We usually aren’t into cruises. But we always seem to end up on one. When we do go, it’’s usually more to hang out with friends than the cruise itself. This time was no different.

We flew into Miami the day before and stayed at the Hyatt Regency Miami

I don’t really have too much to say about the cruise. Just read the review

It’s an all adult cruise. There isn’t as much entertainment as Carnival Cruises. Depending on your point of view, it’s either boring or relaxing.

The food is definitely better. Another difference is that with Carnival, every adult in your cabin has to buy a Cheers Beverage Package if one person buys one.

With Virgin, you can open an optional bar tab that gives you bonus spend.

You also get free basic WiFI.

As far as the stops, we stopped in the Dominican Republic and did a rum tour…

We had a day at sea and then stopped at the THE BEACHES OF BIMINI, THE BAHAMAS. We just went to the beach and hung out in the water.

This is very much a been there done that thing. It was…fine. But we probably won’t do Virgin Voyages again. Vir

We were back in Las Vegas a second time in September to see Bruno Mars at Dolby Live. It was a great concert. He is a talented singer, the choreography was great, and he is also a wonderful songwriter.

I don’t have any pictures of the concert since they made everyone put their phones in a locked bag.

The best description of the concert can be found here

We went to the “I love R&B” festival in Los Angeles last month.

And stayed in the Conrad in Los Angeles on Hilton Honors points. We definitely wouldn’t have paid cash for the hotel even though it was “nice”.

It was less than a block away from the venue - Grand Park.

Honestly, we wouldn’t have bought tickets for this concert if we had experienced the Orlando Funk Fest before buying the tickets. Lesson learned. Don’t attend a concert outside and where you will see a bunch of one hit wonder performers who are past their prime.

Because we aren’t ones to fall for the sunk cost fallacy, just because we paid for the tickets isn’t a reason to stay outside in the heat. We ate and left after the first artist and went back to the hotel.

These last two years have been all about learning what we like and don’t like. We definitely don’t like outside venues….

At the end of July, we saw Ciara, Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliot in Concert at the Kia Center here in Orlando.

There isn’t too much to say. Everything about the concert was excellent. Great performances, choreography and visuals.

Pictures just don’t do justice for how great the concert was. It was definitely the best concert we had seen up to this point.

This has definitely been the year of concerts for us. We have been to Las Vegas three times this year.

The first trip back to Vegas was to see Robin Thicke and Boys II Men.

We stayed at The Jockey Club.

The concert was okay. I knew not to expect too much from older artists.

This was our first time back in Vegas since last year when we were there for a month and half. It was like being back home. We went to our old spots at Miracle Mile. My wife went to various gyms to work out with friends.

We saw Janet Jackson and Chris Brown back to back weekends in Atlanta in July. The difference between both couldn’t be more stark.

We had VIP lounge access for both.

Janet only had 4 dancers for the entire show and the choreography just wasn’t as good as Chris Brown’s

On the other hand, I knew hardly any of Chris Brown’s songs and I knew all of Janet’s.

The concert situation got more exciting as the year progressed. More to come…

We went to the Orlando Funk Fest in June because we thought it would give us a chance to see a lot of different artists.

What can I say besides it was really disappointing. They started late. The acoustics were horrible. There were weather delays and the few performances we saw were way past their prime.

We were so disappointed, we didn’t even bother going back the second day.

I’m glad we didn’t. Many of the artists didn’t show up and there was another weather delay the second delay.

Our first trip of the year besides going back and forth to Atlanta was Baltimore, Maryland.

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore Inner Harbor

It was conveniently located and the only time we had to take an Uber was for my wife to go to a MixxedFitt class and for me to meet a friend/coworker.

We spent the first day just hanging out around the Baltimore Inner Harbor

We went on a dinner cruise one night where we ate well and saw the sights.

And listen to live music at Keystone Korner the next night.

It was a nice little getaway.

We went back to The Abbey again. This time to see Candlelight Neo Soul by the Listeso String Quartet.

It was a different and enjoyable experience.

Our first real outing of the year was Acute Inflections: Soulful Sounds Love and Laughs.

Not too much to say. The music was nice. The singing was a good and the couple had great chemistry

Once we decided to stay in Orlando this year, the question became, how do we get around?

My wife teaches fitness classes and needed transportation. We really didn’t want to go back to accumulating “stuff”, I hate maintaining cars or anything else for that matter.

