Sorry for the nearly two months without an update. I assure you I've been busy restructuring my home, having the yard landscaped, and addressing as many deficiencies as I can identify. Yep, I've been keeping secrets from you, and today, my planes will fill the sky. So let's talk about some of those things.
School
It's true, I'm going to school. I'm taking a few classes through Straighterline at the moment, since they transfer relatively easily into Florida community college credit. I'm most of the way through College Algebra (MAC1105), and it should be the last math class I ever have to take. After that, I'll be telecommuting through Comp I, Macro-Econ, Micro-Econ, and possibly others. I won't have to appear in person for many, if any, Freshman classes. So what's the goal? I'm so glad you asked.
The intention is to transfer all of these credits to Florida Keys Community College and pursue their AS in Marine Engineering, where I'll learn to build boats from the keel up, and most importantly (to me), learn to fix inboard and outboard engines. Marine engine repair appears to be my best bet to get out of computers and integrate with the local economy on a somewhat comfortable basis, although that's more of a longer-term plan. For now, there's no danger of me leaving the programming world.
Fitness
Longtime belgo.com readers may know that I lost 40 pounds at one point with my fitness drive of 2007-2008. Moving to the Keys threw it off track in many ways. There was a lot of new food to eat, and gallons and gallons of booze to drink. The end result saw me regaining some 30 of those pounds, not to mention smoking cigarettes while boozing it up in an Islander haze. But for a few days shy of a month now, I've been doing half an hour of cardio 5 times a week and not smoking, as Grace prepares healthy dishes for us that are full of veggies and low on calories. This is the same formula that worked in the past, and it's already taken several inches off my waist, and several more pounds off my weight. I went pretty quickly from a heart rate that raced over 160 when I stepped onto the machine, to a heart rate that takes a lot of work just to push over 140. My heart is back in shape, thanks to a revitalized elliptical-path training program.
Projects
Ohh yes, there have been some interesting projects. The yard got pretty heavily landscaped a month ago, but I can't really take credit for much besides having the initiative; I paid people to do it. But the inside of the house got pretty nicely squared away too, as the office and living room got reorganized. Grace's computer got replaced with a very nice new Mac, and I also got a nice Mac desktop, my first fixed desktop computer in most of a year. The Macs have Geforce 9800GT graphics running dual 24" Dell LCD displays, and dual-core 2.93GHz processors, with 4GB of RAM and 1TB of disk each. It's the first time in years that I've had computers nice enough to compel me to stay up late playing with all of the cool things they'll do.
We're still boating, also walking trails and geocaching, and sometimes I still spend a day or two in Old Town Key West, but I gotta tell you, right now the biggest emphasis is on living life as well as possible, and often that means I don't make time for narcissism on Facebook or here at belgo.com.
But I still promise some cool pictures soon.
-Chris