Photo Dump

Well we've been going a million miles an hour trying to make the most of all this.  Blogging is getting less and less apealing.  Turns out Jay has a fancy schmancy program that makes a musical slideshow of our photos with the click of just one button.  Sooooooo we'll be doing a few photo dump slideshows on Jay's youtube channel.  If you want to see the visual picture of what we're up to just click the links below.  Cheers!

First Weeks in Germany
https://youtu.be/by2UBPgie5Y

Sweden & Denmark

https://youtu.be/sKq5HBgA9NA

Playmobil Fun Park in Nuremberg
https://youtu.be/A5d8Mzm3Gyc

Berchtesgaden & Tegernsee
https://youtu.be/DMWBjT-MAR8

 -Aber & Out

Berries & Beer

We've spent our first few days here doing most of the touristy things because that is what is easy and familiar to us.  The girls have survived on sausages, french fries, and gelato.  With a new circadian rhythm, new environment, and constant air of excitement and exhaustion we are just happy to get calories in them.  We've made the rounds at the Glockenspiel, Viktualienmarkt, Englischer Garten, and Hofbrauhaus.  Riding the trains, buses, and trams has been a bear with the girls.  Having not grown up riding public transport they want to go crazy and run around shrieking excitedly every time we get on.

As I write this is day two of Jay being back at work.  I knew if I didn't dive in head first on day one with the girls I might never get out so we headed to the store to stock up.  We walked to the grocery store, drug store, and bakery.  I came out relatively unscathed even after using a credit card with the mean checkout lady.  Jay called to ask if we could meet him and his new coworkers at the Hofbrau Keller after work so we got in our first solo train ride as well.  No transfers, but I'm just happy we got off at the correct station and found the elevator to the surface.  Eeek!

Today we took the bus!  It was just a short practice ride with the double stroller and we were able to get to our local berry picking patch.  The berry patch is a mommy toddler paradise.  A shaded outdoor play area with logs, water features, and a tricycle track.  We ate and drank all the things and even got strawberry ice cream for the walk home.  I have a feeling we'll be spending many of our days there. 

The parks we have explored so far have been awesome.  So different from what we are used to.  So many of the playgrounds are made of rough logs and integrated into the natural environment.  Every park we go to feels like we are in some kind of magical forest school where kids can explore and play.  There's always some industrial element such as a pulley and chute setup for rocks or water pump and loch system.  The kids naturally organize and set to work, Rose typically acting as the foreman.  Rose had a particularly fun time yesterday playing in a tree fort with about five nine year old girls.  She thought she was really something and the older girls loved listening to her English and trying to teach her German words.  Definitely all we had hoped for and more! - Aber & Out

Roses & Thorns

A few unexpected roses from our first couple of days in Munich:

~That free wine on international flights.

~There are actual roses and a yard.

~The toilet paper here is so thick.  It's like wiping with a paper towel.

~An entire extra toilet in our rental that was not advertised!

~Someone left a decent bike with a lock here.  We were planning on buying a used one for Jay to ride to work so we saved a few bucks.

Jay's sweet freebie bike.

~A weekly visit from a cleaning person is included in our rental...also not advertised.  Holy. Crap.

~No screens on the windows and also no mosquitos.

~There's a balcony off of each bedroom.

~This kids chair that I've always wanted back home.

~Many people are wearing joggers out of the house here.

Some minor thorns:

~There is a church directly across the street that dings and dongs like the city is on fire right into our open windows at noon and 3 just in time for naps.  There is minor dinging and donging at all other hours.  Closing the windows and baking alive with no a/c is not an option.

~They are shutting down the main train stops from our house to downtown every weekend in August for maintenance.  This means a wierd bus route and no chance for me to practice using the train with Jay on the weekends for my solo trips with the girls on the week days.

~Our train stop and all of our destinations so far have not exactly been ADA accesible as we anticipated.  Lifting the stroller in has been a two person job...another thing I'm not looking forward to doing solo.

~Our tablet does not lend itself to formatting blog posts well.

~I was inches away from bringing my Adidas classic tennis shoes and one people watching trip on the train made it clear that I most definitely should have.

