What better way to celebrate the end of work and a future lack of cashflow than to go on vacation?

Kim and I spent last Sunday through Wednesday at the Atlantis resort in Nassau/Paradise Island. Most Caribbean islands have lovely beaches, and Nassau was no exception, but the resort itself was remarkable to say the least. The “lost city of Atlantis” theme has all the potential in the world of being tacky, but somehow the designers made it very tasteful. Central to the resort is a series of huge aquariums featuring a ridiculous variety and number of fish. There was enough space and enough fish to see schools darting around the entire resort. Some of the more interesting denizens included an ENORMOUS manta ray, several large sharks, and a collection of very creepy large eels. Unlike Freeport, Nassau was certainly large enough to have kept us busy for at least an entire week. We wish we had the time to visit Eleuthera or a couple of the other nearby islands. Perhaps another time.

So…tomorrow is the first day of school. I’m wavering between feeling slightly panicked and feeling at ease, almost bored, which I suspect is more a coping mechanism than real boredom. We had dinner with Jimmy last night, and he helped to get me in the right mindset for school, but I obviously won’t “feel it” until I’ve settled into the academic routine. While general chemistry is probably the best subject for me to ease base into things again, I expect to be challenged. But that’s good, right? That’s the whole point of this path, and a large part of my decision to pursue this career. So bring it on. Let’s see what I can do!

Cleaning out the contents of my laptop was symbolically instrumental in marking the end of my Accenture career. My little 12 GB hard drive was perpetually on the verge of running out of space; I had to offload photos and other files from it on a weekly basis just to keep enough space free for the swap file. In a surprisingly short amount of time, though, I had freed up something like half of my hard drive. It took just a couple of hours to undo three years of accumulated work, both business and personal.

The frosted company logo on the glass office doors looked the same as always, but I certainly felt very different as I walked through them for the last time.

I had to stop by the main office in Reston to drop off my laptop. I stepped out the front door for the last time, and once again I was struck with the simliarities between this situation and the day I left college. I stepped out and turned around to look at the building. I was there when it was dedicated some four years ago, when I was still in the beginning of my career and already feeling frustrated at myself. I half expected to be glad that I was leaving. It turned out that I was somewhere on the border, stuck between looking forward to the path I’ve chosen and wishing to stay within the comfortable routine I’d established some time ago.

But nothing lasts forever, right? I turned back around, crossed the street, and walked to my car.

OK, so maybe I predicted wrong. Ugh, I feel so weird.

Yeah, I’ve thought about this very thoroughly, and I’m definitely making the right decision. And I’ve known about today for quite a while now. But now that I’m literally within minutes of turning in my laptop and walking away for the last time, I’m feeling rather sad about the whole thing, and I find myself dragging my feet on the last couple of steps. It’s the sort of bittersweet feeling that you hate, but still want to prolong for some inexplicable reason.

Well, enough of this. I’m about to shut down this computer and head downstairs to drop it off on my way out. Time to close this chapter and start a new one. Time to move on.

…but even though I’ve never truly loved it, I’m going to miss this place.

I think my final day here (tomorrow) is going to be rather anticlimactic. Lately I’ve been acting and feeling rather numb, almost nonchalant, about the whole thing. I know that’s now how I really feel, but maybe I’ve got some kind of defense/coping mechanism going on. It’s hard to describe. I guess I expected to feel more weight towards the end of this week. Thoughts like “this is the LAST Thursday you will work here” just aren’t hitting me with the psychological thud that I was expecting. It is, however, strange to think that this is most likely the last time I will walk through the office doors to a cubicle.

Five days to go. This is my last Monday here. It’s like leaving college (or moving) again.

The difference is that my future, while clearly planned, is less certain than it has been in the past five years. I had a job before I left Cornell, and of course we had a new home when we moved out of the old one in April. Sure, I’m going to school in two weeks…but there’s little guarantee that I will succeed, and there is no way of knowing how my plans will work out in the end. The truth is that I have plenty of doubts and fears about what lies ahead. I’m sure that I’m doing the right thing by quitting and going to school, but the inherent risks and uncertainty get to me once in a while.

