Move: to Madison, WI (Day 20)

After 20 days, you’ve settled into a routine. Ideally, you have a very good idea of how to do your job. Also, you may have paid (off) the credit card bill(s) from your move.

But, your furniture is still at your old place, or in storage, and you’re still in the sublet. On the other hand, after 20 days, you may not miss your stuff. For now.

Indeed, the only thing (not person) that I miss is my garden, and compost bin.

O 'Yukon Gold' potato cultivar, you will be missed

While having a container garden on a balcony is feasible, composting in an apartment setting is not. In Houston, I had to keep a bale of hay in the garage, so that there was some anti-smell components to add to the compost when the need arose. With a balcony, a composting system (bin plus hay plus room to maneuver) may take anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of your balcony or patio.

As the Wired guide suggests, you’ll be buying dirt every season. The economics of apartment gardening lean heavily towards that of a money-sinking hobby, versus a money-saving task.

In more prosaic news, yesterday I checked the PO box, and there was mail! It’s taken more than two weeks, but Houston mail is making its way to Madison. Mail is also starting to arrive in the sublet mail box. Mostly fliers, but some sublet-specific stuff.

In other relocation news, I’ve visited several neighborhoods, and compared them to the neighborhood where the sublet is. While some neighborhoods have more people outside, walking their dogs, etc., they’re further from the office than the sublet is. Some neighborhoods have no highway or airplane noise whatsoever, but they’re much, much further from the office. Some neighborhoods have high-quality housing, but the neighborhood itself is monolithic and dull. One gets the feeling that it may be a ghetto in about ten or 20 years. Some neighborhoods have a decent-sized grocery store (something bigger than an Aldi) within five minutes' walking distance. But, you clearly hear the major road that is adjacent to the grocery store.

Overall, no neighborhood stands out as being really better in more than one way than the one I’m currently living. The sublet is close to work, and in a reasonably active, but quiet neighborhood. The build quality of the sublet is pretty good as far as apartments go. There are worse houses out there. But, the neighborhood is kind of pricey, and far from major grocery stores.

Right now, I’m unwilling to pay more than the mortgage payment equivalent-of-rent to live further away from the office. Only one neighborhood seems worth it, and it is the one within five minutes of a grocery store. It also has some the cheapest real estate in the area. I have yet to see the inside of house that is for sale there, so build quality is not yet fully known.

In other words, I may just stay in the sublet. Yeah, that means missing out on not owning real estate in Madison. But, I already own real estate in Houston. That house is being rented out. Selling the house there, to buy a house up here, is not an obvious good decision. At least, on a five-year planning scale.

In community events news, I’ve gone to a total of three library events: the John Scalzi reading, a performance by Forward Theater, and a discussion lead by Dan Egan on his new book. Forward Theater was salaciously funny. Egan’s talk gave some ideas that could be useful for my ecology hobby. However, it has become clear that I should go to community events that take place somewhere other than a library. This is not to avoid burn-out, but to avoid becoming accidentally complacent or dependent on library events.

But, the Middleton Library has indoor agriculture (sort-of), too!

 

Move: To Madison, WI (Day 10)

Settled into the sublet today. After 10 days of AirBnB, it’s nice to have one’s own kitchen and bathroom. It’s not-so-nice to sleep on the floor. We’ll see how my back feels, and determine from there whether an air mattress is necessary.

If you’ve never moved into your own apartment or house before, be prepared to buy at least the following things:

Shower curtain + rings

Soap

Toilet paper

Bathmat

Floor lamps + light bulbs

The sublet doesn’t have ceiling-mounted lights, making floor lamps a necessity.

Since this sublet has coin-operated laundry, I need to stop by a bank or credit union, and exchange bills for quarters. May also buy a sturdier laundry basket.

If you’ve lived your entire life near I-10, note that places north may not have central air conditioning. Especially where the winters are more brutal than the summers. In the case of the sublet, there is a wall-mounted unit in the living room, but not in the bedroom. Fortunately, summer nights in Madison seem to have lows in the 60s. Compare that to lows as high as 78 or 79 degrees in Houston. How humid Madison feels compared to Houston remains thus far not-yet-experienced.

On Friday, I went on a tour of Sector 67. Sector 67 is one the local maker-spaces in Madison. If you’re in town, you should definitely check them out. The size of their facility, and the amount and variety of their machinery, would compete very well in the Houston area.

This is just the lobby. 

Click to see a larger version of the photo.

