Silver Linings

For a couple living in gentile poverty with only one wage earner in a stalled economy, it can seem like there could be no way for happiness to thrive.  That is not so.  We seem to have found ourselves in the midst of friends, and friends can do a lot to make you happy.  Tonight, there is a Sewanee alumni gathering that we are going to attend.  We will join roughly 20 fellow young Sewanee alums as we hang out, catch up, and make connections--just like we did when school resumed. 

Then there is this Saturday, when we go to the Old Dominion Brewhouse to join 50 or so of our closest friends for the Alabama Crimson Tide Football game.  Thanks to the National Capital Chapter of the University of Alabama Alumni Association, the entire place is overrun with crimson jerseys and t-shirts.  This Saturday will be particularly fun since it will be the Alabama-Florida game. $5 says the commentary will be dominated by Tim Tebow's legacy.  Roll Tide!

Finally, a real bright spot of where we live is the fact that great stuff happens here.  We'll be there, and we hope you come too.

-Pete

Rip Van Winkle stirs

Well.  Looks like the site kind of stalled out there.  Last post was before I graduated.  So, where are we now that a full season has passed us by?  In one of the more terrifying points of a young couple's life: staring over the edge on the rain-slick precipice of darkness--the job hunt.  It has not been successful, and anyone who has ever shared the difficulty of having a spouse sacrifice to put your butt through school so you can get a good job knows, not being able to deliver that good job at the end of that schooling is a MAJOR disappointment.

We're plucky, determined and eager to have an answer to "what's next?" Uncertainty of this level makes life hard to live, as we must settle for mere existence until that change comes.  As I said to a friend that was cheering me up on a particularly frustrating day of career searching, "It's a tough road and the only way to get off is to keep walking down the trail."  It doesn't change the fact of the matter that the search is hard, all the harder after the worst recession since the Great Depression.  And just because the times are hard does not mean that I have to like it.  But these are the "interesting times" in which we live.  That old Chinese curse is collecting its bitter due.

To keep myself from going mad, I have started another blog, The Inner Napoleon. This one is is more about my journey as a gamer--with a smattering of actual shop-talk on strategy.  Drop by, and if you have some words of wisdom you've gained from playing games, send them to me and I'll put you in a s a guest columnist.

I keep trying, trudging one foot in front of the other down this rugged, hostile path, thinking that each time the dust tears up my eyes in disappointment that this time, this time the mirage is real.  Every day, I keep expecting to be like George Clooney in "O' Brother, Where Art Thou?"  I will find my treasure, but it will not be the one I expected.

See you down the road, fellow travelers.