Regardless of the big picture, there are times when I wonder if it makes any sense to give up a good job to throw myself deep into debt. There are plenty of people who work for the money, then live their lives when they come home. Let’s not forget that I’ve been out of school (and, therefore, out of practice) for five years now. Even if the subject matter is not new to me, I’m worried that I won’t be able to compete with everyone else. On days when I’m feeling particularly nervous about the academics, I’m tempted just to take the safe road and stay where I am. There are many worse things I could do, such as rack up student loans and get absolutely nothing out of them. Furthermore, I’m not blind to the fact that this life change will effect much more than my own future. Kim and I don’t want to be first-time parents at 35. We will most likely start a family while I’m a student, and that will certainly make life interesting. Again, it would be much easier if I just stay the course.

Then again, there was never any guarantee that those plans would pan out. And while I’m taking a calculated risk, I’ve already decided that accepting failure is infinitely better than never taking the risk in the first place. The unpredictable nature of life should not deter anyone from breaking out of their boundaries and trying new directions if they aren’t happy where they are, and failure should be treated as an educational opportunity instead of a roadblock. I still worry about failure, and how we will work out the demands of an adult life as I go back to school…but I no longer want to avoid those problems.

The last two days were spent explaining what I’m doing and why I’m changing directions. The next natural step, I guess, is to explain why I’ve chosen to pursue medicine.

Of all the things I could possibly do at this point, medicine is arguably one of the most difficult and expensive. Law or business school would require minimal preparation and a relatively short time commitment, after which I could quickly realize the benefits of the education. Other paths that don’t require school would be even easier to follow. On the other hand, I have committed to roughly seven years during which I will either be a student or a menially-paid employee, followed by at least three years of modest income and very hard work. I will accrue a significant student loan burden and there will always be the risk that I will not complete my education, which would leave me with a huge bill and nothing to show for it. Why bother? What’s the point, especially if I truly believe that money is not the motivating factor?

I’ve previously mentioned my affinity for problem-solving and my interest in learning about complex systems. For example, when our washing machine broke earlier this year, my first reaction was to go online to learn how it was supposed to work. My eventual diagnosis and fix took more time and probably cost more money than if I’d hired a professional, due to an initial misstep; however, I walked away from the experience much more satisfied with myself and confident that I could fix it inexpensively the next time. I now see the machine as the sum of its individual components, rather than just a function of its controls. I am gratified every time I dig into a system with my own hands and gain insight into its inner workings. That deeper level of understanding is what allows experienced technicians to diagnose problems in ways that bystanders might find to be mystical; in fact, it’s just a result of the intuition gained from develping an intimate understanding of the system.

My engine rebuild project was a major undertaking, and while I committed to doing all of the teardown and assembly by myself, I was not sure that I could do it at first. Let’s face it: Even to an experienced hack mechanic like myself, car engines are complicated and rather intimidating. Most car enthusiasts, including those who modify their cars in one way or another, see their engines as black boxes. While anything that attaches to the engine or the car body is simple to diagnose or replace, anything that lies under the valve cover is often seen as foreign and dangerous territory. I wasn’t entirely sure of what I was doing as I put my car on jackstands and assembled the engine hoist. I still wasn’t really sure of myself as I tore down the engine, but by the time I got down to the crankshaft, I had built up enough confidence to know that I could rebuild the engine.

