The power of other people's blogs....

As I continue the job hunt looking for a new opportunity, that will hopefully lead me to a placement where I can better balance life and work within the various constrainsts that are imposed on my life(style).

One of the ideas that has me intrigued is the whole downtown living (again). I kind of had downtown living when I was living/working in Medicine Hat. But, not so here in the greater Columbus, Ohio area...where I've and work just on the Dublin, Ohio city boundary. In fact I cross the boundary every day going (walking) to and from work. The office is just inside the Dublin boundary (most of the parking lot is in fact not) and my apartment is on the outside....so I'm considered in Columbus. Which is largely only an issue with figuring out which school district I'm in and which city I'm a resident of for taxation.

But, the life part of the mix hasn't been that great...and now that the work part isn't anymore....I'm leaning towards finding a new situation where both are good.

Last night I heard of an opportunity in downtown Memphis, TN. I admit this isn't probably the most idea opportunity....the weather is going to be even less like what I was accustom to in Calgary or Medicine Hat, Alberta. And, there are no direct flights from this city to Calgary or places where other family members reside. Though these aren't really major sticking points on what I was looking for.

Anyways...my prelimary research of Memphis, TN....was a mixed bag....found it annoying that when I queried a yellowpages site (actually a couple) on what businesses are near the zipcode of downtown Memphis....it reported lots of hits. Which I later found out that it had set the zipcode field for all the businesses to match the zipcode I was looking for...and in reality most of the businesses weren't anywhere near downtown....in fact some where in different cities that neighbor Memphis. This started to worry me that downtown Memphis might be worse that downtown Columbus....somewhere that is recently started to shift to increasing residential living, while the downtown mall is shrinking (in fact I hear the last remaining anchor [of 3] might be going away....perhaps because the chain was acquired by the company that owned one of the other anchors that closed its fixture of a downtown department store...because it didn't see the value of continuing to stay in downtown Columbus). Plus there are other factors why downtown Columbus living just isn't good at yet.

Then I came across this blog entry....though somewhat 'dated', it is quite an intriguing and detailed entry that has me intrigued with the whole possibility that this might be one of the opportunities to consider.....now if only each of the apartments mentioned actually had websites.....

...or I could find other websites about life in downtown Memphis....I guess I'll thumb through the guy's blog to see if there's more....

Hopefully, I'm not getting too far ahead of myself again....

....though the uncertainity for the future is affecting whether I'll make the family reunion later this year. Which I hear might not be as grand as originally envisioned. Though is that because I might not be able to make it now?