Hobbies / Reading

The professional/ambitious side of my life encountered a minor delay last week - I'm currently waitlisted for the U-Wash MBA program. If it works out I'd welcome the opportunity to make progress toward the degree. If it doesn't, well, I understand I'm young and without much in the way of managerial experience presently, so I'll try again in the future.

In the mean time, having a strictly 40hr/wk job with no on-call has left me with lots of free time during the week nights.

Since the move I've cleared out 90% of the old computer parts I had laying around, filtered thousands of old baseball/basketball cards for any of value and discarded the commons, filtered the 'assorted stuff' boxes - result - two fewer rubbermaid bins full of stuff than previously. I've also ripped all my CD's to properly ID3 tagged MP3's and sold a few that I knew I'd never listen to again. And cleared some old clothes out of the closet. I'm not done yet, but it's a necessary start.

After all that, it was time to read. Between 'A Fine Balance' (recommended by family) and 'Atlas Shrugged' (just never got around to it before, even though I knew it would resonate with me) it hasn't been light reading to say the least, but necessary.

Next up - we'll have a decent number of friends and family visting Seattle over the next couple months, so I won't have as much free time as previously, but I'm still thinking ahead to what to do with my off-work-hours time during the week.

What kinds of projects I could take up in the absence of school...

-I've thought about rebuilding an(other) old car - early Porsche 911's interest me from an engineering perspective, even if they do have a cult following that keeps prices high-ish.

-I'd like to make something. This is hard to do in a 700sqft apt.
- Herbs are growing, slowly. The harvest at the end of May was generous though. The oregano turned into a week's worth of pasta sauce, the thyme worked well on fresh fish over a few meals.
- I'd like to make a bookcase from lumber instead of buying Ikea next time. It's all right angles. Easy enough it seems.
- The other thing that interests me, along similar lines, is making speakers - not the specific drivers, as I can't produce magnets, but the pairing of drivers (which are cheap) to real wood enclosures. Buying complete real wood speakers is rather expensive.

On the non-productive diversion side I've thought about possibly finding a sporting club to be part of - possibly soccer, possibly sailing - unsure, though I think I'll probably veto both on the grounds of 'I could be doing something productive with this time'

That's all for now. Back to work here.