Michael Bay will you sign my explosion?

It's been quite a while since I last updated my blog and I apologize for not giving all 3 people that read my blog something to do to put off doing more work at whatever place employs you. Tonight's events were simply too epic to pass up.

On Tuesday, my good friend Tony informed me that he had scored a couple of promo tickets to "Transformers 2" in IMAX at Dulles. I'm already a sucker for free movie tickets so I was interested. He then informed me that Michael Bay himself would be introducing the movie and watching with us which adds even more to the awesome factor. I told him I'd be more than happy to pick him up from work so we could head out to see the movie.

Later that night I fell into a slap-happy type goofiness that only comes with lack of sleep. I knew that Michael Bay is well known for explosions (for those of you who don't know just watch this video) and I started to think how funny it would be for Michael Bay to sign an explosion for me.

After a bit of inspiration from the above video I thought it would be pretty funny to make a demotivational style poster and after a bit of work in Gimp, this poster was created:



I had Kinkos print one off in 20x30 format and it was go-time.

I picked Tony up around 2:00 in order to avoid DC traffic, but even by that point traffic was bad enough that it took nearly 3 full hours to arrive at Air and Space. Because a seat was not absolutely guaranteed, we had to wait a while in line. When the movie was nearly ready to start and we were being lead into the theater I was beginning to worry that there would be no meet-and-greet and my plan would be foiled. There was a podium up front where he introduced a bit of the movie and some of what he encountered when producing the movie, but because he was opposite us with a spotlight in his face there was absolutely no way he would see us, let alone come over to sign.

I was a bit discouraged, but quite enjoyed the movie. The only unfortunate part is the great seats were reserved for press so our seats were only marginal even though we were among the earliest there. I would have hated to arrive later though.

After the movie Tony and I started heading for the car when we saw Michael Bay in the lobby. He had decided to stay and actually do a meet-and-greet. Before too many people mobbed him I managed to get fairly close to him and say "Michael Bay... Will you sign my explosion?!" I unrolled the poster to which he chuckled a bit and said "Wow, I don't think anybody's done anything like this to me before." I snagged a signature and we went out on our way. (I don't like to bother celebs too much)

I'm finally back home and ready for bed, but it was quite an eventful night. I'm thinking of framing my signed poster as it will be great for home-bar decor (which I plan on having at some point... unless you're Colleen, in which case I plan on talking it over with you first and coming to an agreement.)

Picture goodness below:

My New Toy

I must say I am very happy with my new purchase! This post is coming (nearly) live from my brand spanking new MSI Wind. (the only reason it isn't live is I'm on the DC metro which doesn't have any sort of wireless connection.

I spent early morning setting up this computer and let me say I am an instant fan of this laptop. For those of you not familiar, the computer I was looking for had to be both small and light, have long batter life, and have a decent price point.

I had looked at some ultra light, ultra long lasting laptops, but was never completely satisfied with my options. I looked long and hard at both a MacBook Air and the Sony Vaio TZ series, both of which were under 3 pounds with 4+ hour batter life. The thing that had always prevented me from getting one is they are outrageously expensive. Both weighed in around the $2000 mark!

Recently I caught wind of a new ultra low power, ultra low price processor being released by Intel – the Atom, which only consumes 4 Watts of power (for comparison most laptop processors consume well over 5 times as much.) I found out that a laptop called the MSI Wind is going to be one of the first to incorporate this new processor into an ultra portable laptop... and for under $500 bucks. I immediately jumped on board barely getting the last of the first release and so now I'm here enjoying the tiny little machine.

For those of you not familiar with the Wind it has:
a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Processor
an 80 Gb Hard drive
1Gb Ram
Built in Bluetooth, and 802.11/a/b/g/n
a built in webcam and mic
and a 10” screen all in a 10”x8”x.8” form factor at 2.3 pounds

The battery I have only lasts around 2.5 hours give or take, but there is a larger battery to be released soon which will give it life for around 5.5 hours!

I was initially worried the 80% sized keyboard would be a major hindrance to me, but it turns out to not be a huge deal. I've been able to type at full or nearly full speed with no noticable problems.

I've also already got it dual booting XP and Xubuntu!

Well I think that's about enough of me rambling on about my laptop so until next time!

Engagement / Promotion/ Wall Street Journal Interview / Laptop / Golfing / and Back Problems

I haven't updated in quite a time and thought now would be a good time to do that.

