A more official update is on the way to a lot of you, but now I've been here in the Mile High City awhile, I've gathered my thoughts somewhat and can verbalize a bit -- curse of the Introverted iNtuitive Judging sort, I think -- can't say it until I've intuited it into a coherent shape.

So what does Winter here mean to me? Well, for one thing, "great big gobs of greasy green goose manure" on the sidwalk between the office and my bus stop. Puts me off my meals a bit, I must say. Other than the (to me) baffling inconsistency of the weather, and the fact it gets cold fast when the sun goes down, however, it's not at all a bad place to winter. All the snow you hear about is off in the mountains west of here -- where, cleverly, the ski resorts are placed.

The other distinctive feature is the dryness here on "Planet Nosebleed", as I occasionally think of it. There is a certain mold-inhibiting quality to it, though, which is good.

Accidents of history mean that I'm living in one close suburb, but busing out to a further one for work. Tooooooo much surburbia, daily. Not really sure what the City itself looks like, but of course the suburbs compare, shall we say, unfavorably, to Pittsburgh. I'm suppressing the ensuing disgruntlement, because it's not based on a fair comparison. And the downtown is fairly nifty, from what I've seen of it so far. Hoping to get a day off here, hit the art museum downtown, etc.

As to the work, well, after October, November, December, and basically January, the other shoe has entirely failed to drop. Can't find anything wrong with these people. Won't claim they're perfect, or they do everything the way I want to, but it's blinkin' well a better model of Christian working community than anything I've seen in a very, very long time.

My own work, though, is turning out to be a lot more project-manager-y than I'd ever expected, and involving more data-wrangling than I'd thought. (Don't have my main man JK to pass the buck to anymore, either...) Still, it's teaching me a lot about what I value, and how to adjust to running the show, instead of just being in it. I like to joke I'm my own boss, to I've had to take me out and give me a good talking-to a few times. The trick with managing these projects is mostly that they're largely related to things I don't know anything about, and/or that I've never done before -- which makes it hard to estimate anything. So that's a bit stressy. Even small things, like ordering PCs, can be irksome -- Dell takes rather bloody longer to fulfill an order than I appreciate.

Still haven't found a church out here -- after the excitement back home, and 8 years around Episcopalians, I could stand a break, but the snake-belly-low Protties (as CR would say, whom I quite miss often) aren't really my speeed either, and I'm just not sold on Eastern Orthodoxy enough to convert yet. So it's mucking about in the middle some more. Hit a E.Free kirk that had a decent sermon, and several good qualities (horns, for ex.) this week, and it was more promising than almost anything since the shouting-preacher charismaniacs we saw the first two weeks, or the Orthodox of course.

Sadly, I haven't been in touch w/ my fellow alums out here since I ran into them back in Fall. Hoping to rectify that soon.

Since people seem to think that Pittsburgh is a hellhole, and here is practically ecstasy in a bottle, I'll repeat my general offer, which I also made for Pittsburgh: Any of yunz who want to come visit, let us know and we can probably accomodate you. It's not like we have a castle with a guest wing, but we manage. :>

All for now. Messages welcome.