mike in progress

No, everyone, I am not dead.  I’ve just been terribly busy at work.  For those of you that didn’t know, I transferred to a new location that is being built here in Boston.  Same job, same company, although with a few more responsibilities.  Mainly because team I am on will consist of mainly new, external hires, about 90 percent or so.  But I digress.  Here’s a quick recap of what’s been going on.

The first week back to work for me had me in Chestnut Hill training some of the external hires.  That was all well and good except Chestnut Hill was an incredibly dead location.  I wanted to kill myself out of boredom.  The week after that I spent training some more people in Cambridge.  This was much more enjoyable because I was hanging out with some pretty cool people.

Since then, I’ve been doing more training.  And to be honest, it’s getting kind of old.  Thikning about it, it’s been an entire month, since I’ve done what I was originally hired to do.  Once the new location opens, that will change, but the fact still remains that I have a while to go still.

Anyhow, I find it quite remarkable still that I am where I am.  If we go back to College Mike, I don’t think that he would have ever imagiend himself having a job here, much less a career.  Sometimes Present Mike is also amazed by the fact.  I have a career with a company that I love with people that I love working with.  It’s pretty flipping sweet.

Adam on Matt’s girlfriend:

“It looks like she’s still evolving.”

(He’s saying she’s ugly.  Either that or the physical qualities of a neanderthal.)

Sunday is your last chance to see me.  I will be working from 11 until 6.  Monday I leave for good!

I have one week left till I move.  I’ve got a bunch of stuff packed, most of the stuff in my closet and my on my personal bookshelf.  Thursday is phase one.  I’m taking up a carload.   I might even be spending the night there.  I’m excited to go.  It’s a great opportunity for me, and I’m not going to let it go to waste.

So as time marches on, and spring approaches, my time in Connecticut is quickly coming to an end. Next week is my last at work, and the week after I will be spending moving. It’s creeping up, and even though it is all very real, it still has an air of unreality to it. It also makes me think about everything that’s happened to me since I came here.

So I thought I would recap everything that’s happened to me here.

I arrived late in summer of 2006, fresh out of college, and fresh out of most of a summer spent in a drunken stupor in Buffalo, NY.  I started work with a defense contractor.  I started dating this med student named Ashley.  She was cute, smart, and fun.  One problem, ego clash like whoa.   So that ended.  Work continued, and as time passed, it was getting less and less cool.  I realized more and more what a twit one of my bosses was.  Come March 2007, I was pretty fed up with my job.  I quit and soon started to work where I do now.  I got a promotion in September, and got to spend two weeks in California.

The holidays passed and then I met Elizabeth.  And that’s over.  And here I am, moving to Boston.

I fear that I will pick up a Boston accent while living in Boston.

So the just the day before last, I went up to Boston with Marcus to go apartment hunting.  We found the perfect place, and we are currently applying.  But that’s not the good part of this tale.  First, I have to provide some back story.  Boston streets aren’t the best.  Marcus hates potholes.  He feels that hitting enough of them causes his car to become unaligned.  So I made fun of him for cursing every single pothole that he hits.  So there we were, driving in Back Bay from Cambridge to get some dinner before we head home.  It’s about 6:30.  He hits a pothole.  Not all that hard, but pretty hard.  He gets pissed, then all of a sudden, warning lights go off.  Low tire pressure.  We pull over and I check the tires.  He has a flat on his front drivers side tire.  We pull into a parking lot, and I ask him if he knows how to change a tire.  He has no idea, so I end up changing his tire for him.  That alone is enough mockery to last a good month or two.  But then we head to the closest Lexus dealership.   They don’t have a spare and they don’t have anyone around to change it.  We head to a Bridgestone, and they don’t have tires in stock.  They send us to an NTB, and they say we have to get all the tires changed.  His car is an all wheel drive model, and you have to change all the tires together, else the transmission will go.  So long story short, he gets four new tires, we go out and have dinner, and we head back.  I get home a bit past midnight.

So that was a much more interesting story when it was in my head.  But the thing I am really taking away from it is that for the first time I really realized that I was in the city that was going to my new home.  It hit me for the first time.  And as much as I am looking forward to going, there’s still a lot that I’m leaving behind.  More than I realized, after tonight.  I have to go, because it’s the best thing for me to do right now.  But there’s a part of me that will still wonder, “What if?”

Life is full of what ifs.  And as much as we can tell ourselves that they don’t matter, they still factor into our thinking and decision making.  So what does one do?  I don’t know.  If I ever find out, I’ll tell you.

The one downside of working almost every day is you lose all sense of time.  For example, I have no idea what day today is.

I haven’t posted in a few days, but I shall.  It’s been a few busy days at work, and I have just been drained when I get home.

But more importantly, Happy Birthday Seth!

Watch this.

I know it’s frustrating for people to leave college with degrees and still not have any real skills.  I can name a few people like that right now off the top of my head.  (First one that comes to mind, English Major.)  I had a useful major, and I had some real life type skills before I went to school.  Most of my lower level classes I didn’t do so well in because I felt that I wasn’t learning anything applicable, so I never really tried.  My upper division classes were another story altogether.  If I went back and did the math, the difference in GPA between my lower level and upper level classes was something like 2 whole points.

But anyway, I take a certain kind of delight when I apply something I learned in class to my job.  It reminds me that my thousands in school loans didn’t go to waste.   I am now going to end this post because my train of thought has completely derailed, and I don’t remember what else I was going to say.