Sorry if that Poison song is stuck in your head for the rest of the day.  - Aber & Out

Landed

We are on German soil.  The flight went remarkably well compared to previous flights.  No major melt downs, only a little crying.  The girls slept a grand total of one stinking hour so there was lots of uncomfortable rocking and singing to keep everyone happy but it worked and we survived the international flight.  The most yelling might have come from Jay when they informed us that they had split up our seats for the flight to munich and we would have to sit separately for 8 hours.  Glad all that is behind us now.

I had forgotten about the free wine on international flights.

As I sit here on night two reflecting on the past 36 hours I am happy with what we've accomplished so far.  Despite some wicked exhaustion and a little anxiety induced IBS I think things are going to be just fine.  Our first order of business after landing, getting to our place, and taking a nap was to have our first meal...doner kebab.  Wierd to come all the way to Germany for Turkish food, but it's what we have been looking forward to the most.  We plan on eating doners for dinner at least once a week.  We took the train downtown to a higher rated kebab shop and Jay went in to order.  I found a table outside and was immediately approached by a nice German lady whom I did not understand but gathered she wanted to sit at our table so I obliged.

Our new friend Sabina who used to work at Andres!

First of many gellato stops.

Waiting for the train.

First German meal.

Some familiar snacks.

Wouldn't you know she was thrilled to find we were americans and went on tell us that she lived in Overland Park and worked at Andres in the eighties!  She knows the whole Swiss crew and how to make all those delicious treats!  We remenisced about the Plaza and downtown and then she gave us the DL on some inside spots in Munich.  Such a happy chance meeting on night one that left us feeling welcome and at home.  

Night one was a doozey and the four of us were up partying at 2 am.  The girls have been unruly little monsters as they adjust.  We're trying to take things slow and decided to limit our day two outings to Aldi and the Hofbrau Keller.  The food here is so cheap compared to our usual so I'll be living off of the two dollar blocks of brie and fifty cent balls of fresh mozzerella.  Good thing we're doing a lot of walking.  My feet already hurt as they are getting broken in to a new standard of use.  There was a playground at the beer garden where we got our first chance to take a breath and soak in our new reality over beer, pretzel, and dumplings.  I'm excited to go to sleep tonight and hopefully wake up a little bit fresher every day.  Sunday will be spent at home unpacking and organizing our half of the "Double House Rose". - Aber & Out

Operation Deutschland

It's been seven years since our first sabbatical and you know what that means!  It's time to embark on another adventure.  This time with two toddlers in tow.  We swore we'd never take our kids on a European vacation until they were old enough to understand some history and wipe their own butts.  Well, we got the itch and found a way to make a long haul trip to Europe work.  We'll be living in Germany for three months while Jay works remotely from his company's office in Munich.  We'll have plenty of time to get over the jet lag and explore at a toddlers pace so it will all be worth it right?  We've got big plans and we're optimistic.

Jay's company has graciously allowed him to work remotely for this time period.  He's working hard to make it a smooth transition and continue to be a rock star engineer so they might let us do it again in the future.  I'm thinking the Aukland, NZ office could be stellar!  

We've been planning and researching our butts off and the number of spreadsheets created for "Operation Deutschland" is a little obscene but not surprising for us.  As we prepare for the trip we've been saving our pennies and churning all the flight mile credit cards we can so we can all fly free.  We were shocked at the monthly Airbnb rental prices in Munich but were able to secure a duplex (with a yard!) in Boggenhausen.  We desperately wanted to get the girls into a German speaking preschool or daycare but have had no lucking finding one with spaces open for us.  There are still a few things to check off our to do list but with passports in hand and flights booked we are feeling good.

We'll have several rounds of friends and family coming to visit.  We plan to travel regionally in Bavaria and to a few major European cities while there.  I have no idea how I'm going to manage the subways with two kids and a stroller but copious amounts of beer and bretzel should help.  I'll be spending the next few months brushing up on my non existent German language skills so that I can navigate the bakery and beer garden at the very least!  Stay tuned.

