for a promising new job in a city 600+ miles away. The job was exactly the type of work I want to be doing. It’s new, challenging, and cutting-edge. The town is certainly smaller, about twice the size/population of Lubbock. We miss visiting family on a regular basis, our favorite restaurants, and our comfortable home. We moved into an apartment close to where I work and once the house sells we will look into buying a house in Madison. A few of the restaurants we desperately miss are Pot Belly’s, Free Birds, Genghis Grill, and a number of Tex-Mex places. We’ve tried about five Mexican food places and only two of them were good. A few of the things I’ve learned so far are:
1. They don’t serve hot sauce and chips, they serve salsa and chips.
2. Use any available bottled hot sauce to mix into the salsa.
3. Mexican food and Tex-Mex isn’t the same thing (pay attention to what they say they serve).
4. A buffet of Mexican food is just gross.

Still Looking

I haven’t updated my blog in a while. I’ve been looking for a new job and about a month after being laid off, went to work as a contractor for the very same company that me go. It was a bit odd going back to work in a place I thought I would never see again. Pulling up in the parking lot the first day I had to laugh to myself, but I went back to work like I never left. My computer was still there and nothing had really changed.
During my time looking for a different job I created a new website with the domain name, www.paulhatfield.me, to keep my work separated from my blog. The website URL ends with “me”, because “com” was taken. My resume and screen-shots of the work I have done can be viewed on that website.
Also in my spare time I’ve been working to port the screen saver that I worked on several years ago to Linux and I have also been geocaching. A trip or two ago Alexis and I ran into more inhabitants, which will probably increase as things become greener. This will be our first summer geocaching and we expect the heat and humidity to rise. Our plan is to hit the trail early in the morning and hope things are much cooler.

March Madness

If you haven’t already heard, I was laid off at BRIT Systems earlier this month. I’m not happy about it. I enjoyed working with the people there and the work that I was doing. The guys I worked with have been very supportive, offered to be references, and passed my contact information to others. The last two and a half weeks have been decent as far as phone interviews and one in-person interview. My motivation and spirits are high for the most part. I’ve kept a schedule similar to what I had on the days I worked from home, except now my job is to find another job. So I’m being productive; sending resumes, talking to recruiters, and networking.

Setting the depressing aside, last weekend we drove over to Lake Lavon and geocached along the Trinity Trail. The trail stretches 25.5 miles along the west side of the lake and only allows hiking and horse back riding. We only walked 2 and a third miles of it before making the hike back to the car. Our walk took us through some nice wooded areas, a farmers field, and lots of mud. Crossing the field was strange and felt like a mile walk in itself due to the mud and horse tracks which made the ground uneven. Overall on the first trip we netted 10 geocaches. We could make four more trips and still have more to find. So we will certainly be back.