2009 overview
well it's been a while. and it's been a busy 2009. so happy new year!
i have been feeling a bit down so i figured this might cheer me up. actually, today was a good day for the most part. didn't get nearly the amount of stuff done that i wanted to, but what else is new there..? then this evening it hit me again how much i miss matt and it's been kinda downhill from there. i talked to my mom, which led to thinking of how much i miss my family and how it sucked to havta leave so soon after Christmas...and i've been watching florida kick the crap out of cincy at the sugar bowl...not so much for the football bc i thought this was going to be a pretty uneven game, but in the hopes of getting a few glimpses of downtown and the river between the game and the commercial breaks. i'm sure i sound like a well put-together mess...i'm not that bad really, just in the trough of one of those lows that comes from time to time...
anyway...happy thoughts...
let's see...2009...
started off for me in south florida at mark's gig for nye. matt had (shocked and) surprised me by flying down and coming to the gig with me and dad & robin. it was great! i had a really fun time that night. still remember the way i bout jumped through the ceiling when i got that phone call..."so...is mia or fll better to fly into to get to your dad's?" best new year's eve. really. it was :)
then hm...what came next...school yes...it was a hectic semester for classes...what did i take again...oh yeah, how does one forget radiation? also had tropical and dynamics ii. and i did seminar. wow i'm glad that's over! haha and i unfolded radar data till i literally developed eye problems (more on that later). over the summer i took knupp's tornadogenesis class, and that was basically just a bunch of paper reading; really good papers yes, but it didn't really feel like a "class." for the fall i took cloud processes and professional development. i havta say that cloud processes was far from my favorite class, but it was good to have friends in there and i'm glad i had taken one of john's classes beforehand. being familiar with his teaching style (if you wana call it that) was very helpful for me in there. and of course how could i leave out the crazy WRF model, and the excruciatingly late nights at work, made a little more bearable bc i was working with elise! professional development i think had a good objective, i did learn a lot, and it was good to have that venue for discussion, but it wasn't exactly what i expected. i guess that's only natural though...one professor, many students, everyone is going to have different expectations.
i did a lot of traveling this year...mostly for work (i have grown accostomed to referring to school and my research collectivly as "work"...it makes me feel like i have more of a real job even though i really don't) but a good bit for fun too. as i already mentioned, started 2009 off in fla, and then flew back up to hsv to start the semester. now, alabama is weird. despite the fact that mardi gras parades actually begin in mobile, most all the rest of the state completely ignores fat tuesday. which is intolerable. i planed on going home for the weekend of endymion bc it's ENDYMION, and i missed home lots by then anyway. then, my family on my dad's side got a great plan together...my grandpa mullins' 80th bday fell on ash wednesday, so we decided to have big shindig for him, and got everyone to be in town the wkend before to celebrate. matt came down w/ me, after a plows deployment...this is one reason i know he loves me! it was a great weekend, even though we were both terribly sleep deprived! the next adventure i had was over spring break. i went to st louis with crowe, and it was a blast! i got to go up in the arch (check that one off my life list!), tour the budwieswer brewery, and consume a milkshake at one of the most famous candy companies in the country. oh and there was the st. paddy's day parade! fun times. after break it was back to work...and stress and the usual. for Easter i went to decatur with matt. got to really meet his nephews, who are the most adorable kids. then i made the best 3am decision of my life! matt and i were trying to plan a trip to glacier national park around the time of chris & elise's wedding (in minnessota). we had talked about other places we wanted to travel to before, and i don't even remember why but just for fun we looked up a package for a trip to hawaii. at 1:30 in the morning. and we were shocked. of course, we were in the "last minute" time range, so i was thinking everything would be crazy expensive. but it wasn't. and matt had a coupon. for like $200. so...at 3 am we booked a trip to HAWAII. and a week and half later were there! in much the same way that traveling to europe made me want to see more of eurpoe, our week on oahu really pushed us both to wanting to see more of the islands. another trip one day... literally the DAY we arrived in hsv from hawaii, we began the looonnnnggggg drive up to minnesota for the wedding. it was so cold! but it was lovely to share in our