I've been collecting my writings from years gone by as I find them. Each time I move - now 5 times in the last 3 years - I find more scraps, loose sheets, etc. with my thoughts from various times in my life. I've decided to copy as many of them as I can here to try and keep from losing them again, and to share with the world. Please feel free to comment as thoughts occur to you. Either send them to trekker9er@yahoo.com or use the comment links here. Thanks, and Enjoy!

Sunday, October 31, 2004

 October 31, 2004 - For Harvard's 5 Year Reunion Book


Wow, five years already. I have to check back through my yearly holiday letter to make sure I cover everything that's happened with me!

Of course there's the big stuff:
I'm currently living in Michigan. I moved here a little over a year ago, in August of 2003, because I found a great job in Detroit. I'm still at that job and enjoying it very much! No significant other yet. No children... at the moment. But I do own my home (via a mortgage), and own my car outright.

I'm a software developer, have been since my first job after graduation. I know, not my major, but that Engineering degree didn't completely go out the window - two of my classes were programming ones!

Random school related stuff:
I was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2002 due to my Summer internship at Harvard in 1999. And I was told a couple years ago the work I did at my Summer internship in 1998 at Biosphere II is still up and in use there. Way to go internships!

Other stuff:
I also volunteer with the Red Cross, as Disaster Relief personnel, and have been doing that since 2002. I kept up with Rainbow Girls (IORG), becoming an adult advisor. I also joined Eastern Star, and made it to second in charge before I ended up moving to MI. I'm still working to reestablish myself in an assembly and chapter (respectively) out here in MI. I'm not in a singing group, not since college, but I do still sing whenever I get the chance. I started taking ballet lessons a few months ago, and boy has that given me a new respect for ballerinas! I took acting lessons for a while before I moved to MI. They were lots of fun, and I learned a lot. Such as if you're not really serious about it and not willing to give up your career you're not going to go far at all. Lastly, I still do roleplay a fair amount. Mostly just table top now, but it continues to be fun to interact with good people. Oh, and I run a Star Trek simulation online, which has been running for over three years now (yes, I am proud of that fact).

My Brother graduated from Carnegie Melon in 2003 with an Engineering and Computer Programming degree. He interned with Intel for a year, and is currently back at Carnegie Melon for graduated school for Computer Science. My Mother is still a Juvenile Court Judge in Mass and loving it. My Father remarried in 2001, giving my Brother and I four step-siblings. I have sisters!

There were eight rough months in 2003 where the catch 22 of middle class was made apparent to me: When you have the money to go places and do neat things, you don't have the time. And when you have the time, you don't have the money.

In my personal life, I've had my share, if not more, of heart ache. My Nana, whom I loved a great deal, died the winter after graduation. Then I had an irrecoverable falling out with my best friend of ten years. My great-grandmother died three months before that. My cousin lost her second baby to a reckless driver in 2003. My grandfather died this past Summer, only months after a friend at work died, both of them from cancer. And if I had have known how hard it was going to be to move so far away from my Mother, I don't believe I would have left Massachusetts.

But life always has ways of getting you through the bad. I have good friends, and one wonderfully great new best friend, even if I don't get to them see as much as I want. My cousin, the same from before, had a child in 2001 and is currently pregnant again! Both girls. I have family nearby here in MI, and camping up North is always refreshing, if not outright fun. I came back to Christianity in early 2003, and Easter of 2004 really helped me put things into perspective. My job continues to be great pretty much all around.

Now I just have to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, and I'll be all set.

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