Shaine Mata Blog

I've never been a money grubbing worker, so this is my first time. I feel bad about leaving my current job for another; but at the same time, I recognize that I need the money and it would be irresponsible to stay put. We need to show a profit on this trip. So far, we are in the negative. I learned that our season will not be four months as I thought. It will only be three months. With a shortened season, we won't earn as much as we need if we both work at the Head Start. Our needs include our earning goal and the need to recover what we have spent. My wife will stay on and I will jump over to another job that pays better. It's not difficult or dangerous. In fact, the job is very boring and routine.   Today, I went over to the Seneca plant to apply for the job. It's funny, I got the job before I even finished filling out the application. The biggest selling point was that I am bilingual. Many of the applicants don't speak English. They were already w

I got wind of a good opportunity today. I'm going to follow up tomorrow to see what my prospects are. If the opportunity is good, then I will have to do something that I don't like doing. I'd end up jumping ship from one job to another with a better offer. I have tried loyalty to my employers in the past and have wound up used and broke. So dumping one job for another goes against my nature. Usually, I'll stick to a job until it is no longer fulfilling, quit, wander around, and find another job. It is difficult to go against my nature by finding another job while employed; but this year has been about change for me.   I'm learning some things about my current job that would mean that I will have wasted my trip north. I'd end up in the RGV again without having met my objective. As much as I want to be loyal and be a part of the group, I'm seeing that I won't get where I want to go. Ironically, the job would be very fulfilling if I were to ig

I found this site with news about Los Fresnos . I thought I'd share it so other bloggers can link to it. It seems authentic, so I hate to see it die out. Anybody who can link to it should. I'll be adding it to my links later. I don't see any RSS buttons, otherwise it would go on the SpinRGV site as a regular headliner.

We have arrived at Rice Lake, WI. This is where we will live for the season. We left St Paul, MN this morning around 9 am. We took I-35E north and then turned onto U.S. Hwy 8 to I-59. That practically brought us to Rice Lake. We stopped at Turtle Lake, WI for lunch. The diner was nicely decorated on the inside; they had a Coca-Cola theme throughout with checkered black and white tile on the floor. The menu was a bit limited, but they made the few options very well.   We arrived at Rice Lake a little before 3 pm. It was easy to find the AmericInn . We took all of our stuff off the truck and moved it into the room. We have until Friday to find an apartment here. After that, the company will house us at the motel on a case-by-case basis depending on our success in finding a place to live. Traveling, even though you are sitting the whole time, takes a lot out of you, so we took a short nap. A while later, we got a call from some friends who had arrived here and went to visit a family

I went swimming earlier this evening at the UWOSH indoor swimming pool. I was expecting the worst. I remember as a kid when I would go swimming in the lakes in Wisconsin. One year when we lived in Madison, our apartment complex had a pool. All experiences involved damn cold water. I was pleasantly surprised tonight. The water was a bit shocking, but not the sort of cold that leaves you breathless. As a guest of UW, I am allowed to use the facility. I went with a friend and my son around 7:30. It took us a while to find the way into the pool, they keep it in the basement. My friend had been here last year and went swimming. He forgot how to get in. The water is colder than an RGV swimming pool. It didn't take long for my toes and legs to start cramping up. The valley definitely has a advantage in pool temperatures.   If you want to experience a good pool, you must go to the Mission Northside Pool, next to Mission High School. That pool is heated all year. It's awe

I got an anonymous comment on yesterday's post . I re-read the post and towards the end it sounds like I'm not going back to the RGV. I'm sure that anonymous will be disappointed, but I will be returning home to Mission, Texas. This is just a seasonal job. I expect to be going home by October. As much as I like Wisconsin, the area where I'm going is only an hour away from St. Paul, one of the coldest spots in America during the winter. There is a damn good reason why we have Winter Texans in the Rio Grande Valley every year. If you look in my 43 Things list, you'll see that freezing my ______ off is not listed. Besides, the valley is my home.   I haven't interviewed anybody, today. My mind was mostly on my job interview. I wound up having two interviews for jobs I had not considered. They are short-staffed in bus drivers, so I volunteered to get my Class B license so that I can drive the bus. This would be on top of my duties as a teacher, shoul

