In less than two days, Everything2 will no longer have any active noders in West Texas.
If you haven't heard the news yet, I finally got a job, after seven months of drawing unemployment. I'll be working at the University of North Texas in Denton, where I'll be an "Online Content Specialist" -- meaning, I'll be helping to make sure that all the university's websites are compatible with each other and fairly consistent in quality across the board.
I start work on Monday, and I'm definitely looking forward to it -- the job description sounds like it was written specifically for me, and the employees I've met so far seem to be great people. I also got my Masters degree at UNT, and I'm fairly familiar with Denton, which is a very nice, scenic city, though it's punishingly hot in the summer. It's got a strong artistic/musical/intellectual culture, thanks to two different universities in town (UNT and Texas Womans University), and while it's close enough to the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex to allow for some fun trips into the big city, it's also far enough away to keep me from feeling claustrophobic about living in a big city. It has one of the most spectacularly beautiful town squares I've ever seen. My favorite bookstore in the universe is located here, and they've actually got two comic book stores in town. I fully expect to love living in Denton.
I'm also going to intensely miss Lubbock. I've lived here for about eight years, and I've gotten very attached to living in the same town as my grandmother (turning 98 in September, and still living on her own), my brother (who has let me live for the past month or two rent-free in his duplex), and my niece (Hyla, my brother's rat terrier). I'm going to miss the friends I've made here. I'll miss the local bookstores, the local grocery stores, the local garage that kept my car operational without cheating me. I'll even miss Lubbock's famously crooked politicians, and the city's tendency to periodically fly into insane moral panics about random inoffensive stuff.
Nevertheless, Lubbock had plenty of chances to hire me for something (and I'm starting to suspect that Texas Tech just shitcans any job applications from Lubbock residents -- it's more presitigious to hire Austinites, don'tcha know), so the Hub City's loss is Denton's gain.
My parents, my brother, and I are planning on trying to pack my furniture into a moving truck Wednesday morning. If we can get it done before noon, without killing ourselves with heatstrokes and heart attacks, we'll go ahead and drive to Denton; otherwise, we'll wait 'til Thursday morning. And once we get to Denton, we can look forward to a fun few hours of unloading all my stuff in one of Denton's spectacularly hellish July heat waves. Here's to lifting with your feet, not your back, and to proper hydration.
That's what's been happening with me, kids. How 'bout you?