A little over a month ago I turned 30, earlier this year we bought a house and I've recently started looking at strange things called "retirement" and "life insurance" instead of NewEgg, car parts or camera stuff. I don't get it either. There's something terrifying about realizing I could work in my current job until I'm too old to do anything else. That is the stuff of nightmares.

First off the house. We bought a nice place that's kind of out in the middle of nowhere. I've gone from maybe putting gas in my car once a month to doing about 175 miles a week of commuting. The garage is awesome and the house itself is huge. Our Realtor thought we should look at something smaller as this place is really setup for a 4+ person family. But we were largely tired of being cooped up in our ~700-800 square foot apartment and being right on top of each other all the time. Megan and I didn't even have separate office spaces and for those of you who know how I am about my desk can see how that was less than ideal.

The irony of the whole thing is that we mainly bought the place because of the huge bonus room upstairs and we almost never go up there. Seriously, a hobo could be living in it right now and we'd never know it. The first floor is much bigger than we thought so we generally stay downstairs.

I'm still not entirely sure on this whole provincial living thing. It's quiet but the connectivity is awful and I miss being able to walk to work. However there are no loud parties, drunk kids in the front yard, drive by paintings of the neighborhood, sketchy magazine sales people trying to scam you, other seemingly sketchy folks banging on the door asking for rides (we lived less than 30 feet from a bus stop), etc. All of those things actually happened by the way. At my core I think I'm a town or city dweller. I grew up in the countryside and to be perfectly honest I don't have terribly romantic feelings about it. I do miss curbside trash pickup, cell phone service and actual broadband. This DSL is what I call "for humor purposes only." We had to get an actual land line telephone too. However Megan is exceedingly happy out here so I'm content for now. I love having the space to spread out and work on projects too.

I do rather enjoy the garage as well. So much so I've nearly filled up. I recently picked up a used and abused Forester XT for a nice price that I've been working on. It needed a lot of work. New brakes, timing belt and associated hardware, plugs, and exhaust for starters. Still working on the exhaust as both catalytic converters are shot and expensive to replace if I want to stay with stock parts. I may just end up going the after market route. All this has lead me to become even more familiar with turbocharged horizontally opposed engines. That just makes it easier to work on an old Porsche at some point. I've also discovered I really enjoy heated seats, something I though absurdly frivolous before.

A lot has changed in the last few months and I've taken things with different degrees of grace or insanity. At this point I'd say 2/3rds of my coworkers can't stand to be around me. I don't fit in with adults very well. I've also been working on a few new things on the side that don't seem to be going anywhere fast at the moment, more on that later.