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.

I was shopping in Whole Foods today, and much to your surprise, I’m sure, was looking for some bacon.  But all of the bacon there was of the uncured variety.  So this got me thinking, what the heck is uncured bacon?  Well evidently, all bacon, by its very nature is cured.  Its what makes bacon, bacon.  The difference here is that uncured bacon uses salt instead of cured bacon which uses sodium nitrites.  In the late seventies, there was a whole thing about how sodium nitrites were bad for you.  So in uncured bacon, they just use celery and lemon juice and salt and some other stuff in order to get the same sort of effect that sodium nitrites got you.

So I had a good day in Boston. I moved the first carload of stuff to my new apartment. I have to say that I am loving the location. I have three restaurants in the ground floor of my building, all good ones, there’s a Morton’s across the street, and numerous other eateries abound.

On another note, I read the most interesting quote on pacifism. It pretty much said although war is ugly, there are many things that are uglier. And that the most frightening prospect of all was a world where there wasn’t anything worth fighting for.

Side note: I talked to a pretty neat girl.

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.