We decided to try the SixT car subscription service. We pay to rent a car per month with no long term commitment and they take care of maintenance and repairs. We have the option of turning the car back end at the end of the month if we don’t need it.

This is our first month and so far so good. We had a minor issue with the first one after two weeks and we took it back and exchange it with no issues.

About a year and a half ago I started this blog with a post called No Turning Back where I wrote about how we got rid of everything we owned to start a new adventure.

Well that wasn’t absolutely true. We left ourselves an out. We didn’t sell our home in Atlanta, we rented it to our younger son and two of his friends just in case we wanted to come back.

We weren’t ready to completely burn the boats or give up our 1.9% interest rate. We refinanced in the summer of 2021 when the rates were at their lowest.

But life happened and we had to make a decision about which direction we were going to go in. Were we going to sell our place in Florida or sell our house in Atlanta?

We decided to help our son and his friends move. We told them that they could take all of the furniture they wanted and throw out the rest.

We flew back home in February to a well maintained house that only needed painting, carpet cleaning and yard work. We got everything ready and put it on the market and sold it.

Florida is now officially our home and our plans for the rest of the year are interesting, but diffferent. We won’t be “nomadding”. But we do have a lot planned.

Stay tuned…

A year ago we started the the three suitcase life.

We survived, our suitcases didn’t. I replaced my large suitcase with a Samsonite Tru-frame medium spinner and my wife replaced hers with an Samsonite S-cure spinner.

Soon we will be replacing our two carry ons with this set of Samsonite Tru-frame spinners.

They are all zipperless. We were becoming tired of finicky zippers breaking.

We will both have Delta Silver Medallion status next year and along with a Delta credit card, we will have two free checked bags up to 70 pounds.

Yes our three suitcase life turned into four suitcases.

Chicago was our last stop of the year and now we are back home in Orlando.

It’s been a wild 7 months. We have been to 10 cities together and a couple of more apart from each other.

I have thoughts…

The condotel worked out as planned. But we will be making a few tweaks.

We bought our condotel the end of last June. But we didn’t move in until early January and left early March.

We can now see the income trends and have some idea about when the income will cover the expenses - our mortgage and the HOA fee that pays for utilities and access to all of the amenities.

We don’t have numbers for January and February since we were here then. But we do know that Spring Break (March and April) and the summer (June - August) are good months with July being the peak with the income dropping off dramatically after Labor Day.

The place is dead May and September through the first half of December.

Our plans going forward are to be here in Orlando between early October through the first weekend in March and come back in May.

We will come back in May both because the income won’t cover the expenses and my wife has a conference in May.

We really like our home

Most of the time when we come back from vacation, there is a temporary sadness that we have to “get back to reality”.

Reality for us is not to bad. Orlando is one of the warmest places in the United States during the Winter and we have access to three pools, a gym, two restaurants, a decent convenience store onsite and a walking trail.

After leaving Richmond, my wife and I parted ways for three weeks. She came back home to Orlando and I met my cousin in New York City.

I then went back and forth between Atlanta and Albany, GA to spend time with friends and family.

I flew to Chicago from Albany on Sunday three days before my wife to avoid flying during the first week of starting a new job. I stayed at the Hyatt Place Chicago/Lombard/Oakbrook.

It was your standard Hyatt Place. I worked from there Monday - Wednesday and I then met my wife who flew in from Orlando at the Embassy Suites by Chicago Downtown Magnificent Miles. It was our fifth and last stay free with points for the year.

The view was great and it was everything we had come to expect from an Embassy - two room suites, a great free breakfast and two free drinks during happy hour..

While here, we went to see the Hamilton Broadway Musical on Friday and Fantasia on Saturday.

They were both excellent.

We had plans for Sunday. But they were both postponed due to rain. We will be back next year.

The last time I was in Albany I mentioned to my cousin that it was on my bucket list to go to the US Tennis Open. She said she wanted to go this year. My wife definitely didn’t want to go.

So we made plans and I arranged to meet her in NYC. My wife and I were planning to go to Niagara Falls. But she was more than willing to put that off for another time. She had just come back from back to back trips to Las Vegas and Dallas.

I needed the break from the time I had in Richmond.

My cousin and I landed at JFK on Tuesday and went to a day session on Wednesday and a night session on Thursday.

The US Tennis Open was held at the Arthur Ashe Stadium.

My cousin really wanted to see Novak Djokovic. I was there for the experience. I didn’t know that we could also see other matches that were going on.

