What a year! In many ways, my forty-first year was the best of my life. Here are some highlights.
- Katrina went back to work part time. She works about 20 hours/week at a Physical Therapist office and it’s been good. There has been a lot of questioning about whether she should be home more or if it’s fine and I’d say all in all it’s worked out just fine.
- I started my new job as a Software Engineering Manager at O.C. Tanner. In a couple of weeks it will have been a year and it’s been the most challenging and rewarding job I’ve had. I have two teams of developers – one that is developing an SAP Commerce catalog with a lot of custom functionality, and another that is building out a way to theme/white label all of our software. We’re scheduled to go live with OC Tanner as our first client on September 3rd. Because it’s in Salt Lake, the commute often takes up about two hours of my day, which is a lot, but I usually don’t mind too much. To top that off, I rarely work less than 45 hours week in the office and sometimes work 50 or 60, like I am this month in preparation for our launch. All that said, I’m better compensated than ever, I get amazing bonuses twice each year, I love the work that we’re doing (we help people have happier work cultures) and I work with good people.
- We’re all adjusting to Harmony not being here. Ben and the kids are doing really well, all things considered, and it’s been a hard adjustment on the family – especially on my parents and Saren. We get to see Ben and the kids from time to time since they live pretty close.
- My Dad is beating all of the odds and continues to be active, despite having been diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic cancer 19 months ago. He’s been through several rounds of Chemo, then he stopped for about 9 months since the cancer wasn’t really growing, then he started back up again recently. On this last round, things were really bad. He stopped eating, slept all day every day and threw up constantly – all of that on top of the constant pain and the steady resultant intake of Morphine. Rough stuff. He recently (a couple of weeks ago) decided the Chemo wasn’t worth it so at this point he’s starting to feel better and hopes to enjoy his last months with a healthier, happier quality of life – something that just isn’t possible while Chemo is part of it. He, my Mom, Shiloh, Brian and their kids are coming over tonight actually, so we’ll see how my Dad is doing.
- Anders is going into his junior year (11th grade), Addie is going to be a freshmen (9th grade), Aani is going into 7th grade and Ava into 4th. Wow. We have promised Anders that we’ll take a family trip to Hawaii before he goes on his mission so we’d better start looking into that. All of the kids are healthy. All are well. They’re great kids and we’re pretty lucky to have them. Anders drives me nuts sometimes but in the last few months I feel like he’s turned a corner of sorts. He now works quite a bit, has a license, dates, all that. It’s trippy.
- I traveled to India for 15 days in October and November last year to meet with the offshore team for our project. It was a pretty amazing trip. I got really sick twice but the rest of it was great.
- We vacationed in Mexico this year as a family, spending a few days in an unbelievably dream-like lake house in Bacalar (south east Mexico, near Belize) and then a week or so at my brother’s house in Mexico City. We loved the trip and the time with family. I got sand in both ears, however, and was about 50% deaf for three days until we were able to go to a doctor, who pulled out years of accumulated nastiness. I hear better than ever now.
- My YouTube channel (LRN2DIY) hit the milestone of 250,000 subscribers recently, which is pretty amazing to me. I’m at 256k subs now and it’s hard to believe. My fledgling little 3D Printing channel is only at 1800 subs, so that’s going to need some more work. 🙂
- We built a deck on the terrace in the back yard and it’s amaze-balls. We love it. Fire pit, Adirondack chairs, shade, Alexa, a Hammock… It’s a little wonderland.
- I had some Basal Cell Carcinoma (skin cancer) removed on the side of my face. Not a huge deal but it left a good scar and made me more cognizant of my sun exposure.
- The wood shop has been fully functional for a while now and is awesome. I wish I could spend more time in it.
- About a year ago I purchased a DJI Mavic Pro, which has been super awesome. I’ve gotten some amazing footage from it but the other night I was flying it above my house and a windstorm picked up, it started to downpour and the Mavic couldn’t keep up. It got pushed back away from the house and carried out over Utah Lake where it met its watery demise. It was sad. I’ve honestly love flying it and seeing the world from a different view. I used YouTube funds to buy a new Mavic Pro 2 and some Racing Edition Goggles to see what it sees. I’m very excited to try it all out. Those should be here in the next week or so.
So that’s year 41. Now for some pics.
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