The travels I have taken and the experiences that resulted.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Goodbye 2010.

I don't blog that much. But I thought 2010 was a good one to recap. It honestly may have been one of my favorite years.....So here it is in cliffnotes.

TRIPS
2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver: I'm not one to skipping school. I'm also not one to pass on a rare lifetime opportunity. When else will the olympics be close to me. More importantly when will they be close while I'm still young. That answer is a resounding no time soon. So I made the trip to Portland to rendevouz with Kevin where we drove up to ol Canada. Vancouver is such a beautiful city. Surrounded by water and mountains it provided quite the backdrop. We did the necessary touristy/photo taking tasks. We didn't get to catch an event there, but headed up to Whistler. We would end up having a ski in ski out condo on the mountain. I got to wear a flag and cheer on the skeleton race. The next day I got to do something more enjoyable. Ski. Whistler is a beast of a mountain and easily one that will be hard to pass in terms of terrain and beauty. While skiing we did get to cheer on some Men's Super G

Before the olympics I was able to get a big of gambling, BCS Championship watching, hanging out with friends and skiing in Lake Tahoe. I received a helmet just prior during Christmas. Lets just say after one of my falls I was fortunate to have that with me.

Made three trips to Idaho. That actually might be a record for me in a year

Chicago. Got to there on a long weekend date. Its a more enjoyable city doing that than the several times I've been single

2010 World Series. I ended up getting tickets at cost. It was the first weekend after I moved back to Dallas. The move was one for the record books. The movers showed up at 3AM like it was no big deal. Still fighting it. It was a very great atmosphere A lot of excitement in the air. Then Giants got on the scoreboard long before the Rangers. The excitment diminished considerably.

I got to truly learn the city of Austin via my girlfriend and a couple trips to hang out with my buddy David Guy. Its a city I fall more in love with after each visit.

Accomplishments
Now you may think the big accomplishment was graduating with my MBA (with honors no less). It wasn't. It was learning the sport of rugby. The MBA class formed a team. And while I was no way prepared, I learned enough of the basics to make it to the tournmanent in North Carolina. If you haven't seen me lately, I maybe tall (at over 6ft), but I wouldn't consider myself to be broad or big by any means. But I buckled down like the others made some tackles and took some hits as well. I gained a respect for a sport I didn't know much about and made some great friends in the process. I also passed my first and hopefully last kidney stone.

Career Accomplishments
Well heres the one dark image. I moved to Houston and worked for an energy company. Actually the largest one. Thats exactly what I set out to do with my MBA. Life couldn't be better? Its not what I wanted. Dallas had been my home. I was doing very much accounting. Glorified book keeping if you will. I was working for a major company and with it realized all the processes and politics that were about to be in play. I'm now for another mega company abliet a different industry. Unfortunately, I am disappointed with the position for a number of reasons. I'm sure some of it is a mindset and hopefully it'll get better. One bad bruise on the resume, is manageable. Two and I could see myself on the street. So safe to say I'm staying

Life
Well in 2010 another big life event happened. I started dating someone. That's not that big. Ive dated a number of others. I've also been in a relationship that lasted considerably longer than this one has. So who knows where we go from here. But it was worth a risk for me to come back to Dallas. I don't know if I can say I would do that for any of my past relationships.

Conclusion
2010 by far had more ups than downs and that's exciting. In looking in the year in reverse thats what you see. You dont see the stressful situations that happened at work, car problems (did experience a gas run out in the middle of the summer), or unexpected bills. 2011 has a lot to live up to, but with a couple trips already on the books it might just make it.