With the exception of yesterday and today the last couple of weeks have been amazing. As I've been telling anyone who asks (and some who don't) last week was the week I got the promotion, I got the girl and I got the laptop (which some say is not on the same level as a promotion or engagement, but I argue I'm a computer engineer and this is the latest and greatest so it is actually quite huge)

Promotion

I was really stressed out for the weeks leading up to my vacation to Minnesota to see Colleen - Not only was I behind, but I just endured a PTO end of quarter which is always stressful, and I had to fit in doing a weeks worth of work with packing, laundry and cleaning in about three days. I also had a very expensive piece of jewelry to worry about in the process.

I started to see the light through the clouds immediately before and during vacation though when my Spe pulled me aside and said I needed to get my new pap plan (aka - I've been promoted) I had a quick talk with him and hooray, I'm moving up on the GS scale. Unfortunately in the government this is only mixed news as my workload will go up almost 30% and my pay will only go up 10% - I am however one step closer to being able to work anywhere in the country which will be amazing.

Vacation Finally Starts!

7/1 - I arrived in Minnesota and finally got to see Colleen again. Long distance has it's downsides but both of us are more than willing to put in the effort which is very nice. We spent a rather uneventful night just watching Harry Potter and crappy TV

7/2 - Went to see Get Smart which was actually a pretty good movie. It wasn't completely true to the original series but I didn't really expect it to be. They did have the cone of silence and a couple of familiar lines like "missed it by THAT much" and "We've got this place surrounded by [insert large reinforcement group]"/"No you don't"/"Would you believe [insert smaller reinforcement group]"/"I think not"/"Would you believe [insert humorously small reinforcement group]" I'd say it's worth a watch especially to fans of the original show. We also headed to dinner at a pretty nice restaurant near Colleen's place. While half of me wishes we had dinner here after I received permission from Colleen's parents, the other half of me thinks how cliche it would have been to propose in a restaurant. - oh well.

7/3 - Colleen and I went to the Mall of America to check out the new and improved amusement park. (They now have 4 roller coasters in the Mall of America including one that loops 3 times which is absolutely insane!) We didn't go on anything because Colleen is not too adventurous when it comes to thrill rides, but it's not that big of a deal to me. I just gave her some crap about it.

We also had dinner with Colleen's parents which is where I wanted to ask for Mike and Kay's permission.

All of Colleen's immediate family was there including Kate and Lance (sister and brother in law who now live in Vegas) Dinner ended and I still hadn't had a chance to ask either Mike or Kay when Mike said he had to go get his haircut. I couldn't go with him and I wouldn't have had enough time to grab him before he left so I had to make sure we stayed untill after he got back.

Kate and Kay went into the kitchen in the meantime so I excused myself and went into the kitchen while Colleen and Lance talked. I came up behind Kay and said:
"You know Kay, I really love your daughter"
she replied: "Well that's good"
I then said: "Would I have your blessing if I asked for her hand"
The simultaneously both Kay and Kate let out an "oh my god" that increased in both volume and pitch with every word. We then began speaking in loud whispers as to how I intended to ask, when, where, If I had the ring with me, etc, etc. There were smiles on both of their faces for the rest of the night and Kate agreed to also try her best to keep Colleen around for Mike's return and to keep her occupied for a few minutes to give me the chance to ask. That conversation went something like this:
Kay - "hey Michael, I think Bruce has something to ask you"
Me - (looking to make sure Kate and Colleen are out of earshot) "I was wondering if I would have your blessing if I were to ask for your daughter's hand"
Mike - "Wow, this is unexpected"

Now that left me a little bit worried at first, and I never got a straight yes out of him, but I found out later neither did Lance. I think that was more of a metric of raising two very independent daughters and being temporarily stunned. He did seem to quickly come around although I didn't get a chance to ask him if that meant yes before Colleen came back.

The Big Moment

We got back to Colleen's place pretty late that night and (even though in retrospect I probably should have waited) I ended up proposing in her apartment. Between me not being able to wait, Kay not being able to keep a secret for terribly long and Katie wanting to see the ring before she left for Vegas again, I jumped right to it - admittedly very willingly.