Aber & Out

Aber & In

I've been thinking lately that a more appropriate blog title for the current phase of our life would be "Aber & In".  We've settled in to the 8-5 routine, bought a house, and baby number one is on the way.  While life as we know it will change forever as we enter parenthood, we're still looking forward to getting out and experiencing the world with our kiddo in new and different ways than our previous globe trekking, off the grid, late night techno music fueled adventures.  We've decided to share our thoughts and family updates with the world through this blog in an effort to veer away from Facebook as a platform to share all our news.  Not to say there won't be a flood of pictures and Facebook baby bragging going on at first, but I think ultimately blogging will provide a classier, more therapeutic, and concise online presence for our family.

With baby Rose due in December I will be taking a break from engineering and trying out motherhood as a career for the time being.   It's quite possible we'll initially have a big pause in blog updates while I try to figure that role out.  Our life is going to change in so many unforeseen ways we just want to step back, soak it all in, and tackle the challenges as they come.  Luckily the baby wave is ebbing all around us and we've got lots of friends and family with little ones ready to see our ship off with full sails of experience, help, and advice.  This is going to be one exciting voyage.  Yikes the sailing references!...we are currently reading Treasure Island aloud at night and it is clearly on my brain.

The pregnancy has been surprisingly pleasant so far despite all of the worries and fears that come along with growing a human inside your stomach.  What I can gather from my birth club forum on TheBump.com is that I am one of the lucky ones that the other moms love to hate for having such an easy pregnancy.  No complaints here!  I also stopped reading said pregnancy forums about half way through my pregnancy.  No need for the naysayers and constant paranoia wondering if you are doing everything right.

We're trying to enjoy these last six weeks and get everything in order as much as possible.  Hopefully this means lots of dates, taking advantage of as much free sleep and shower time as possible, and getting some freezer meals made.  I got a slight curve ball being diagnosed with gestational diabetes so we'll be adjusting to that whole rigmarole too.  Nothing like being on a diet for your last month of pregnancy and Thanksgiving.  All that aside, we are looking forward to what will be the BEST Christmas ever.  I've really been on the fence about putting up our Christmas decorations this year knowing that I'd be taking them down in a sleep deprived stupor with a one month old on my tit.  However, I think we'll just do it so we can enjoy the full splendor of the season in our home since we may not be getting out all that much.  Just don't be shocked if you find the tree still up when you visit in July.

Google Camino View

We're famous! At least, as much as being on Google Street View makes you famous. As luck would have it, as we were walking on the Camino last year, the Google Street View car cruised by us a couple of times. I knew what it was right away since I had seen pictures of it online before. So we made sure to get on the pictures and note the exact location that we saw it. We have been checking that spot from time to time on Google Maps and had just about given up hope that they were going to use those pictures. But then a couple of weeks ago they actually updated the imagery. It's pretty awesome that the only place we're on Street View is on some random rural road and hanging out with some cafe con leche at a local bar in Spain.


View Larger Map


View Larger Map

KC Beer Blog

Well what do you know. This whole blogging thing seems as if it's panning out. Looks like I'll be writing for the KC Beer Blog now. The current manager of the blog was just too busy to keep it all going by himself, so he put out a call for contributors. There are three of us new guys that will be blogging away about beer now. One guy will handle all the brewery news and new beer releases, one guy will be talking about homebrew news and community, and then...there's me.

I guess I'm just going to be writing about whatever brews up in my head. The staff opinionator, I suppose. Which, when I consider I should probably actually write something once a week or so, it's a pretty daunting task. It's easy to write whenever something pops into my head, but to coax words out of the depths of my mind on command? That's just a whole different deal. So I call on all of you out there! Give me ideas and ask me questions! About beer, brewing, or...whatever!

You can see my first post here!

The Aber Taphouse

It's been a while, Internet Friends. We haven't posted much lately not for lack of goings on, but frankly because there's just been too much going on. Not to bore you too much with all the details, but the house is starting to look much more like a home ahead of Lauren's baby shower that she is hosting there for our friend next weekend. This was always the big deadline to get lots of our projects done so that the house looks presentable to a bunch of random relatives and friends of friends. Now that we're just a week off though, things are finally seeming somewhat manageable. The patio floor has been grinded clean of ancient carpet glue and sealed, the house has been painted, lawn seeded, artwork hung, and furniture arranged. Just FYI, I'm pretty much a pro at grinding concrete now. So if anyone needs help with any grinding work, I'll be at home, screening your phone calls and hiding from you. Let me know.

