The futuristic Chicago in "I, Robot" was pretty neat - it even had the new apartment building on the south side of the loop in it. This weekend I have more people to see than I have time for.

I wish I lived in Chicago.

Michigan ave

I miss the fam.

weirdos

My cousins are growing up.

there’s even more than this

My cousins who I grew up with are mostly there and are good people to spend time with.

all grown up

And there are many more reasons than I can think about right now. Ah well. This weekend should be good.

This weekend Kiefer looks at me dead seriously and says “The other day I found the perfect girl on Friendster.”

Some people thought I sounded pretty sad in my last post.  Let me assure you that’s not the case.

I've started doing Yoga.  It is nutty.

I am going to see Modest Mouse, The Walkmen and Broken Social Scene this weekend.  Rawk.

I go dancing alone all the time, sometimes I meet a girl and say “hi” and buy her a drink and say somethin witty and then get ignored. Tonight I met Jessica and bought her a glass of Champaign, which is what she was drinking. She asked me if I put anything in it, I calmly explained I put roofies in it then told her whenever I was drinking Champaign I always thought of the Dad’s Root Beer slogan, "the foam goes straight to your brain" and she finished my sentence and I though it was cool and then she went somewhere else. Good story. Yeah. Whatever, I had a good time. As has become typical, I had a cigarette, your indispensable night life companion. Yeah. Anyways. Those XUS guys seem to be having a lot of fun. I wish I could be there.

My decision to leave my job has been weird. Ever since I was a kid every life changing choice has been well laid out. After grade/middle-school I had 3 choices in high schools, then limited choices for university, a few choices to make while at university, and then a few choices for post-university. Things become less clear after that.

Man, I could have redbull and Jagermeister for lunch.

Yeah. Options are less clear. "The Company" wants you to believe you have lots of options with it and that’s all you need. I remember when I would meet people from work and refer to it as "The Company", that sent shivers down my spine. It was like ... yeah, being corporate.

I just caught a mosquito in my apartment with my right hand. Awesome.

Anyways. Options are less clear. And it’s hard to figure out what they are and it’s easy to be lazy and not explore them. It’s easy to go dance and drink and smoke and pretend it’s all ok. It’s easy to focus on the little problems you have instead of the giant ones. Like that I am all too often lonely on Saturday night. Instead of problems like "fuck I can’t do this for the rest of my life," those problems are really not what I want to deal with. Although I have declared that I am going to quit my job, I haven’t looked into one viable option to replace it. Too damn scared. And sometimes too freaking drunk.

As I’ve told a few of you I am looking to change my career very soon - sometime in the October to February time range. I am not entirely sure what I am going to do, but making a lateral move to another software engineering position is not exactly what I have in mind.

I haven't been too happy with my current job. I could go into a lot of explanation, but the short of it is this: the work I do does not excite me or 'really' push me, additionally I have seen no career path at my company that I admire or see for myself. More importantly, and more difficult to explain, is that I don't feel that I would want to sign my name to working for the defense industry for a long time. So I need to act now while nothing is keeping me here.

Fortunately for me I have the opportunity right now to do pretty much whatever I want. And I really gotta take it.

Like I said, I'm not entirely sure what I want to do. If anyone knows of an interesting opportunity (volunteer or otherwise) please let me know. I am strongly considering something that would take me to another country. I am also considering opportunities in teaching. Leave me an idea on the wiki.