We finally made it back to living in houston. Things are fairly different from 8 years ago, more people, more traffic and food is twice as expensive. In 8 years I've gained about 70% in salary, but we are poorer here than when we left because of inflation. Crazily enough, the government is claiming little to no inflation because ipads are getting better and cheaper, but once you've bought an ipad (or 2) food really is a lot more expensive. I'm expecting real measured inflation to kick in once the government makes some program to relieve people's suffering, with mandatory wage hikes or COLA increases, or everything could crash and we'd have another 5 years of deflation and no growth or stagflation. What has been so tiring about the past 14 years is being trapped in the tides of history. I'd much prefer just working and saving my money and making 5% on investments, but to make any return I've been throwing the dice and risking a lot, and losing a crapload of money twice since the dot-bomb crash. So who knows what's going to happen.
I'm only writing this because the building management is constructing offices from an area that used to be a conference room, and it's so noisy that I haven't yet been able to concentrate. I thought i would try an old trick and start to write something here and hope that it carries over to what I have to write for work, or the carpenters will go smoke a cigarette for a little while. Luckily my spanish is good enough that I can follow what their plans are for the morning, and it sounds like they are leaving to go somewhere else. huzzah.
Anyway, glad to be back home, back on my native heath. Finally able to unpack all of my books and buy a lawnmower.