The most important thing to take place was the installation of some new outlets in the utility room so that the kegerator could be plugged in. The house officially became a home as homebrewed beer was first tapped about a week ago. Only the garage and the shed still make it look like we're hoarders. I think about this every time I'm tooling around in the garage with the door open and some perfect looking family scowls at our disorder from the sidewalk over the top of their stroller and german shepard. Well, maybe they're only scowling in my mind. Our neighbors seem pretty great for the most part.

My biggest concern at this point is now that our deadline will soon be passed, all those other things on the to-do list are just going to float away, never to be finished. Then again, maybe this is the essence of owning a home: the ability have selective vision and simply not notice anything wrong with the house. Maybe some day I will get bored and just start working on the list. I find this unlikely at least until after the new year though, as I think I've had enough home improvement work for at least the next couple of months. And afterall, its brewing season, hunting season, and holiday season. Which basically means...it's drinking season! (AFTER the hunt, anyway.)

I know it's foamy, damn it! I was in a hurry!

'Tis the Season

'Tis the Season to drink and wear Oktoberfest Trachten! Prost!

The Lost Camino Footage

Much as archaeologists discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls thousands of years later in a cave, we have discovered some lost footage of our Camino buried in a cave of SD cards. Maybe the anthropological significance doesn't quite stack up, but hey, it was a pretty cool find in the Aber household. (Now if we could just do an archaeological dig to find our silverware that has gone missing in the move...)

So on the advent of our Caminoversary, we thought we would post them. They were both pretty early on in the Camino, taken on September 13th & 14th of last year. That was around the time when we were figuring out what the Camino was all about, and when our hair started dredding out. The first video is a tour of the most awesome Albergue, the Casa Paderborn in Pamplona. Then we've got a video of the trail just before we hit Alto del Perdon. I would rate our hike from Pamplona up Alto del Perdon and down into Pueta la Reine as one of my favorites. The landscape was amazing, we got our first taste (literally) of the vineyards to come in la Rioja, and it just seemed like a nice hike. The end of the day was kind of shit, though, because the amazing looking medieval albergue in Pueta la Reine was full, and we had to walk an extra half mile out of town to get to the next one. But it wasn't all for naught, because at that albergue we met some awesome peregrinos like Heinz-Peter (yes, that was his first name), who had already biked 1000 miles from Germany to Spain and then was going to walk another 500 to Santiago and Nurse Rosey who solved my knee problems. Anyways, enough of my blathering, here are the videos!

The Camino One Year Later

Crossing the Bridge at the bottom of Rue de la Citadele

One year ago today we started walking out of St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, naive pilgrims without an idea of what was ahead of us. That seems like a lifetime ago. On the occasion of most anniversaries, I reflect on how quickly time has passed by. It seems only yesterday that we did this or that. It was only a year or so ago that we graduated, met friends, lost touch, moved in, moved out, traveled to this place or that; all things that happened years or decades ago.

This year has been different, though. I sometimes try to reflect on all that we did this year, only to have the details lost in the fog of time and memory. It takes looking back at pictures to remember all of the people we met, places we saw, and all the things we did. The pictures bring back only good memories, where it takes reading our old blog post to remember the physical and mental pain we suffered on the Camino. This is what makes the most everlasting memories though: remembering how much we needed the other people around us to keep on.

It seems years have passed by since we walked the Camino. It's hard to imagine that after we walked the Way, we also traveled all over the US, Carribean, and Central America. Our time after the Camino affected me nearly as much as the time on the Camino. We hiked the most amazing, awe-inspiring, and breathtaking trails in the National Parks, and rekindled a love of camping and the American outdoors. The National Parks we visited instilled in me an awe of nature and a pride in America that I haven't felt in years. We snorkeled among beautiful underwater gardens of coral that I didn't imagine possible. The time out living at Kahola gave me a new outlook on conservation and being less wasteful with water and energy. Living in Colorado, and seeing no other soul besides Lauren for weeks at a time gave me a much deeper understanding of our marriage and made me love her that much more.