friends' big day. the next trip for me was for vortex2. it was my first time in the great plains, and really all i could say was wow. i got to see storm structure like i thought only really existed in textbooks. it was amazing. i went home again in june, for mom's surgery. while that and the recovery was a rough time for her, she's doing great now and i'm so happy they were able to help her and improve her life. it's like my mom is herself again. came back to huntsville, matt took me to a cowboy mouth show here on my bday which was perfect. i love getting to have little tastes of home up here bc i miss it so much. when i can get a little louisiana, i take it very happily! then began the massive eye problems, but i'll go into that later. in august i got deployed to starke, fl (in the middle of NOWHERE) for a lightning study in collaboration with the university of florida. it's a neat project, but the only problem was that it didn't ever rain where we needed it to while i was there. did get to sample the sea breeze though. like every day. for two weeks. did i mention it was the middle of nowhere? anyhoo, then classes started up again, and in october was the radar conference in williamsburg. i'm really glad i got to go and was able to present some of my work, it makes me feel like i'm actually getting somewhere with being in school. other aspects were...interesting...namely just seeing how people from various institutions will or won't talk to you...but it's not like that affected me personally or anything. after the conference, i did get to go home for just a weekend, went to a saints game with amber and her parents for her bday! we played the panthers, and we won. it was a history makin win too! first time ever we were 8-0! my next trip was to iowa. for plows. even though i didn't want anything to do with plows. i was told that i was a radar operator and therefore i didn't have a choice. it was a tough deployment for me, not only the COLD but more so that we left the same day matt left to move to maryland (more on that in a bit too). so i was an emotional mess but i got through it. somehow. thanksgiving he & jon flew back to hsv, and we had just got back from iowa. we went to decatur and had a nice day w/ his family. then after the semester was officially done, i flew up to dc and helped get him more settled in his new place. and it snowed! it was messy and cold and i wasn't exactly very nice, but that was only for an afternoon. the next day we went to the saints game! he had got the tickets as our anniversary present and i was so stoked! thank goodness we won (even though it was in overtime) bc i would NOT have been happy to have stood out in the cold that long for them to lose! about 2 wks after i got to hsv, i flew home. was there for a week and half for Christmas, then on dec 26th i flew back to hsv, where matt came to pick me up! he was here until the 29th (tuesday) and i was THRILLED to get to see him for that time, even though we couldn't be together on Christmas day. so that was my traveling for 2009. a lil novella...
ok, my eyes. this is new from 09, and it's not something i'm happy about, but what can ya do? literally the day after my bday (just to add that it makes me feel like i'm old) my eyes hurt so bad. it was insane. like i had little daggars constantly poking me in the eye, sharp pain that wouldn't go away no matter what i did, so i wouldn't even attempt to put my contacts in. but there was nothing wrong with me! at least, as far as i or anyone else looking at me could tell, i looked perfectly fine. no red eyes, no stuff oozing out of them, and i could see just fine (with my glasses...), yet i couldn't get my eyes to stop hurting. after seeing a dr who had no idea what the hell he was talking about, i got an apt with dr. lee. dr. lee has since told me that i have the worst case of dry eye he has ever seen. he put me on a regimen of prescription eye drops, otc eye drops, and an ointment that i use before i go to bed. he put lil plugs in my tear ducts to prevent moisture from draining out of my eyes (i now have silicon implants! haha). things were getting better and he gave me the ok to wear my contacts again just before i left for virginia for the radar conference (that was july-october w/ no contacts!). well. i wore them for 3 days in va, while still using drops to try to keep my eyes moist during the day, but the pain returned! i wasn't supposed to havta go back till april, but it kept getting worse so i went in november. i got more eyedrops. currently, i have 3 prescription eye drops, 1 otc eye drop, and the ointment, all of which i use EVERYDAY. been feeling a little better, so long as i don't read or stare at a computer for too long w/o putting the next drops in. i go back this week so we'll see what he says...hopefully i can (1) stop having to put drops in my eyes nearly every hr when i'm working and (2) finally wear my contacts again soon. i really don't like having to wear my glasses bc i have no other choice. i don't hate my glasses per se, but i don't like essentially being forced to wear them.
