Where Oh Where Did My Summer Go
Alas, work has not died down. Still have a two hour presentation to finish up for my workshop next week in The Netherlands. However, I thought I might take a break this morning and simply ignore its weight for a bit.
Getting back into the blogging habit is rather difficult. Those three months when I ignored reedmaniac.com, except for occasional silly blurbs on a white page, were quite nice. No decision making about how much of my personal life I wanted to reveal. No judging how offensive I could be until certain words would be taken too directly to heart. And yes, a few of you are wondering if I even care about such things. Yes, yes, I do. Not to the extent of most people, but I do try to keep myself in line with certain rules and principles when interacting with others in any form.
Except for one rather unpleasant dating debacle, this summer was rather brilliant. Let's just list off the things I did for brevity.
Outdoors. Climbed Mt. Hood with Dan. Climbed South Sister with Kevin. Climbed Longs Peak with Brent. Climbed Mt. Adams with Kevin, Sarah, and Aaron. A mountain a month. Not too shabby. Went to Boulder, Colorado for a week. Did not fall madly in love but was incredibly intrigued, especially by the sheer amount of rock climbing so close to town. There is an urge to go back for a longer visit next year. Three days in the Wallowa Mountains backpacking with Dan and Dain. Camping at 8,000 feet and watching thunderstorms perform below us? Brilliant. And then various hiking trips in the Gorge. The midnight solo hike to the top of Dog Mountain to howl at the full moon? Priceless.
Pie Party II. With new people and a greater variety of pies. Made my first savory, vegetable pie, which turned out so fantastic that it was gone the first hour, and then a three chocolate pumpkin pie that ended up being a dense sugar-fest of tastiness. Martha Stewart continues to be my domestic hero.
Sand in the City. Joined Amy and her cohorts building sand sculptures in Pioneer Courthouse Square in 95 degree heat for eight hours. Promptly drove out to Bend that night and climbed South Sister with Kevin, which helped me lose eight pounds in just two days. Oh, and yeah, we might have won first place...
Exercise. Summer trail runs in Forest Park at 5am is a great way to start the morning. Those sunrise runs through the forest were my favorite summer activity. By going so early in the morning, you also miss all of the usual car traffic when trying to get from SE to NW. Cannot wait until I can do them again next year. Started swimming at Buckman Pool one or two mornings a week after rolling my ankle during one of those trail runs in August (Paul was a bit too sleepy that morning). Egads, was I in terrible swimming shape when I started. Now I can go an entire hour with only (drinking) water breaks. After taking a yoga class while visiting Tara and Brent in Boulder, I came back to Portland and found a yoga studio in SE that I liked. Been going for just about six weeks now. In a couple more months, I intend to start playing soccer again and see if yoga has helped my joints stabilize any.
Oh, and last weekend Brian and I did the Great Columbia Crossing 10K run, which goes over the 4.2 mile long Astoria-Megler Bridge at the mouth of the Columbia River with a lovely 205 foot elevation gain at the south end. Really cold winds that morning, but the views were quite lovely and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves despite the chill. Brian was impressive and allowed me to be a chatterbox the entire run without beheading me at the end of the race. We might do more.
Children. Met Jack's newly born daughter Caitlin. Damn they are really cute when they are not crying. Christy and Mitchell both just had daughters in the past month too. Laura is pregnant again with, what looks like, another girl. "Egads, people! Stop breeding! Think of the environment!" That is what I would say without a single lick of guilt, if I had not had an hour of serious paternal instinct while playing with Charlie during Karin's birthday party. Crappity crap crap. Amelia, you can stop making ticking clock noises now.
Friends. Movies in the Parks. Nothing like seeing Dirty Dancing on a gigantic inflated screen surrounded by women swooning for Patrick Swayze. Dan bought a house, which Amy and I are helping to prepare for the move in at the end of October. Still getting the raised beds put together for the garden, but I have high hopes for next year's crops. Jack visited with wife and daughter. Jack married and breeding? I felt like I was in Bizarro world. David Clark visited (with wife!). Yup, definitely Bizarro world now. Amelia and her entire clan visited, which was amusing in the way only her family can be. Cameron left for grad school in California (BOO!), which leaves me without a serious beer drinking partner.
Work. After a lot of soul searching (re: boredom), I realized that it was about time for me to start being productive with my time again (re: make money). So, I talked with Mitchell (re: informed him) that I was willing to spend more hours working for Solspace (re: reading less books and playing less Halo). So, on August 1st (re: August 3rd, as the first was a Saturday) I started working full time (re: 30 hrs/week) as Lead Developer (re: Chief Doom Officer) at Solspace.
Fiery Tea will sort of die a slow death. It became a rather apparent to me that there was no way I could do what I wanted with Fiery Tea without either competing with friends or seriously pissing people off. Neither of which particularly bothers me but it was causing friction in ways that were unproductive and frustrating, so I chose a better direction by joining Solspace and using Fiery Tea for alternative coding projects that may or may not amount to anything in the long run.
With this job comes quite a plethora of work and responsibilities, which has been a bit jarring but that I am adjusting to slowly. A year and a half off is a long time to go without the mantle and pressure of being in charge of a company's software development. However, I am being flown out to the Netherlands next week to present at a conference, and I doubt that would have happened without being a more official part of Solspace, so there are definite pluses too. We'll see how long I can stand it though and not want to go back to semi-retirement. There is still plenty of money in the bank and who knows if I will ever use those funds to actually buy a house.
