I'll start with the biggest news: I put an offer on a house on June 10th. It's not exactly what I wanted, but it meets almost all my minimum requirements, and I think it's a suitable house for where I am now in life. The two main disadvantages are that it is 30 minutes away from the nearest church that I would attend, and that it has no garage (and adding one may be difficult). Aside from that, I am happy with the location. It is less than 15 minutes from work, and within a couple of miles of most essentials: groceries, pharmacy, gas, etc. It's an unfinished house, which has resulted in delays, but on the other hand I was able to pick out the paint, flooring, appliances, and cabinets. My initial closing date was July 25th, but the date has been pushed back several times, mainly because the power company has had difficulty getting the power to the site. Supposedly they successfully managed to connect the power yesterday, so there should only be a couple of weeks left before I can finally close.
At work, we moved to the 803 building, but mainly stayed in trailers. Then, a couple of weeks ago, we finally moved into the building itself. The building is not very comfortable, and we're not doing much more work, but things have become a little more professional and engaging. We have been installing devices in panels, which takes up two hours per day or so. I also helped to reorganize the whiteboard, and currently my main project is to contribute to the morning meetings with safety topics.
Even so, there is a decent amount of down time, and I'm not doing as much outside of work either. So I have enrolled in an electrical engineering technology program online. I am quite excited about it. I don't know which courses I will take yet, but I am hoping that it will be physics and electrical circuits. This morning I realized that for my whole life I have not gone for more than three years without attending school.
On the sadder side of change, I have been noticing an effect on my hair due to aging. I actually have had nightmares about losing hair since I turned thirty, but I didn't really think it would happen until I was at least forty. I first noticed the diminishing coverage on a picture that was put on the wall of the middle school of me showing some students how to do something. As I am bent over with the top of my head toward the camera, my scalp is somewhat noticeable. I felt that it was not too bad as long as I didn't intentially point the top of my head at someone. Then about a year ago I started wearing hats. Shortly thereafter I noticed that when my hair was stuck together, my scalp was visible in streaks. I feel that it has gotten worse since then. It's depressing, but I know there is not much that I can do about it. It has sapped a bit of my care for my appearance, I have noticed.
As far as entertainment goes, I spent a couple of months playing Factorio devotedly. I beat the game with the space age expansion, and aside from making megabases and extravagent spaceships, I feel that I have done just about everything I wanted to do. Possibly related, I have slept very poorly for most of the summer. In July I averaged 5.5 hours of sleep. Somehow I didn't feel fatigue too much, but I'm concerned about other effects. Exercising fell by the wayside for 5-6 weeks also. I've been playing Abiotic Factor with the book club irregularly. It's a really cool game and I would like to do more, but I need to prioritize sleep. Last week I decided that I would go bouldering. That served as an impetus to return to working out. When I went to the gym, I was impressed with how clean, welcoming, and uncrowded it was. I enjoyed it, though I was also frustrated at how quickly I got tired and became unable to climb anymore. I built a shelf in the garage for batteries. I've been reading webfiction mostly. I read through the first nine books of Cradle, but I have stalled on the tenth one.
Coming up: I'll be moving into my house and taking a few trips in September and October.