I went to plug in my cellphone (which luckily I needed to do and had a valid excuse to head to my bag) I grabbed the ring and headed back up. She was sitting and I decided to kneel in front of her (it's actually quite natural for me to because of the height difference as we're about eye-to-eye if she's sitting and I'm kneeling. Now we have this thing - which I know is outrageously cheesy, but it's our thing damnit. One of us says "hey guess what" the other says "what" and then the first answers "I love you." So this is how it went:

We were about ready to sit and watch How It's Made - which in my own defense is a hott show for us engineering types.

I kneeled, kissed her on the forehead and said "Hey Guess What?"
she said "what?"
and I said "I love you."
She responded "oooh, I love you too babe."

I then kissed her on the head agaid and said "Hey Guess what else?"
"What?"
"I loved hanging out with your family tonight too"
She said "I'm glad you get along with everyone so well - do you want me to scoot over so you can sit?"
I said "Oh, no... not yet"

She then started to suspect something - I kissed her on the head one more time and said: "Hey guess what"
and in a more suspecting voice she said "what?!"
I said "I want to make sure I have plenty of time with you and your family in the future" then producing the ring I asked "Will you marry me"
Then, the moment that momentarily stopped me dead.
She responded "You can't do this now!!!"

She had thought both that I had not asked permission and additionally that the current location was inappropriate for the occasion as she sees little romance in her current apartment. I started to explain the whole story about asking her parents and explained that I couldn't wait to propose to her any longer and the romance was at least partially restored to the scenario.

She smiled wide and then asked me "so, is that mine" while pointing on the ring, and immediately became much more giggly which didn't stop till well into the next day. It was amazing seeing her so happy. We had fun getting used to the term Fiancée (and also making fun of it) for the next couple of days too.

I'm a little bit remorseful that I didn't wait till a more romantic time, but the only time that may have been more appropriate would have been fireworks if we even ended up going (Colleen and I didn't go, but I may have been able to convince her - although I'm less sure I could have done that without her suspecting something)

7/4 - Colleen's giggling didn't subside till later in the night. :-)

We had dinner with her parents, sister and brother in law again. It was a rather relaxing day watching the Twins, the DC fireworks show on TV and eating... lots of eating.

Golfing with the future in-laws

7/5 - The boys (Mike, Lance and I) had some golfing to do - we already had a tee time set up for that morning. And the ladies didn't originally have a plan, but after the previous day's news it quickly turned to Wedding dress shopping. Both Lance and I lost to Mike but it turns out we were a great match for each other. I ended up edging him out by a single stroke when all was said and done. It was a great time though because I hadn't been golfing in around 4 years!

Colleen also had a great time wedding dress shopping from what she said. She really seemed to enjoy the bonding time with her mother and sister. (I'm also kind of glad I asked when I did because that gave them the chance to take the initial look at dresses.)

My parents showed up for dinner that night. When they did I introduced them to my Fiancée Colleen - which they got a kick out of. We had dinner and talked well into the night. Kate decided my mother was to reserved and should speak up more - Yeah, Right :-)

7/6 - We met my parents for brunch around 11 where she decided that she had never been to an IKEA and absolutely needed to go. We headed over and wandered through. They ended up getting and endtable and some other minor things.

After that we headed to the Mall of America being right across the street. They wanted to see all the new roller coasters in the mall so we went almost immediately to the center park where (I still can't believe this happened) we talked Colleen into riding the looping rollercoaster. If you want to see it in action you can catch it right here.

We had a few extra tickets so my dad and I went on another roller coaster there. While we were in line I ran into Matt - one of Colleen's friends from highshool who I had met. I said Hi and that Colleen and I were engaged. He said that was awesome and wanted to see her to say hi, so after the right he said we should go get her and come up the exit to see him. We got my whole family there and he ended up giving us all a free ride (which Colleen went on - I couldn't believe that either!)

Collen and I had a relaxing afternoon and night to ourselves after waving goodbye to my parents. It really was good to see them and I'm glad they could get up there to see me. The next morning I was off to the airport very early so I had to say goodbye to my Fiancee.

Limited Release Laptop Obtained

Right after I got back I ordered a laptop which was to be released that day. I did manage to get a hold of one just barely. It's 2.3 pounds, 10 inches by 8 inches, has a battery life of 5.5 hours and is only $500 bucks! More on that purchase is now here. It should be here tomorrow (7-15) so I am excited for that!