We had the opportunity to meet the executives of UMOS today. We learned about the history of the organization and some challenges. Very interesting stuff. It was followed by more training. Today we were joined by support staff, which made our group bigger. In addition, UW-Oshkosh is hosting some summer camps. The campus is flooded with high school kids. We did have the good fortune to find Uncalendars . I got hooked on them at UT-Austin .   Tomorrow, I officially interview for my job after a day of training. It's a formality of sorts, I'm practically in already due to the shortage of workers. In case anybody is interested, the Migrant Head Start program needs bus drivers and other personnel for the schools. If you don't mind relocating, there is work for you outside of Texas. This brings me to a related subject that popped up today.   While we were fighting to stay awake during the training, my wife wrote me a note asking if we could come to Wisconsin ag

Tonight, I decided to talk to a long-time migrant friend of mine who came to the Migrant Head Start training. He now works as a bus driver for the program during the summer. Back home, he also works as a bus driver for the Head Start program under the Texas Migrant Council. Due to some family ties, I've known him for almost two decades. We call him Soto, although that's not his real name. He got his nickname because he came from Soto La Marina, Tamaulipas in Mexico. He has been coming up north for a long time already. Now, he has a family with a son at UT Austin and two lovely daughters who are about to bloom into their adulthoods. Today was his first day in Oshkosh before the long week of really boring training for him, my second. So, we went to have a couple beers to console ourselves over our ill-fate.   Just to give you an idea of who he is, Soto is one of the hard-working Mexicans who came to the U.S. to make a better life for himself. He has done everything

We have arrived at the ramada camp north of Wautoma.

We have arrived at wisconsin. Drive is almost over.

We have crossed the Mississippi into Illinois at Cairo. We are in the land of Lincoln.

We are entering missouri on interstate 55.

We are leaving the migrant center after some rest and showers. We are going to grab some coffee and then head to out.

There is a hispanic newspaper in Arkansas. You can read it at www.amigonews.com weekly.

We have finally left texas. Damn It's a big state! We will stop to rest at the Hope migrant mission in Arkansas until midnight.

We are on our way to wisconsin. Kids were waiting to leave so they could sleep. We will stop briefly in austin. Then on to Hope AR.

The text post blackout commences tonight. I don't know how long I'll be away from computers. Hopefully not too long. I'd like to post press releases on the SpinRGV Blog  as quickly as possible, but I may fall behind. I'll be posting audio entries on RGV Life . The RGV Life Podcast may not have any show updates depending on how "in touch" I am with events in the Rio Grande Valley. Maybe I'll start a new RGV Life Podcast Migrant Series or something.   In the coming days, expect audio posts telling you about our trip and places we are visiting. I have no way of posting pictures, otherwise I would do it. I will be taking my digital camera on the trip. We'll also have our iRiver to record anything. I expect a boring trip, frankly. The kids may be excited to see new things. We leave in three hours.    

Today, we spent our time cleaning up and putting stuff away around the house. I made a few trips to the Laundromat to wash the clothes. We won't be taking most of them with us to save us some trouble. We squeezed most of our stuff in a big plastic container. Our toiletries are in a separate box. Besides, we can hit yard sales up in Wisconsin and buy clothes that are better suited to their weather up there. Even in the summer, most days are in the 70's or 80's. Nights fall down to the 50's. My daughter is packing a swim suit because she plans on going swimming. I've warned her that the lakes up there are cold. You can feel layers of cold as you swim around in the lakes. The deeper you go, the colder the water gets; and it starts off cold by our standards. You dive in brown and come out blue. I guess you have to experience it for yourself.   One issue has come up. We had an idea of how we would deal with it before, but we have new developments. The issu

We're having a lazy day at home. Just messing around about a week ago.

This is our son Magnus fooling around at home. He's 4 years old and very energetic.

We have a lot of time to prepare for our trip up to Wisconsin. We will be leaving on Friday at midnight. This way, we can visit my brother for a while in daylight before heading up north. We spent the day taking care of bills. I discovered that Texas Gas Service was way behind. I don't look at the bills because I have automatic payments scheduled. The last time I checked, my gas was about $12 per month. I scheduled $20 monthly payments so that we would have credit. I did not realize that our monthly gas has gone up to $26/mo. So we owed $50; there goes my credit. We used to not cook as much. Lately, since I've been home, I've been cooking. I usually prep food in advance of working the pans, so I tend to cook on high flames. When you cook on medium, you have time to prep as you go.   Other things we did included paying our Post Net mailbox through November, depositing the money from the sale of my wife's van, cancel our car insurance, and other little erra