Roadtrip, part deux

Well, yesterday was my last day at work, and today my mom and I are beginning the roadtrip from Seattle to Saline. Wish us luck! Here's the plan:

Washington
Idaho
Montana
South Dakota
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Illinois
Indiana
Michigan

Whew!

I want to bang on the drum all day

It's been a rough week. And it's only Wednesday. My fuse at work seems to be shorter every day. There are several concrete things that I'm frustrated with, but the bigger problem is that my quarter life crisis seems to be rearing its ugly head everywhere I look. I read an interesting article over the weekend that was written by a photojournalist in New York:

If you are not passionate and love what you are doing for a living, and if you do not get any personal satisfaction out of your accomplishments, then you will lack the desire to get up in the morning to go to work. There are too many people who go to work every day and spend it watching the clock, year after year, because they can't wait to leave "that place" and get home. These are the people who spend their working life waiting for retirement. When they do retire and look back on their careers, they see only misery. It doesn't have to be that way.

---

I studied commercial photography at Syracuse University. While I was a student there, I was offered a job at the Observer-Dispatch as a part-time photographer, and even though I had no interest in photojournalism at the time, I took the job because it was the only job I could find where I could make money doing photography. My first day on the job I was driving around town with a two-way radio and a police scanner chasing fires. My whole world changed that day. I knew I was in love. It was the first time in my life that anything felt so right.

I can't say that I've ever been struck by a "brick wall" feeling like that, at least not about work. I wonder if I'll finally be happy with the kind of work I've been doing once I don't feel so dumb in it; once I have the technical knowledge to back it up. But if not, I'm not sure I know what other fields to look in to find my equivalent of falling in love with a two-way radio and a police scanner while chasing fires.

Blue Angels

I love airshows. However, they always make me want to join the military... If I could be guaranteed a spot as a Blue Angel or a Thunderbird though, I'd drop this engineering nonsense and sign up immediately!

Oops!

My friend Brian from high school just started a company called Diamondhawk Graphics, and he recently sent me this shirt that he designed:

Blue Angels practice

I heard on the radio this morning that the I-90 bridge (connects Seattle to the great void to the east... crossing Lake Washington) is going to be closed for parts of today because the Blue Angels are practicing for the airshow at SEAFAIR this weekend. I thought about that for a minute... and realized that the only reason they would do that is because our friends the Blue Angels are worried about crashing into the bridge and killing unsuspecting commuters.

My confidence in the Blue Angels just dropped significantly.

To be fair, it's apparently because one of the stunts that they do takes place only about 25 feet above the bridge. In any case, it's been neat to hear them scream by overhead all morning.

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Josh and I made it out to Snoqualmie Falls over the weekend. It's advertised as 270 ft tall - higher than Niagara Falls, but it wasn't as impressive since it's so much skinnier. Anyway, it was still really cool, especially because you could hike down from the observation deck to the base of the falls, and then jump over the trail fence and climb down onto the rocks to get even closer.





The rest of my pictures are posted here.