I haven't blogged in way too long, so I've got a lot of updates. My life has been a bit of a whirlwind this year, and I suspect that won't be ending anytime too soon, so I'll keep this as short as possible.
The biggest news I have for anyone who hasn't seen me in awhile is that I've been making great progress losing weight for the first time in my life. I've lost over 60 lbs since the middle of February. Jen's been doing well too and lost over 20 lbs so far. I started counting calories for food and exercise and mostly just paying attention to what I ate is what did it for me. The FatSecret website and Android app have been truly amazing at helping me - you can even follow my progress and see my profile at that link. I kept ice skating with Jose in mid-day work breaks for as long as the local skating rink was open and kept hitting up the Wii Fit routines. When I started my new job, though, I needed a new exercise to replace skating, and so I started running. My new company awards anyone who can run a 5k race in August in under 25 minutes with a free day of vacation and I'm going for it.
And so, as you may have already figured out, some other big news is that I have a new job. As of April, I left OASIS Open (on a full time basis, anyway) and I'm working for Dynamic Network Services in Manchester, NH, otherwise known as DynDNS. Dyn is a company that is probably the coolest place I could imagine working. I'm working amongst many genius-level tech/geek peers and learning a ton of new stuff. The environment is so casual and fun and geek-friendly and social and everything! I'm still helping OASIS out as a consultant, and the extra income is helping with some big expenses we've got coming up. The commute is smaller and will get to be even shorter once we move into our new place (remember that thing about big expenses?).
And on to the next segue... we're buying a house. After searching for almost 2 years, on and off, we found a place in Merrimack, NH. The paperwork is going through, and hopefully the powers that be will see how wonderfully creditworthy we pretend to be, so that we can move into our kickass new house in mid-August. It's an over 2500 sq ft contemporary, just 5 minutes away from the highway, seated on 5.75 acres of woods, and surrounded by some of the most incredible gardens we've ever seen. Four groovy turkeys were wandering around in the front yard to greet us when we went to see the property the first time, on my birthday. We went back later that day to see the place with Jen's mother and step-father for some builder advice regarding garage plans mostly, and then negotiated a purchase and sale agreement with their realtor the next day. We were a little late in getting home so that our friend could pick us up to drive us to the airport.
Still on the segues, we went to Ireland for a week between my birthday and our anniversary. I took lots of pictures, and I'll slowly be committing my favorites to my Flickr stream over the next few weeks. There's a few there already and many more to come. We had a blast. It was a bit rainy, unless you asked the locals, who were amazed at how dry it had been.
That's a lot for one post, but I did want to add one more thing. My birthday passed and I was asked what I wanted. I came up blank. There's been a remarkable amount of great stuff happening these last few months. The Subaru has been fixed with some incredible transmission and differential upgrades, and it will be competing this weekend for the first time since Nationals last year. My pool game is getting better and better. Jen and I have been having a great time of keeping afloat with all the craziness, and our relationship has been growing moreso in the last 6 months I think than any other time since we first met. I really wanted nothing for my birthday, though I do appreciate the clothing gift certificates from everyone who noticed I desperately need to stop wearing my "fat" clothes.
Thanks for reading this far... phew.
-N
