Ree Linker

Central Texas is beautiful this time of year. The ground is exploding with wildflowers, and the trees are taking a time-out from their usual subdued dark green to briefly explore a more vibrant shade. To top it all off, the weather makes you want to go outside and skip and the bugs haven’t come out yet. All over town, windows are thrown open and ceiling fans are put to work. I know that soon it will be breathtakingly hot, but Austin is a lovely place to be at the moment.

Franklin still loves his job, and his job still loves him. He’s picking up the pace with the goal of producing 10 ukuleles a week. His department only has two and a half employees at present, and their hoping to get it down to two. Franklin’s perfectionism can be a challenge to his speed, but I have faith in his abilities. This type of stretching is the reason that he wanted to work for a high quality outlet like Collings in the first place.

I received my first paycheck since 2000 last week - yippee! Due to stringent non-disclosure agreements I can’t say much about my job but I can say that I adore the people that I’m working with. The company has cultivated a nice, relaxed atmosphere and I’m happy to go to work every day (especially when that paycheck thing happens). This job is only available until the end of May, so I’m still trying to decide what to do with my life. In the mean time, I am applying for grad school (GRE scores be damned!).

Though we love being in Austin, there is ONE thing that drives me nuts. People here simply don’t obey leash laws. A few weeks ago Franklin and Chole and I were out hiking and geocaching (it’s fun!) when a couple with two unleashed labs jogged by. One of the labs peeled off, ran straight for Chloe and bit her soundly on the butt. The owners were mortified (”He’s never done anything like this before!”) and in a truly dumb move I shooed them off because I couldn’t deal with them AND an injured dog. Though Chloe was bleeding pretty profusely, she walked the kilometer back to the car under her own power. At the emergency vet clinic ($200 that I would love to have the other couple pay if I could ever locate them again) we heard that this happens all the time. Now we’re a bit afraid to have Chloe out even in areas where the leash law is clearly posted. Anyway, Chloe has recovered well, though it has taken a few more trips to the vet to get her back on track.

In happier news, we sold our Jerusalem house! Wait. That’s not exactly happier news, is it? We miss our place and our Israel friends daily. But we are certainly glad to have a bit of money headed our way. I suppose the Austin house hunt will begin soonish.

News! News! We have so much news for you folks!

First of all, Austin is all kinds of amazing. We are on the brink of surviving our very first SXSW, also known as “The Festival That Ate An Entire City.” We had the awesome privilege of hosting The New Familiars - a Charlotte based band performing at the festival. There were six of them, and things were very exciting around our 1000 sq.ft. apartment for a few days. (We adore our apartment, by the way. It’s just on the edge of the city, so we get quick access to downtown while still being surrounded by rolling hills and acres of trees.) We’re a long way from being either Austinites or Texans, but we’re on our way (assuming the two aren’t mutually exclusive).

Franklin is happy as a clam at Collings. He’s building ukuleles. Stop it! Stop laughing right now! Ukuleles have a rich tradition and they’re totally fun instruments. Now that you’ve calmed down, let me explain that it’s actually a great place for Franklin because the department is new and small, so he gets to work on several different aspects of the instrument. If he were working acoustic guitars, for example, he’d be stuck doing necks all day every day. Or kerfing all day every day. Or side bending all day every day. You get the idea.

In other news, I got a job! Looking back on the ramp-up to the move, I was SO NAIVE about getting a job here (why didn’t you tell me?). I remember saying something along the lines of: “I’m not going to get just any job, I’m going to get a job that I love. I want to work with books (librarian, quirky small retail shop, editing for a publisher) or animals (zoo keeper, vet tech, stable hand).” After a few weeks of getting turned down by literally hundreds of employers I was practically standing on the street corner flinging my resume at passing cars. At a particularly low moment I submitted an application to a “hemp friendly retail store” looking for someone to “help us figure out how to pay the bills, man.” Then I drove across town for an open house, took a test, had an interview, and got hired. I’ll be grading the free answer section of state administered standardized tests. It sounds boring, but we’ll see. I’m actually rather fond of standardized tests, and the pay is A-OK.

Speaking of standardized tests, I took the GRE this morning. I did very well in verbal (750) but not well at all in quantitative (720). It’s not enough to really recommend me to the grad program I wanted (Math at Texas State), so I’m not sure where I’m headed with that. I think I could improve my quant score, but I’m not paying another $120 to find out.

After the test, Franklin and I went out and bought a car. For the first time in our married lives we are a two car family. We got a 2008 Hyundai Sonata, and it’s a beaut. I’ll be driving it up and down Mopac for my daily commute, and I’m sadly excited about that.

OK, that’s all for now. I start work Tuesday so I’ll have more to say about that later. We love and miss you all, thanks for you patience with our extremely erratic blogging schedule.

You would think that people who have lived overseas for most of their married lives (in the Middle East, for crying out loud!) would find a move to Texas lacking in the excitement department, but I have to tell you folks, when we set out Wednesday morning it felt like a momentous occasion in the lives of the Linkers. We felt buoyed on a current of expectation and bright hope for the future. We felt that way all the way to Atlanta, where the passenger tire of our trailer blew out.

We’ve had a series of minor misfortunes since then (no heat or hot water until today, the wonderfully inexpensive medical coverage that we thought we were only paying ONCE a month, a leaky toilet, uninstallable dryer - you get the idea), we find ourselves this afternoon in a great apartment in an exciting city where Franklin has the opportunity to make money doing the thing he loves the most in the world. Besides a bitter and lasting resentment towards Texas Gas (which, by the way, is so common here that it actually helps us blend in with the locals), I think we’re really going to enjoy being here.

The next step in our master-plan is for me to get a job. For some reason this totally freaks me out. Not the having of the job - I’m looking forward to that - but the getting of the job. I’ve got a serious self confidence deficiency, and the thought of selling myself scares me spitless.

Most of the boxes are unpacked and the apartment is starting to look like us (for better or worse), so feel free to come and visit any time. We’d love to have you.

Here is the story:

We left Israel so that Franklin could further his guitar building skills with which he would go back to Israel and build guitars. But then this thing happened where the State of Israel said, “No thanks. We’d rather you just stayed in America.” We argued for a while, and lost. So we returned to the States and began hunting for worthwhile guitar building jobs.

This was easier than one might think in this economy because (I’m sure you don’t find this hard to believe) Franklin is fantastic at building guitars. Our first big opportunity was in Montreal Canada with a super-premier luthier. It was the chance of a lifetime - seriously, this guy is the creme of the crop - but he doesn’t pay his apprentices. And Canada is no more excited about giving me a work visa than Israel was, so we would have been a zero income family. We like food and shelter, so we decided to keep looking.

We considered opening up a repair / building shop here in Charlotte. We have friends, family, and a supportive church here. The idea had its attractions, but we weren’t sure that we could pull it off. Franklin was also concerned that his development as a luthier would be slowed by working in solitude.

And then we heard from a company in Austin, Texas. Franklin’s instructor from Michigan had called them and suggested that if they were looking for builders, they should snatch him up. And they did. And we’re leaving tomorrow for Austin.

I won’t promise that I’ll be better about blogging (you’ve heard it before), but we’re looking forward to adventures in the capital of the Republic of Texas, and I think those adventures should be shared. Austin is an amazing city, and we want you all to come and visit us there.