FMC 3.0

Wow. It’s really been a while. Crazy how long you can lapse when life gets busy. Don’t get me wrong, life hasn’t slowed down any, I just found a spot for a breather. I can’t believe it’s February already, it seems like just yesterday I was getting out of the car at BWI, or just sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner.

Anyway, I’m gonna do a quick recap, with more in depth info on the interesting bits later. Lets see… last post was… 10/14? Phew. Ok, the highlights since then:

Halloween: Did the office costume contest as Peter Griffin. Didn’t come anywhere close to winning, mostly because there were others a heck of a lot more creative than me. The costume turned out pretty well, though I decided to shave hoping the shock value would help me win. I haven’t been clean-shaven in years, and haven’t since. Don’t think I’ll be doing that again any time soon.

Thanksgiving was a nice relaxed thing, the way it should be. Christmas was a little nuttier than usual with a truckload of stuff under the tree (most of it for Sydney). The presents part was the nutty part though, it was…

The Road Trip. It did indeed happen, though that route I posted months ago is not how it went. We trimmed out a few stops, normalize the route to almost a straight line, and blitzed from LA to Baltimore in 4 days. Christina (the other driver) didn’t like my using the word Blitz, but in all honesty, that’s what it was. And since she’s finally far enough away (Italy) that I won’t hear too much gruff about it, yeah, it was a blitz. But it had some really, really cool moments - and one or two dastardly ones. But that’s an entire post in and of itself, so keep an eye out for that.

After the road trip, I spent New Years with Matt in VA. I’d tell you what I did, but I was a little too buzzed to remember anything.

Since then it’s been the ramp up of Odyssey. You may be looking at my little list up there and say to yourself “Ok, that’s three or four things in a few months, he can’t write because…?” - and you’d be partially right. Yeah, I’ve slacked off, and quite honestly, didn’t feel like it. But I guess the bug bit again, so I can fill in the gaps. And the underlying thing all those months is Odyssey.

Imagine Odyssey as snowboarding an avalanche. In August/September, it’s just a few flakes near the top of a mountain. Then it slowly gives way, but as it heads down the mountain further and further it gets much bigger, much louder, and involves a lot more snow. Then, once the tournament is over it hits the bottom. With the tournament being March 1st, you can imagine how February 1st falls onto that scale. I’m sure there will be a full report on that later as well, since it’s been an interesting year for that so far as well.