On Track

American Guns

My brother is so awesome. I've been having a lot of fun biking, golfing, hanging out, and fighting with him.

I apologize.
That was an awful post to leave up for so long.
It is Sunday afternoon, I have nearly nothing better to do, thus I blog.

Since I left, I have graduated, partied, lived it up, started work, enjoyed life, so on and so forth.

Immediately after graduation, I sent off my best friends Andrew and Chelsea to hot, humid North Carolina. If they were snowpeople, they would be melted by now.

Kudos if you know where this is

To ease my sorrow of sending them away, I went to Hawaii. I just had to get my mind off of the sorrow. Party the sadness away.
My family romped all over Hawaii. Two islands worth. It was great fun.

We [family] started at Pearl Harbor; a sobering but really cool place. We crawled all through a submarine, saw the USS Arizona memorial, then finished up with the Big MO'.
There was waaay more. I saw the submarine museum, but not the museums that lead up to the Arizona or the air museum. We'll leave those open to make sure that I get back to Hawaii.

While on Oahu, I managed to sneak in some cups of $60.00 coffee. Talk about living it up. Some of the best stuff. Strong enough up front, but doesn't leave some nasty burned aftertaste.

From Oahu, we moved onto beautiful Kauai. Kauai is so nice. We stay near a small town that is a tropical Homer. It has it's love-able quirks.
Needless to say, I want a house on Kauai. There are so many hikes to do, so much adventure to be had. Tons of biking, potential for pouring rain, nice beaches, and it is relatively uncrowded in comparison to the other islands.

When I got back, I still had a week of vacation. Towards the end of the week, I was going nuts. No homework, no studying, no work. What does a normal person do under those circumstances? I'm still trying to figure that out. I've read a couple books. Learned to lounge around and enjoy coffee no matter the time of day. Golf. <I'll get back to that thought.
I started my job. I love it. I love my job. The people I work with are great. One of the other engineers is very boisterous. My supervising engineer is what every runner aspires to be. The director of engineering is quirky, but can be pretty awesome. He was angry at I.T. and suggested I just go buy the biggest, baddest computer I can find. I settled for larger monitors, which no one has ever thought about before because they are the most coveted item in the office.
Shortly after arriving, my supervisor took a week off and I've been trying to figure out how things work on my own. Sometimes, that is really frustrating, especially when projects are not moving as fast as I feel they need to be. But I see the wisdom: I am getting to know the system.

Pre Race

I completed my second marathon in here somewhere, too. I was feeling awesome, until the 15th-16th mile, then I just died. I still had fun. It never ceases to amaze me that I can do those things. The next one will hopefully be somewhere out of state so that it is more of an adventure. I'll run it off the cuff so that I know none of the course, make it a real challenge.

Post marathon, I've been golfing a lot. For some reason, I find it really fun. It is super challenging not to get frustrated, but the number of good shots that I have is increasing. That makes you just keep coming back to the game.
I was in the company tournament, and I'm not sure how, but I won a natural gas BBQ grill. I guess I'm blessed. And it means that my family can't get rid of grills. Every time one gets sold or taken, we get a new one.

My current music kick: I guess it's blues. Little Axe. Jon Shain. Jo Bonamassa. (thank you Pandora)
My current goal: lets just recover from the marathon. I feel spent and running is really hard.

So! In future chapters of Nathan's life, I want to explore the hole in the wall restaurants around Anchorage. Take golf lessons. Learn to rock climb. Find every other possible means to enjoy life. I am a free man. This is going to be great.
Check back periodically for updates.