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”.

We left Los Cabos, Mexico about a week ago and it was a different experience.

This was our first time being out of the country except either on a cruise or at an all inclusive. We just got our passports two years ago.

We stayed at the Hyatt Place Los Cabos.

We booked a year in advanced and only paid $119/night. We stayed for three weeks.

This was our first time staying at a Hyatt Place. I didn’t know what to expect. It is laid out like a Home2Suites. But only had a half size refrigerator and no microwave. I was either able to use a microwave downstairs or ask the bar to put my sandwhiches from Starbucks in the oven.

The breakfast was meh and we ended up eating a combination of Starbucks and at the restaurant in the hotel since we didn’t have a microwave in our room.

There was also no washer and dryer on site. The concierge recommended Cabo Express. They picked up our laundry from the hotel, wash and fold for $40.

While all of the customer facing staff was bilingual, the cooks, housekeeping etc weren’t. Neither were most of the staff at the local Starbucks, McDonalds or Barber I went to twice. The little Spanish I knew helped a lot for me not to feel completely lost. I also can read Spanish better than i can speak it.

For me, it didnt feel completely disconcerting. For my wife, it did. She usually doesn’t mind taking an Uber and exploring by herself while I sork during the week. But she really felt uncomfortable this time. Lesson learned. I won’t be “nomadding” in any non English speaking country. We will be “vacationing” amd be tourists. I don’t think I would have been as comfortable in a non English/non Spanish speaking country. The built in iPhone translate app helped me fill in the gaps. But I wouldn’t depend on it for a language I don’t know at all.

It was frustrating that I didn’t speak Spanish better because I knew it was just because I didn’t practice.

Our friends backed out at the last minute so I ended up working every weekday.

The first weekend, we just happened to come in time for the free Jazz Festival.

The second weekend I did a boat tour. My wife gets motion sickness so I knew she wouldn’t enjoy an Uber, a bus, a 5 hour boat ride on a small boat and back on a bus. It was relaxing and I took pictures.

I also did the camel ride. The camel ride was more of a bucket list thing. it was nothing overly exciting.

and we did a food tour.

We just spent two weeks in Houston Texas. It rained the first week and I had to travel for work the second week. We didn’t get a chance to do too much.

The first weekend we went to the Mother’s Day Celebration and saw Dru Hill, Jagged Edge, Case and Shai. We were not impressed. They had everyone who had ever been in Dru Hill singing together and not harmonizing. Sisqó was the highlight of the show.

After returning to Houston, we went to see Drunk Shakespeare. It was definitely a great show and I highly recommend it.

We stayed at the Homewood Suites at WestChase. It was a standard Homewood and relatively affordable.

We will have to come back to here when we have more time.

We have been in Las Vegas for 30 days. We never intended to be here this long. It just happened.

It started with us planning a 4 day stay for free if we sat through a timeshare presentation. We signed up for before we decided on this lifestyle. We stayed at the Hilton Grand Elara. We sat through the timeshare presentation as required and that was it.

One nice thing about the Elara is that it is attached to the Miracle Mile Shops.

While here we ate at Gen Korean BBQ. I really didn’t enjoy it as much as the one in Raleigh. The meat was okay. But the cuts were thicker and they took longer for us to cook them.

We also ate at Pampas. The food was okay. But in all fairness, we did have a free lunch and we didn’t get a chance to try everything.

But, what really stood out about the Miracle Mile was Ocean’s One Grill. $12.99 for 3 drinks and $5.00 - $10.00 for either breakfast, lunch or dinner.

We only stayed at the Elara for 4 days and then went to HVC Cancun Resort. I chose it because it was off the strip and I knew I would be working during the week. The hotel itself was not exciting, it had no vibe and it wasn’t conveniently located near anything. It was cheap though. It had a full, but small kitchen and two bathrooms.

