First, let's start with the history of my writing. I haven't posted anything in a while because I've had some major life changes, but I figure it's about time to start up again. My old blog was Sacramento Husker, and I'd just started that before the life changes. You can find it here: http://sacramentohusker.blogspot.com/.
Anyhow, you can see that I used to live in Sacramento before moving to New Orleans. In fact, over the course of my life, I've lived in Sacramento for roughly 23 years, so I consider it my hometown. Actually, I consider Rancho Cordova (or Corclova for you, Brian) my hometown, but no one outside of Northern California knows where that is, so Sacramento works well for most people. Rancho is a suburb of Sacramento, and would be the third largest city in Nebraska if it was up and moved 1500-1600 miles. I had a pretty good life growing up in a solidly middle class family. Not a crapload of money, but we weren't poor, either. My parents were both educated at CSU Sacramento, and I was at both of their graduations from college (well, all three - my dad has two degrees), so I guess you could say they were non-traditional students. They are who I credit for instilling in me a fierce desire to learn and read, and I can't thank them enough for it. I'm the youngest of three and the only boy, which means that I am very humble and never, ever, ever acted like a spoiled little snot while growing up.
After high school, I left Sacramento and went to Lincoln, NE for school. My dad grew up in Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska, and his side of the family was pretty firmly rooted in Gretna, NE, just outside Omaha. The last time I was in Nebraska, though, I think Omaha had pretty much expanded all the way out to Gretna, so it isn't so much a small town as a suburb now, which is a shame. My aunt designed the Gretna Dragon logo that was on the town's water tower for some 30 some-odd years, my uncle still holds a hurdles record at Gretna High, and I think the cops are still trying to catch my dad for all his mischief from high school. Like I said, his side of the family has roots in Gretna. Anyhow, I grew up a Nebraska fan, and pretty much always wanted to go to school there. When researching schools, it didn't hurt that they have a decent engineering school and that the tuition is dirt cheap. All in all, I have never regretted my choice to go to school there, though I do wonder how my life would have been different if I'd attended a party school. Odds are I'd be dead by now, so it probably wasn't such a bad thing.
During my senior year at Nebraska, my mom told me she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, so I piled on the classes so I could finish a semester early and get back to Sacramento as quickly as possible. Evidently you're not supposed to take 26 credit hours in one semester, but I hadn't learned that lesson yet. All I can say is that I lived school for several months, and I couldn't have been happier to graduate.
When I returned to Sacramento, I started my career in engineering at a mechanical design-build contracting firm designing HVAC and plumbing/piping systems. This was a great company, and I learned a tremendous amount about the industry and the technologies used. The best part, though, was that working there helped me get ready for the Professional Engineer's exam, which I managed to pass on the first attempt after several months of studying. I can't tell you how happy and sad I was to tell my mother just a few days before she passed that I had passed the exam. I really don't know if she heard me, but I hope she did.
I left the design-build firm and entered the world of consulting engineering just before my mother passed, and I've never really looked back. During this time, I met my wife (NOLAH wife) and we had a daughter (Miss V) after our elopement. I eventually became a partner in a firm, but the dynamic in the firm really just wasn't what I wanted nor was the partnership working out, so I ended up leaving after a couple of years. After some soul searching and job searching, my wife and I decided that we'd move out of California so we could save a lot of money, pay off homes, and retire much earlier than 70, which is the pace we were on in Sacramento. We still have homes in Sacramento, but with the reduced cost of living in other parts of the country, we can bank quite a bit of money and then move back to Sacramento. The job and location search eventually led to Austin and New Orleans as our options, and the money, attitude, and culture of New Orleans was right for us.
In February of 2011, I moved down here to establish myself at my new position and secure a small apartment in which to live until my wife and child arrived. My stepson, J, is staying in Sacramento until June, when he will graduate from high school. Since being here, I've seen and done things that I never really thought I'd see or do, and I have learned so much about this place in a short 10 weeks that I don't think I'll ever be able to write about it all. My goal with this blog is just to talk about Husker football, my experiences in New Orleans and elsewhere, and to make random observations. Enjoy.
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