It's been awhile

Well, I've looked at my blog and discovered that I have not posted in over 6 months. My last post discusses my ceiling collapse. This is a good ending point and beginning point as well. Before the ceiling of the kitchen could get repaired I had a SECOND ceiling collapse, this one in my bedroom. I was surfing or working away at my computer and suddenly I heard crackling from the ceiling. I could hear the folks upstairs moving stuff around, and I guessed that the movement was the root cause of the crackling. I thought nothing more of this and continued to pound away on my key board. More crackling. This time the crackling was more persistent and ominous. I stood from my desk and stared at my ceiling. To my surprise my ceiling approached me (or at least a 3 foot by 5 foot section did) and pieces of plaster plummeted right in front of my face. I received a couple of nicks from little chunks that glanced my face. I was not pleased and my room was a mess. I left a strongly worded voicemail claiming immenent collapse of more of the ceiling structure and this finally got some action from my landlord. I then spent the next two weeks in what I would call a construction zone. Various sketchy men came and went whilst the ceiling resconstruction went on.

And now.. Dinner.

Back.

My ceiling has held up quite well in the intervening months and I am happy with the structure of my apartment. The fall was very busy. I didn't register for any courses and this has caused me to lose my graduate status. My career prospects seem dim without an advanced degree in my area. I can continue to be a "test guy" and work with the software group, but my soul is dying doing what I'm doing. The MASc would have given me something I could hang on my wall to back up my claim of being an optical designer. I can't really expect to find a hardware job with the experience I've had, and I'm not sure that I'd enjoy one at this point. The fall at work was very busy with document writing and design for our current release. I was very stressed by this because it's alwasy difficult to get everyone to agree to what we want to do and to fit it into the SW development schedule. My personal life took a tumble in the fall too. I was doing relatively OK for most of the summer, but in the fall I got busy and attached to work. I desperately needed the Christmas break and enjoyed a few days back in Ottawa after a few days "home".

Much of my past two months have been about cross country skiing, fire fighting at work and implementation stuff at work. The cross country ski conditions were good for a few days at the start of January, then horrible, then good but with cold weather and lately good. I've gotten out numerous times. I really do love this sport; I regret not keeping up with in in University. It would have been a good way to stay fit and meet some like minded people. Recently I skiied the Keskinada Loppet 10 km skate race. This was very fun. The course was extremely fast, and although I'm not used to going race pace I managed to do pretty well. I'll probably attemp the 28 km race next year. Two of my friends were in the race and did well; Eerik placed 19th in the 53 km classic race against many top competitors.

I had designs on applying for college in the fall, but I have not followed through. My biggest problem seems to be getting the intiative to make it happen and convince myself that nothing bad will happen if I follow this route. It's been difficult to accept that I need to go back to school. After dragging myself through an undergraduate degreee I just couldn't stomache going back to school right away, and then some girlfriend stuff happened and well, here I am. 30 years young and very uncertain about what I want to do. I can continue to toil away at my current post, but my heart is not in it. I've also contemplated writing the GMAT, but the more I read about graduate school the less I'm interested. I don't think I'd be able to keep up with the work load and I'm also not convinced that the post graduate job situation would suit me. I keep countering my overly ambitious super ego with the fact that there are millions of people who live quite happy lives without MBAs or the pressure cooker of the business world.

This has been a rambling post, but now the blog is somewhat back up to date. The biggest change was turning 30 and realizing that not much has changed. In the next 30 years I hope to find myself no longer working for the man, happy with myself and at some point living with someone I care about. Hmm, just discovered Safari doesn't support the spell checker, so my apologies if there are any mistypes.