Life In The Crossroads - Vol 1

It has been nearly a year since I did my 365 in the AI...time flies. Things change. Boy, do things change. In a nutshell, I was asked to take an early retirement from the Air Force. If I'm honest, and I mostly am, that still very much gets to me. It's exactly like getting out of a long relationship; the Air Force has been the longest relationship I've ever had in my life. I certainly dedicated a ton of my time and energy to that relationship, met a ton of her friends, tried to adapt and grow to be better to her. In the end, she told me "It's not you, it's me," and she left me a few months to pack up my things and go. That was a maaaaad scramble. Hitting the fast forward button, Miranda and I moved from Alexandria (of which I had a weekend to rest), moved to Carrollton, VA, and I got hooked up with Cameron Brooks to find me a job (thanks Jeff Guynn!). I went through a crash course of interviewing, learning interview questions, and book reading with the culmination being a 2 day, 13 job interview gauntlet. Of which led to 5 follow up interviews, the last 2 of which I conducted with the worst head cold you could imagine (didn't get a job offer, incidentally). All of this landed me a job with INVISTA, whose largest plant lies in Victoria, TX. They call Victoria, TX (and surrounding areas) "The Crossroads". You gotta admit, that's a cool ass nickname that they are not exploiting nearly enough. Victoria is two hours away from San Antonio, Austin, and Houston. I have used the joke "it's a geographical oddity, two hours from everywhere" about 15 times now, and will use it 15 more. Then 15 more after that. Victoria has about 61,000 people so it's basically exactly what I thought it would be. Needs a Cracker Barrel, Waffle House, and a Massage Envy and it'd be great. There's this whole thing here where old money is battling it out with new money. We all know this story, old money is rich and wants things to stay the same. New money wants more commerce to come into town and fancier stores. Old money does not like new money. New money normally wins out and if I have a good feel for this town I'm going to assume that they want fancier stores to spend money in. For example, the fanciest restaurant is downtown, a place called Sendera. It costs enough to eat there but I could go there in a tshirt and shorts if I wanted to. I can dig it, it's small town Texas. Jeans and boots and bolo ties are casual dress up here. What got to me was that the waiter flat out admitted that he wasn't trained in any way. That just floored me for some reason. Don't they train people at McDonalds? I'll ramble on more later...haven't even really mentioned anything I've done since I've been here. Jiujitsu and youth football come to mind... Later on, y'all.