Falling Up

Without a doubt this is the longest hiatus I have ever taken on the ol' blog, and while I can't promise it will never happen again, I do have to admit it feels good to be typing here again. :) I'm generally not a fan of people giving the excuse of being too busy, and that rings true here also. It's not that I have been too busy, because I have consistently found that we will make time for the things in our lives that we deem as priorities. If I was too busy to write in my blog I would have not found time to beat a couple video games, watch so many movies, and waste so much time on Facebook. But nevertheless, the fact remains that I haven't updated The Brighter Side in a while, so I'm going to try to rectify that situation. Will it work? Well, like my dad says, "We'll have to see once."

This summer has been exceptional, but then, summer pretty much always is. It was my first summer since 2005 that I had to work a consistent 8-5 shift at my job. Every year I was teaching I just sort of got summers off, and even though I worked as a maintenance dude on campus from June through August, it was so much fun it could hardly be called work. But clocking in and out at the usual working man's time these past few months has been pretty nice. It's kind of good to maintain a schedule throughout the summer, and I really like my job at the university, so working there has been pretty cool. We even found the means to take a few trips, as is pretty usual for us. We drove to New York for a wedding and back in the span of six days, and along the way got to see a whole lot of family and friends. We only stayed in a hotel one night thanks to my wife's exceptional trip planning abilities and the prominence of family and friends in cities along our route. Our new car Charlie handled the drive very well, and is currently taking a well-deserved break in our garage too. :) We also got to make it to my family's annual reunion this year up in northern Minnesota, which was awesome as usual. And since it was our first trip up north since moving to Oklahoma we made sure to see some friends in the Twin Cities as well.

I'm telling ya, all in all, it was a great summer. And not just because of the trips and the warm weather. It was just a good time in general, and even though the leaves are starting to show the first signs of their fall colors I can look back on the last several months with satisfaction and no regrets. Which is generally the best way to live life anyway. :)