Dear e-mail victims,
It had to happen... Back to the grindstone for Gregg; I am due to start work as a Senior Software Development Engineer at CSX in Jacksonville, Florida on March 15th - that's about two weeks before I'm due to start work as a daddy. Oy vay, as they still say in the Occupied Territories.
On the family front, Claire continues to get bigger and continues to blame it on the pregnancy. Otherwise, she is in excellent health, and has an excellent appetite. She has registered with a midwife practice at the Baptist Hospital here, and we seem to be prepared for the formalities. All we need now is a roof to sleep under and a bed to sleep on... and a dozen nappies and eight jumpers and a cot and some receiving blankets and a Noddy-and-Big-Ears bumper and a paediatric thermometer and two sets of ear plugs and... Of course I'm looking forward to it.
Unfortunately, I will doubtless find myself distracted by the pressures of work. Having considered this soberly some time ago, I am unsurprised to be looking forward to the intellectual challenge of work; during the interview process, I met four managers and two directors, and developed a good opinion of the ethos at work and the challenges offered. They have been very fair in matching my salary request, and offered three weeks holiday, with an extra week for my fathering duties this year. The relocation package is almost overwhelming, and it seems a pity that our chattels are so few. The work appears to offer variety, and genuine opportunities to develop new skills with formal training plans, although the first few months will be tough - we have a deadline to complete the acquisition of 48% of ConnRail (the remainder going to rivals Norfolk Southern). I agreed with my manager that the best way of familiarising myself with the business is to get into coding initially, and the
n see how my role develops. I stressed that my interests were diverse, and that I didn't want to be stuck in a two-dimensional job, and was encouraged by the reception that this ambition received. An immediate bonus is that the majority of the applications here are CICS-based, and I will be required to get up to speed with that; additionally, there is widespread use of mid-tier systems (e.g. Oracle), client-server and Internet applications, and there does not appear to be a formal division between team staffing for these various platforms, so I anticipate the opportunity to continue to broaden my skills and interests. As I said, work may be distracting.
Requiring more immediate attention is the final leg of the migration of Womble; I am planning to drive down to Marathon today with my father, prepare Womble and provision, and then set up North on an offshore route to take advantage of the Gulf Stream. Due to uncertainty about the exact positioning of the Gulf Stream, the conditions out there, and a desire to give ourselves the opportunity to do as much as we want without over-taxing ourselves, I do not have a fixed itinerary down, but will keep in contact with Claire. With only two on board, and the intention to spend several days at sea, we will have to be more disciplined about watch routines than we were on the trip down to Norfolk. Research into the positioning of, and conditions in, the Gulf Stream has just shown that "you never can tell", so with the trip down under our belts and optimism tempered with caution, I hope to make the trip in about seven days - we shall see.
On the domestic scene, we have taken advantage of these idle days to shop for accommodation and the necessary accoutrements of a baby-oriented home. As most of you will appreciate through your own experience, the combination of finding a job, moving home and provisioning for a baby is a demanding job, which might be taken as an excuse for not subjecting you all to a barrage of words over the past few weeks - apologies if we have seemed a little uncommunicative. After the disappointment of Tampa, we are favourably taken with Jacksonville, and look forward to settling in. As anticipated, we are going to miss Boston's public transport system, but I plan to purchase a motorbike and earn many citations for lane-splitting to ease the burden of the commute (technical notes - lane-splitting refers to the practice of riding a motorbike between lines of traffic, which is commonplace in Europe, but apparently illegal here in the U.S. of A. - ohmygawsh! - where a citation is given for a
traffic violation, rather than an outstanding achievement). On the subject of Tampa, I have appended a diatribe inspired by our experience; although it is less than complimentary about some aspects of the U.S., I sincerely hope that none of my friends and hosts will be personally offended - if you think you might be, feel free to ignore it.
I'll have to cut this short to prepare for the trip to Marathon; apologies for the wordiness of this note, but I wanted to get it out before I left and have not allowed myself the luxury of editing my original indisciplined scrawl. I look forward to entertaining you more with an account of the trip from the Keys up to Jacksonville; in the meantime, I hope you all continue to have fun and can do just about exactly what you want to - at least some of the time.