Oh, yeah, other changes

I thought about editing the other post and adding this but decided to surprise everyone and give a short one.

Another big change from a year ago to now: last spring I was working furiously to finish my master's degree.  I had been going back to school a class at a time while still working full-time for a full 5 years at that point.  Then, in May of last year, I graduated.  So, after 10 straight semesters of school, I'm now on my second without it.  That's new.

Another: because a year ago I was a) not paying for two places to live and thus had more money, and b) was in full-on theological searcher mode, I was buying books like crazy from Amazon and doing some rather serious research.  I was reading and writing up new classes to teach and all that.  And now I'm not.  I taught a class on Wednesday nights at church for 7 straight years.  Now I'm teaching nothing.  I have nothing to prepare for.  No classes to teach, no research to do.  There are certainly still personal questions of a theological nature, but I've already made my big decisions -- even if I haven't quite followed through on all of them yet -- and so what's the point?

Another: in past years, because my family was so important, I would often get asked by people at work or whereever to come over and do guy stuff and I would often turn it down because I had to do stuff with the kids.  Now, I'm sitting here in this little apartment by myself most of the time (well, not most of the time, I'm not that isolated, but it feels that way sometimes) because when I call now to see if anyone wants to hang out they all have to do family stuff.  Because all my friends are married and have kids.  That's new.

Expansion on a previous one: work and what I do.  Before, I was the techy guy who sat in the back in front of a computer all day and wrote code and analyzed data and, while I'd interact with the rest of team pretty well, and would put together presentations for briefings and stuff, I was the techy guy.  Now, my job is to go to meetings and talk like I know what I'm talking about, and to give other people direction, and to write systems engineering plans and powerpoint briefings, and to draw little cartoons for the powerpoint briefings.  That's awful new.