On reflecting on the past year, I think that I can come up with three things that I've learned: we all need each other for happiness and survival, the Earth is a more beautiful and amazing place than words are capable of describing yet all too easy to defile, and we don't need extraneous material goods in our lives to be happy. What follows from this is that we should spend more time with our friends and families, spend more time outdoors, be more conservation minded, and live simpler with less things. Material goods only serve to bind you to an unhappy life of keeping up with the Jones's; working long hours to afford things that won't make you happy and serve only to fill up our landfills. Whereas, camping, hiking, and generally being in nature will make you happier, lead to lower stress, and give you a sense of how important it is to protect our natural environment. What's even better, is to enjoy these things with friends and family alongside.

A happy Camino family just after receiving our Compostela's at the end of the journey in Santiago, Spain.

How Beer Invented the Internet

It wasn't Al Gore, I swear! It was beer! Or so I would like to think. I wrote a guest post over on Mike's blog 1 Barrel Brews somewhat to that effect in any case. Since I've been down at Green Room so much, Mike got tired of listening to my rantings about beer and told me I should just write them down instead. So now I'm using his Internet soapbox to broadcast all of my beer soliloquies. Anyways, go check it out!

Closest representation I could find to a caveman drinking
beer. Thanks for the pose, Adam.

Samson's Power

Well, it finally happened. Nearly two years to the day, I've gotten a hair cut. The last hair cut I got was about a week before our wedding. (Note to self: two year anniversary approaching.) Luckily for me, my strength doesn't appear to be connected to the length of my hair. On the contrary, it has allowed me to work and sweat indefinitely without dealing with hair ties, brushes, or hats. It also only takes me about 3 minutes to shower in the morning now. (And since we have an awesome 1.5 gal/min shower head, thats only 4.5 gallons of water. Bam!) Hopefully my super soft luxurious hair will now make some kid super happy when they get a sweet prosthetic hair piece made out of my two little pig tails (well, maybe not that little, they are a foot long).

I'm free!

Hair sure is weird when it's not on your head. 

Say Goodbye to the Stripes

Time for the stripes, and lime green wall in our bedroom to go. I'm not sure how long I could stand waking up in the morning to this paint job. I don't know that I would mind the lime green so much as the black stripes. It's a little hard to see in this picture, but after a coat of primer, the stripes were still super obvious. Also after the first coat of our actual paint color, the stripes are still visible. So three coats of paint is all it will take to cover them up... But at least the end of painting is approaching! 

Nomads no More

After the last 8 months of being homeless nomads, we're finally back in a place of our own. We closed on our new house on Thursday, wrote the single biggest check of our lives, and were handed the keys. It was a day of moderate anxiety--not so much about writing the check, but mostly just because we were wholly tired of the process and just wanted it to be finally over with.

The only moment when my hand did waver in the face of a signature was when we signed the initial contract offer on the house back in June. That is when I thought--what the hell are we getting ourselves into? After that was all over, I didn't expect to have to go through another month and a half of inspections, appraisals, paperwork, having our phone calls, messages, and emails ignored by various parties involved, multiple rounds of negotiations with the seller, and not knowing if we were actually going to get the house until the keys were in our hands. I suppose that going through things like this is the stuff of adulthood.

Now that all of that is behind us, it's on to the fun part! Painting, yard work, tearing out carpet, emptying all of the plumbing traps of mysterious black sludge... Well maybe not fun, per se, but knowing that everything we are doing is an improvement to something of our own is a pretty awesome feeling. The projects abound and to do list seems never ending, but at least we know that we have the rest of our lives to complete it all (and I'm sure it will take that long).

Hopefully it won't take too much longer to get the paint and flooring done though, as we've postponed moving in the majority of our things for ease of work. So we're working every night so that we can actually move in the rest of our stuff in a timely manner. In true Jay & Lauren fashion, we spent our first night sleeping on the floor on the same camping pads that we used in our roadtrip out west. We have now upgraded to sleeping on a pull out sofa bed in the living room. Our utensils and chairs are also straight out of our camping gear. Its like a camp-out every night in our house!

The help from our friends and family has already made everything much easier on us. The monumental undertaking of home ownership would be so much less enjoyable without everyone being so willing and able to help. Thanks to all of you in advance for your trucks, your lawn mowers, your used furniture, and your company at our soon to begin house party circuit!

