Since My Return

These are the only passport stamps I earned. Wahhh.

It's been over a week since my last post, so I'm due. I've been back stateside for about a month and a half, and in those weeks I've actually done a lot. I'll keep this post short. I know people aren't that interested in what I've done in New Jersey.

My collection of souvenirs from abroad: a wallet, an autographed baseball, and short shorts.

My one last test of will and endurance from my trip was a 12 hour flight from Tokyo to Minneapolis in a middle seat. If you recall, on my long flights to Tokyo, I watched two Keanu Reaves movies. Now on the flight to Minneapolis, I watched Meet the Millers and Office Space. I didn't know Jennifer Aniston was in Office Space, but there ya go. That movie is as hilarious as all my coworkers had told me it was. Flash forward a bit to New Jersey, I watched The Founder and Spider-Man: Homecoming, which both starred Micheal Keaton. He's excellent, and seems to be getting in everything these days. He deserves it. I'm excited to see "mother!" next. Javier Bardem is the bomb. Reviews have been mixed though. Have any of you seen it? Message me about it.

All told, about 1 USD in SEK, DKK, EUR, PLN, CHF, and JPY. Dime for reference.

After Minneapolis, I had a three hour flight to New York and then a two hour bus to Atlantic City. And within two days of that, I drove back up into Connecticut for a family reunion. Too much traveling for being done with traveling! On the way to the reunion, my mom, aunt, and I picked up my cousin Sarah from her summer camp police academy graduation. Congratulations to her! She was even the top performing female in a physical test.

Sarah's proud family

I lost twelve pounds in eight weeks abroad. Yes, we were trying to be frugal, but on the whole I think I ate a ton. That's just how much we were moving on foot. I think most of that weight came out in sweat in Japan. Whatever weight I lost though, I gained about half of it back at the family reunion and now I sit at about 195. (I don't care much about my weight, but I think this is a good number to sit on.) So much food! Enjoy a small selection of pictures from the reunion, courtesy of Aunt Judy.

After the reunion, I went right into ultimate mode. Mike recruited me to be the ringer in the South Jersey PADA ultimate league finals. I was too rusty to handle them into the finals, but had a good time anyway. The team included me in the team photo, but the captain failed to send it out. Oh well. You know what an ultimate team looks like.

I've gone camping in Pennsylvania somewhere. Dunno where that was. No mountains or exciting views or anything. It's true I'm spoiled after all the exciting hikes I've done this year. But it was a fun time with six friends and a dog, regardless

Then we had Rob's bachelor party. Shhh. This was a really fun weekend where we rented a cabin in the woods. Thanks to Moob for organizing.

Lots of games of all kinds.

The bachelor shooting at the range.

And then I flew to Florida with my mom to help my parents pick out their next house. Florida is way too hot and muggy for me, but we found a couple good houses. Problem was we went right before Hurricane Harvey. The storm chased us out... in our rental car. With flights cancelled, we drove all the way to Atlantic City. We left Florida as the state called for an evacuation. It was really hard to find gas until Georgia. The storm forced us to have a nice vacation, and allowed me to revisit Savannah, Charleston, Durham, and Richmond. Butch and Courtney hosted me and my mom. We played tennis and ate bagels. And let me tell you, driving all the way from Naples to Jersey is really tiresome without cruise control.

Store supplies were depleted in advance of Harvey.

Those are my major life events. Gone into New York once and Philly a couple times. I had my birthday. Played trivia. Was gifted a cherished NES Classic from my brother. And obviously I watched season four of Bojack Horseman on Netflix. I really think this was the best season yet. Go start the show if you haven't already. Otherwise most of my time goes into applying for jobs. Louisville, Charlotte, Raleigh, NYC, DC, and Denver have most of my attention.

Clown dentists and dentist clowns

City Rankings

To help myself apply for jobs, I created this tiered ranking system and placed the cities I visited (and some others) into the tiers. I will focus my job hunt efforts into these cities in accordance with these ranks. When job offers do start coming in, my interest in the job will be weighed against my interest in the city. When job quality + location quality meets my minimum requirements, I take the job. Simple as that.

Rankings apply only to where I want to look in my job hunt at this point in my life. It says very little about where I would want to live in the future, like with a family. It says nothing about how much I enjoyed my time in the city. For instance, Charleston, SC, was extremely fun but I can't see myself living there. Don't take offense if I'm not considering your city for a job!

City is italicized if I didn't visit it on this trip, but I've been there before and it got my interest.

Tier S (anybody got a job for me in these cities?)
Charlotte
Louisville





Tier A (would be thrilled here)
DC
Raleigh/Durham
NYC
Denver



Tier B (why not?)
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia
Richmond
Boston
Nashville
Chicago





Tier C (job needs to be perfect)
Winston-Salem
Atlanta
Mobile, Birmingham
New Orleans
Chattanooga
Annapolis
Providence
Minneapolis
SF, LA
Seattle

Tier F (out of the running)
Indianapolis
Cleveland
Newport News, Hampton, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Roanoke
Greensboro
Columbia, Charleston
Savannah, Athens
Montgomery, Tuscaloosa
Baton Rouge
Jackson
Knoxville, Johnson City
Dover
Norwalk, Hartford
Concord
Montpelier, Burlington
Augusta
Moncton, Fredericton, Niagara
Albany
Trenton

Tier U (on the backburner)
Toronto > Quebec > Montreal > Ottawa
Brussels
Crete

Most European cities' industries seem to only be tourism, but Brussels was one of the few exceptions. There were certainly some other European cities I could see myself living in, but let's be serious, I'm not looking outside of America just yet. If I ever feel like living in Europe, Brussels is at the top of my list. And I'm throwing Crete out there for fun - Greece was just that incredible.

I think next I need to look up which of these cities have respectable fencing clubs.