“The wind of change is blowing through this continent.”

It’s been a while since I last updated. Life has been turning itself inside out, and change has come at me from all directions:

  • I turned 30 recently. This doesn’t yet feel any different from 29, or even 25, or even 21, for the most part. But then again, I live in my skin every day, and so the changes are so small to me as to be imperceptible. Still, because of this, it doesn’t strike me as a big change.
  • In a few weeks I will no longer be a member of None Of The Above, the A Cappella ensemble I’ve been with for three years. This was a bit sudden to me, and emotionally, it feels like a breakup. It wasn’t my choice, but I’m coming to accept the decision, and it has freed me up to take some ballroom dance lessons, so it’s not all bad.
  • The biggest change is that as of October 1st, I’ll be working at Regis College. After 7+ years without much growth, I’m stepping out of the comfort zone and into a new role. I’ll be their new Instructional Technologist, which is sufficiently different from m past experience that I’m sure it’ll be a struggle at first. It’s also a small cut in pay, which is going to make things exceedingly squinchy for me for a time, but he opportunity for growth and future advancement outweighs the downsides. this is the change that has me the most nervous, although it doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it might. Yet.

The need for speed….

Today was the netsys (networks and systems) team building day. Instead of the typical daily grind, we went to F1 Boston, and raced go karts. Hmm. That’s a bit misleading. These are high powered 40mph items, on a designed indoor track, helmets, fire retardant jumpsuits, neck braces, and strict rules. A fairly professional job and experience.

We raced for 45 minutes, 4 qualifying races, with 10 laps each (laps times were in the 20-25 second range typically), and a final race of 20 laps. Everyone was in 3 qualifying races, and the best 1 were in the final race. I did decently well, typically holding or slightly improving the position I had at the pole (the start).

My best race was my third race, where I started in 2nd. The guy who started in 1st and I had been pairing fairly evenly on all our races, and this was no exception. I passed him on lap 4 or so, and he passed back on lap 7, I think, and we came in with me inches behind him. We had the exact same laptimes, down to the hundredth of a second, at 22.57 seconds.

In the final race I was solidly in 4th until one of the younger guys in the department (and the one who tends to get the most emotionally invested in competition like this) side swiped me trying to get around the outside and still cut a turn, and I spun around. I was able to right myself quickly and not interrupt the race too much, but not before another two guys had passed me, and I came in 7th in that race.

Overall I did better than I thought I would, given that I’m not a car guy and a cut throat competition guy, or a race guy. I had a lot of fun, but given the costs, I probably wouldn’t do an outing like this on my own dime. Afterwards we had lunch in their billiard room, where I proved yet again that I didn’t play pool at all in my formative years, nor in college. Downside to not having decent access to pool parlors. No big deal, I had fun, and played darts instead.