other big change in life this year...really the last like month & half...ma cherie matt now lives near dc. once the funding for his position at uah was officially coming to an end (knowing exactly when this would be kinda got complicated), he started looking for a job. and he looked everywhere. i mean, everywhere. even on the other side of the world (and i'm not gonna lie, i am pretty happy that one didn't work out). it was crazy. think crappy job market + specialized field + limited funding...that all adds up to a really tough job hunt. there were phone calls and interviews...even one trip up to dc for an interview and get-to-know-ya thing for a different job. that one ended up with a really disappointed matt and a few days later a job offer that really made life complicated. then there was the wyle job. it's a contractor thing, so he kinda gets the best of both worlds (but also has to deal with the worst of both, not to mention three different bosses). and the stuff he is working on is pretty neat, defiantly something that makes me very proud of him. and the idea that the experience he's getting, not the mention the people he's working w/ and the connections that he's able to make, will (hope & prayerfully) make it easier for him to work from wherever later...like say...just hypothetically...if he ever wanted to live in a place that wasn't too far from a university with a meteorology pgm that was nice enough to hire a lil cajun girl to teach dynamics...but that's a ways off. it does suck to have to have him so far away, but it could be worse. and it's dc! a place that i've been to but only got a minuscule amount of time to really explore. i'm not happy that i have to finish school here without him, but in a way that may be a good thing. and if i had to pick a place for him to be, i think dc is a good one. not only is he getting to work in a one-of-a-kind environment, he's getting to experience living in a real city (something he'd never really done before). and there are people there and moving up there soon that he/we already know from uah, so he has a decent network to start with for socializing. and it's a place loaded with things to do and cultures from all over the world meeting and creating new things everyday. how selfish would it be of me to not be happy for him to get that? when i think about, i'm kinda jealous. really. huntsville is nice and all but...it's pretty easy to get bored here. maybe it's a good thing though, bc i have a thesis to finish and then there's that whole other phd thing. dc is very unique, and i'm glad that he'll get the experience of living there. and i love that we can explore it everytime i go visit. he started it off perfectly. it was our anniversary. i was happy bc of that, but also sad and trying not the think about the fact that he'd be moving soon after that. i had already planned to go up to see him and help finish getting him settled as soon as the semester was over. had my flights picked out and all. he took me to dinner at the seafood place by lake gunnersville, and while we were eating i asked if he knew when the saints/redskins game was, bc we had talked about going to saints games once he was up there. i had been so busy with the classes tying down, preparing for him leaving, and then a last-min plows deployment that i hadn't figured out when we played up there. so i asked him, and he said he could look it up if i wanted on his phone. so he gets his phone out and is piddling on it, i'm thinking he's going to espn or something to find the saints' schedule. he moves his phone in front of me and it's a message in his email. it says "ticket confirmation" and the very weekend that i was already planning to be there. i was a little confused at first, i looked up at him and he tells me "happy anniversary!" and i bout hit the ceiling! so, the afternoon after elise and i kicked booty on our cloud processes presentation, i hopped on a plane and ended up in matt's arms. and that sunday we checked fedex field off the "things to do in dc" list. :)
and the saints in general this year have just been amazing! it's crazy. the city is going crazy. i love it! coming back to hsv, it became odd to not hear random "who dat?!?!"s in just about any public place. and to not see hand-drawn fleur de lis attempts in shoe polish on people's cars. i miss that. i miss home in general. like always. i mean seriously, i am watching the most boring sugar bowl ever not for the football but solely for the cut away shots of the city and the river, and the bridge that i've crossed so many times i could probably drive it in my sleep (if there wasn't other crazy ppl on it). i just miss home. it's so different, and it really doesn't matter where i go in the world, even if i'm happy there, if it's nowhere near new orleans, it's still never going to really be home to me. i can't explain it, but everyone from home knows exactly what i mean.
thinking about 2010 makes me happy and nervous, and as my mom so eloquently put it, "i don't want you to have a heart attack." it will be a hectic year, but one that will be that much more worth it. i take prelims this spring. i am hoping to defend my thesis in august, officially start my phd work after that, and graduate with my master's in december (uah has no summer commencement). and deal with the miles between hsv and dc. i'm sure there will be many deployments thrown in along the way from january to december, and hopefully as many trips to dc as possible. i'm going to the topical conference in may, so that will be one more state to check off my list (arizona!). all this stuff...2010 is shaping up to be the most stressful and, i think, most defining year of my life so far. this year is what 1986-2009 was meant for. i am doing what i've always wanted; i'm finally here. so, the overwhelming challenges that lie before me, the way i see it they can become one of two things: things that tear me down and define me as a person defeated by difficulties, or things that i, with the help my Lord who got me here, will conquer. i like the latter. actually doing it will be a task of tasks for me, and it will make me a stronger person. it will me more myself and help me further define who i am. that is what i'm looking forward to for 2010.
