In the beginning ...

Oh, where to begin?

Somehow I wound up in Minnesota!

Since being unceremoniously removed from my beloved Memphis Zoo I’ve been working as a Technology Consultant specializing in nonprofit organizations. While I enjoyed the work and the freedom it gave me, I’m not very entrepreneurial so my overall income wasn’t quite making ends meet on a regular basis. So I’d been keeping my eyes open for just the right job with just the right company to return to “normal” employment.

Through an odd series of events that job just happens to be in suburban Minneapolis/St. Paul. Eagan to be specific. I’m working for the International Species Information System (ISIS). You can check them out at www.isis.org. In a nutshell, ISIS maintains a database tracking every animal in just about every zoo/aquarium around the world.

I was already quite familiar with them from my days at the Zoo. Back in October of 2006 (or so) they had a job posted on their help desk. I sent an application. They contacted me and told me that it was a very entry level position that didn’t pay much so we agreed that it wasn’t the job for me. But in February they contacted me about a Network Administrator position. I applied … and waited … and waited. Quite a bit of time passed before they contacted me again and asked if I was still interested and, if so, what my salary expectations might be.

I responded that I was still quite interested and let them know that, while I didn’t come cheaply, that they’d be sure to get their money’s worth out of me. Then I waited … and waited … and waited.

Just as I was getting ready to spend in week in Washington, DC attending a conference, ISIS asked me to fly to Minnesota for an interview. Unfortunately the date they wanted conflicted with the conference so we eventually re-scheduled for the Tuesday and Wednesday right after the Sunday I returned from DC. I was to fly in Tuesday afternoon, spend the night, then have my interview Wednesday morning and fly back Wednesday afternoon.

The flight was exhausting, taking almost 8 hours transferring planes in Atlanta and making a stop in Chicago. When I arrived in Minneapolis I realized that I’d left my cell phone at home. I was to call the ISIS office when I landed and they would send someone to pick me up (their offices are only a bout 15 minutes from the airport). Well, the payphones in the airport refused to recognize the ISIS phone number as being valid. I tried all kinds of things. Called every help number listed on the phone. It was driving me mad. Finally, after battling their phones for almost an hour, I bought a long distance calling card for $10 from a machine. That let me dial an 800 number which then let me connect with the ISIS offices.

I was promptly delivered to my hotel … nice room with a separate living room, microwave, fridge, etc. The hotel shuttle was available to take me to the nearby Mall of America, so I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening wandering around that huge mall. I was pretty bored there after about an hour. It’s just another mall with pretty much the same stores you get in any mall. This one just happens to have an amusement park in the middle of it.

On the trip back to the hotel I kept seeing strange things out the window. Sure enough, it was starting to snow! This was the 2nd week of April, mind you. By morning there was a full 2” of snow on the ground and it was still falling.

Wednesday morning the hotel shuttle was to deliver me and several others from the hotel to the ISIS offices. We arrived at ISIS about 8:30 but my interview wasn’t scheduled until 10, so I sat in on the meeting that the others (a group of zoo veterinarians) were attending about how to streamline the data entry process for the new ZIMS software that ISIS is developing. It was a rush to hear “zoo talk” again.

The interview went well, though I had to point outside the window and note that the city was not doing of good job of marketing itself to me at the moment. After the interview I rejoined the vets for lunch. About the time lunch was ending I was taken aside and offered the job … paying 10% more than I’d asked for. I think they really wanted me and it was the sort of offer I just couldn’t refuse.

On the plane back to Memphis I was starting to freak out at what it all meant. Pulling up my Memphis roots was going to be a major change in my life. It was then that I decided to view this not as a permanent change, but a 2 year extended “job out of town.” I wouldn’t sell my house. Memphis would still be “home.” I’d just be living and working elsewhere on a long-term project. I have no doubt that mentally accepting that “compromise” position kept me from having a full-scale nervous breakdown. It doesn't lessen my commitment to the job. Anyone who knows me know I live and breathe my work. But that "just visiting" mentality will get me through lots of potential anxiety and attacks of homesickness.

To top things off, I knew that moving would be an expensive proposition and ISIS, being a nonprofit organization, wasn’t offering any funding for my relocation. Finding the money for apartment deposits, moving truck, etc. was going to be a daunting task.

By the time I got home I was an emotional basket case. I knew that I had to make this change in my life, but I also knew it was going to be a MAJOR challenge.

Opening the mail that had arrived in my absence, I found a card from my mother. A distant relative had passed away a couple of months before (she was quite a feisty lady who was going full steam ahead at age 97 up until just a few days before her passing). She had left my parents some money in her will and they had decided to pass that money on to my brother, my sister and myself. It was a sizeable check that would relieve all the financial stress of the move. Well, I lost it. I sat there for 5 minutes blubbering. This is the first time that I’ve ever felt that I’d really received a “sign from above.” Moving to Minnesota was going to be THE right thing to do. I just had to find the guts to make it all happen.