Taking apart the engine confirmed that it was indeed a complex system, but only because it was a system of many subsystems. These subsystems were all quite simple and easy to understand. Broken down into components, it was clear how they all worked and how they worked together to create forward motion. I was amazed and relieved at the same time. It was easy to see the evolution of the internal combustion engine from its roots to its modern state, and I could understand the rationale and implementation of each development. Modern engines may benefit from computer control and fuel injection, but at their hearts they are no different from engines built 20, 50, perhaps 100 years ago. As I assembled the engine, my understanding of this marvel of engineering changed significantly. Instead of a monolithic black box, I began to see through the iron and aluminum. The vague concepts of pistons, valves, and timing chains came into sharp focus and I saw them working in concert underneath the metal castings. Now I can encounter noises coming from the engine and make reasonable conjectures as to their source. The revelation was stunning, and my confidence and sense of satisfaction upon seeing the engine start for the first time was immeasurable. I’ll never forget that instant for as long as I live.

When I recount this experience to my friends, most of them ask why I don’t consider a career in the automotive industry. I’ve clearly shown interest and aptitude, and there are plenty of opportunities to earn a good living. While I do think about it from time to time, I don’t believe that I would ultimately be happy working on cars for a living. There are important differences between doing something as a hobby and doing it to put food on the table. My rebuild project took approximately ten months to complete, but the actual work involved would probably have filled no more than one to two weeks of 8-hour days. Because it was a third car, and because I was not depending on it for income, I had the luxury of choosing exactly when and how hard to work. When parts availability was an issue, I didn’t have a problem with letting the project idle for a few weeks. I had no issues with letting the machine shop take their time with their work, and I was able to pick one relatively far away from home because I was under no time pressure to complete the job. I therefore have nothing but positive, happy memories, and absolutely no stress…and I want to keep it that way. I want to work on cars to unwind and relax, not to make money. It simply isn’t likely that I’d find such enjoyment by working on cars to set deadlines or for purposes other than the purpose itself. More importantly, there are some key differences between cars and humans, differences that make the decision very clear to me.

Despite (or perhaps because of) my lackluster performance in introductory biology, I spent some time last year going through the exhibits at the nearby Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. With my hands often still greasy from the previous night’s work, I walked through the exhibit halls and began to notice some interesting parallels between the development of life on this planet and the mechanical development of the internal combustion engine. All living organisms are hugely complex systems of less complicated subsystems, which are frequently composed of many still smaller subsystems, and so on. Evolutionary theory traces life from an entropic mix of chemicals to the bounty of plants and animals that inhabit the world today. While we are infinitely more capable than our predecessors, the mechanics of our existence are strikingly similar to those of the bacteria that have been here for hundreds of millions of years.

While I subscribe to the modern theory of evolution, it totally blows my mind that it has happened at all. There’s an immense leap from a random pond of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen molecules to single-celled organisms, never mind from there to humans. No one who perceives animals purely as their wholes could have any basis to believe that there was some sort of development from one to another; it takes a much deeper understanding, one that goes under the skin to look at structures, organs, and cells, before it suddenly becomes plausible that we are all related. Even then, there’s a big leap of faith until one explores the mechanics of DNA and DNA replication…and even then, there is so much left to discover and so much to understand. Nature is beautiful in ways that humans could never hope to imitate, and I wonder if we will ever answer the questions that have inspired scientists since the dawn of time.

Anyway, on a superficial and mechanical level, perhaps humans aren’t so different from engines — at least, not when it comes to the process of understanding the system, diagnosing a problem, and finding a way to resolve the problem. Gaining an intimate understanding of the human body’s physiology, combined with the physiology of disease, gives one the ability to understand what is going wrong and how to fix it. Being a physician will require that I use my problem solving skills on a daily basis in an environment where every decision and every success — or failure — affects someone in a very personal way. I relish the opportunity to be placed in that position.

For the most part, however, humans are not at all like machines. Machines are unfeeling and replaceable. Parts are easily acquired, relatively speaking, and there are no considerations beyond what is real and physically in front of one’s eyes. Humans have souls. We have feelings, and our emotions are just as important to our well-being as our physical selves. Sometimes the aggressive treatment of a symptom is not the best solution, and sometimes the best solution is simply not to fix what’s physically wrong at all. A physician’s attitude and compassion, or lack of either, is at least as important to the patient as the recommended course of action. I once read that patients are far less likely to sue a well-liked doctor for malpractice than one who did not gain their trust at all. In addition to providing the best physical care possible, it’s important for doctors to understand that humans are not machines.