Yeah, so I think that is a quick overview of the past few months. Good summer.
Getting back into the blogging habit is rather difficult. Those three months when I ignored reedmaniac.com, except for occasional silly blurbs on a white page, were quite nice. No decision making about how much of my personal life I wanted to reveal. No judging how offensive I could be until certain words would be taken too directly to heart. And yes, a few of you are wondering if I even care about such things. Yes, yes, I do. Not to the extent of most people, but I do try to keep myself in line with certain rules and principles when interacting with others in any form.
Except for one rather unpleasant dating debacle, this summer was rather brilliant. Let's just list off the things I did for brevity.
Outdoors. Climbed Mt. Hood with Dan. Climbed South Sister with Kevin. Climbed Longs Peak with Brent. Climbed Mt. Adams with Kevin, Sarah, and Aaron. A mountain a month. Not too shabby. Went to Boulder, Colorado for a week. Did not fall madly in love but was incredibly intrigued, especially by the sheer amount of rock climbing so close to town. There is an urge to go back for a longer visit next year. Three days in the Wallowa Mountains backpacking with Dan and Dain. Camping at 8,000 feet and watching thunderstorms perform below us? Brilliant. And then various hiking trips in the Gorge. The midnight solo hike to the top of Dog Mountain to howl at the full moon? Priceless.
Pie Party II. With new people and a greater variety of pies. Made my first savory, vegetable pie, which turned out so fantastic that it was gone the first hour, and then a three chocolate pumpkin pie that ended up being a dense sugar-fest of tastiness. Martha Stewart continues to be my domestic hero.
Sand in the City. Joined Amy and her cohorts building sand sculptures in Pioneer Courthouse Square in 95 degree heat for eight hours. Promptly drove out to Bend that night and climbed South Sister with Kevin, which helped me lose eight pounds in just two days. Oh, and yeah, we might have won first place...
Exercise. Summer trail runs in Forest Park at 5am is a great way to start the morning. Those sunrise runs through the forest were my favorite summer activity. By going so early in the morning, you also miss all of the usual car traffic when trying to get from SE to NW. Cannot wait until I can do them again next year. Started swimming at Buckman Pool one or two mornings a week after rolling my ankle during one of those trail runs in August (Paul was a bit too sleepy that morning). Egads, was I in terrible swimming shape when I started. Now I can go an entire hour with only (drinking) water breaks. After taking a yoga class while visiting Tara and Brent in Boulder, I came back to Portland and found a yoga studio in SE that I liked. Been going for just about six weeks now. In a couple more months, I intend to start playing soccer again and see if yoga has helped my joints stabilize any.
Oh, and last weekend Brian and I did the Great Columbia Crossing 10K run, which goes over the 4.2 mile long Astoria-Megler Bridge at the mouth of the Columbia River with a lovely 205 foot elevation gain at the south end. Really cold winds that morning, but the views were quite lovely and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves despite the chill. Brian was impressive and allowed me to be a chatterbox the entire run without beheading me at the end of the race. We might do more.
Children. Met Jack's newly born daughter Caitlin. Damn they are really cute when they are not crying. Christy and Mitchell both just had daughters in the past month too. Laura is pregnant again with, what looks like, another girl. "Egads, people! Stop breeding! Think of the environment!" That is what I would say without a single lick of guilt, if I had not had an hour of serious paternal instinct while playing with Charlie during Karin's birthday party. Crappity crap crap. Amelia, you can stop making ticking clock noises now.
Friends. Movies in the Parks. Nothing like seeing Dirty Dancing on a gigantic inflated screen surrounded by women swooning for Patrick Swayze. Dan bought a house, which Amy and I are helping to prepare for the move in at the end of October. Still getting the raised beds put together for the garden, but I have high hopes for next year's crops. Jack visited with wife and daughter. Jack married and breeding? I felt like I was in Bizarro world. David Clark visited (with wife!). Yup, definitely Bizarro world now. Amelia and her entire clan visited, which was amusing in the way only her family can be. Cameron left for grad school in California (BOO!), which leaves me without a serious beer drinking partner.
Work. After a lot of soul searching (re: boredom), I realized that it was about time for me to start being productive with my time again (re: make money). So, I talked with Mitchell (re: informed him) that I was willing to spend more hours working for Solspace (re: reading less books and playing less Halo). So, on August 1st (re: August 3rd, as the first was a Saturday) I started working full time (re: 30 hrs/week) as Lead Developer (re: Chief Doom Officer) at Solspace.
Fiery Tea will sort of die a slow death. It became a rather apparent to me that there was no way I could do what I wanted with Fiery Tea without either competing with friends or seriously pissing people off. Neither of which particularly bothers me but it was causing friction in ways that were unproductive and frustrating, so I chose a better direction by joining Solspace and using Fiery Tea for alternative coding projects that may or may not amount to anything in the long run.
With this job comes quite a plethora of work and responsibilities, which has been a bit jarring but that I am adjusting to slowly. A year and a half off is a long time to go without the mantle and pressure of being in charge of a company's software development. However, I am being flown out to the Netherlands next week to present at a conference, and I doubt that would have happened without being a more official part of Solspace, so there are definite pluses too. We'll see how long I can stand it though and not want to go back to semi-retirement. There is still plenty of money in the bank and who knows if I will ever use those funds to actually buy a house.
Yeah, so I think that is a quick overview of the past few months. Good summer.
– Friday, 2009 October 16 @ 9:48 AM | No Comments -