Fall

This morning at 9:30 AM EDT was the official beginning of fall, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. In my spot on the globe, it rained continuously for the third straight day due to tropical storm Beta. Once the entire alphabet has been used, Atlantic tropical storms are named after Greek letters. This is the earliest we have reached Greek letter territory by over a week, and we are on pace to smash the record for number of Atlantic tropical storms set in 2005. It has been a long summer for everyone, I suppose.

I’m behind on blog posts, but I plan to chronicle my long summer in the coming weeks. I left Oklahoma during the first week of June, setting out for the wild west of hand sanitizer manufacturing in Junction, Texas. After an intense, all-consuming 5 weeks of work, I departed toward the Mexican border, where I lost my first car to a reckless driver in the cruel desert. I soon accepted my current job as a design engineer for another sanitizing products plant in Hallettsville, Texas, a unique position to assume in another unique place. It’s been a challenging time, adjusting to a new industry in a new place in the “new normal.” During such a transient time, I have also observed the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic from a wide range of vantage points, from essential worker to traveling job interviewee to hand sanitizer engineer to rural testing patient.

There’s the teaser, now it’s time to write. With a new apartment, new computer, and a fall that promises to be less frenetic, I have no excuse. So stay tuned for some stories!