On Saturday, I attended a show by the Monkey Business Institute, at the east Madison location of the Glass Nickel Pizza company. MBI is an improv-comedy troupe, which may or may not be your cup of tea. MBI offers three levels of shows. I saw the Adult show, versus All-Ages or one of Imprompt2, the Merge, and so forth (they rotate which will be the third offering).

I laughed, sometimes hard, which is all you need to know about how funny they are.

Parking was free at both Sector 67 and Glass Nickel Pizza.

On Sunday, Aldi and Target reminded would-be shoppers that it was Easter, and that people looking for food or general merchandise had better go to Pick ‘n Save and Wal-Mart, respectively. Good thing those last two were open; I might have had to find a church at which to confess the sin of trying to buy food and a shower curtain on Easter.

As for other community events, there are at least two places in Madison offering Krav Maga lessons:

Urban Krav Maga Madison
FightPrime Training Center

There are also two local community theaters:

Madison Theatre Guild
Verona Area Community Theatre

Now, for real estate analysis and empirical research:

Before buying a house, it may be a good idea to drive to the neighborhood where the house is located, and answer the following questions:

1) Do you feel safe parking your car here, and walking away?

2) Do you feel safe walking around the neighborhood?

3) What do you hear or see that you like or don’t like?

Remember that you’re not buying just a house, but also a neighborhood.

I’ve walked around two neighborhoods so far, and found that each has their pros and cons. The first is closer to work than the second. The first also has a townhouse that the realtor showed me, and the townhouse looked very nice.

However, the first neighborhood felt sterile. If you’ve read Jane Jacobs, then you will know what I mean when I write that this neighborhood may suffer the suburban version of the “great blight of dullness.” This, despite the neighborhood having a diversity in residential building types: single-family houses, townhouses, and apartments. However, the buildings have not aged enough to show whether they will age well or not. This is despite the fact that the townhouse that the realtor showed me was built in the 1980s. It appears to be the newest building in the immediate vicinity.

The second neighborhood is more established, with more people outside. The housing is either single-family or duplexes, and there is an elementary school within the neighborhood. It’s not all residential. The only problem that I experienced right in the neighborhood was traffic noise. A nearby US Highway is indeed very close. You could see and hear cars and trucks whizzing by. Once I heard a motorcycle engine rev, I knew this neighborhood wasn’t going to work out. Were it not for the noise, this second neighborhood would be worth the commute.

Overall, neither neighborhood is significantly better than the one in which the sublet is located. As I type, the window is open, and all I can hear is the drone of a distant air conditioner, if that is what it is. As far as noise goes, it’s steady and subtle. Only one airplane has passed over this neighborhood, since I opened the windows this afternoon.

Move: To Madison, WI (Day 5)

The biggest news is that an apartment management company approved my lease application. The next step is to sign some paperwork, pay the deposit, and get the keys. The scheduling of those steps is tricky. Their office has business hours, and I work during those business hours. We’ll get there eventually.

I have completed two days of work at the new job. Everything is going well. Not sure yet when I’ll have time to return to Houston to move my furniture, but...we’ll get there eventually.

Checked the PO Box. Got some junk mail. Nothing personal yet.

Ate dinner at Saigon Noodle on Odana Road. It’s recommended. While the Chicken Soup was very good, the hot tea was excellent. The sense of fullness from the soup and the tea really took off after about five minutes had passed after eating. The sense of fullness reached its peak about fifteen minutes later at the Aldi. Bought some frozen dinners and lunches for the week ahead. The credit card bills look huge.

When it comes to thinking about Madison, there’s many comparisons that appear attractive to make, but also do not feel fair to make as of right now. While comparing Madison to Houston seems obvious and inevitable, it’s also unfair. The size difference alone drives many other noticeable patterns and trends.

If size was the primary controlling factor, then the only towns I could personally compare Madison to are Huntsville, Alabama, and Beaumont, Texas. While these three towns are not exactly the same size, there are in the same rough order magnitude (city-only non-metro populations between 100,000 and 600,000). Houston might be better compared to Chicago, but I’ve not yet been to Chicago.

So, how does Madison compare to Huntsville and Beaumont? For starters, it’s a northern city, while Huntsville and Beaumont are southern. There’s no ambiguity there. Madison and Huntsville have economies largely driven by government, education, or the military. Beaumont’s economy is largely oil and gas, though there’s a university in Beaumont as well.