Marmot

I wouldn't really call myself a particularly brand-loyal person. For the most part, the whole concept of branding seems rather dubious to me. Paying extra money for a name brand product usually just means you're paying a premium so that you can see the company's advertisements everywhere. However, there are a few brands that I can actually trust to be something better than the generic, and I just have to give a little credit right now to Marmot.

I bring this up because a few nights ago we went to the Gear and Beer event at Backwoods in Overland Park, where Marmot reps fed us free Boulevard beer and food. Now, you may think that anyone who gives me free beer gets my seal of approval. While this is mostly correct, I also have other reasons to think Marmot is the best gear outfitter on the planet. I got my first gore-tex shell jacket for backpacking in 2001, a bright orange Marmot jacket, with a zip-in fleece liner. I wore this jacket for ten years, without getting a single tear, or having the zipper, buttons, or anything else replaced. It was also pretty much the warmest jacket I ever had until I got a Marmot down jacket last year. (Honestly, the Zeus jacket is so damned warm, I can't hardly ever find a time to wear it where I don't overheat. Also doubles as a great camping pillow.)

Since then, I've got Marmot rain pants, a packable rain jacket, fleece, and gloves. Everything I have ever owned from Marmot has been awesome, and after years of use is still in great condition. And now, I can add the Marmot Kompressor Pack to my list (bright orange no less), as I won it at the Gear and Beer party by running up to the front to answer the trivia question of what a Marmot is. (Hint: it's a woodchuck that lives in the mountains. Or was that a groundhog? Apparently, they're really just giant squirrels. Where's Punxsutawney Phil when we need him?)

Now, I know what you're thinking: this guy must be rich! To be fair, Marmot is super expensive, and I don't think that I've paid full price for any of the stuff. It's pretty much all closeouts from the previous year, mostly off of Sierra Trading Post. Hopefully, some day I can do the company more of a service than spreading the word by actually buying some of their things at full retail price.

Kahola Preppers

Well, I survived my first week back to work. I don't know that my survival was ever in doubt, but some may have questioned my ability to actually do something productive for 8 hours a day. After five years of engineering prior to the sabbatical, much like the proverbial bike, it was a bit wobbly for the first couple days, but then it was back to business as usual. It helps that I'm picking up on all the same projects that I left off on 7 months ago. And I'll probably still be working on them 7 months from now. Yes, things go slowly in the development world. Now we've only yet to see if Lauren will survive her first week. Something tells me she will.

Regardless of our inevitable return to working life, the sabbatical seems only half over. We went straight back out to the cabin this last weekend after work on Friday. It felt as if we just needed to get some business done in town over the week and were getting back to our real lives for the weekend. The only difference at the cabin this time is that I didn't have any projects to work on, so we actually just relaxed the whole weekend. The water filter was flowing, the stone pathway was built, solar shower running, and all of the other little things were taken care of.

My biggest goal was realized out there in the form of a self-sustaining drinking water supply from a system that I built myself. The biosand filter worked wonders on the lake water. Only rarely could you smell even a hint of fishiness, and you could never taste anything off. I had to start using the lake water because the small spring on our property dried up on us after a month without rain. However, I came to like the lake water more (considering how much improved it was through the filter) because the spring water was extremely hard water, which is something no water filter can change. It sometimes tasted like I was hanging drywall--liquid chalk. I don't think I could build a reverse-osmosis filter myself for under $50...

I combined the biosand filter with solar disinfection, and for the last three weeks of being out there, that is all the water we needed for drinking, cooking, dishes, and showering. For the two of us, that equated to about 10 gallons of water a day, or about 300 gallons a month. If we were doing more laundry out there, I imagine that might have doubled that number to 600 gallons a month. Considering the average American household consumes more than 10,000 gallons a month, I would say that we're doing pretty good. You start to really understand how much water you use when you have to manually filter all of your water yourself, and carry it around your property instead of having it piped. However, except for the manpower involved in carrying water around, there wasn't any external power source needed for the purification process. Our Prepper street cred must have surely ticked up a couple notches. Now we just need to get our booby traps installed...

House!

