Coming to Austin was a big deal for me. Being raised by an agoraphobic and then living in a very small town for the past thirty years made coming here stressful.

I drove here right before Christmas when the weather in Ohio was pretty good. The drive was pretty easy if exhausting. I did it in two days and the hardest part was the drive once I entered Texas. It seemed like I drove forever as I headed to Austin.

My expectations of Texas are all based on cowboy movies of my youth. I’ve been told if you go north and west you’ll see cowboy movie landscapes. Austin is very green.

I’ve been here a little over a month and it took a couple weeks to get used to the heavy traffic and city life. I still can’t get used to seeing homeless people. We’ve been traveling around and seeing things and now that I’m used to it I’m enjoying the hell out of it. The temperatures have been in the fifties and sixties and this week will be in the seventies. This is a far cry from the polar vortex back home. I don’t miss it.

I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do the things I did at home but I already found a chess club and a healthy poker community. I got second place in the first poker tournament I played in here.

We are looking for a duplex and we may have found one. Even if we do we have a long way to go to get our life in order to move here. The old houses have to be emptied, clean, painted and sold. I’m excited about the future.

This blog is about my health and getting in shape so I’ll be talking about that a great deal.