Really, though, comparing Beaumont and Huntsville to each other is more interesting than either to Madison. While both Beaumont and Huntsville are southern, they represent different aspects of the South. Beaumont is Deep South, or Gulf Coast South, or Cajun, or something like that. Huntsville is the Tennessee Valley, or southern Appalachia, or the foot hills of Appalachia, or something like that. Beaumont gets hurricanes. Huntsville gets blizzards and tornadoes. Beaumont is like a mini-Houston, with few-if-any of Houston’s good features. Huntsville does not appear to be a mini-version of anything else near by. Birmingham and Chattanooga seem sufficiently different from Huntsville, and sufficiently similar in size.

Given a choice, I would rather live in Huntsville than Beaumont. Huntsville has the more beautiful countryside and cleaner air. But, if Beaumont has got you down, you can always drive to Houston, which is an hour-and-a-half away-ish. The nearest cities to Huntsville are about two hours away. Even then, the really big city that is nearest to Huntsville is Atlanta, which is about 6-or-so hours away, via mountain roads. Beaumont connects to Houston via I-10, which really has only one significant curve, near Winnie.

So, what about Madison? Even though I enjoy the short commutes, the light traffic, the very-good-to-excellent dining options, and the urban and suburban areas, nothing really stands out that says, “Ah! This is Madison!”

For people who live in or know much about Houston, imagine a city consisting only of the Clear Lake neighborhoods of Houston, plus Webster and League City. Surround it by several dozen miles of countryside. It’s just Clear Lake-Webster-League City. Interstate 45 largely bypasses it, yet both Webster and League City technically straddle I-45. The town hall and city government in League City is bigger, if it had to represent Clear Lake and Webster. The University of Houston – Clear Lake campus might be larger, as there is no longer a much larger U of H main campus 25 miles up the freeway. The hospitals might be larger, and more numerous, as there is no Texas Medical Center 28ish miles up the freeway. Johnson Space Center remains in place, at its current size. Ellington Field becomes a full-fledged airport, but still smaller than Hobby Airport,12 miles up the road currently. You get the idea.

What town in Texas is actually like this, today? Brian-College Station? A bit small. Its metro population is the same as Madison’s city population. Among Texas cities that aren’t part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the ones closest in size to Madison are Laredo and Lubbock. I don’t recall ever visiting Laredo, and I’ve only ever driven through Lubbock. Reading through Wikipedia, Laredo appears known for being almost entirely Hispanic, and having its economy largely based on trade with Mexico. Lubbock is a “hub city,” being a center of trade and services in an otherwise empty part of the country. Just like all the other western cities: Amarillo, Denver…

So, there you have it. Madison eludes comparison because there is nothing currently in Texas like it enough to draw a comparison.

Move: To Madison, WI (Day 2)

When it became clear that I would have to drive to the sublet leasing office to drop off the application form during business hours, looking up its exact location became necessary. The relocation agent had driven her and myself there yesterday. Upon determining its location, it was too close to a freeway to be considered as even a short-term residence. Re-evaluating all the options, I chose the sublet that was the furthest from freeways and industrial areas. It also just so happened that the chosen sublet was the closest to the new employer.

To make matters happier, the application process could be done entirely online. Ba-da-bing, done! No word from them yet, but it is still the weekend.

In the meantime, I’ve looked up community events and volunteer opportunities.

The two Madison-area makerspaces (Sector 67, and The Bodgery) have their open houses on certain days of the week; otherwise, only members can access the spaces.

The Madison Astronomical Society has their next meeting on Friday April 14.

Corey Feldman’s Whad’ya Know performance will be on Saturday April 29.

The Monkey Business Institute has weekly improv shows, every Saturday.

I called up a contact for a Learn to Hunt event, only to find out the that target audience is for children. The good news is that the contact is willing to take people out turkey hunting, provided that they get a hunting license and camouflage.

I then called the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), to ask about non-resident vs resident license options. The short story is that one needs a Wisconsin Voter ID or Driver’s License for at least 30 days to qualify for residence license. The longer story is the licenses are purchased yearly. So, if I want to hunt right away, I need to buy the non-resident license for the year. The cost for a non-resident turkey hunting license is at least $63, plus stamps. For resident, the cost is $18 plus stamps.

I also e-mailed the contact for Hunting for Sustainability program, to ask if the program would be offered for 2017.

The Wisconsin State Park System is looking for volunteers.

One of the prerequisites to enter the EMT program at Madison Area Technical College, is to have a CPR certification for professionals. I need to call up the EMT program, to ask if one should put down their program’s contact details on the application form, or their own personal contact information.

