*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

After spending about 8 years in Michigan we finally moved back home to Mississippi. Hattiesburg, MS to be exact. Why did we move back you ask? Ellen got a job at William Carey in Hattiesburg. Which works out pretty well considering her mother still lives there. I will still be working at Quicken Loans but doing so remotely. About every 6-8 weeks I’ll fly back to Michigan for a week and work onsite, then head back to MS. The past several months have been crazy. Ellen moved down to MS around August 10th, several weeks before I did, so I stayed with AtomicInternet and finished working on a major project we were launching at work. The day I left for Mississippi, Katrina hit Hattiesburg dead on. It turns out the eye of the storm went right over the top of the city. Several days after Katrina hit, I was finally able to get to Hattiesburg and bring much needed supplies to Ellen and her family. I also got to witness the devisation first hand. It was mind blowing. Even a month later things are nowhere near normal. A fine example of things not being back to normal is I am stuck right now in Tupelo, MS (about 4 hours north of Hattiesburg). We still do not have cable back in H’Burg which means no high speed Internet. Luckily my sister has it in Tupelo so I am staying with her during the week and driving back and forth to Hattiesburg on the weekends so I can continue working. Anyway, there you go, we are back in Mississippi. And for those of you that haven’t heard of Hattiesburg, maybe you’ve heard of Brett Favre? Brett and I both went to USM which is in Hattiesburg (so did Jimmy Buffet for anyone that cares). Having spent my undergrad years in Hattiesburg I know the area very well. I would say it is going to be great to drive down to the coast and hit the casinos and New Orleans which are only an hour away, but after the huricane, all of that is now gone (at least until it gets rebuilt). And that is just damn sad. It was so much fun on the coast. Currently we are shopping for homes in the area (which has turned out to be a chore). I had no idea I was so picky about where I wanted to live. I guess as you get older you really start to learn what you don’t like.