Arkansas, two years later

Two years ago today we got our first good look at the community that would soon be our new home here in Northeast Arkansas.

Maria and I left Crawfordsville, Ind. when she got off work on a Thursday evening and drove straight through to Jonesboro, rolling into town sometime after 2 a.m. and followed a Google map to the  Hampton Inn on the city's southside.

The next day, Aug. 10, Maria spent about eight hours in interviews with management and the staff while everyone tried to decide if she was a good fit for the paper. For her part, Maria wasn't all that keen about moving from Indiana to a strange town in a strange state. Neither was I.

We drove home that evening with extremely mixed feelings. We hoped she made a good enough impression to get a job offer, but dreaded the consequences of having to make a decision about whether to accept.

That was a Friday. The offer came the next Wednesday. I surprised myself by urging her to take it. I had been perfectly content to run out the clock in Thorntown, Ind. where we had been living comfortably since 2001. For a Cancerian like me, someone who values the home and the past and doesn't embrace change, volunteering to leave it all behind for an unknown future in Arkansas was completely out of character.

But Maria had gone as far as she could go at the Journal Review short of becoming publisher and this was an opportunity that was just too good to reject.

So, on Friday, Aug. 17, she accepted and agreed to start work here on Monday, Sept. 17.

We ended up moving from a 100+ year-old house where something always needed fixing to a two-year-old house where everything is new and works fine. The winters are milder and snow is a big event here, but the downside is that we get ice storms. I never expected to own a generator and two chainsaws, but that's just basic survival equipment here. The summers are hotter, but the motorcycle riding season is much longer than in Indiana.

Turns out the only thing I miss about Indiana is our friends and we haven't given up on luring them down here.