What a Year!
2008 started with our apartment complex management unreasonably wanting to raise our rent by 20 percent. Frustrated by all the problems we had with our apartment, and the sudden surprise of the upcoming hike, I convinced Tobia that we needed to buy a house. She wasn’t as willing to come along, but ultimately agreed.
We spent the first few weeks of 2008 looking for a house and settled on a fixer upper in Santa Clara. We were disrupted by two great events during this process that enriched my life. The first was finally getting permission to see the private Point Conception Lighthouse in mid-late January. I have blogged at length about this great trip. The second happened in early February, just before moving into our house. The NY Giants unexpectedly beat the NE Pats in the most amazing sports championship I’ve ever seen (close 2nd is the Diamondbacks game 7 win over the Yankees in the 2001 World Series).
We moved into our new house in March. Our contractor promised to finish our house remodelling by the time we were to leave for our upcoming trip to Greece and Turkey. That gave him two months. Needless to say, this didn’t happen. In fact, running out of options, and giving the contractor more space to work with, we moved in with my parents for a couple weeks before the trip.
In early May we left for Greece and had a wonderful 2 week organized tour there. We toured the beautiful country, and saw/did many different, exciting things. The tour group consisted of great people and we had a very memorable trip. We followed this up with two weeks in Turkey. It was much more of the same- great sights, some hot air ballooning, good food and nice tour group members.
Early June came around and the trips came to an end. It was time to come back home. Unfortunately home was still not completed. It wasn’t until early July that the house was sufficiently well along that we were able to move in for good.
Once in the house, I immediately started my square foot gardening project. It was already early summer, and I wanted to take advantage of the weather to grow my crops. It turned out to be a very successful summer and I will plan on tripling the size of my garden in ‘09. We also took some time to rennovate the front and backyards, as well as purchasing furniture and just settling in.
Late in the summer I joined a new lacrosse league, started by a professional indoor lacrosse player. I’m still involved in it and it is going extremely well. For years I’ve wanted to play in a league but have struggled to find one. It has been an awesome experience to finally play against other people instead of just shooting a ball against the wall.
Around fall time, I started getting bored with my job, feeling it wasn’t going anywhere. The company was also struggling fairly badly. I started a lengthy job search project. After many interviews with different companies, I settled on a new job close to home a couple months later. I have since been at the company for 3 weeks now.
One of my favorite times of year- Thanksgiving time- did not disappoint. Beast came to town for almost a week, and we were able to hang quite a bit, as I was (at least mentally, if not actually) between jobs. A bunch of other friends out of town and those I hadn’t had much of a chance to see this year were able to show up and hang out as well.
Christmas vacation was short but excellent. I pushed my old body to the limit, playing hockey, more hockey, lacrosse and even more lacrosse. It has become a tradition with certain friends to get together and compete til we drop.
Tobia and I will be celebrating new year’s eve in SF with a handful of friends. Looking forward to our tapas style dinner, and to being out late.
In the new year, I plan on seeing some Oregon lighthouses. I hope the lacrosse league generates more players and more competition. Also want to get back into hockey more seriously. I will be hitting the 30 mark at the end of January. Don’t expect that to be a big thing personally, but it’ll be an interesting measuring point. Most of all, I look forward to getting one step closer to Mendocino.