the quiet things

This month was full of quiet things. There's a certain realization after months of unemployment that something needs to change, but shy of hiring yourself, there aren't a lot of options. We've been feeling the pinch. Perhaps more in the head than the wallet - the idle time has been nice, but it occasionally borders on stir crazy. Thankfully, change is in progress.

Last Thursday marked the beginning of a weekend: Renewable Energy Roundup weekend. Last year my duties were tending the vendor gate and serving the beer on Sunday morning. This year, with Matt in tow, I opted to take it easy with a three hour beer shift on Friday evening. Sure enough, the regular coordinators, volunteers and vendors were milling around and it felt like a somewhat long lost collection of friends. A few of my friends (3 from Abilene, one from Rolla, MO) even made it down to join in the geekfest. Honestly, it wasn't all that geeky, but it's great to have a crowd of folks interested in conservation and avoiding unsustainable status quo.

Last Thursday also marked a series of phone calls in which I was offered a position as a zoo keeper with the bird department at the City of Waco's Cameron Park Zoo. The following phone calls confirmed that the wind farm monitoring job that I left in April was losing all of its funding. In October. So instead of three to four years of monitoring, two is the end of the story. Do the world a favor and boycott big wind farms. My current definition of "big" is more than a single-digit turbine cluster of wind turbines that exceed 50' in height.

We returned from Kerrville yesterday, leaving the solitude of the river to fight I-35 traffic so I could make the two physicals scheduled for this morning. Baby steps. On the bright side, I should be learning the ropes by the end of this week.

Until next time, I'll dream of living at the mcfarthest place in the United States. Seriously.