My back is killing me today. Not even my pain meds seem to be working well.
I stopped by my old employers this morning. Just felt like getting out for a few minutes and I found myself in that area (a few blocks from my house) so I stopped in. I found one of the owners so we chatted for about an hour. Hard to believe it has been 2.5 years since I last saw these guys.
While I loved the job there was no love lost when I could not return. After all, the owner I was talking with today had the audacity to call my surgery elective at one point when I had to fight for my benefits. We ended up going before an administrative work law judge because the guys I worked for kept filing appeals to keep me from claiming any earned benefits. However in the end they lost and I got all my benefits and then some.
It was good to get out of the house even just for a few minutes and seeing the old boss was even interesting. We talked about a lot of the development that was supposed to have happened in the area of their business. Things that were supposed to be completed 3 years ago have not even been started and the projects that have been finished have fallen far short of the expectations.
The problem is that the Chamber of commerce wants to focus on one area while the area development group wants to do something else and with everyone wanting something different, nothing is happening. It's a shame too as the old downtown of my city is cool. Since this city was founded almost 200 years ago there is a ton of history there and many of the buildings are from the civil war through the Indian war periods. Sadly many of them are empty due to bad planning on the part of many people and meanwhile the town to our south, with 1/5 the population, is thriving. New developments going in, great schools, brand new housing going up like gangbusters. It makes my wife and I seriously question whether we want to continue to live in this town.
How can we stay somewhere that is not growing with it's population? They won't develop the old downtown area, the public schools are among some of the worst in the state, new development is almost at a standstill and forget about new housing.
We live 10 minutes from 2 major interstates, a NASCAR track, a minor league ballpark and a few other major developments but they are doing nothing to bring business up from those areas when a race is going on or a game is being played. Pathetic.
I would love to pack my family up and just move south of here but with my wife working in this town and my son having been in school since kindergarten here it is not that easy. I swore to myself that I would not drag my kids in and out of schools. So I guess for now we are staying.
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