I ate a late lunch at Monty’s Blue Plate Diner. Had the Blue Plate Burger with French Fries. The blue cheese and grilled onions on the burger were succulent. Monty’s Blue Plate Diner is recommended.

Then, for fun, I drove to the Post Office to check the mail. There was no mail.

Then, for necessity, I drove to an Aldi, and bought bananas, party mix, beer, and a frozen dinner. Total was about $15.

Oh, by the way, the above driving was done without a GPS. One of reasons to drive to the (west-side) Post Office was to figure out how to get there from eastern Madison. Granted, I looked up where all this stuff was online, and studied the maps carefully. Nonetheless, I had to navigate by memory of places previously driven to, or of maps as seen on a laptop.

For tonight’s entertainment, I drove downtown (still without the GPS) to see John Scalzi speak at the downtown library. It turns out that there was a “special event” happening downtown, so the cost to park in a garage was $8.

A Special Event: The Essence of Wisconsin

Usually, I drive in ever-widening circles, in search of free parking. If none is to be had within a mile or two, then I use mass transit. This tactic worked reasonably well in Houston, especially since the light rail has recently expanded. The oh-so-Progressive Madison does not have light rail running down University Boulevard from the airport to downtown to Middleton. For shame, Madison. For shame.

Anyway, I didn’t search for free parking; my vehicle still has a lot of my belongings. From that perspective, eight bucks didn’t buy so much a parking space, but rather a lower probability of broken windows and missing stuff.

Oh yeah, John Scalzi was kind of funny. He’s a goofy nerd who kept bringing up how much money he wanted for options for his intellectual property, and how that options money is paying for college for his kid. He also read excerpts of his material. If what he read is typical of his product, I’m glad to have saved the time and money. Especially the money. I just spent eight bucks on parking.

Move: To Madison, WI (Day 1)

Summary: Ate breakfast, got a PO box, saw some houses and condos, then some sublets, and ate dinner. Drove home from dinner without the help of the GPS.

The long version: I drove to Crema Cafe in Monona for breakfast. The Lake Edge Eggs and Hash were good, but not enough to justify the 20ish mile drive. That, and the food took a while to arrive. Crema is only worth it for people who live in or near Monona, and are eating with other people, or a laptop.

After that, I drove to a Post Office branch, and paid for the smallest available PO Box. The helpful clerk sold me on paying for 6 months, and getting a partial refund if I cancel within the next 3 months. That way, I get a bit less than 3 months of a PO Box, for far less than paying for 3 months upfront. The man was by far the most helpful Post Office employee I’ve ever encountered.

It also turns out that you don’t have to reserve a box online. You can just show up, wait in line, request a form, fill it out, get back in line, show it and your two forms of government ID (one of which must have your photo), pay for the box, receive your keys, test your keys, and leave with your new temporary address. Reserving online, and printing the form at home, seems to save only the second wait in line compared to just showing up at the Post Office. It's good that the Post Office has the forms there. Sometimes your printer is over a 1000 miles away, and asking the AirBnB host to use their printer seems a bit inappropriate.

Met with the realtor, and she showed me some houses and condos. The drive up to Mazomanie was nice, but...one could feel the 25 minutes going by. It’s weird how 25 minutes of countryside feels different than 25 minutes of Interstate 45 in Houston.

Meanwhile, there are some great townhouses well within my price range, right in Madison. When you include the basements of these townhouses, or any house for that matter, the total square footage rivals or exceeds that of Houston houses. Combine that with the relatively low condo maintenance fee, which also includes insurance, one can begin to see the value of Midwestern real estate.

The realtor warned that given my price range, I am looking at about 30- to 45-minute rush hour commute, if I insist on having a single-family house. The questions are: what kind of a commute is most tolerable, and what are you coming home to? She advised living in a sublet for a few months, and getting a lay of the land.

Then, onto sublets. The prices seem reasonable, given the size and quality of the apartments, and their neighborhoods. What seemed weird was that there were no change machines anywhere with coin-operated washers and dryers. One has to “save your quarters,” or go to a bank. What?

The year 1997 called. They said that they ran off with your change machine because 1977 stole theirs.

But wait, there’s more! The laundry rooms also have operating hours. There are apartments above the laundry rooms, so the hours are posted to help keep the noise down. Seriously? I’ve lived in two apartment complexes in Houston. One had a 24-hour laundry room with a change machine. The other had a washer and dryer in the unit. If you wanted to start doing your laundry at 1:00 am Saturday morning, you went for it. Not so in these sublets.