i have been feeling a bit down so i figured this might cheer me up. actually, today was a good day for the most part. didn't get nearly the amount of stuff done that i wanted to, but what else is new there..? then this evening it hit me again how much i miss matt and it's been kinda downhill from there. i talked to my mom, which led to thinking of how much i miss my family and how it sucked to havta leave so soon after Christmas...and i've been watching florida kick the crap out of cincy at the sugar bowl...not so much for the football bc i thought this was going to be a pretty uneven game, but in the hopes of getting a few glimpses of downtown and the river between the game and the commercial breaks. i'm sure i sound like a well put-together mess...i'm not that bad really, just in the trough of one of those lows that comes from time to time...
anyway...happy thoughts...
let's see...2009...
started off for me in south florida at mark's gig for nye. matt had (shocked and) surprised me by flying down and coming to the gig with me and dad & robin. it was great! i had a really fun time that night. still remember the way i bout jumped through the ceiling when i got that phone call..."so...is mia or fll better to fly into to get to your dad's?" best new year's eve. really. it was :)
then hm...what came next...school yes...it was a hectic semester for classes...what did i take again...oh yeah, how does one forget radiation? also had tropical and dynamics ii. and i did seminar. wow i'm glad that's over! haha and i unfolded radar data till i literally developed eye problems (more on that later). over the summer i took knupp's tornadogenesis class, and that was basically just a bunch of paper reading; really good papers yes, but it didn't really feel like a "class." for the fall i took cloud processes and professional development. i havta say that cloud processes was far from my favorite class, but it was good to have friends in there and i'm glad i had taken one of john's classes beforehand. being familiar with his teaching style (if you wana call it that) was very helpful for me in there. and of course how could i leave out the crazy WRF model, and the excruciatingly late nights at work, made a little more bearable bc i was working with elise! professional development i think had a good objective, i did learn a lot, and it was good to have that venue for discussion, but it wasn't exactly what i expected. i guess that's only natural though...one professor, many students, everyone is going to have different expectations.
i did a lot of traveling this year...mostly for work (i have grown accostomed to referring to school and my research collectivly as "work"...it makes me feel like i have more of a real job even though i really don't) but a good bit for fun too. as i already mentioned, started 2009 off in fla, and then flew back up to hsv to start the semester. now, alabama is weird. despite the fact that mardi gras parades actually begin in mobile, most all the rest of the state completely ignores fat tuesday. which is intolerable. i planed on going home for the weekend of endymion bc it's ENDYMION, and i missed home lots by then anyway. then, my family on my dad's side got a great plan together...my grandpa mullins' 80th bday fell on ash wednesday, so we decided to have big shindig for him, and got everyone to be in town the wkend before to celebrate. matt came down w/ me, after a plows deployment...this is one reason i know he loves me! it was a great weekend, even though we were both terribly sleep deprived! the next adventure i had was over spring break. i went to st louis with crowe, and it was a blast! i got to go up in the arch (check that one off my life list!), tour the budwieswer brewery, and consume a milkshake at one of the most famous candy companies in the country. oh and there was the st. paddy's day parade! fun times. after break it was back to work...and stress and the usual. for Easter i went to decatur with matt. got to really meet his nephews, who are the most adorable kids. then i made the best 3am decision of my life! matt and i were trying to plan a trip to glacier national park around the time of chris & elise's wedding (in minnessota). we had talked about other places we wanted to travel to before, and i don't even remember why but just for fun we looked up a package for a trip to hawaii. at 1:30 in the morning. and we were shocked. of course, we were in the "last minute" time range, so i was thinking everything would be crazy expensive. but it wasn't. and matt had a coupon. for like $200. so...at 3 am we booked a trip to HAWAII. and a week and half later were there! in much the same way that traveling to europe made me want to see more of eurpoe, our week on oahu really pushed us both to wanting to see more of the islands. another trip one day... literally the DAY we arrived in hsv from hawaii, we began the looonnnnggggg drive up to minnesota for the wedding. it was so cold! but it was lovely to share in our friends' big day. the next trip for me was for