I hear about uncaring doctors all the time, and I come across them in my own life. Several months before we were married, my wife went to an allergist to inquire about shots. We were planning to get a dog at the time, and she was concerned about the effects that might have on her breathing. The allergist ran the usual battery of tests, than scoffed at the notion that we would ever own a pet. In addition, he brusquely recommended that we rip out our carpets to install hardwood floors and encase our bedding materials in covers that prevent dust mites from causing problems. When Kim persisted, he insisted that shots would not be a viable option and all but pushed her out of his office. Needless to say, she returned home very frustrated. Even if the doctor’s opinion was valid, there was no reason to deliver it in such a manner.

We later brought home a puppy and Kim began to react to her after a few days. She went to a different allergist this time and was given a very different treatment. Rather than chew her out for owning a dog, she was put on allergy shots and given some suggestions for living as symptom-free as possible. The emphasis this time was not on turning around one’s life, but on making it as pleasant as possible. This allergist still suggested that we live with hardwood floors, plastic sheets, and no dog, but there was no sense of disdain and no insistence that the recommended course was the ONLY course to follow. We’ve had Taylor for almost two and a half years now, and it would simply be impossible to convince us that life would be better without a dog.

There are countless other examples of competent doctors who lack the ability to see a patient as a human rather than a soulless machine. I want to practice compassion as well as prescription. In addition to healing a physical ailment, I want to lift the spirits of those who come to me for help. I firmly believe that caring for a patient’s intangible needs play an important part in curing disease, and I can’t wait to see my first patient smile.

I’m no idealist. I’ve been out of school far too long to believe that any job is perfect, least of all medicine. Hospitals deal with their share of junkies looking for their next fix. Patients won’t always take their medication or change the bad habits that made them sick in the first place. When insurance companies are able to dictate what kind of treatment a patient may receive, there is no way that I could give the perfect treatment for everyone’s sickness…which makes it all the more important for doctors to be less cynical, less superficial in their patient interaction. I’m prepared for the realities of the working world, and I’m well-versed in the inner workings of a business.

Despite the inevitable mounds of BS, the actual work performed by a good physician is nothing short of magic in my opinion. It’s a balance of science and art, of medicine and compassion, and it’s something that I could never experience outside of the field. It’s more than being selfless; in fact, I quite selfishly will make myself happy by healing others. I can’t think of a single profession in the world that bears such responsibility, involves such direct interaction, and reaps such great rewards.

Quite simply, I want to be a doctor because there’s nothing else that I would rather do.

With nine days to go, I thought I’d make some comments on my career over the last five years and why I’m leaving it behind. To fully explore the subject, I need to back up to my freshman year of college.

While I’ve always been a technically oriented person, I entered college with the intention of not taking another computer science course. I had done plenty of work in that field in high school, I reasoned, and I wanted to try something else. Besides, I was pre-med, and life would be easier if I majored in something like biology or chemistry instead. I chose chemistry and promptly enrolled in the honors intro course. A lack of focus, motivation, and a strong dose of college student laziness set in pretty quickly, but I managed to do reasonably well in chemistry that first year. My physics grades, however, were far below my potential. Things only got worse during my sophomore year, when I was hard-headed enough to take honors organic chemistry despite my lack of familiarity with the subject. Predictably, I fell behind rather quickly; without the desire to spend a significant amount of time on the subject, I never was able to catch up and I finished the year with two horrible performances in orgo. I failed to complete the paperwork to apply for a major that semester, deciding instead to think about it over the summer.

