On the eve . . .

It's Thursday evening as I sit here and as I was on my way back from gaming, just walking up my steps from the car, I realized that it was this evening three years ago that I arrived in Bellevue and started living here.

I have a better job than before. It's more fun, more interesting, and pays me more.

I have an apartment that I've now lived in longer than I've lived anywhere in the past 17 years. It's nice, fairly spacious, and comfortable.

I'm a bit thinner than when I moved out here. I'm definitely healthier.

I keep in semi-regular contact with everyone I kept in contact with before I moved here. I was worried when I moved that I might quickly lose touch with people back home, but over the years I've apparently learned how to keep in touch with people. And really, why wouldn't I? I have some great friends . . . even if they do live in Michigan, New Jersey, Florida, Wisconsin, and everywhere else it seems like.

I have some great friends out here. I've managed to develop a fun group of friends that I enjoy spending time with and who, for some reason, enjoy spending time with me. If you go back and read the first year or so worth of posts after I moved here this was a big, big worry for me and I'm happy to say that things have turned out well.

That's all very good. All in all, I guess things are going pretty darn well.

Thanks everyone for whatever role you play or played in all that.

News over the past couple of days was interrupted by the reposting of the saga of moving out here, but I'll do some quick recaps.

Tonight was the first presidential debate. I already have my mind made up on who I'm voting for so I didn't watch, but honestly that's not why I didn't watch. The reason I didn't watch was because it would make me way too stressed to hear about all the crap that no doubt was thrown on one candidate and then back on the other. Sure, there were probably some interesting bits I missed, but it wouldn't have been worth being ticked and tight-jawed about it all night. Besides I had a game to play. My favorite post to-date about the current President has to be from the Crawford Texas Iconoclast. It's interesting how negative they are on Bush considering they endorsed him only four years ago. (Thanks for the link Jason.) My real fear is that people who identify themselves as Republicans will vote Republican just because that's what they've always done. I think if people were to look at his record objectively they'd see how weak -- how bad -- his time as President has been, they'd see that keeping him in office, that voting for him, only helps to weaken this country both internally and to the rest of the world.

You may have seen in the news over the past couple of days that Mount St. Helens is acting up again. I really wanted to comment on this in the last couple of days, but it would have interrupted the flow, so I didn't. Hmm, what are my thoughts on a possible volcanic eruption right next door (geographically speaking)? Well, I think it's pretty cool. Sure, I have reservations about being excited -- and I'm not foolish enough to think, "Well how bad can it possibly be?" I have a pretty good idea that it could be pretty damn bad. Even so, I think it's pretty interesting. Seth found some good links about Mount St. Helens' seismic reading last week and those from this week. Cool.

I have a ton of editing to do on a project and I've started, but it's not going as fast as I'd like it to. I really need to sit down this weekend and spend some time going through everything and making real progress. Must.

I got a call from Phil this week. He's having a party in the middle of November that I'd like to get back for, but I don't know if I have the money. I like Phil and I'd like to be there for him on his big mid-life birthday. I'll have to look into that over the next couple of weeks. I can't imagine there's a lot of demand to fly to Milwaukee this time of year.

Okay, time to get some sleep.

Year four starts today. Cripes, four years!