{"id":64,"date":"2007-01-19T05:31:18","date_gmt":"2007-01-19T04:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=64"},"modified":"2010-09-19T10:24:05","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:24:05","slug":"gee-its-great-to-be-back-home-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/gee-its-great-to-be-back-home-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Gee it&#8217;s great to be back home again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What a <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">great<\/span> week!\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;m back in Houston, TX.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s been a while, but as soon as I got off the plane and the humidity hit me, I just felt that I was right back home again.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, it&#8217;s not the prettiest city in the world, and it&#8217;s never going to make it as a\u00c2\u00a0vacation destination, but something about\u00c2\u00a0Houston just makes it <em>comfortable<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m here ostensibly to finalize the details of my\u00c2\u00a0new job.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Much of this involves sitting\u00c2\u00a0in all-day meetings with the rest of my new organization trying to working out who\u00c2\u00a0we are and what we&#8217;re supposed to be doing.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Inbetween all this excitement I&#8217;ve been trying to get a few things organized for my full-time return.\u00c2\u00a0 And it&#8217;s going pretty well.\u00c2\u00a0 In the past 24 hours I&#8217;ve signed a lease on a new place to live (back in Katy &#8211; and on the same street we used to live on last time we were here), and signed\u00c2\u00a0my new work contract.\u00c2\u00a0 So now we&#8217;re all systems go for our triumphant return to the\u00c2\u00a0Good Ole U.S. of A.\u00c2\u00a0 Huzzah!<\/p>\n<p>All I need to do now is pack up everything\u00c2\u00a0we own in Belgium,\u00c2\u00a0and get it and the family shipped out here; sell cars there, buy cars here; sell everything we own that runs on 240v and buy replacements that run on 110v; terminate the utilities in Belgium, get the utilities connected in the U.S.; accept the Belgian landlord keeping our entire deposit for spurious reasons, and hand over a deposit to the new landlord knowing that I&#8217;ll never see it again; and go through the administrative Hell of exiting Belgium (which is matched only by the administrative Hell of entering Belgium).\u00c2\u00a0 What could be easier??<\/p>\n<p>I would be\u00c2\u00a0fazed by it all, but (1) we&#8217;ve done it all several times before, and (2) none of it matters &#8211; at the end of the day we&#8217;re coming <em>home<\/em>, and nothing can diminish the joy that that thought brings to me.\u00c2\u00a0 So, it&#8217;s so long crud-hole, hello land of the free (or at least moderately priced. And with added Customer Service).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a great week!\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;m back in Houston, TX.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s been a while, but as soon as I got off the plane and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[81],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}