Hyderabad

I just found out that one of my close friends from high school, who was the best man at my wedding, is getting married. This exciting not just because he found someone great to marry, but he is getting married in Hyderabad, India. I have always wanted to go to India. Unfortunately my ability to go is currently clouded. The wedding is set for August of 2008, right now my wife and I’s plan is to have our first child sometime early that summer. Who knows whether things will go according our plan, or even if they do how our ability to go to India would be effected. I am sure that these things will sort theme selves out over the next couple of months. Still I am very excited for good friend and the possibility that we might get to go to India.

Breakage

Ninth in Series about the menial jobs I have worked

I got my bachelors degree in December of 2002, my soon to be wife would not graduate until the following May. The long standing arrangement that I had with my parents was that they would help support me while I was in school, but once I got my bachelors I would have to totally support my self. I still had my job at the planning commission, but the loss of parental subsides put a major dent our budget. With an impending move to Louisiana, purchasing of house, and a wedding all occurring that summer, it was clear that I was going to need some more income. So immediately after my graduation I began to look for another part time job.

I got a part job at Lowe’s unloading trucks. It was a goof fit because it was part time in the evening so I could go there right after getting of at the planning commission job. At 5:00 I would leave the planning commission and head across the river, I would grab a quick dinner at an adjacent conscience store, almost always a couple of hot dogs, a bag of Chili-Cheese Fritos, and a Mountain Dew. Fortified by this nutritious meal I would work until about 9:00 unloading merchandise from trucks. It truly was a boring job. We broke a lot of stuff. Management never reprimanded us for breaking things, but if we took even a little longer than we were supposed to we got our asses chewed out. This policy lead to a lot breakage on our part. They must have had a similar policy at the distribution center where the trucks were loaded, drunken orangutans would have used more care in loading the truck. The most egregious example of the less carelessness is the time that they loaded a riding lawnmower on to a stack florescent bulbs, well they were florescent light bulbs, by the time truck go to us they were just boxes of glass shards.

It was an extremely mind numbing job, and the fact that I worked after spending the first part of the day at my other job made for extremely long days. Fortunately it was only for a short period of time. With the extra cash that I made were able to make one the best purchases I have made. We got Berkeley, who was a surprisingly expensive little puppy.

Finally May came a long and I left this job and Illinois, I also thought I was leaving menial labor behind forever, sadly this was not to be true.

Next: Bitterness

The Bane of My Backyard

My greatest landscaping dilemma is whether or not to remove this bush. When the original owners of my house moved in nine years ago, they did very little landscaping. While most homes my block are now enjoying the benefits of somewhat mature landscaping we are basically starting from scratch. The bush pictured above is one the few mature plants that we have. Sadly I'm this close ripping the mother f'er out of the ground.

It really is a nice looking bush, it grows well, not a small feat in this climate. Its flowers attract scads of hummingbirds to my living window, much to the delight of the cats. Unfortunately for a bush with so many wonderful qualities it could not have been planted in worse location.

It was planted just inches away from the edge of the pool. This is a problem because it fills the pool with an ungodly amount dead leaves and flowers. I clean the pool, turn my back, and once again the pool is full of debris from this accursed bush. Oh why couldn't the original owners have just planted it few more feet to the right?

I have looked in to if a could transplant it, but have been told that it would probably kill it. Which at this point would not break my heart. I am seriously thinking of replacing it with a giant agave this fall.

Start of a Career

Eight in a Series about my pre-professional jobs

By my Junior year of college I had finally picked a major, Political Science, but I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, I only picked a major because the university made me. Late that fall I saw an notice in the departmental newsletter that the local regional planning commission was looking for an intern. Start of a Career

This announcement caught my interest because urban planning was one of the career paths that I was kind of considering. I have always had a life long love of geography and differences between different communities has always fascinated me. I always found my self wondering why one community developed one way while a community just down the road developed in a completely different manner. Give these interests I decided to apply for that internship. I didn't know it at the time, but this was the first baby step into my career.

The agency that I got my internship with was a regional planning organization composed of all the counties and cities in the metropolitan area. Their basic function was to attempt coordinate the planning efforts of all these various jurisdictions.

About the time that I started my internship the data from the 2000 Census was released, I was tasked with analyzing to see what kind of interesting information was hidden deep within it. I found doing this demographic analysis to be totally entrancing. I loved how from a mass of seemingly meaning jumble of numbers that an interesting story could be told about a community. This experience was one the major factors that lead me to pursue a career in planning.