While our seats in Ashe Stadium were pretty good…

I enjoyed watching the other matches at the smaller courts even more.

That Friday we went on a food tour in Chelsea.

Overall, it was a great experience. While most of the time I would have taken Uber, this time we used NYC Transit. It was surprisingly easy to navigate using Apple Maps.

We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn New York/JFK in Queens because of its proximity to Arthur Ashe stadium. Now I realize it’s more important to stay near a subway station even if it’s further away.

Richmond was a crazier trip than even we usually have. Besides my being on the job hunt doing most of the time we were there, my wife went to two conferences while we were there. The first one to Las Vegas with a friend and the second go Dallas.

We were able to go to a Nelly concert the first weekend we were there.

Besides that, I purposefully didn’t do much while I was there by myself. I was mentally drained by the job search process.

We chose Richmond at the last minute because my wife wanted to take a couple of trap cardio classes.

We stayed at the Hyatt Place Richmond Arboretum. It was a standard Hyatt Place. The second one we have stayed at and like the last one in Los Cabos, we did not have a washer and dryer on site.

We may come back. Richmond is cheap and my wife was able to meet a few instructors here.

Now that I think I have all of my ducks in a row, it’s time to get into job hunting mode. I’ve done it seven times in my career and I think I have it down to a science.

First, I reached out to my network. That led to a referral and an interview loop that I pulled out of for various reasons that had nothing to do with the company. I knew that the company would be great to work for. I didn’t feel like I was a great fit for the role.

A former manager at another company brought me in as a consultant for a short term part time contract.

Then, I reached out to all of the former recruiters I had used before. This didn’t turn up any remote jobs.

Finally, I did something I never do. I started randomly applying for jobs where I had no referrals from either coworkers or third party recruiters. I applied for at least 50 roles over the next two weeks.

The result of my spamming my resume far and wide led to three interviews. I had one rejection, one where they didn’t move forward and one offer. I start in two weeks.

But my time in Richmond wasn’t all about work.

To be continued…

The rules have changed for looking for a job post Covid.

Before 2020, when I was looking for a job, my competition was people looking for work, who had the right skillset and were willing and able to commute to the local office.

Now, especially with companies forcing employees to return to the office, the competition for remote work is fierce.

I looked at jobs using LinkedIn’s Quick Apply and I saw hundreds of applications for the same role.

I knew I had to up my LinkedIn game.

I asked for recommendations and received 8 including from my former managers, added skills to my LinkedIn profile and I subscribed to a premium subscription to LinkedIn.

Of course I updated my resume. Now it’s time for me to start looking for a job.

To be continued…

Continuing the story from part I…

AWS gave me a four year offer as they do everyone. My original goal was to use the four years to:

1. Pay off all of our debts
2. Save money
3. Put ourselves in a position where my wife wouldn’t have to work even if my next job was paying less.
4. Learn what I could and improve on my weaknesses.
5. Be able to put I worked for Amazon on my resume and make my resume more competitive.
6. Build my network.

Notice that “sell everything we own, move to Florida and travel half the year was never one of my goals”.

I have to say that while I left a year early, all of my goals were met.

This is a tough market for people working in technology and I was worried that it would take me longer to find a job than usually did with all of the people looking for fewer roles…

To be continued…

I had to think long and hard about this post and how much I should share on the internet about it. But, I never wanted it to seem like this lifestyle was all rainbows and unicorns. I’ll have more to say about the downsides of how we live in another post as we approach the end of year one.

But for now, I would like to write a little bit about job transitions while working remotely. This was my first time actually looking for a fully remote role. The job I was hired for in 2020 really just fell into my lap.

It was New Years Day 2020 and my wife and I were sitting on a cruise ship on our way back from Mexico.

We were planning our trips for the upcoming year. We were planning to go to DC, Hawaii and celebrate New Years 2021 in Miami.

Life was good. Of course we all know things didn’t work out as planned then and we still haven’t been to either place - they are all on our list for 2024.

Around April of 2020, a recruiter from Amazon Retail called me about applying for a role as a software developer. I asked would it require relocation. They said it would after Covid lifted. Many people got complacent and thought that Amazon would never require them to come back into the office. It came back to bite them.

I had no interest in giving up my life in the burbs and relocating to Seattle. I was about to end the conversation there and then the recruiter suggested a fully remote role in the AWS Professional Services department where I would be working with customers bringing them on to Amazon Web Services.

