Despite the extended drought of posts in this old blog, I'm still among the living. My typical orbit does not carry me very far from home or work, but I did make a nice elliptical loop out to Scandinavia in the summer of 2017. I crewed a great tall ship (Statsraad Lehmkuhl) for about a week from Bergen, Norway to Turku, Finland, and then spent about a week in Finland. I finally got to see some new castles/fortresses, which ended a long drought.
Since then pretty much all my brief escapes from the extraterrestrial grindstone have been to see beloved family and friends. I've taken zero hours of paid leave I earned this year, all of which I will lose (if I haven't used it) at year's end, and I now don't have enough time to use it all, so...yay.
On the bright side, it has been a very productive year "at the office", with a lot of progress made toward getting new things ready to fly, while continuing to work plenty of cargo missions that intermittently punctuate all the other development activities. There aren't any big promotions or advancements or changes in the offing. We have our hands full. They're full with new stuff, which is definitely enough to handle for the time being and foreseeable future.*
Oh, and I'm gradually easing back into skateboarding for the first time in decades. A few weeks back I went to my first skate park (indoor), and didn't completely destroy myself. Yesterday a co-worker friend and I attended the 35th annual Turkey Jam skate contest (didn't compete) held in a big drainage ditch north of downtown. A good time was had by all.
*Apologies for all the intentionally vague terms. I haven't figured out how to write about my new daily normal activities without feeling like I'm in danger of breaching NDAs, etc.
"When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have."
~The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister
Since then pretty much all my brief escapes from the extraterrestrial grindstone have been to see beloved family and friends. I've taken zero hours of paid leave I earned this year, all of which I will lose (if I haven't used it) at year's end, and I now don't have enough time to use it all, so...yay.
On the bright side, it has been a very productive year "at the office", with a lot of progress made toward getting new things ready to fly, while continuing to work plenty of cargo missions that intermittently punctuate all the other development activities. There aren't any big promotions or advancements or changes in the offing. We have our hands full. They're full with new stuff, which is definitely enough to handle for the time being and foreseeable future.*
Oh, and I'm gradually easing back into skateboarding for the first time in decades. A few weeks back I went to my first skate park (indoor), and didn't completely destroy myself. Yesterday a co-worker friend and I attended the 35th annual Turkey Jam skate contest (didn't compete) held in a big drainage ditch north of downtown. A good time was had by all.
*Apologies for all the intentionally vague terms. I haven't figured out how to write about my new daily normal activities without feeling like I'm in danger of breaching NDAs, etc.
"When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have."
~The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister
