Gee it’s great to be back home again

What a great week!  I’m back in Houston, TX.  It’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.  Sure, it’s not the prettiest city in the world, and it’s never going to make it as a vacation destination, but something about Houston just makes it comfortable.

I’m here ostensibly to finalize the details of my new job.  Much of this involves sitting in all-day meetings with the rest of my new organization trying to working out who we are and what we’re supposed to be doing.   Inbetween all this excitement I’ve been trying to get a few things organized for my full-time return.  And it’s going pretty well.  In the past 24 hours I’ve signed a lease on a new place to live (back in Katy – and on the same street we used to live on last time we were here), and signed my new work contract.  So now we’re all systems go for our triumphant return to the Good Ole U.S. of A.  Huzzah!

All I need to do now is pack up everything we own in Belgium, and 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’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).  What could be easier??

I would be fazed by it all, but (1) we’ve done it all several times before, and (2) none of it matters – at the end of the day we’re coming home, and nothing can diminish the joy that that thought brings to me.  So, it’s so long crud-hole, hello land of the free (or at least moderately priced. And with added Customer Service).