vortex2. it was my first time in the great plains, and really all i could say was wow. i got to see storm structure like i thought only really existed in textbooks. it was amazing. i went home again in june, for mom's surgery. while that and the recovery was a rough time for her, she's doing great now and i'm so happy they were able to help her and improve her life. it's like my mom is herself again. came back to huntsville, matt took me to a cowboy mouth show here on my bday which was perfect. i love getting to have little tastes of home up here bc i miss it so much. when i can get a little louisiana, i take it very happily! then began the massive eye problems, but i'll go into that later. in august i got deployed to starke, fl (in the middle of NOWHERE) for a lightning study in collaboration with the university of florida. it's a neat project, but the only problem was that it didn't ever rain where we needed it to while i was there. did get to sample the sea breeze though. like every day. for two weeks. did i mention it was the middle of nowhere? anyhoo, then classes started up again, and in october was the radar conference in williamsburg. i'm really glad i got to go and was able to present some of my work, it makes me feel like i'm actually getting somewhere with being in school. other aspects were...interesting...namely just seeing how people from various institutions will or won't talk to you...but it's not like that affected me personally or anything. after the conference, i did get to go home for just a weekend, went to a saints game with amber and her parents for her bday! we played the panthers, and we won. it was a history makin win too! first time ever we were 8-0! my next trip was to iowa. for plows. even though i didn't want anything to do with plows. i was told that i was a radar operator and therefore i didn't have a choice. it was a tough deployment for me, not only the COLD but more so that we left the same day matt left to move to maryland (more on that in a bit too). so i was an emotional mess but i got through it. somehow. thanksgiving he & jon flew back to hsv, and we had just got back from iowa. we went to decatur and had a nice day w/ his family. then after the semester was officially done, i flew up to dc and helped get him more settled in his new place. and it snowed! it was messy and cold and i wasn't exactly very nice, but that was only for an afternoon. the next day we went to the saints game! he had got the tickets as our anniversary present and i was so stoked! thank goodness we won (even though it was in overtime) bc i would NOT have been happy to have stood out in the cold that long for them to lose! about 2 wks after i got to hsv, i flew home. was there for a week and half for Christmas, then on dec 26th i flew back to hsv, where matt came to pick me up! he was here until the 29th (tuesday) and i was THRILLED to get to see him for that time, even though we couldn't be together on Christmas day. so that was my traveling for 2009. a lil novella...
ok, my eyes. this is new from 09, and it's not something i'm happy about, but what can ya do? literally the day after my bday (just to add that it makes me feel like i'm old) my eyes hurt so bad. it was insane. like i had little daggars constantly poking me in the eye, sharp pain that wouldn't go away no matter what i did, so i wouldn't even attempt to put my contacts in. but there was nothing wrong with me! at least, as far as i or anyone else looking at me could tell, i looked perfectly fine. no red eyes, no stuff oozing out of them, and i could see just fine (with my glasses...), yet i couldn't get my eyes to stop hurting. after seeing a dr who had no idea what the hell he was talking about, i got an apt with dr. lee. dr. lee has since told me that i have the worst case of dry eye he has ever seen. he put me on a regimen of prescription eye drops, otc eye drops, and an ointment that i use before i go to bed. he put lil plugs in my tear ducts to prevent moisture from draining out of my eyes (i now have silicon implants! haha). things were getting better and he gave me the ok to wear my contacts again just before i left for virginia for the radar conference (that was july-october w/ no contacts!). well. i wore them for 3 days in va, while still using drops to try to keep my eyes moist during the day, but the pain returned! i wasn't supposed to havta go back till april, but it kept getting worse so i went in november. i got more eyedrops. currently, i have 3 prescription eye drops, 1 otc eye drop, and the ointment, all of which i use EVERYDAY. been feeling a little better, so long as i don't read or stare at a computer for too long w/o putting the next drops in. i go back this week so we'll see what he says...hopefully i can (1) stop having to put drops in my eyes nearly every hr when i'm working and (2) finally wear my contacts again soon. i really don't like having to wear my glasses bc i have no other choice. i don't hate my glasses per se, but i don't like essentially being forced to wear them.