Two of the sublets have in-unit washers and dryers. Not only that, one of them is cheaper by the square foot than the cheapest sublet with coin-operated washers and dryers. The ones with in-unit laundry also have friendlier lease terms than the cheapest sublet. The choice is becoming more obvious, but I’m going to sleep on it.

For dinner, I drove back to Monona, to the Waypoint Public House. Had a stout beer, and the tenderloin poutine. Instead of gravy, the tenderloin was seared, sliced, and layered on the cheese fries. Waypoint Public House is recommended.

I've now driven back to the AirBnB host's house enough times that I don't have to use the GPS to find the way back to their place. First the PO Box, now knowing the way back to a certain place. Eventually, I will earn the cheese hat.

Move: To Madison, WI (Arrived)

Currently in Madison. There is something like a gentle culture shock, to go from Little Rock to Madison. To put what one sees from Little Rock to Madison into context requires asking questions and examining one’s observations.

To start, what are the borders of the Southern United States? I don’t mean Texas and Arkansas. I mean instead the ineffable essence that is the South. Its attitude and its history. Its horrible problems, and its charm. Where does it begin and end?

In Texas, I have a rough idea of its boundaries. Houston is a border town between the South and the Spanish-speaking Southwest. On Interstate 10, the Southwest peters out somewhere around Anahuac. Beaumont is definitely the South. It has the racial dichotomy and all that comes with it. Meanwhile, on I-10 again, the South peters out near Columbus. San Antonio is definitely Southwestern. It has the Spanish history and linguistic pre-dominance.

From Houston, headed north on I-45, the Southwest ends somewhere around Huntsville. From there, it’s the South all the way up to Dallas. Fort Worth is the West.

On US Highway 59 from Houston, the Southwest ends somewhere around Splendora. From there, it’s the South all the way to Little Rock and Memphis and then...that’s where I lose certainty.

North of the Arkansas side of Memphis, once you’re out of the Ozarks, is as flat as you can imagine the Great Plains to be. But, this is the Mississippi Delta region. Definitely the South. But, what about southeastern Missouri? Headed north on I-55, references to crawfish fade almost immediately. References to Southern Cooking fade gradually.

About halfway between the Arkansas border and St. Louis, German place- and business-names become more common. Highways in Arkansas are dedicated to fallen policemen and soldiers with decidedly Anglo surnames. About halfway to St. Louis, the surnames become Germanic.

Perhaps, it is the halfway-point between St. Louis and the Arkansas border, where the South fades, and the...Midwest?...Breadbasket?...region begins. Where beer-brewing has a history and a gusto that just isn’t so in the South.

St. Louis itself looks like it has a history of industry that no place in Texas has. Smoke stacks are made of concrete or bricks, unlike the shiny metallic ones in Houston or Pasadena, TX. By the way, the St. Louis Arch, as viewed from the freeway, is worth it. It looks just like it does in the pictures.

Going back to the regionalism topic, what about the Rust Belt? It seems like something that you would recognize immediately upon seeing it. Well, here’s the thing. Individual cities and towns can be Industrial or Rust Belt-y, but smaller towns and farmland usually aren’t. If the Rust Belt has a theme, it is: Industrial Past, and Decline Ever Since. For the Breadbasket: Farming Past, and the Factories Never Arrived. The Rust Belt has experienced a slow-motion apocalyptic decline in population. The Breadbasket has experienced an even slower-motion, far steadier decline in population. Notwithstanding the university towns in both regions.

That said, I put St. Louis in the Rust Belt. It has seen better days. For that matter, everything from St. Louis to Rockford, Illinois, is Rust Belt. An awful, but truthful way to know if a place is in the Rust Belt is this: did the town or city experience white flight on an almost grand scale? A more subtle question might be: did the town or city experience its heyday in the 1920s?

Madison, based on my limited reading, does not have the history of Rust Belt cities like its neighbor Milwaukee. It never experienced a decline in population, least of all since the 1960s. It never industrialized in the way that Milwaukee or Chicago did.

If Madison had its heyday, it never ended.

Move: To Madison, WI (1 Day Before Arrival)

Tuesday was so busy that it ran into Wednesday morning. Packing up kitchen gear, clothing, and other necessities just seemed to take longer than expected. This is a lesson to carry over for the furniture move.

To get from Houston to Little Rock, one takes US Highway 59 to Interstate-369 in Texarkana, then I-30 to Little Rock. It’s about a 7-hour drive.

