We may be done with snow, but the snow is not done with us.

I started making a list of things that I'd like to do or accomplish, and it got me to thinking... what about the things I've already accomplished? I mean, not about making a list of them, but did they affect my life in any positive way? Was I happy when they were done? Should I have taken a few pictures along the way?

  Quitting my job to become an engineer: That was kind of a wild ride. 2 years of awesome grades and (almost) no social life, but it put the lid on a solid 3-4 years of drinking and feeling sorry for myself. The crowning achievement was a weeklong visit to the ICU battling acute viral encephalitis*.

After a semester of recovery and restudying for missed final exams, I went to MINNESOTA - the land of beautiful summers and "what the fuck was I thinking" winters. I made some great friends in MN, and I got to know some of my family that I'd never really been in touch with. My ability (motivation) to study never really recovered after my stay in the hospital, so I kind of feel like the whole experience of getting my degree was kind of tainted... my heart really wasn't in it at that point, but I did finish with a decent overall GPA.

 The whole point of the experience was to get out from behind a desk, and to escape from doing mindless work that I wasn't excited about. This naturally resulted in... *It's funny how two years can be compressed into less than a paragraph. Lots of other things happened, but none that impact my life in a very big way overall. Getting an aerospace job doing mindless work that I'm not really excited about: So, now I live in Frederick, MD. I'm about 40 min from work, which pays about what my old job did. I have to admit, at least the work takes actual skill. I get to use my degree, sort of, sometimes. That said, I'm now eligible to work on much more complicated and interesting things; it's clear now that to find them, I'll have to actively hunt them down. Back to that list... I know the run-up to this point has been a little Debbie Downer, but things ARE actually going pretty well. I've joined the crossfit cult and I'm training for a marathon (more posts on that later). I'm brewing a beer for a homebrew competition (and it's the 5th batch I've brewed, so I guess I finally have a successful hobby that I'm sticking with). I've contacted a few companies who are working with autonomous sailboats because I think the idea of living by the ocean, working with robots, and doing work that doesn't have any military/national-security interests would for once be a really nice change. I'm also looking at possibly moving to Norway. I have friends over there, the economy is doing great there, I'd have more vacation time and the exchange rate means that my Kroner would open up a lot of doors to serious travel. It'll be interesting to read this later and see if I followed through on anything more than just brewing another beer.