County Fair / Montana Trip / Fruit Harvest '24 / 12 Months in Current Role
In early August, Nicole and I took Scarlett to the annual county fair. It's here in town, which is greatly convenient. It's a somewhat small affair (Yamhill county isn't huge) but it's really nice to see what our neighbors are up to as well as get a sense of the kinds of responsibilities our local farms are up to. Scarlett had opportunities to get up close and personal with all sorts of farm animals and particularly enjoyed the chickens. We also hit the fair last year when Scarlett was only a few months old, so perhaps this will become a yearly tradition for our family! My favorite part was checking out the artwork pavilion and seeing all the photographs and paintings people did. One of the officials struck up a conversation with us and strongly encouraged us to participate next year with a submission of our own. Apparently there's award money in it too! I'm just not sure what to submit... I guess I have a year to figure it out.
I took a week off in August to make the trek to Montana to visit Nicole's best friend, Abby, and her family. We try to make this journey at least once a year and this year we were worried that Scarlett wouldn't tolerate the 600-mile road trip very well. We were really pushing it, too, by compacting the entire drive into one day. Thankfully, Scarlett handled the drive well both ways. It was such a relief. The secret to our success was to leave at like 5 AM so that she'd sleep for several hours to start the trip. We also made several relaxing extended stops. This proves that Scarlett can handle travel which is good because we have another big drive ahead of us in October when we travel down to California to visit with Nicole's family.
As for the Montana trip itself, it was really nice! I believe we were sick last year during the visit so it was nice to not have our trip obliterated with illness. One of the highlights was going to a Celtic festival and seeing one of Abby's daughters perform an Irish dance with an audience. It reminds me of my Celtic heritage (I'm an English, Scottish, and Irish mutt) and was simply a fun time even though we weren't there long. The bagpipe bands were so very amazing. Altogether, that week flew by and before I knew it, we were back home.
Late August heralds the annual fruit harvest! In our suburban backyard, there are three fruit trees planted by the previous owners of the property. They're quite mature and boy, do they produce. It's a chore every year to deal with these three trees but it unfortunately has to be done. This year, I went crazy with trimming the pear and apple trees and hopefully this will prevent things from being so wild next year. Out of thousands of pears and apples, we're only keeping the very best few hundred and even that is a mountain of fruit. The weirdest part is that now that those two trees are trimmed, the evening sunlight shines on that part of the yard and into the house. It's bizarre to have that sky and sun coming through. It's like we've forgotten that corner of the yard exists! Next week I still need to trim the plumb tree and then it'll be done for the year. So much fruit... We're gonna be sick from all these apples...
Welp, I successfully completed twelve entire months in my current role at work. The company has a soft rule where you have to wait a year to move into a new role so now that I've accomplished that, there shouldn't be any resistance to me moving around once a new role pops up. In the mean time, nothing has really changed in the last month although I feel like I'm slowly getting along better with the extended team members. My boss tells me that good changes are coming that align better with my engineering goals so as long as I''m stuck in this role waiting for something better, I may as well stick it out find enjoyment where I can. I'm still unhappy but at least there are things to look forward to coming down the line.
I took a week off in August to make the trek to Montana to visit Nicole's best friend, Abby, and her family. We try to make this journey at least once a year and this year we were worried that Scarlett wouldn't tolerate the 600-mile road trip very well. We were really pushing it, too, by compacting the entire drive into one day. Thankfully, Scarlett handled the drive well both ways. It was such a relief. The secret to our success was to leave at like 5 AM so that she'd sleep for several hours to start the trip. We also made several relaxing extended stops. This proves that Scarlett can handle travel which is good because we have another big drive ahead of us in October when we travel down to California to visit with Nicole's family.
As for the Montana trip itself, it was really nice! I believe we were sick last year during the visit so it was nice to not have our trip obliterated with illness. One of the highlights was going to a Celtic festival and seeing one of Abby's daughters perform an Irish dance with an audience. It reminds me of my Celtic heritage (I'm an English, Scottish, and Irish mutt) and was simply a fun time even though we weren't there long. The bagpipe bands were so very amazing. Altogether, that week flew by and before I knew it, we were back home.
Late August heralds the annual fruit harvest! In our suburban backyard, there are three fruit trees planted by the previous owners of the property. They're quite mature and boy, do they produce. It's a chore every year to deal with these three trees but it unfortunately has to be done. This year, I went crazy with trimming the pear and apple trees and hopefully this will prevent things from being so wild next year. Out of thousands of pears and apples, we're only keeping the very best few hundred and even that is a mountain of fruit. The weirdest part is that now that those two trees are trimmed, the evening sunlight shines on that part of the yard and into the house. It's bizarre to have that sky and sun coming through. It's like we've forgotten that corner of the yard exists! Next week I still need to trim the plumb tree and then it'll be done for the year. So much fruit... We're gonna be sick from all these apples...
Welp, I successfully completed twelve entire months in my current role at work. The company has a soft rule where you have to wait a year to move into a new role so now that I've accomplished that, there shouldn't be any resistance to me moving around once a new role pops up. In the mean time, nothing has really changed in the last month although I feel like I'm slowly getting along better with the extended team members. My boss tells me that good changes are coming that align better with my engineering goals so as long as I''m stuck in this role waiting for something better, I may as well stick it out find enjoyment where I can. I'm still unhappy but at least there are things to look forward to coming down the line.