Wall Street Journal Interview

To add to an already amazing week, I was contacted via Facebook by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. This reporter was juggling around a couple of ideas for a story about spontaneous improv such as what I've done with the DC Defenestrators. I called her up and she immediately set up a half-hour phone interview with me later on that day.

She asked me about the effort to set up events, how I get people involved, why our group does what we do, where I get ideas, my background - both family and personal. I of course didn't mind sharing. I think she was trying to pigeon-hole this into a political movement at first, but I was very clear that as a group avoided political statements. We have very diverse group members and really I'd like to strive to keep it that way. I don't ever want to exclude someone because of any sort of belief.

It sounds like she's going to keep an eye on our next event which is coming up on the 26th and if an article coes come of it, she'll let me know... which I must admit would be pretty cool!

And the bad - Back Problems

With all that was going well in my life it was about time for some pain and suffering and I actually messed up my back enough to warrant a trip to the ER. That happened yesterday (7-13) and I'm still in quite a bit of pain, but fortunately the pain meds have been working. I hope the back dude they referred me to does something, because it sucks having such a fragile back like I do.

It happened because I was lifting a heavy box of computer components to a top shelf in my apartment. I had it resting on my chest and was ready to push up to get it above my head. I got it above the shelf, but not fully on it when I realized I couldn't move my right arm any further and was already suddenly in excruciating pain. The box started to slide back towards me because I had to take my right hand down... so I gritted my teeth, pushed the box safely on the shelf and quickly went to my bed and collapsed.

After a half hour of watching TV trying to lay as comfortably as possible (with little success)I got up to take a few Ibuprofen and drifted to sleep for a couple hours.

Colleen called and convinced me I should go get it checked out so I did. The pain meds were wearing off by the time I went in to get X-Rayed and that was pretty bad, but they prescribed a couple of muscle relaxants and horse-pill sized Ibuprofen. I'm doing much better but of course there's always bad to go with the good.

I must admit the previous week much more than made up for it. I don't recall a week that I've been happier than the one I spent with my future wife and our families.

Tony's B-day party

Had a great time at Tony's birthday party even though it got off to a rough start. We were supposed to go salsa dancing last night, but unfortunately there was a private party occupying the top two floors and dancing was canceled. The funny part is those top two floors were reserved by the Patent and Trademark Office Society, of which I am a member.

Because of the private party, I knew there would be a contingency plan. Unfortunately Tony, nor any of his friends had shown up yet so I was worried they had already moved on. To compound the matter, Tony had lost his cellphone so there was no way to contact him directly. In order to find out if there was a contingency plan, I had to call Sarah, who had to call one of their mutual friends to see if they were around Tony.

The matter was resolved when everyone suddenly showed up 10~15 min after I had arrived. Most of us were starving so we decided to eat at a Thai restaurant called Thaiphoon (yes we all mocked the name for how corny it was).

They had very good food and while it was well presented, it wasn't expensive at all. We had a few good laughs and a ton of good food. Somehow in the mix of things though the "every show choir move ever" bit was mentioned so I apparently "had" to do it after dinner. I told Justin he had better buy me a drink in return (which he did - thank you Justin). If you haven't seen me do the "every show choir move ever" bit, let me tell you that I make a complete ass out of myself in the process. I did it outside of the restaurant and not only did the 8 or 9 ppl we had there enjoy it, there was a couple inside that saw me do it who gave me a thumbs up for it (making me feel like even more of an ass). :-)

We decided to go over to Buffalo Billiards and shoot some pool. On the way I was challenged to an arm wrestling contest by Brooke so I accepted. It was packed but fun. Eventually we commandeered a pool table and a shuffleboard table. About halfway through the night Brooke remembered about the arm wrestling so we cleared off a space and while I did win, it wasn't by a wide margain really. (that girl is freakishly strong!) She also kicked everyone's ass in shuffleboard too (although I um... let her win... yeah) I did kick a lot of ass on the pool table though and I now have an awesome video of me shooting the "roller coaster" trick shot. I'm hoping to get that posted up here sometime soon 'cause it's a cool vid.

I started to feel just a tad sick on the way home. My stomach turned just a bit, and the walk home sucked much ass... but as soon as I got home I sucked down a couple of tums and I was good.