Towards the end of my spring semester, I realized that something had to change drastically. My grades definitely weren’t going to get me into any sort of medical school, and my interest in chemistry was at an all-time low. I decided to attempt a transfer into the engineering school in order to pursue a mechanical engineering degree. The topic held some interest with me, naturally, and I figured that I could find good work in the field. I was thwarted when the department chair refused to let me in unless I had taken more prerequisite courses, which would then only give me provisional enrollment until I had taken a few courses in the major.

That summer, I took an advanced introductory-level computer science course and another introductory physics course. I got an A+ in the computer science course, and the idea of majoring in CS popped into my head. I knew the topic was interesting, I was certainly good at it…why not? It didn’t hurt that I could satisfy all of the degree requirements within two years. I filled out my major declaration at the beginning of the fall term. My grades did not noticeably improve, but I was doing well enough in the major to be semisure that I’d made the right choice. In fact, I had planned to stay another year to get a Master of Engineering degree, and went to my first career fair during the fall of my senior year to look into internship possibilities.

Recall the state of the nation’s economy in late 1998. The dot-com bubble was still expanding at a terrifying rate, and employers were absolutely desperate to hire people. When I walked into the large gym, I was greeted by rows upon rows of corporate reps, pushing random useless tchotchkes on me and asking for my resume at every table. When I mentioned that I was a computer science major, they seemed to be even more interested. I submitted a pile of resumes that day, then went home and edited my objective statement to seek permanent — not summer — employment. I wasn’t expecting much due to my academic performance, but I did get a phone call that evening from Andersen Consulting. The Andersen Consulting recruiting process involved three rounds of interviews, with each round being used to weed out the weaker candidates. I gave it my full attention and I made it past each round, after which I was invited to an office visit. The written offer came shortly thereafter, and in January of 1999, I had secured my future.

The first weeks of work were perfect. The training work itself was not difficult, the consultant lifestyle was glamorous and relatively opulent; it was a welcome break from lectures and problem sets. The first six weeks were spent on training, two of which were spent at the central training center in St. Charles. Nothing had really felt like work, but everything changed once I got to my first real project. After two weeks of doing what I thought was appropriate work for my background, I was switched over to a testing team.

Frustration set in quickly and never abated. I had graduated from college with a very strong knowledge of Java and software development techniques, and I had started to use some of that knowledge…but two weeks later, I found myself staring at a printed sheet of instructions on testing the functionality of a website. “Click on the ‘Continue’ link. Verify that the confirmation page is displayed properly in the window.” Cripes! Following that assignment, I was placed in a team that maintained a software architecture on a mainframe platform. From there, I went on to test a mainframe application, then another web application, and then another web application. I finally was placed on a team that took advantage of some of my skills, but it was too late by then to turn me around.

My career path is not terribly different from others’ in this line of work. The difference is that I was never truly motivated to excel, and my mounting anger towards my situation showed itself in some ugly ways. The second problem was that despite my persistence, I was never able to find a role that made me truly happy. I was surrounded both by bad luck and poor support (again, until recently). I saw my peers continue to rise in the ranks while I sat immobile, stymied by a number of things. Is it any wonder that my performance declined, and that I’ve made a number of half-hearted attempts to change careers?

In the end, though, I can’t place 100% of the blame on my employer. Among its competitors, Accenture is certainly one of the better places to work. The benefits are good, and despite several missteps, the leadership generally tries to take care of their employees. And while I’ve never particularly enjoyed any of my roles, I can’t say that anyone made a conscious effort to make them unpleasant. My issues stem from the actual nature of the work. I expected a very different sort of work, and when I learned what I would really be doing, I lost heart pretty quickly. I let it progress to the point where there was realistically no way to improve the situation; while this was certainly a slip on my part, I don’t think I would be ultimately happy here, no matter what I had done earlier in my career.

