I just received an email with a few pictures of where my work is about to take me. This is a view of the port in Novorossiysk, Russia, from the site where I'll be working. My visa is in the works  and it looks like I'll be going this fall.

If you've been wondering if I've dropped my blog forever, I'm glad to say that you're wrong! I have, however, been super busy. For 3 weeks I was staying in Houston working at ENGlobal's fabrication facility while the control cabinets and my code for the pipeline control project that I've been working on were being tested. After finishing testing of my part last week, I've been commuting in as support. Through all of this, I've been working 12+ hour days, but the end is in sight for this phase!

The good news is that as things have slowed down, I've been able to visit with a lot of friends, and even meet some new ones.

Hopefully these aren't too incriminating ;-)

Practice, practice, practice! The first 3 orchestra rehearsals for Oliver! were in the "black box theatre" at Lamar State College, but we've since been moved to our final resting place, an equipment storage room back stage.

Swimmers, please know that I have the utmost respect for you. I've been swimming consistently for more than a month and realize now that stuff is crazy hard! Growing up, I had a handful of "lessons" in the pool of a family friend when I was somewhere around 6 yrs old that provided me just enough proficiency to keep me from killing myself. I never learned how to keep my head down or breathe and picking up a few weeks agomy stroke and kick, of course, were nowhere near efficient. Now that I can breathe and no longer freak out about putting my face under water, I'm learning to put some other pieces together.

My Problems

I'm excited to announce that I will be playing for musical theatre for the first time next month! At the end of July, I'll be playing french horn for Port Arthur Little Theatre's summer production of "Oliver!" As always, I hope this will solidify my name as a skilled and dependable local horn player.

I've decided on a dream job. I can't stand working 8-5 just to fund the things I love to do outdoors. Again, if (since) I've got to work, I love engineering, especially the relaxed environment of my current job. However, this is just not my ideal way to spend 8 hours of every day of my young life. Everyone says you should do what you love and, well, what I love most is being outside. And active. On my own schedule and unbound. That last one is what causes problems for thinking about ever changing careers.

It's been a while -- too long, really -- since I've written, I know. So you know, I've started a few entries, but haven't been able to get my thoughts quite together or, I guess, coming out the way I want them to. Those posts will come later. This one's been building up for a while. Regardless, I'm sorry for not sharing lately.

I'm not entirely sure why I'd feel guilty. I'm not sorry to the internet and I doubt that there are many readers that expect regular rants from me or look forward to them enough to be hurt by their absence, but for all the emotions that I have and am so bad at expressing in words or in person, I feel this is a place where I need to let them out. And I haven't. I haven't.

So here's a blob of emotional goop that doesn't have any personal application in my life right now, but wells up every once in a while and has been brought to an emotional head by some random occurrences.

So, I know this is Update 4, but today is actually Day 5. We are all in after a day of rrrrrrrrrrroooooouugh roads and some strong wind. I'll be brief.

The day started with us all heading south into a killer wind. The distance from our day's start to finish point was only 35 miles, but hey, you do what you gotta do to get a respectable number of miles in, so we detoured south before heading up to Ft. Worth.