TheFranciscos.Net

What’s up world? After 2 1/2 years of being offline on this blog, I’ve decided to come back to it. The main reason for my inactivity? Laziness. But there were also other reasons (too many to mention without boring my audience). But now, after re-reading my old blog, I’ve regained that sense of fun found in keeping an online journal. Things and memories that I wouldn’t remember easily (sign of getting old) have been refreshed because of reading this blog again. I’ve come back with a resolve to post something semi-regularly, even if it won’t be as often as I used to.

So what’s new? I guess the first order of business is to catch up on all of the things that have happened. Chronologically, here are the major events that have happened to us after my last post in March 2004 –

1. The Whale graduated from Family Practice residency at UPMC. It was a quiet, but fun ceremony at the Youghigheny Country Club (I think that’s how it’s spelled) attended by myself, Zoe, Mommy Digna, and “Baby Grandma”, as Zoe likes calling my mom. After 11 years of schooling, The Whale is now a full-fledged Family Practice doctor.

2. As a result of major event #1, Aileen accepted a new position as one of two physicians at a n outpatient clinic in the quaint town of Tyler, Texas. “Saan yon?”, puzzingly asked by almost everybody in the audience. I asked the same question myself when I heard of it. It’s a small town in East Texas, with around 120,000 people, about 100 miles east of Dallas on I-20.
Bakit sa Texas kami napadpad? The #1 consideration we had when we decided that we were leaving Pittsburgh was that we needed to live in a warm climate. After living through 3 harsh Pittsburgh winters, we decided that we tropical folks just couldn’t live through another winter like that. So we were thinking of moving to Florida, Texas or California. Florida, we decided, had too many hurricanes. California was just too expensive. Texas (as Goldilocks would say) was just right.
Bakit naman Tyler ang napili ninyo? Good question, and I’m not really sure I have a good answer other than the cliche “it’s a nice place to live and raise your family in”. We were considering moving to a big city like Dallas or Houston, but Aileen was having a hard time looking for a position that fit her needs. When the opportunity came for the practice in Tyler, it seemed like a good fit, but the only problem was that we never even heard of Tyler before. To get a better idea, Aileen’s then-prospective employer flew us out to see the city and look at houses, schools and the like. When we got to Tyler, I can’t say it was love at first sight, but there were definitely a lot of things to like about it. Aileen really liked that it was a small town with big city amenities. The shops and restaurants that she loved (or an equivalent) were in Tyler. She also liked the fact that there wasn’t a lot of traffic, at least when compared to big cities. She’s always said that she’s a small-town girl at heart. I’m a little bit easier to please – I just saw that the city had a Best Buy and a Circuit City, and I instantly knew that I could live there. Another plus was that there was a good Catholic school in the area with an excellent reputation. Lastly, we thought that living in a small town would be a nice change from living in the city (or suburbs) that we were used to. So we finally decided to move to Tyler in the fall of 2004.

3. As a result of major event #2, I switched careers from IT/Software Development to Project Management/Implementation. I still work for my old company (MAH), but transitioned from being a Software Engineer to Project Manager, mainly because this is a position that I could do remotely. It’s been a good change for me because I’ve been getting burned out on software development. The only downside to this is I have to do a good amount of travel. The travel schedule is not too bad though, so I’m not really complaining. I’m usually travelling 3 out of 4 weeks in a month, but only around 2-4 days per week, with the rest being office days (e.g. work from home). It’s also been a plus that I was able to stay with my company because I now have 28 vacation days, plus holidays. Seniority is definitely good.

4. Zoe is now in school at Rice Elementary. She has always been in daycare, but moving to real school was a big step (I think more for us as parents than for her). Zoe’s also involved in a lot of extracurricular activities like gymnastics, soccer and cheer, and is generally just having a good time being a big kid.

5. That brings us to today, and the biggest bit of news – we are going to have a baby boy! Yup, Aileen is about 19 (or is it 20?) weeks into her pregnancy, and we’re due in the middle of February. Valentine’s day, to be exact. We’re all very excited about this. Zoe in particular is excited to become a big sister, but she insists that she won’t help with changing diapers.

That’s pretty much the past 2 1/2 years in a nutshell. Hope all is well with everybody.