Best Summer EVER (barring Drum Corps)

Alright so where to begin. I was sittin' around the other day and I realized that I have had a pretty active and pretty positive summer so far. I am going to list off quite a few things here which are not in any particular order (except for the last one).

1. Fantastic party weekend like 2 or 3 weekends ago. I feel like I really got my personality out there with my co-workers and all. I went to this party where apparently I got ripped yet I still maintained some sense of humor and people bought into it, so socially that is cool.

2. No question, the biggest thing hanging over my head EVER is my Thesis. I seemed to have ridiculously slow progress with that over the past year until July. I don't know if it was the imminent deadline or what, but I finally got the hardest parts finished. So it isn't done, but it is at a point where I can finally say, completion is endevidabuble. I posted all about it in my blog. So that was one thing.

3. I(we) purchased a house. Obviously a huge step in anyones life. It was my first time and so far its been working quite well. Kathy and I closed Friday and it went pretty nicely. Kathy and I spent the first night there and got up and started fixing this, or buying that. This weekend was a big spending weekend but it pretty much rocked because every dollar (save the tax) went towards a better lifestyle. Thats a good feeling. I'll take that. We got some nice living room furniture the day after we moved in and I could sit in that couch for ever.  We get our HOT table tonight at the same time as the comcast guy comes buy to hook us up. So that basically rules. We are working on some of the interior decorating schemes and it is really fun kinda working things out and making decisions based on what other people will think. I don't know, its just a different kind of fun.

4. Leading into that, we had been talking about getting a vacuum cleaner since we bought the house. Neither of us have one and I would say it is a necessity for any homeowner if you want to live to any decent standards. One of the things we were throwing around was the idea of getting a Roomba The only difference between the Discovery and the Discovery SE is the hanging wall mount is a charging wall mount on the SE. One of the things we like about the Roomba is that it will charge itself on the floor. So we will put the charger under the couch or something and it'll be fine. So anyway, we were going to hold off on this for awhile because of the price tag. Then I saw that it was sold at Sharper Image. After that I remembered that you can double your cashback bonus if you go to stores like Sharper Image and stuff. So since gas gives me 5% by default on my Discover card, it is really 10%. So when gas is $2.20/gallon, I am really only paying like $1.98 or something. So that rules. Anyway, I cashed in my junk and we got the Roomba for about half off. Not bad huh?

5. The latest huge thing that has happened to me. Today (really yesterday), I got the good news that I am now in the ELDP here at work. It stands for Engineering Leadership Development Program. Essentially what this means is that I get a new manager effective August 1st. I will start a new job VERY soon after that. The jist of the program is this: Members do 3-4 rotational assignments which last 9-12 months each. During this time I will be working towards getting a higher education technical degree. Thats right, a new MS. Some of the work we do at the plant is supposed to transfer into the school of our choice. This program has agreements with University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, and a few other big schools as well. My first choice for schools is VT in the Software and Machine Intelligence program. Obviously I am super syked about this. I did some interviews a few weeks back that I kinda kept on the DL exactly how excited/nervous I was about this. So it should be a pretty good time. The first thing I need to do is go to a conference in Virginia for a week. That should rule. That is like the second week of August or something. My friend Mario also got into the program. I am really happy that both of us got into this. Its going to change our lives and the velocity and which we progress from now on. (Now we wait to see who brings up the fact that I am not done with my project and how they would have done things differently because they are superior in their decision making process.)

6. Going with big things happening to me, see the link to my past journal entry. I don't need to write all about it, but its worth noting as "things that happened to me lately".

So...Things are going well.