Going Back to South Florida

As in the Boca-Broward-Bimini Triangle... Palm Beach/Broward/Dade Metro of Doom.  I'm going back for a job interview down there.  Going back...

I moved there in 1994 to begin my first full-time job as a Librarian I at the North Regional / BCC Library.  It was a brand new structure back then, fresh paint, new carpeting, new shelves, new everything.  Lord, that was 16 years ago, and it was pretty beat up the last time I visited in... what was it, 2004?

What happened was... I had wanted to work in academia, you see.  And the NR branch was part of a County Public Library system.  While as a joint-use library it also served the community college students, in truth there wasn't much in the way of academic-level research offered.  So even though I had a decent job there, I kept sending my resumes to colleges here and there, just looking, interviewing sometimes (why I didn't get that North Florida job, I'll never know, I thought I nailed that interview).  So in some respects I never really wanted to stay there...

Part of it also was the fact I took a promotion up after about six years from Librarian I to II, which moved me to a supervisory role and into the Public Computer Labs... at other Regional branches.  Worked at South Regional for about seven months in one of the most cramped staff offices I'd ever seen (it had been built before the widespread need for computers at every staff cubicle... it was also built with some of the shoddiest materials I'd ever seen, the roof LEAKED, this was a Library for God's sake), then transferring up to another brand new Regional library for about a year... then transferred from there to the Main branch as a regular Reference librarian again until 2003 when an opportunity opened up at my alma mater UF.  Job history from there gets a little more complicated to where I'm sitting here unemployed in Pasco County wondering just what the hell I've done wrong job-hunting the last 14 months...

I last visited Broward County for a friend's retirement party.  That was 2004, maybe 2005.  Only stayed for that and not much more.  It's been six (maybe five) years since I'd even been down there.  I know South Regional built a new building roughly 4 years ago.  I figure most of the people I knew working there probably moved on... It's been so long, and I never made an honest effort to keep in touch.

The job I'm interviewing for is a small private college in Dade.  If I have some time, I might visit a few old haunts, see how the place has changed... sure it's been five (six) years since I'd been down there... but I know things change within a heartbeat.

Except for the traffic.  I'm pretty damn sure South Florida traffic is still a frakking nightmare.