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.
Vacation Then Jury Duty
Alexis and I drove all over Texas and half of New Mexico for our vacation. We drove to Ruidoso and stopped in Lubbock on the way there, then stopped in Odessa on the way back to visit with family and friends. Our stays in all three places were great. In Ruidoso we went to a stocked pond where we caught some rainbow trout. They provided the poles, bait, license, and cleaned the fish. It was fun, but being a stocked pond, the fish hit the bait less than a minute after dropping the bait into the water. Here’s a few pictures:
The fish were placed in a sink after we caught them. Shortly afterward they were cleaned, hence the knife on the left.
This is one of the first fish I caught. The biggest one was 11.5 inches.
One of the strangest moments during our trip was when we noticed a car pull over near some road kill about 20 miles outside of Lubbock. Alexis and I figured they picked up the road kill, but for what purpose is a mystery. In Odessa, we were invited to go to an art show, which was the last thing I thought we would do on our trip. It was surprisingly a lot of fun. One of the funniest moments during our trip was seeing Hunter, my nephew, taste a lemon. At first he didn’t think anything of it until he managed to get enough of it to make a sour face. It was priceless.
Near the first of the month, I received a jury summons. I was panicked a bit when I opened it, but relieved when I saw that the date was after our vacation. Alexis had a jury summons several months ago and when she arrived at the courthouse, she was notified that it was canceled. I was hoping for the same. No such luck for me as I went through the whole process. To top it off it was a child indecency trial. There was testimony from the victim, the victim’s mother, a couple of police officers, and a child advocacy worker. No solid evidence and no other witnesses. There was evidence that the guy was in the area, but it really came down to whether the jury believed the child’s story beyond a reasonable doubt. After much debate and nearly a hung jury, a painful process, the verdict was guilty. I don’t know what the sentence is, since the jury doesn’t decide the punishment. I would be happy never to go through that, or anything similar, ever again.
Under the Weather Again
I am sick once again. Usually there is substantial time in between illnesses. I’m currently blaming the weather and the immunosuppressant that the doctor gave me to bring down the swelling around my eyes. If I’m not better by tomorrow, then I’ll go into the doctor.
Enough about me, Alexis has had a huge jump in traffic on her website. She usually has about four or five unique visitors a day, but on Friday she had 450 unique vistitors. This happened because Alexis’ brother, Jeremy, linked to her website to show his readers what great work she’s doing with shrinky dinks. Jeremy’s blog is focused toward games and Alexis has made several shrinky dinks based on a game called Final Fantasy XII. I believe Alexis is going to be selling them once she has a years worth.
Here’s a retro commercial if you’re not familiar with shrinky dinks.
I left out a couple of things that happened during my trip to West Texas. The day we arrived in Odessa; Alexis, Tyler and I, went to a Jackalopes hockey game and had a blast. We had seats two rows away from the glass behind the home teams penalty box. They were so close to the ice that when two opposing players fell near the boards we couldn’t see what was happening. It wasn’t until the referees pulled them up that we realized they had been fighting. The Jackalopes dominated the first period, but fell into penalty trouble in the second and the visiting team mounted a come back. In the third the Jacks came out on top. There were a couple of fights in the game, hard checking, and great puck handling which made the game enjoyable to watch. At the end of the game as the players skated to the locker room, they threw T-shirts to the fans and I managed to grab one. I also forgot to mention the fun I had giving my nephew a personalized blanket, which has his name, birth date, birth time, length, and weight. He’s too young to appreciate it, but I think he will eventually. Alexis helped me find a store to order the blanket from, which fortunately is located in a huge building in downtown Dallas. Instead of paying for shipping, I could pick it up. Even though I work downtown I’m not familiar with the area around the big buildings, so I called ahead to ask where I should park. The guy who answered said he would meet me at the street and to call when I was close. Curb side service was a nice surprise.