Jay is back at work and I am soon to follow starting next week.  After being together nearly twenty four hours a day for the past nine months, getting back into our work schedules and the time spent apart is taking some getting used to.  Let's just say I miss him a lot which is being reflected in the elaborate lunches that I have been packing him for work each day.  I guess I'm hoping that extra snack sized Snickers bar helps him through the day too.  When we were fresh out of college we both had job offers at each others companies and made the decision to work at separate employers as to not complicate our new relationship.  At the time we didn't see it as an excellent opportunity for more time together, but now I'd like to think we could have made it work.  I have faith that we'll soon get over our separation issues and get back in to the swing of this big city life.

Now that we're back in the city we're working on finding a more permanent place to live.  We shared a town home for 3 years and are ready to graduate to home ownership.  The deal isn't done yet, but we've found a gem in Prairie Village that we're hoping to close on in about a month.  It's been pretty difficult not to plan our whole future including paint colors in the house while we wait for the closing date to approach.  It's well suited for entertaining and I've got a myriad of party ideas that I can't help but dream about.  Our fingers are crossed that everything goes smoothly until we seal the deal.

Did I mention that it is a mid century modern style home with awesome potential for a danish modern interior?  Yes, that means we'll be searching for those awesome 1950's pieces at thrift stores and garage sales when the time comes.  Meanwhile, I'll be daydreaming about teak chairs and waiting for Jay to get home from work.

Work!

As they say: all good things must come to an end. Better put, all things come to an end, considering the sun is going to obliterate the earth in a couple of billion years, wiping out everything humans have ever done. This is getting way too deep though. More immediately, after 16,000 miles driving, 680 miles of hiking, 6 countries and 8 states our sabbatical journey came to an end today with my re-entry into normal American life. Yes, today, I went back to work, and Lauren will be back next week.

This may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you. We had planned to be on sabbatical through the end of August, and I imagine some of you may have believed that we were never going back. Being the complete networking professional (read: I show up at happy hours), I had been in touch with those at Lutjen on and off throughout this last year. I talked to Scott, the President, in mid June about whether they would need my help again this fall. Turns out, they needed some help a little sooner--like by today. I reflected on the last year and thought--Ok, I've had it way too good, and Lutjen has been too good to me--how can I turn the offer down for a few extra weeks of time off? In a similar turn of fate, Lauren's company asked her back as well starting next week.

I've been thinking for a while about our re-introduction to Corporate America. I had some plan a while back to shave my head, burn my clothes and emerge from the ashes wearing a polo shirt and khakis--a born-again engineer after our year off. However, the closer the time came to the date, the more I realized that there is no such thing as being reborn in the span of a few minutes in some sort of ritual. Much like at the end of the Camino, lots of us said--well, so what? We all thought that upon arrival in front of the cathedral in Santiago we would have some sort of moment where some great epiphany of thought or feeling would shine upon us. The moment was rather anti-climactic though. How can the experience of 500 miles of walking be condensed into an instant? It was only through a long process of reflection afterwards that we were able to see the ways the Camino had changed our lives.

I feel the same way about the rest of the sabbatical. I came back to work--it was as if I had never left. Nothing had changed, save for a few new employees and some new projects. I fell back into the rhythm of work immediately as if I had just taken a week vacation. On the flip side, it's as if our sabbatical hasn't ended. We're going to be back at Lake Kahola this weekend, and most likely the rest of the weekends this year. I'll be back to brewing beer and making cheese. We've got plans to do more camping, and backpacking--being out in nature and being more active as we were on our sabbatical.

However, I can already start to see the ways in which this year has changed me. The biggest change must be that I don't have the same cynical and fatalist mindset that most corporate worker-bees have--what I used to have. I've always liked the work that I do, and I like the company I work for. I've been lucky in that regard. However, if I didn't like it here, I wouldn't be back. Some people are stuck in their position in life, due to unfortunate circumstances or poor decisions. However, I believe that most people have much more control over their destiny than they believe.

Sabbaticals should take place every seven years (its a corollary to the Sabbath day every 7 days). What the year 2020 will bring, I know not. I do know that we will still be blogging. There are exciting things on the horizon, which we will be updating everyone on shortly!