I interviewed and they made me an offer….

One hard question that people ask me is “What do I consider home?”

Our legal home is Orlando. But we have owned the place since June of last year and have only “lived” there for two months.

I lived in Atlanta all of my adult life. My wife has lived there all of her life until last year. That’s where most of our friends live, where our sons live and we still have our house - until next year.

But then, Albany, GA will always be “home”. I grew up here. My parents and most of my other relatives live here.

We were able to see both sides of my family while here and my wife met my dad’s side of the family for the first time.

My wife was actually able to meet a fitness instructor she knew and they taught a class together.

Then we left Sunday and the fun began. We were suppose to leave at 2:00 but storms delayed our departure to ATL until 8 and then our Atlanta flight was cancelled and we had to rebook our flight until Tuesday.

All of the Hiltons for five miles were booked so we tried to make a reservation at our normal spot when we are in Atlanta.

But we were told there was water damage. Before we moved from Atlanta, we wanted to go to the Halcyon that had just opened. But we didn’t have the opportunity.

We booked two nights at the Embassy Suites Halcyon.

All of our clothes were in our checked luggage and I had nothing to wear clean. Lesson learned, always pack at least one change of clothes in my carry on book bag.

We did our usual thing and tried to call an Uber from the airport. None were picking up.

Then we tried to rent a car - it’s already 7:00 AM Monday and we were at the airport in Albany 12:00 the previous day. We finally got an Uber and got to the hotel and only slept four hours before we found out the flight

Then on top of that we find out flight had been rescheduled for Monday instead of Tuesday. We didn’t get the chance to explore Halcyon after everything that had been rescheduled for that day.

We headed back to the airport for a 3:00 flight and hung out in the Delta lounge until boarding

We just left Atlanta. It was the first time I have been back since last year.

The first goal was to lay eyes on our sons.

We met at Copeland’s of Atlanta. The meal was pretty good.

I also had the chance to see one of my oldest friends and his family and two former coworkers. But, neither one of us had a chance to see everyone on our list.

Since this was home, the plan wasn’t really to do anything touristy. However we did see Wicked. It had been on our bucket list for awhile. It’s a shame that we lived in Atlanta for over a decade and had only been to the Fox Theater once before.

Most of the time, staying at an Embassy for 33 days would be very much out of our budget. However this time we were able to stay at the Embassy Suites in Alpharetta using an extended stay discount.

It was an excellent experience. Embassy Suites has the best free breakfast with cook to order omelettes and it also has daily happy hour with finger foods and 2 free mix drinks.

The gym was decent and the rooms are spacious.

We knew we would be doing a lot of running and taking Uber would be impractical. We rented car from Enterprise using Uber Rentals. It was the first time I had been behind the wheel of car since we left Atlanta in October. I still used Uber a couple of times when my wife had the car.

Oh and we did see Barbie…

After leaving Los Angeles we went to Dallas, TX for three weeks.

For both of us, but more for me, it was a time to give my mind, body, schedule and budget a rest after a slightly stressful six weeks at work while battling not feeling well.

We stayed at the Hilton Homewood Suites in Bedford. It was a standard Homewood Suites. The only thing remarkable about it was that the hotel staff was excellent and it was cheap $90 a night and close to the gym my wife wanted to go to.

Besides, we were in Dallas just last year and did the tourist thing.

I met a former coworker for lunch and took the chance to do some networking.

My wife took a few classes and taught a few songs as a guest instructor both at gyms and free fitness event at a local park.

We didn’t do anything the first two weeks we were there except binge watch Succession.

The third weekend before we left, we went to the 90s Tour featuring…

Young MC

Rob Bass

2 Live Crew

All 4 One

And

Vanilla Ice

It was one of the best shows we have seen. The “one hit wonders” were great MCs, did their famous songs and cover versions of other legendary rappers and in Vanilla Ice’s case, singers like Bob Marley.

I have to say our six day stop in Los Angeles was dissapointing with only a couple of highlights.

We stayed at the The Hilton Los Angeles/Universal Studios free with points. The location was excellent. we went to Universal CityWalk and saw a couple of movies.

But after thinking I might try Universal, I realized both that I really didn’t want to go in the middle of the summer, and that we could go in Orlando cheaper because we are Florida residence.

We did the tourist thing when we came in October. We didnt really need to do that again.

The two highlights were meeting my friend from back home for dinner and the Tina Turner tribute concert.

My wife with “Tina”.