I guess the good news that comes with the fact that I haven't been writing is that I've made some really wonderful friends over the last month and the relationships have just blossomed into adventures!
I've also done some more Gainesville exploring. Trying not only the local Mexican place owned by the drummer from ___, but I got a gym membership (purely for yoga-class taking purposes), I've started to enjoy a few of the other local restaurants, and I've become very good friends with a checkout lady at the local grocery store Wards.
My apartment is finally looking like a functional home. I now even have a very nice set of silverware courtesy of my mom :) My paintings that were stored in San Diego have now arrived and I even have barstools at my kitchen counter. I'm all sorts of established in my little apartment now.
The long weekend was really excellent here. Not only did my new large group of friends have a great night out on Friday. We then took another day for the beach on Saturday, followed by an awesome and loud dinner that evening. The next day a few of us rose early to go to a local farm and pick peaches ($1.50 per pound) and we ended up with about $25 dollars worth of them between three of us (I have eaten So many peaches, and created so many random peach recipes in the last week it's quite silly). Later we attended a big Brazilian barbecue hosted at a friends house that's referred to as the "swinger" pad due to it's 1990's sprawling yet geometric architecture. That night concluded with an art sale at the house. Monday was the day of recovery and at the end of it I was fortunate to have a few friends come over to my place where I lead a sunset yoga session on the grass. What a beautiful life!
As I said, Florida has more SUN than I've ever experienced. It's ALWAYS sunny. You may laugh and think how I lived in San Diego for all those years and how it must be sunny there. But it wasn't. San Diego gets the June gloom, the summer days always start off with the marine layer blocking out most sun. So while it's bright, it's not sunny. Here in Florida the sun shines without fail ALL the time. Seriously, there's very rarely a cloud to block the sun, and when there is it's a massive torrential downpour, so you aren't outside anyway. While it's been quite warm (upper 80's on average), I've still managed to only turn on my air conditioning on rare occasions, so I'm proud to be doing my best to conserve there (though the car is another story)Work has been challenging of late, but I'm really starting to feel more comfortable in my role and with the company (I think I actually understand most of what we do now) so I'm really jumping into some projects now. As was determined, I get to focus on the youth initiatives, so I've been working hard to help the team develop and plan for the SkillsUSA National Carpentry competition, which our company hosts. I'm a double duty attendee of the conference this year, working both my normal job with the confrence VIP's and media but also helping my company with its hosting of the competition. It should be a great new way to experience the conference and I'm learning a whole new aspect of what it takes to run the national conference. An excellent learning experience all around.
With so much time to cover I could go on, but I think I've covered the most recent highlights. All in all, things are wonderful, people are excellent, and while I miss my friends from all the other places in the world, I think I'll be happy calling this little tree town of Gainesville my home for a few years :)
