middaymoon's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

There's this girl I really like. I'm gonna ask her out this Saturday. So that's exciting.

IBM has treated me very well. They gave me a lot of training and I've gotten tons of help finding new projects to work on. I've barely spent any time between projects. And I've gotten to travel a little bit too! Chile last year for two weeks, and a few days for training in Chicago and New Jersey each. Certainly not vacations, but traveling is kind of fun. Especially when it's paid for! In Santiago I was introduced to pisco, which is sort of a delicate brandy. And I got to touch the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

Actually, I've done a fair amount of traveling outside of work too. I've visited a few cities in Texas for church conferences and the like. I went to a family reunion in Puerto Rico which was wonderful. Hadn't been there in a few years. Hiking in Utah for a week was challenging, incredible, and beautiful.

I had a friend get married in South Africa and I was a groomsman, so obviously I went and made a vacation out of it. Got to hang out with my closest friends all together! We drove through some parks, saw all sorts of cool plants and animals, and even got to play with a few tiger cubs. At one point I had to get out of the car in the middle of the park, with lions stalking about, and help push us out of the mud. That was...a moment.

Later we all had a "bachelor party" at Soweto Towers, where we played paintball and did their freaky 40 meter free fall. That's almost 3 seconds of falling. That's too long. It was so much fun.

Back at home, I recently moved to a new apartment. It was kind of a hairy transition, with roommates entering and leaving the group and a last minute apartment switch, but I settled into a place with a big bedroom and pretty cheap rent. I don't have any furniture except my hammock, so I've had to buy some things and scrounge for others. Slowly pulling together a living room. The hammock is my bed (again, at long last!)

I've got a lot of "adulting" to catch up on. Need new contact lenses and glasses. Gotta make a doctor appointment to get a basic checkup. Probably need a cap on a tooth. It's so easy to procrastinate when nothing is pressing.

Lacroix is more palatable when you stop thinking of it as "soda" and remember that it's just sparking water with a bit of scent added. Most Americans aren't really into sparkling water, though, so I see why there's a misconception. The lawsuit against them is just dumb.

She really likes Lacroix so I figured I'd give it a solid try.

I just finished the Hyperion Cantos, which is a series of four books by Dan Simmons. I read the first book around 2008, I think (sometime in high school I'm pretty sure), but never got around to the rest of the series until last year. I learned that lots of local libraries partner with Overdrive to offer free ebook rentals, which can be synced to my Kindle. So basically the value of my Kindle increased drastically. I finally got to read the whole Cantos, which was very good sci-fi along with Stephen King's It and a few others. I wish I had bought a kindle earlier, they're great. I'm re-reading the Inheritance Cycle now (aka The Eragon books) and even though I know the story has some moments that are a bit tedious later, the first book is really a treat. I felt like a kid again, reading it late into the night and dreaming about dragons. Great stuff.

Speaking of technology, I've gotten back into gaming with the release of Nintendo's Switch console. Zelda and Mario were both spectacular, and even though I've beaten and moved on to new games I actually played a lot of Zelda this last week. That's a good game. My Nintendo fanboy-ism has been turned up to eleven. I can't wait for Smash Bros to release in December.

I have a group of friends here in town who meet once a month to play games together. A few Switch games have local wireless capabilities, which means that we can basically have a LAN party with a bunch of consoles and TVs and stuff. We just go nuts with Mario Kart and Splatoon, mostly, but soon Mario Party will make a debut and then obviously we will play Smash a lot when it comes out.

If I can get her into Smash bros that will be a plus but I'm not worried about it. She's a great friend to me and we have other common interests. Scary movies, anime, hiking, being sassy, God, dogs, etc. She's a nurse and she's funny and smart and pretty. She challenges me. I hope I can challenge her too but I really just like making her laugh.

So that's exciting!