Sunday, September 30, 2012

Updates Etc

I will be making some changes to this blog. It will not just be "crafty" things but life updates as well :) I will tag those entries as "life". In this world of microblogging and social networks, I feel that I don't really know what's going on with anyone anymore and I just end up wasting a lot of time on the internet getting sucked into tons of micro updates.  

NYC

For those of you that don't know, in July I moved from Seattle, WA (where I had been living since 2001) to Brooklyn, NY! This was a huge move but I had been feeling an itch to relocate for some time. I had considered Portland but I felt like I really just wanted to go all out, get rid of everything, and completely start over. Some other major changes in my life...

Spring

In November 2011, I adopted a wonderful Boston Terrier from Donna Melton named Spring. She has had 2 litters but they weren't up to show standard so Donna had been looking to re-home her. Some of you know about my experiences with Radagast, my sweet little Frenchie who developed epilepsy. I was unable to continue to care for him so Donna helped me to find a new home for him where he could get the special attention he needed. While she felt horrible about the whole situation as she takes a lot of pride in her dogs (and to date this was the only one of hers to develop epilepsy), she had offered me my pick of a puppy for free from any future litter. Well, anyone who knows anything about brachiocephalics knows that breeders do not make any money off of these dogs and the whole birthing process is very involved and expensive. I just couldn't in good conscious do that, especially since Donna spent much of her own time and money helping to get Radagast's condition stabilized and re-homed. So when I saw the opportunity to help her out, I took it. And Spring has been with me ever since :)


Love Life

 In May, at YAPC::NA in Madison, WI, I met a wonderful guy named Florian :) He is originally from Germany but spends a lot of time traveling and trying not to work (or only to work on things that are fun). He is a very talented and prolific Perl developer also known as "rafl" in various communities. Florian came back to Seattle with me from Wisconsin and stuck by my side through my road trip to Portland and ultimately my big flight to NYC. He has been wonderful with helping me with the move and providing emotional support as I'm transitioning into a new life here. This move would have been so much more difficult without him. Currently he is splitting his time between Germany, NYC, and the various YAPC's throughout the world he attends.

   

And Then...

My new job has me reading a C codebase and working with R for statistical analysis. It's pretty interesting stuff and I'm finding I'm pretty good at data number crunching. In my spare time, I'm continuing to broaden my technical writing portfolio by working with Florian to document some of his modules.

I'm also attending as many Perl events I can squeeze in. Recently I attended the Moving to Moose Hackathon in Stavanger Norway. I will write another post with pictures and such.

 In the meantime, I'm limiting my time on twitter and social networking sites. If you have anything you want to share, your best bet is to email me!