I'm gearing up for my comedy bit tonight which should be fun. I'm doing the same act as last week because this is the "professional show" and I'm not supposed to try out new material... just the proven stuff. I'm going to (hopefully) hit a few open mics to try out some new stuff, but that's later on.

I'll try and update about the comedy gig tomorrow, and thanks for reading.
Bruce

Car Problems

This week has been pretty bad for me getting into work already. I took Monday off, only came in a half day Tuesday, and was sick half of Wednesday and all of Thursday. As of Thursday night I had 12 hours of time in so I was going to have to work at least Saturday and maybe even Sunday.

The fun started Friday. I worked most of the day, but I had some errands to run and took off after about 8 hours of work. I grabbed my car keys, went out to my car, and gave the ignition a turn...

*click* *click* *click*

Not a terribly wonderful sound. This could mean one of three things:
1) My battery died or was out of juice
2) My electric starter died
3) My alternator died

I was looking around to see if I left any lights on in the car and didn't see anything that would have drained the battery. Nonetheless, I decided to find someone to try and jump my car. I found a couple of guys that lived in my apartment complex to help me out. He pulled his car over to try and start it... nothing.

This was actually good news to some degree because it ruled out that my alternator was dead... unfortunately it ruled out the best-case where something was left on in the car to run down the battery. I started hunting around and found the battery serial number. It was a battery from 1998 which was supposed to last around 6 years... so I had a pretty clear idea as to what was wrong.

It was too late and dark to do anything more that night so I went inside to do some research as to what battery I should be looking for. I actually hadn't ever changed a car battery before and was a bit worried about electric shock (I've been zapped by 12,000 volts before so I'm overly paranoid) so I looked up tips on changing batteries too.

The next day Michelle called to see what I was up to and I told her what was going on. She offered to help out and drive me to get supplies. I picked up a new battery and a set of socket wrenches because I have no tools out here at all.

Because the battery had been there so long, there was some horrible corrosion on one of the terminals. It was almost impossible to fit a socket wrench around and also almost impossible to turn. I stripped it a little in the process also which didn't help. After I got everything changed out the car started perfectly so I set out to get a new terminal bolt and some anti-corrosive spray to clean things up.

I got everything changed out and to make a long story short, I ended up getting to work around 6PM on Saturday and worked till 10. So instead of the 8-12 hours I had hoped, I got stuck with a dead car battery and a ton of errands. Needless to say I'm currently at work taking a bit of a break before I dive back into things.

As a patent examiner, we get Monday off because it's Columbus day and I work a government job (hooray), but it sucks that my "long weekend" is going to consist only of Monday.

Boston and Being Sick

I spent the day at home today because I've been sick for the past couple of days. It sucks pretty badly to be sick, but on the other hand I've enjoyed the day sleeping and watching TV. It's always nice to have some time off. Nothing of extreme consequence happened today so I figured I'd share about my trip up to Boston to see Kyle a.k.a BFK.

Last week was the end of the fiscal year and I had quite a bit to do to end my quarter gracefully, but I decided that if I were to get everything done that I needed to do by Friday night, that I'd head up to Boston. I worked until about 12 midnight getting everything done, but I managed to pull it off meaning I wouldn't need to be in till Tuesday.

I had always been the person to (almost) never do anything spontaneous... nothing major that is, so it was a combination of wanting to see new places, being completely on my own, having the weekend free, and me peer pressuring myself because I hadn't done anything like this before.

The trip up was a bit long (it's about 8 hours up there), but I used to drive a 6 hour leg to Chicago from Des Moines all the time so I was used to the lengthy trip. What I wasn't expecting is the amount of traffic and tolls headed up there. Don't get me wrong, the traffic wasn't terrible by any means and I live in DC which has been the worst for traffic congestion in the nation for a number of years, but for a Saturday afternoon it was still much more than I'm used to.

I was hoping to be able to make a few calls to friends on the way just to talk and keep myself occupied to some degree, but unfortunately my hands-free headset wasn't working and DC, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania all have very strict cell phone laws and you MUST have a hands-free headset to talk. Because of this I only had two relatively brief conversations with Colleen and my mom.

Now Let me just tell you guys about the difference between going from DC to Boston from Des Moines to Chicago. First off, you never see a sign that says next gas 45mi, you never run out of radio stations, your biggest fear is an accident with another car and not with a deer, there are about 30 miles that AREN'T on a tollway going through a major city or suburb versus about 30 miles that are and it seems like road rage is much more prevalent out here. I do like the way rest areas are set up here though. They all have 3-5 restaurants, a gas station, and a convenience store.