The assignments that most interested me this company required me to gain a full understanding of a system, then determine what was wrong with it, then determine a method to resolve the issue, then actually implement it and test the results. I enjoyed the hands-on nature of the work, and I liked having the responsibility on my shoulders. At the same time, I was frustrated by the lack of directness in my work. The extent of my involvement with the system was typing into a terminal window, which simply wasn’t very satisfying to me. One of the things I loved about rebuilding my M3’s engine was that my hands were actually doing physical work. The problem-solving process was not philosophically different from my IT work, but the implementation was directly in front of me. The results were incredibly gratifying. In contrast, I am unimpressed and annoyed by work that forces me only to test the viability of an existing system, or to make a miniscule change to existing functionality, or some other task that only takes place behind a computer screen and affects no one but the client’s budget and our bottom line.

(Some people might read all of this and wonder why I’m pursuing medical school rather than some sort of automotive certification. The thought did cross my mind, but I have my reasons for not following that path. I’ll get into that later.)

So it’s clear that the development of my career left me with an intense desire to do something else. Another factor that led to my decision was my potential future in this profession. The majority of my managers here have been competent, supportive people, and I wouldn’t have stuck around nearly as long as I have if it weren’t for the leadership in my most recent project. However, they all have something in common. As their careers here progress, it appears that their life-work balance shifts further towards work. While I respect their dedication, I just can’t see myself throwing as much of myself into my career here that my managers do. I have no illusions about the medical workload, but there’s a difference between spending time on something of interest and spending time on something purely for the money. The most important thing I’ve learned in these past five years is that chasing after a salary is not going to bring happiness in the long run.

On that last point, I can’t deny that physicians make a comfortable living, but there are many easier ways for me to make that kind of money. Simply staying where I am, I could earn enough for my family to live very well for the forseeable future. I could venture into a new business, or pursue business school, or any number of other things. The only sane reason for me to pursue medicine would be that I want to do it, and nothing else.

But that’s a topic for another day.

Well, it’s official. Ten days to go.

Some time ago, I mentioned that “big changes” were coming soon. That was a rather optimistic statement, as far as time predictions go, but I wasn’t joking about big changes. My last day with Accenture will be Friday, May 28th. I submitted my two weeks’ notice last Friday.

Some of you might remember a series of entries I made last summer, starting in July. My increasing frustrations with the development of my career after college culminated in a period of intense self-reflection. I had gone through similar period in the past, but those were relatively short-lived episodes that never went beyond the initial consideration phase. While I was more determined than ever to find a direction for my life, I wasn’t any surer than I was in the past that I’d come up with a definite action plan.

There was a series of events that helped to harden my resolve this time. First was the realization that time is perhaps the most precious of our resources, one that we use regularly and incessantly without any knowledge of how much we have left. It just doesn’t make sense to continue down an aimless and frustrating path in one’s life. No one knows when his or her time is up. It’s one thing to be working towards some goal, therefore willingly giving up some measure of happiness in the short term, but it’s another thing entirely just to be stuck in a mediocre situation with no better target in sight. Last year I finally realized that taking action — any action — is better than begrudgingly taking no action.

A second, more powerful influence came late last summer when Kim and I held some very challenging and difficult conversations. While I won’t go into much detail here, I did share some of my thoughts and feelings as they had begun. (I urge you not to overanalyze what I wrote; while I was being very frank and honest, I don’t believe that I actually had exposed or discovered the true sources of our conflict at the time.) I realized that my mounting sense of disappointment and frustration at myself had affected more than just my own spirit, and that the effects could be felt far beyond my own self-esteem and self-worth. I was shocked and immensely saddened when I saw what I’d done, and it was even more shocking to see just how subtle and imperceptible all of the changes had felt to me. I had thought that I was doing “the right thing” by swallowing my own bitterness and working for the greater good; instead, by trying to supress my outward feelings, I had let them control my life by changing my inner self. And I had no idea of what was going on, of what I was doing to myself and those around me, until it was nearly too late.