East Texas from Houston to Texarkana reminds one of Mississippi, only more prosperous. It’s the trees. US-59 seems to turn and wander through forests and towns, with enough stop lights and left turns to make one appreciate freeways.

About four hours from Houston, in Jefferson, Texas, a cashier replied to a question regarding if the store required customers to spend a minimum amount of money in order to use a credit card. She replied, “We don’t have limits on credit cards. We’re not foreigners. We’re Americans!”

Once in Arkansas, it looked as if Arkansas is more country than Texas, in more ways that one. For starters, there appeared to be more country music stations per capita than in Texas. On US-59, one could easily pick up hip-hop or Tejano. In Arkansas, it was easier to pick up country. I saw three different people wearing a bandanna, camo, and overalls, respectively. That’s three more than in East Texas.

Maybe it’s because US-59 goes from town to town to town, but I-30 in Arkansas seems to go through a somewhat more northern-forest version of Texas, with far fewer towns.

When it comes to Little Rock, all I can confidently say is that if you’ve been in Houston for over a year, you forget what driving on hills is like.

Here's my current advice for people moving solo across the country for work. Realize that for all the planning that you do, you will be in “react mode” for much of the time. Talk with real estate professionals as soon as possible, if you’re serious about buying a house. Make hotel or AirBNB reservations for at least the first week in the new town. Reserve a PO Box online. If you’re not moving everything at once, be sure to have all the stuff you need for “camping out” in an empty apartment.

That includes a sleeping bag (or several blankets), cooking appliances (toaster, electric pressure cooker, etc.), and clothing that is appropriate for at least the next six months, depending on the climate.

For your first day on the job, you'll need Government IDs (passport, SS card, birth certificate, etc.). You will also need to dress professionally. This is for photos for your badge, the company’s directory, public relations, etc. What “professional” means varies among industries. Since you’ve likely had an in-person interview, you have an idea of what people wear in the office. Go for at least one “step” or “level” beyond what you saw. For men at least, if you walk in wearing a coat and tie, and see that the office is much more casual than you remember, then you can easily remove the coat and tie.

Tomorrow’s drive will bring experiences of Missouri, Illinois, and finally Wisconsin. Except for Chicago-area airports, I’ve never been to Illinois.

Move: To Madison, WI (4 Days Before Arrival)

Since Tuesday, the big themes of the move have been preparing the house to be rented out, and having good-bye dinners with friends and family.

On Wednesday, a contractor replaced a bathtub faucet. The replacement works well. On Thursday, I visited the new location of the CreatorSpace. If you haven’t been there yet, check them out!

On Friday, I transferred money from one Credit Union to another via yet another Credit Union. The first one had a Certificate of Deposit, which had the money for the tuition pay-back to the employer. (They paid for me to go back to grad school; now that I’m leaving, I owe them a pro rata share of what they paid.) Anyway, the first CU does not have the capability of transferring money seamlessly from itself to another CU. To get the money from the first CU to the CU that has my checking account, one has to use a third CU that has Shared Branching.

On Saturday, Dad came by for a visit. We had coffee at Murder by Chocolate, then he helped me trim some trees in the back yard. Later, I made a pot roast for him and some friends. We ran through the Bubble Quiz. Dad “won” with the highest score. The quiz is really good at sparking conversations about society, culture, and politics.

On Sunday, I bid farewell to the Adult Discussion group at the Bay Area UnitarianUniversalist Church. Then, I bought some supplies at Home Depot for doing some more repairs. The day ended with dinner with some friends at B&B Butchers. Highly recommend eating there, if you’re willing to spend ~$80 per person for appetizer, main course, side dish, and alcohol. But, wow, the bacon, the beef, the mushrooms, the mojito…

The evening ended with drinks and tiramisu at a friend’s house. We discussed politics well into the evening. I transferred the title of the VW Rabbit to one of my friends. She drove herself another friend away. I shook hands with the last friend, and bid each other farewell.

Monday will be my last day of work. I will need to turn in all the company stuff, hand over the employee badge, and sign my final time card. Afterwards, my boss and coworkers will all converge at a local pub.

The following day, Tuesday, will be the last full day in Houston. Final repairs will need to be made. Final dinner with relatives. Packing up the Subaru for the drive to Madison.

The plan for Friday April 7 is shaping up. Will look at some houses and sublets with the real estate agent. The Madison weather forecast is becoming more relevant.