other big change in life this year...really the last like month & half...ma cherie matt now lives near dc. once the funding for his position at uah was officially coming to an end (knowing exactly when this would be kinda got complicated), he started looking for a job. and he looked everywhere. i mean, everywhere. even on the other side of the world (and i'm not gonna lie, i am pretty happy that one didn't work out). it was crazy. think crappy job market + specialized field + limited funding...that all adds up to a really tough job hunt. there were phone calls and interviews...even one trip up to dc for an interview and get-to-know-ya thing for a different job. that one ended up with a really disappointed matt and a few days later a job offer that really made life complicated. then there was the wyle job. it's a contractor thing, so he kinda gets the best of both worlds (but also has to deal with the worst of both, not to mention three different bosses). and the stuff he is working on is pretty neat, defiantly something that makes me very proud of him. and the idea that the experience he's getting, not the mention the people he's working w/ and the connections that he's able to make, will (hope & prayerfully) make it easier for him to work from wherever later...like say...just hypothetically...if he ever wanted to live in a place that wasn't too far from a university with a meteorology pgm that was nice enough to hire a lil cajun girl to teach dynamics...but that's a ways off. it does suck to have to have him so far away, but it could be worse. and it's dc! a place that i've been to but only got a minuscule amount of time to really explore. i'm not happy that i have to finish school here without him, but in a way that may be a good thing. and if i had to pick a place for him to be, i think dc is a good one. not only is he getting to work in a one-of-a-kind environment, he's getting to experience living in a real city (something he'd never really done before). and there are people there and moving up there soon that he/we already know from uah, so he has a decent network to start with for socializing. and it's a place loaded with things to do and cultures from all over the world meeting and creating new things everyday. how selfish would it be of me to not be happy for him to get that? when i think about, i'm kinda jealous. really. huntsville is nice and all but...it's pretty easy to get bored here. maybe it's a good thing though, bc i have a thesis to finish and then there's that whole other phd thing. dc is very unique, and i'm glad that he'll get the experience of living there. and i love that we can explore it everytime i go visit. he started it off perfectly. it was our anniversary. i was happy bc of that, but also sad and trying not the think about the fact that he'd be moving soon after that. i had already planned to go up to see him and help finish getting him settled as soon as the semester was over. had my flights picked out and all. he took me to dinner at the seafood place by lake gunnersville, and while we were eating i asked if he knew when the saints/redskins game was, bc we had talked about going to saints games once he was up there. i had been so busy with the classes tying down, preparing for him leaving, and then a last-min plows deployment that i hadn't figured out when we played up there. so i asked him, and he said he could look it up if i wanted on his phone. so he gets his phone out and is piddling on it, i'm thinking he's going to espn or something to find the saints' schedule. he moves his phone in front of me and it's a message in his email. it says "ticket confirmation" and the very weekend that i was already planning to be there. i was a little confused at first, i looked up at him and he tells me "happy anniversary!" and i bout hit the ceiling! so, the afternoon after elise and i kicked booty on our cloud processes presentation, i hopped on a plane and ended up in matt's arms. and that sunday we checked fedex field off the "things to do in dc" list. :)
and the saints in general this year have just been amazing! it's crazy. the city is going crazy. i love it! coming back to hsv, it became odd to not hear random "who dat?!?!"s in just about any public place. and to not see hand-drawn fleur de lis attempts in shoe polish on people's cars. i miss that. i miss home in general. like always. i mean seriously, i am watching the most boring sugar bowl ever not for the football but solely for the cut away shots of the city and the river, and the bridge that i've crossed so many times i could probably drive it in my sleep (if there wasn't other crazy ppl on it). i just miss home. it's so different, and it really doesn't matter where i go in the world, even if i'm happy there, if it's nowhere near new orleans, it's still never going to really be home to me. i can't explain it, but everyone from home knows exactly what i mean.
thinking about 2010 makes me happy and nervous, and as my mom so eloquently put it, "i don't want you to have a heart attack." it will be a hectic year, but one that will be that much more worth it. i take prelims this spring. i am hoping to defend my thesis in august, officially start my phd work after that, and graduate with my master's in december (uah has no summer commencement). and deal with the miles between hsv and dc. i'm sure there will be many deployments thrown in along the way from january to december, and hopefully as many trips to dc as possible. i'm going to the topical conference in may, so that will be one more state to check off my list (arizona!). all this stuff...2010 is shaping up to be the most stressful and, i think, most defining year of my life so far. this year is what 1986-2009 was meant for. i am doing what i've always wanted; i'm finally here. so, the overwhelming challenges that lie before me, the way i see it they can become one of two things: things that tear me down and define me as a person defeated by difficulties, or things that i, with the help my Lord who got me here, will conquer. i like the latter. actually doing it will be a task of tasks for me, and it will make me a stronger person. it will me more myself and help me further define who i am. that is what i'm looking forward to for 2010.