While here, my wife went to various gyms to take and teach fitness classes during the week. On the weekends, we went to see Usher,

Michael Jackson One and MJ Live and Prince

It was unusually cold in Las Vegas. But it did warm up near the time we were planning on leaving to go to Denver. But Denver was still cold. We decided to stay in Las Vegas another three weeks instead.

Now that we knew more about Las Vegas and the strip, we knew where we wanted to stay - close to the Miracle Mile.

After 14 days at the Cancun, we decided to move back on the strip and stay at HVC Polo Towers. It was right across the street from Miracle Mile. The location on the strip was great and everything was in walking distance.

We will probably make Las Vegas an annual pilgrimage.

Our trip back from San Juan to Nashville was quite interesting.

We had a layover in Atlanta and they were taking volunteers to give up their seat. We took the offer at $600 a piece and a promise that we would get whatever the final offer was. We ended up with $1000 each and a voucher for a free night stay at the Westin Atlanta Airport

Most of the time, we try to fly out on Sunday so I can be prepared to work on Monday. Luckily, this time, we flew out on Saturday so we could have a delay until Sunday.

We stayed at the Home2Suites Hilton Metro. The bed was uncomfortable. The sofa was uncomfortable and the breakfast was bad.

We only had one thing planned while there - a walking food tour.

We are eventually coming back when we have more time. The weather was bad and we originally were planning to stay longer. But we split our time between Nashville and San Juan before our next planned stop.

We left Orlando Sunday for our first stop on our 8 month trip - San Juan Puerto Rico.

It was a last minute addition, we had enough Hilton Honors points to stay at the Hilton Caribe for six days free. I took the week off.

The view from our room was amazing.

I did the Tropical Trail Rides.

It was honestly rougher than normal. But the views were worth it.

It was an hour and half Uber ride to get there and once I got there, I realized that Uber didn’t service the area and had to scramble to get a taxi to get back - and pay $200. Lesson learned.

Friday, my wife and I did the three hour Old San Juan Walking Food Tour. I highly recommend it. It was amazing.

We may come back in a few years. We will probably stay at the The Candado Plaza Hilton. The hotel is located in a more walkable area

On to our next stop tomorrow.

After years of saying we were going to do it, my cousins and I finally went on a trip together to New Orleans.

Nothing much to post, we hung out on Bourbon street. The only touristy things we did were the Creole Queen Paddle Wheeler music and brunch and the Airboat swamp tours

Growing up as my grandmothers only grandson out of eight grandchildren became apparent when all of the rest of my cousins wanted to shop. I just sat on my phone at the bar.

It was needed. Since Covid, we haven’t had as many extended family get togethers. We are already planning our trip for next year.

We just left our last stop for this leg of our journey - Savannah, GA. We are now nesting in our condotel in Orlando until mid March.

While there, we stayed at the Embassy Suites in the Historic District.

I stayed at 7 Embassy Suites last year and this was by far the nicest. It had a helpful concierge on site, a great friendly staff and the breakfast was a cut above the rest.

While all Embassy Suites have made to order omelettes, you have to wait in line for your omelette to be made. It was far more organized this time. There is a kiosk where you order omelettes and pancakes, you grab a number and they bring it to your table.

There was also live music Friday and Saturday night at the hotel.

On another note, I came to realize that we probably “vacation” differently than most. I took 6 days off and we paid for five days with points with the fifth day free and paid for the sixth.

We ate lunch the first day we arrived while waiting for our room. We went on a Segway tour, walked around River Street and had a few drinks on the 4th day.

We worked out a couple of days and I got my haircut and my wife got her hair braided. We didn’t have a jam packed itinerary.

The only other thing of note that we did was watch Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil which was filmed in Savannah and we saw the locations where the film was set that we saw on our Segway tour.

It was a very relaxing end to a crazy two months.

We have stayed in six Embassy Suites and two Homewood Suites this year. Among the many other reasons we choose Hiltons is the consistency.

