change of address

This blog was always my blog. I tried to keep it focused on our plans, our progress and our happenings but it's always been my voice. My perspective. My grammar crimes. This next phase in our lives, we want a blog with both of our voices. Rather than continue the good fight here, we are going to mothball Leaving Normal and create a brand new spot for y'all to keep track of us.

We have a new domain and lofty plans for our home on the intarwebs. In the meantime, please change your bookmarks, RSS feeds, and post-it notes to our new blog address:

http://blog.svhelloworld.com

choice

"I've always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone. What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all - in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

-from Voyager by Sterling Hayden

how can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?

I've been remiss with blog updates. Not because of overwhelming school requirements as in the past (I totally quit school AGAIN - but more on that later) but mostly due to future plans that change on the hour. However, Christy relayed a request from her mom that I update my blog with current Christy/Jason happenings and plans. As I haven't yet met Christy's family, it seemed wise to stay on her mom's good side. (Hi Anne!)

"Quit school, you say??" Yep, that's me: two-time college dropout. This is a huge source of embarrassment for me, trust me. But you'll see in just a few sentences why this is not necessarily a bad thing. Unless of course, you're one of those people that highly value education and knowledge and such. Then maybe yeah, bad thing.

Here's the plan as it stands this afternoon. We reserve the right to change it soon and often.

1. Move into Christy's houseboat in the next few weeks.
2. Rent the townhouse.
3. Buy a sailboat and learn how to sail it.
4. In October, move out of houseboat and onto sailboat.
5. Sometime in spring 2009 quit our jobs.
6. June 2009, take off sailing for Alaska. We'll cruise around the PNW for a spell before:
7. August 2009, sail to Mexico to meet up with our good friends, Kim and Fisher, who are sailing down there a few months prior.
8. September 2009, anchor somewhere in the Sea of Cortez.
9. Drink hand made margarita's on deck.
10. Fix stuff on the boat that broke.
11. Go to step 9.

We don't know what we'll do after Mexico, nor do we particularly care at the moment. We'll figure it out when we need to. At this point, we are just focused on getting a hold of the skills we need to pull something like this off without being handed a Darwin award.

As you can see, there is no step in the plan called "graduate". School didn't really make sense if all we were going to do was just get my ass graduated and then hop on a boat and promptly sunburn that knowledge right back out of my head. One of these days, I would sorely love to graduate but school really made so much more sense when I was planning on working after graduating. As it stands, I'll need all the room in my brain for the inordinate amount of knowledge and skill required to keep our boat from settling on the bottom of the Puget Sound.

So to sum up: quit school, moving in with Christy, saving money, quitting work, sailing, margaritas in Mexico.

Any questions?

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Had you whispered in my ear two years ago that at end of 2007 I'd be selling my house, quitting my job, going back to school, gearing up to sail the world, and oh-by-the-way ass over tea kettle in love, I would have enjoyed a hearty guffaw at your expense. "HA HA HA" I would bellow, holding my belly and pointing at such foolishness. "What a maroon!" I'd chuckle to myself as I slowly shook my head. But as it turns out, you'd be right and I'd owe you an apology. I'm not great at apologies so consider this a sheepish smile and a manly chock on the shoulder and then we shall never speak of it again.

The restlessness showed up sometime in 2006. I started to get the feeling like my life was on railroad tracks and the scenery looked all the same. I'd been working for the same company for going on 7 years. I settled into a pattern of work, friends, and TV. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. I dreaded being asked the standard "What's new?" question because my answer was always the same. I used my weekends to shake up the pattern and that worked for a time. I'd head off on my motorcycle or con some unsuspecting friends into backpacking trails that far exceeded our physical conditioning. Come Monday morning, I'd find myself sore and covered with bugs but right back on the same railroad tracks motoring past the same scenery.

Around this time, I'd ended up with a very few extra ducats in my savings account from selling my condo and the smidgeon of stock options I'd been hanging onto. The financially conservative Jason would have promptly buttoned up that pile of change into mutual funds and CD's and fiscal what-not. But another side of me felt like this was an opportunity to derail. I decided to go back to school and finish the degree I started 17 years ago. That was the good news. The bad news was that during all my fucking around at the University of Oregon 17 years ago, I never got around to taking any sort of math class. Therefore, a large chunk of 2007 was dedicated to suffering the slings and arrows of a year of calculus in preparation for the computer science program at the University of Washington. I'm keeping my job in tact long enough to polish off all the prerequisite classes before going back to school full time this spring.

Since I'd swapped out my smallish suburban condo for a more expensive townhouse in downtown Ballard, I had a problem deciding what I was going to do about my mortgage payment after the money stopped coming in. I debated whether to hemorrhage cash out of savings to pay for my townhouse, to get a roommate to stifle the flow, or just sell the place and immerse myself back in the college lifestyle of shag carpeted studio apartments. Eventually, and with the help of a good friend, I arrived at what I find to be a ridiculously elegant solution. The long version of the story is written up here. The shorter version goes something like this: sell the house, buy a sailboat, move on board. And up until about a couple weeks ago, I was charging in that direction. But before I finish that thought, there's another matter to be tended to.

Our first date was the Seattle Boat Show. We walked amongst the boats, laughing and flirting. We had a great time talking over food and beer at a local bar. As evening approached, we decided to sneak back into the boat show after hours to walk among the boats without all the crowds. And that's when I figured out that this girl was different. Christy and I have known each other just a few short months but it feels like years. I'm taken aback at how much we parallel each other. The things we want out of life, the way we see events, that which makes us giddy are all eerily similar.