The intellectual and emotional weight of these events, combined with my ever-present frustrations and most recent wave of “changeitis,” brought about a new resolve to change directions. And while I came across the same possibility among several that I have considered many times in the past, this time I wasn’t willing to stop simply because of the level of difficulty and amount of time required to reach those goals. I finally made a commitment, and although there is always the chance of failure, I won’t let that prevent me from at least breaking out of the mold.

I have decided to become a doctor. I was a pre-med student for the first two years of college, of course, but I backed off of that plan after very poor performance in a number of the required courses. Those mistakes are going to cost me, but they can’t stop me any more. I will re-take the required pre-med courses over this summer and coming school year, then apply to medical schools with the intent of matriculating in the fall of 2006. Yeah, that’s over two years away. I expect to become Blair Lee, MD, in 2010, some 11 years after graduating from college.

There are plenty of things that might stop me along the way, and I have a number of my own insecurities to think about. I’ll share some of them shortly. What’s important right now is that I have a goal and I have a realistic plan to achieve it.

Do you remember the day you left college?

For me, the days leading up to that moment comprised an odd mix of emotions. I was excited about moving on to the next step of my life; I had my degree in one hand and a job offer in the other. The tantalizing prospect of making REAL MONEY was obviously something that gave me real joy and enthusiasm for leaving Cornell. On the other hand, I was filled with regrets about the things that I missed or chose not to do in college. I found that four years wasn’t enough for me to truly appreciate the experience, but I knew that I couldn’t stay any longer. I would’ve been perfectly happy to spend another year or two as an undergrad.

Either way, there was no escaping The Last Day; time wasn’t about to stop because I had mixed feelings about graduating from college. That made the last few days leading up to commencement and move-out filled with impatience and dread, the excitement and fear of the unknown combined with sadness and glassy-eyed fondness for the immediate past.

Kim and I are slowly moving into our new house. We settled on the property on the 5th. The house was ready to live in immediately, but we’ve spent the last several days painting some walls, refinishing the upper floor, and doing other little things that are much easier to do before all of our furniture is moved in. The moving company will be at our “old” house tomorrow morning, which means that tonight is our last night in our first home. The home we bought brand new, optioned out exactly the way we wanted. And while we’re both excited about the new place, we didn’t realize until one or two days ago how much we’d miss the old one. Perhaps we kept ourselves too busy with work to think about it. It’s a lot like leaving college, for some reason.

Time moves on. We love the new house and soon enough we’ll find it as comfortable and inviting as the one we will leave for good in just a few more days. For now, though, we both find ourselves excited and sad about the transition. I can only imagine how this would feel if we had raised children in the old house.

To my faithful readers (both of them) I apologize for the lack of updates lately. I suspect I’ll be writing with more frequency in the near future, now that things have settled down somewhat.

There’s plenty of stuff going on in the background, but the most significant news in recent history is that we are moving. We put our house on the market last Thursday and recived three bids in just hours. We selected a bid on Friday and signed the contract.

Of course, selling a house in this market is easy. The tougher part is finding a house, but we somehow managed to do it quickly. After walking through a few houses over the weekend, we finally found one that matched us perfectly yesterday (Monday). Our agent sent over a contract and negotiated with the owner until he agreed to our terms. (This is somewhat of an understatement; from what I understand, she fought like a bulldog for us.) We close on the “old” place about a week before we close on the “new” one, after which we still have about three weeks of rentback to do any repainting before we move.

I’m amazed at how much our property appreciated during the 28 months that we had it before putting it on the market. Of course, properties everywhere appreciated at roughly the same pace. Our “new” house is not much less expensive, but it is much better for our commutes and the location is superb. Photos will come after settlement; for now, just imagine looking out the back window and seeing a golf course just a few feet away. Kim and I are very excited, and we can’t wait to have people over once we’re settled!

In other news, my car is almost whole again! I’ll update the car page when I get a chance. There is a lot more to write about, but I don’t have to time to do that just yet.