Sailing Away

You can tell by the picture that I am ready to hit the road. Tomorrow I am leaving Rochester after 4 week stay and driving to Chicago. I hope that my arrival and short stay in the “windy city” will bring some relieve to the distressed Illinoisans, whose enterpreneurial governor was just thrown out of office for his very innovative attempt to raise capital. Not only governor was canned, the Illinois Senate voted anonimously to prevent him from holding polical office in the state again. One person that I expected to speak out on the governor’s behalf through out the whole affiar was none other then coach Jimmy Johnson. Now that Rod Blagojevich is looking for work, Jimmy’s days as a Hair Products spokesperson are numbered.

Introspection on the previous post

The picture of the “Famous Coffee maker”. Note that I haven’t washed it since it was purchase in 2001 and until my mother scrubbed it last week, much to my distress.

Day 3 was taking up by packing. At the last minute I realized that I forgot to buy thermos (much needed for long exertions in the Wasatch) and replace my bad windshield wipers. As I was packing, CNN and MSNBC were getting ever more giddy over mass layoff at Pfizer, Boeing, Caterpillar, Home Depot, Texas Instruments, Starbucks, Harley Davidson, Time Warner, Dell, General Motors, Target and perhaps many smaller companies that didn’t make it into the headline news. I couldn’t help to notice that I am feeling like a school boy who is cutting the class. On the other hand, it was very easy to jump of the train, but I also feel a good deal of anxiety about my ability to get back on. Especially, when scores of others have been thrown off. Even the Halliburton, Darth Vader of the Oil Industry, said it will reduce its workforce. Curiously enough if you look at the Halliburton’s stock performance for the year 2008 (here is the link from yahoo finance: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=HAL) you can pick up a very peculiar trend. The stock topped 50$ in July (gas prices near all time high) and began to shrink slightly as economy was slipping into a dipper recession. However at the beginning of September, the stock takes a deep and dramatic dive below 20$. If you re-call, this is the time when Lehman went under and sunk all hopes of the quick economic recovery along with John McCain’s presidential bid. The price plunged even further, to the all year low, in November, when it was officially over for the GOP. Of course, since Dick Cheney stepped down as Halliburton’s CEO to become 43rd Vise President and “severed” all ties with the company, he will have a very plausible explanation for the above trend, alone with Halliburton’s multibillion dollar no-bid government contracts. I am wondering if he was more upset about his party loosing the election or Halliburton loosing its leverage (or at least huge part of it) in the US government.

In the Pub

The 1st day of being jobless had started with coffee, whole grain toast with brie and followed by 1600 feet swim at Webster Aquatic Center. The rest of the day was spent on minor chores, playing with the laptop and experiments with my camera – see the picture. I am also trying to plan what to take with me. My car is very small and I would like to travel light. However I need all of my ski gear, most of my triathlon gear, some “civilian clothe” and a suit, which hopefully will help me get back into the “9 to 5” crowd. I am also taking my 8 years old coffee-maker, which was the 1st thing I ever bought on the Internet (this post really calls for the picture of the coffee-maker). I am still waiting for the arrival of the Giro Fuse helmet – the latest Internet purchase. I hope to get it before leaving Rochester, so the helmet doesn’t need to chase me across 10 states. I ended the first day of being jobless, the way every man who quite his job should – I went to the local pub, called “The Pub” and had a few pints of Guinness with my boys.

From New York to Rochester

Almost 4 weeks ago I gave up my apartment in Forest Hills, sold all my furniture (Craigslist rules!), put everything I could fit into my car and drove to Rochester, NY, to spend some time with my family before heading out West. So far I have spent a lot of time reading, playing with my camera, swimming at Webster Aquatic Center and trying to run if the weather stays above 15F. I was also working from home up until yesterday. Last night I sent out a very lame “farewell” email to my co-workers and signed off for the last time. Since it’s Saturday, I don’t really feel jobless yet, but I guess it will hit me on Monday when I neither have to go to the office nor login from home. At the moment I feel like a sitcom character who gets drunk on the cold winter night then tries to pick up a girl with a “Hi, I am Eddie, I am 33, I don't have a job and I live with my parents...".