...And then the papa tomato says "ketchup"

OK, so it has been a score since the last time I actually sat down and dumped my brains on some paper. It's technically been 0.015 score, but folks are terrible at math these days. So here's the abridged version of the summer with all my news that's fit to print, granted I can print it in 30 minutes or less.

I finished my spring semester at WSU, two A's and a B 'cause I'm a friggin' genius. The 17 and 18 year old freshmen don't have nuthin on me, except the hope of a boundless future and smart decisions.

A big company up in Montreal, Canada flew me up there for a nice weekend and a job interview. I got a job offer on the spot, double my salary but I would have to cut ties with everything here (family, friends, house, job, school) and start all over in Los Angeles. At least I grew up on gangsta rap so I'd know the native dialect.

While I took two weeks to make my decision, I got an interview and job offer for a promotion at my current company. It was for a different kind of job as the other offer, so I was at a career crossroads. I was not ready to pick up my roots quite yet, so I pushed my luck and asked for a fat raise along with the promotion (that's phat loot for you west-siders). Since my only true skill is applying pressure to said luck, I made out the best I could.

Amidst all these easy life changing decisions, my friends and I went to Lake of the Ozarks for Memorial weekend. My buddy has a house and boat right on the lake so we spent a long weekend drinking beer, cruising around the lake, watching pretty women, cliff jumping, my poor atempt at water skiing, and yet more beer drinking. For as much as I avoid the sun, I had an amazingly fun weekend.

So back to school for the summer... this time it was Business Statistics and the Information Systems lab. In other words, the joy of charts and how to make them in Excel. Lucky for me, that's what I do at work since noone else can seem to understand the cryptic symbols they call "numbers". Once again, a two wonderful A's again. See, I told you's I's a friggin genius. (sorry, that sounded much better in my head).

Now it's been a few weeks at the new job. My stress level has been reduced to almost nothing. That has been by far the hardest adjustment I have had to make in my career. for the last 12 years, I have worked in high stress environments. The steady pressure has always been a fire that has tempered me with a valuable hardness but luckily hasn't burned me out. Without that fire to keep me motivated, I'm having to figure out how to deal with work the way the rest of you folks do. I can tell you that normal is not normal for me. We shall see how this hand plays out...

So this past weekend, some more friends and I headed up to Hays and Wilson lake for a peaceful weekend of camping, swimming, drinking and conversations. I've made it through another summer with two trips to the lake and no sunburns this year. Gotta tell ya, it's been one of the best summers ever.

So here we are at today, a few weeks from the start of the fall semester. On the menu this time is Management and Organization, Marketing and the coup de gras... Oceanography. Not exactly my most wanted choice, but you gotta do some silly stuff when you are chasing that paper. It should be interesting at least, and that's always appealing. On the homefront, things are peaceful. The cats are terrors, but they are my lil terrors. The family has been patient with me and that's always nice since I'm hard on most nerves out there.

So there's my ketchup. Hopefully most get the Pulp Fiction reference and hopefully I will be able to maintain this a bit better. God knows I need to speak out more