Like many other internships this one had its share of menial tasks, a good example being the stuffing of countless envelopes When the director forgot his hat in mittens at meeting across I was the one sent to retrieve them. Menial stuff like this bother much less at internship did not bother, because unlike the other menial jobs that I worked, paying my dues here could and did lead to something much better

One project that was educational and menial at the same time was the plotting with GPS the entire sewer system of an entire town. The good part of this project is that help me become proficient in using GPS. The down side was that in order to collect the necessary data I had to stand over an open sewer manhole for about a minute as the GPS registered its position and I measured the depth of the manhole. The stench of the sewer gas could be quite horrific.

As an intern I never had my own official office, rather I used the office of whatever position that was vacant at the time. The office was located on the top floor of the tallest building in town. The view from the 20th floor overlooking down town and the river was spectacular. My current office is great and I am grateful to have a window, but the view is nowhere near as awe inspiring, I gaze out on to the Super Wal-Mart parking lot across the street. For about a half year I occupied a corner office, not bad for an intern, a corner office of the top floor of the tallest building in town.

Another thing that made the internship/job so wonderful was how well the organization treated me. Initially the internship was to be unpaid six month experience. At the end of that term I was given the chance to stay on for in paid position. Granted it was only $8 an hour, but the hours were totally flexible and that was at the time most I had ever made. Not only that they applied this rate retroactively to my prior six month of unpaid work, a very nice gesture.

By the end of my two and half years there as was well on my way into the planning profession, I was doing the work of an entry level planner. By this point I had no doubt that urban planning was the career that I wanted to pursue. So I began the process of applying to grad schools. Thanks in large part to the experience that I got at this job I got a full scholarship plus a paid assistantship to the University of New Orleans.

Next job: More Menial Labor

111.2

To me it is now officially summer as the temperature smashes though 110 degree barrier this afternoon. To me summer down here is defined by day after after day of 11o+ degree days, and now it has begun. I guess those perfect 70 degrees with not a cloud in the sky winter days have to be earned some how. At least this year unlike my first two summers down here I have a working A/C in my car.

Five Years Running

The beginning of June marks five years since I took up running as a hobby. Five years ago I noticed that I was for the first time in my life starting to get fat. I had no interest in trying to diet, it just didn’t seem like the kind of thing that I would stick with. When I was a senior in high school I ran cross country, I enjoyed it, but had stopped running when I went away to school. Taking up running again seemed like a natural way to fight my growing gut.

So I dug my running shoes out from the deepest depths of my closet early one June morning and for the first time over four years went for a run. That first morning I had a hard time just circling campus, a distance of less than a mile. However I did rediscover how much I enjoyed running, I was hooked. I continued to run not for weight loss reasons, though within a month I had taken the extra poundage off, but because I enjoyed it and it made me feel good.

Running quickly became my main leisure activity. Getting dogs, cemented running as a permanent daily activity. As much as I love running, they love it more. Their enthusiasm is infectious. On days when I don’t feel like running they ensure that I do, they raise an ever increasing ruckus until I relent and take them running. For the past year I have also been taking a neighboring friend’s Weimeraner along on all of our runs. Having another dog along only makes the experience more fun for my dogs. Now any time a meet someone from my neighborhood they almost always recognize me as the guy who gets towed behind three Weimeraners through the streets of the neighborhood.

I now have fallen into the comfortable pattern a beginning every day with a two mile run at dawn, and then ending it with a three mile run at dusk. It is great way too mentally prepare for the day, and also to unwind from the day. I hope that five years from now that I am still running.

8th Street

The best place to eat in my town is not in one the innumerable chain restruants, but rather at the taco stands on 8th Street. Cheaper and tastier Mexican food can not be found. Tonight I stuffed my self with six tasty canrne asada taco for about six bucks.

Eating at the taco stand on 8th Street is an experience on to its self. At night the site pictured above fills up with about a dozen mobile taco vendors and hundreds of hungry people. The smell from all the grilling carane asada fills the air, as does lively Mexican Banda music. It is an experience that have not found anywhere outside the borderlands. Just down the road another impromptu food court is set up nightly in a defunct car wash.

As great as all of this is, it makes the urban planner in me cringe a little bit. A location at which over hundred people are eating without so much as running water and totaly inadquate parking. For a varrity of reasons the county and city have had a hard time regulating these types of businesses. Though I think most people are just happy that the health department inspects them and are willing to leave it at that.