Most of the highways have trees on both sides as sound blockers so the scenery was similar for most of the trip, but going into New York was pretty crazy because you can see the whole skyline from the Jersey Turnpike.

I got into Boston early evening and met up with BFK. He has a pretty cool apartment near Boston University (which is where he's going for law school).
We met up with a couple of his buddies and went out for dinner at a pretty cool place. I forget the name, but they had a very wide selection of food. We went out to a couple of clubs later and apparently tennis shoes aren't allowed in any clubs (this is where all the really rich lawyer types are mind you) so I had to cram my gigantic feet into BFK's tiny and ugly-ass black boot-shoe things (ok, they weren't terrible, I just wanted to give BFK more crap). We had a pretty good time, enough that parts of the night are a little bit fuzzy, but I made it into bed successfully and we were up and around sometime around noon the next day.

BFK took me on a walking tour of Boston, and man did we walk. We went downtown to where he works, by the Cheers bar, around to the Boston Commons, to Boston Harbor, MIT and Harvard campuses and a couple more places. We mapped it out and we had walked 11.2 miles that day. Just walking though we ran into some pretty impressive cars. There was a Lamborghini Murcielago, a Bently (not quite sure on the model on that one) and two Maseritis, but hey, Boston is where all the really high paid lawyers live so I'd expect to see cars like that around.

It turned out that everybody had plans for that night so I had Sushi with BFK and his girlfriend Sarah. We spent most of that night playing Guitar Hero and hanging out.

I left Monday morning and headed back. I'm happy that I got all the way to Baltimore before rush hour because New York and New Jersey on the path I would have taken would have been bad. Baltimore was surprisingly light as was the beltway through DC by the time I got to it.

The trip cost me about $50 in tolls and two tanks of gas ~$70 and I found out later that you can book a shuttle flight from DC to Boston for around $80 but I suppose you live and learn. That and you have to book well in advance to get that price and this was a last minute type of thing. It was a lot of fun though and definitely worth it to go up.

The next couple of weekends are going to be pretty crazy though. I'll be working this weekend, but the one after we're headed to Atlantic City and after that Colleen comes into town so many Hoorays!

In case you're wondering what the pictures are, they are as follows:
The first is the Boston Commons which is a really cool park area that actually has a huge parking garage and other infrastructure below it.
The second is one of MIT's main buildings. We wandered past their campus which is actually rather unimpressive aesthetically. A lot of boxy 70s style architecture.
The third is the Lamborghini we saw that was actually sitting at a very nice hotel by near the Commons.
The fourth is looking across Harvard campus which is a really cool campus, but had better be for the price and prestige associated with it.
The fifth picture is Boston Harbor where the Boston Tea Party occurred.

An Introduction to Myself

Like any blog, we'll kick this off with an introduction to myself. Now if you're reading this you probably already know me, but I want to test out my layout so I'll post anyways.

I'm 24, in an amazing relationship, and working out for the Patent and Trademark Office out in VA. I have a cat who's name is Schrodinger and a very small and somewhat messy apartment for the two of us to live in.

My girlfriend is Colleen who lives out in MN right now. this arrangement is tough, but we trade off seeing each other every month and we talk every day with very few exceptions. She is absolutely brilliant and motivated and is going places for sure. She's also very nerdy which I find hott as hell! Things just flat out work between us and I have never been more in love... but enough of the mushy stuff.

I work for the United States Patent and Trademark Office as a Patent Examiner. It's not the best job in the world, but the hours are very flexible which is absolutely perfect for me and I don't think there are many other jobs that would be a better fit without me working on my own simply for the flexibility.

I don't quite know where I'll be 5 years from now, but there are a number of possibilities. The USPTO offers hoteling which is where you work from home and need only to come in once every two weeks for a quick meeting. It would be nice, but I don't know how good I'll be at making time for work on a regular basis. I may go back to school to either get a second major or a law degree depending on how things work out. I'm also interested in photography and stand-up comedy and may try to make a career out of either of those later in life, but I'd really have to prove myself either way before anything started happening for me.

For now I do need to give a certain someone a call, but there will definitely be more posts to come.