From very early on, plans of our future just naturally evolved. One day a few months back, we both had crappy days at work and school. We were both cranky and needed a diversion. So we decided that evening we'd plan the Work Sucks Tour aboard the s/v No Tan Lines. I stopped at a book store on the way over to Christy's houseboat and bought a map of the world. We spent an evening pouring over different islands of the world deciding how we were going to sail to each one.

"We should go to Easter Island."

"OK, while we're at it, let's go to Christmas Island. They can't be that far apart right?"

"I'd guess about four months."

As so it was that we forged our plan to set sail. Our destinations are still pretty fuzzy and mostly irrelevant. Life together on board a sailboat at the whims of the weather is what appeals. We're targeting 2010 as the point where we cast off, take a left at the Straight of Juan de Fuca and sail towards azure waters and umbrella drinks. That should give me enough time to finish up school and for us to even work a bit to build up a cruising kitty. Oh, and buy a boat. And learn how to sail it.

The more our lives intertwine, the more they get fragmented between two households, neither one of which ever has enough clean clothes. After lots of discussions about selling houses and buying sailboats and living aboard at the dock, we decided that our life needs one household not two. Since Christy already lives on a bad-to-the-ass houseboat on Lake Union, it became quickly obvious that we could scrunch our two worlds down into the 450 square feet on board her houseboat. At some point in the spring, I'll sell or rent out my house and settle into the houseboat. And then we'll start off on this life together.

I want to take a second to say thanks for stopping by. This blog is mostly a mental exercise for me and secondarily a place for my family and friends to stop by and shake their heads at my goings on. But it means a lot to me that you all stop by every now and again. I hope you have all had a wonderful past year and that you're all healthy and happy and that your life is on an upwards trajectory.

2008 is gonna kick a metric ton of ass.

seemed a good idea at the time

Good ideas are a function of context. What seems like a good idea at one moment can be pure folly the next. And so it was in a cloud of vodka and various other forms of liquid courage, we all agreed wholeheartedly that the only logical course our houseboat party could take at that juncture was for all of us to get naked and huck ourselves into the December-chilled Lake Union water. It was only as my naked white ass rotated through 180 degrees during my unsightly front flip down towards the black water that I gave pause to reflect.

Maybe we shouldn't have left the blaring deck lights on.

indeed

There lots of schools of thought about the amount of personal information on a blog. What if your employer sees it? What if your ex-girlfriend sees it? What if Alanis Morissette runs across it and starts stalking you?

This is all I have to say about that.

changes in latitude

When I was an 18 year old boy, I was an idiot (redundant thought, you say? fair enough). I entered college with plans on becoming an architect only to discover that architecture sucks (apologies to all you architecties out there). Without direction, my academic pursuits crumbled like bad cake. I dropped out of college sans degree and went to work.

I've been working in the software industry for enough years to work myself into a comfortable job with a comfortable salary and a nice office view of Mt. Rainier and Lake Union. I bought a great little townhouse in Ballard right off the water about 3 miles from work. One of the side benefits of this arrangement is the ability to kayak to work. Sometimes, life is good.

But here I am, way too many years later and realizing that I need that bachelors degree. More to the point, I need the knowledge that comes with the degree. I've no interest in doing academic backflips for a pat on the head and a piece of paper. I need to understand computer science at a level that I just don't right now if I'm ever going to advance beyond Reasonably Competent Framework Programmer into Kungfu Software Master.

I put together a rigorous plan that would get me back in school, relieve me of full-time employment* and draw heavily on some saved money to feed the mortgage. It was all very specifically laid out and I'm eight months into the execution part of the plan. I'm working full time still while I knock down the ridonculous amount of pre-requisite math classes in the morning or at night. However, at one class per quarter, graduation and retirement will be racing along side each other, neck and neck. Eventually I need to quit fucking around and step up to full-time student status. Which means zero-time work status. Which means no income. Which means hemorrhaging cash out the bottom of savings account. My mortgage is plenty comfortable with money coming every month. Not so much when the coffers aren't being replenished. However, selling my comfy little townhouse to move into a $1000/month shite apartment holds no appeal. This has been gnawing at me for sometime and I hadn't really come up with any solution other than graduate really fast.

Then it dawned on me like a brick dawns on a plate glass window.

I live in a city abso-frickin-lutely surrounded with water. I could live on a sailboat cheap. Really cheap. Swap out the equity in my house for a boat. Pay moorage which even in Seattle proper is a fraction of what my mortgage payment is. Weekdays living on the water in the heart of the city, walking to restaurants, campus, coffee shops. Evenings spent sailing Lake Washington. Weekends living off the hook somewhere in the Puget Sound. Summers poking in and out of fjords all the way up Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Grilling salmon off the stern. Beers on deck. Sunning myself on the bow like a walrus. Just dog-damned beautiful.

Now, I need to learn how to sail.


*UPDATE 10.1.2007: it's a long and sordid tale but can be boiled down thusly: my company got bought out by an ogre of a company and I got shafted out of benefits. My boss and his boss swooped in with some heroic action and saved my ass. Big time. Working for folks like this is a rarity and will be much harder to give up than I previously imagined. Boat and school plan is still in motion but quitting entirely is now in flux.