We know exactly what we are going to get. We land on Sunday. We use the digital check in and we know that we are dealing with professionals.

We did our third Segway tour in Savannah, GA.

It was slightly different. We wore earphones and a radio where we could hear our Segway guide while we were riding. It was a much better experience than we had in Charlotte. The guide spoke through the entire 90 minute ride and we could all hear him. It also wasn’t as cold.

We have found that Segway tours are a happy medium between walking tours and bus tours. We will be looking for Segway tours in cities we visit.

Honduras last year

Charlotte

Savannah

I am introvert by nature or the other way i use to say it, “I don’t like people”. It use to be draining for me to talk to people except for my inner circle of friends I’ve had forever and family.

But, I had to step out of my comfort zone.

I just read a blog post about Conversational Skills Essentials.

It was very timely. Yesterday I was at the bar at the Embassy Suites in Savannah during happy hour and I overheard a couple speaking Spanish. I am learning Spanish now using DuoLingo and I struck up a conversation with them - in English.

They were from Puerto Rico. We talked for about three hours. This is completely new for me. I just learned how to strike up a conversation with people I don’t know within the past couple of years. The “safe” subjects to talk about with people you don’t know are usually sports, weather and hobbies.

I don’t watch sports. Talking about the weather is cliche and before two months ago, I didn’t have any interesting hobbies.

It was a very natural conversation and I am glad I put myself out there. They live close to Orlando and I hope I have the opportunity for us to meet again while we are there.

Being able to strike up a conversation is also important for my job. I work in consulting now coming from a software development background and I am always talking to customers. Almost everyone has interesting vacation stories to tell and I have a genuine interest in hearing people’s travel stories and most find our lifestyle interesting.

I also go out of my way to talk to our Uber drivers.

This is the couple I met.

We had no plans on being back home in Atlanta so soon. But here we are. We had some business to attend to and we made the best of our time here.

We saw friends and family and used our AMC Stubs A List subscription to see Violent Santa.

It was a movie we wanted to see anyway and the The AMC Dine-In NorthPoint was one of the easiest methods to get food on Christmas Day.

The AMC Stubs Plus subscriptions were originally commitment devices to get us to leave the house. But they also mean that we will try movies that we usually wouldn’t try.

The subscriptions allow us to see up to three movies per week for free.

While we were here, my wife rented a car. We usually just take Uber everywhere. But Atlanta is so spread out and we had so much to do, it just made sense this time.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites Alpharetta.

We usually won’t be paying to stay in Embassy Suites. Either they will be work trips or we will be paying with points.

However, this Embassy has affordable “extended stay rates” of $129 a night which after fees is near the top of our budget, but affordable. We will be in Atlanta once or twice a year.

While we were in Charlotte from 11/26 through 12/18, I took two last minute business trips. The first to Nashville and the second to Raleigh, NC.

They weren’t fun. But they were both necessary. With all of the technology that is available to us today, nothing beats being in the same room with whiteboards so you can talk things out.

The meeting in Nashville was with a coworker. We kept trying to schedule time to collaborate remotely and we were just moving slowly. We were much more productive when we were together and we got to know each other. I was his mentor during virtual onboarding.

I stayed at my usual spot in Nashville, The Embassy Suites Nashville Airport. Nothing really remarkable about it. It is a standard Embassy Suites. This was my third time being in Nashville this year. We have a major office here.

The second meeting in Raleigh was similar. But myself and a coworker went to meet with clients so we could have some uninterrupted time just to figure out next steps. We changed the entire direction of the project after meeting with them.

While I didn’t get the opportunity to do anything in Nashville besides work and sleep, my coworker and I did get the opportunity to try out a couple of restaurants - Honey Pig Korean Barbecue and had dessert at Raleigh Rolls.

Honey Pig was a new experience where you cook the food at your table and Raleigh rolls had excellent ice cream.

I stayed at the Embassy Raleigh Durham by the Airport.