decision '06

well, it's decided.

i am no longer going to be an expatriate.

on july 27th, 2006, i will be packing a 17' u-haul with all the shit in my tiny apartment, and driving it down to good ol' new jersey. i'll be living back at home with my parents for at least a few months, while i work at my job at McManus Design Group, and look for a brewing job.

sadly, the decision had to be made on one factor: my knee. Windee (who has had two ACL procedures) told me the details of the surgery, and it really shocked me. i thought this was a standard "tie the broken ends together" procedure. nope. this is a "remove an ACL from a corpse and bone graft it to my knee" procedure. and, upon further inspection of the selection of doctors up here, i found that there are two (yes, that's right...two) orthopedic surgeons that are members of the canadian association of orthopedic surgeons in this province. and neither are knee specialists. so, not only would i have to wait around 6-9 months to get the procedure done, it wouldn't be done by a specialist. i plan on snowboarding again in my life, and there is no way in hell that i'm just gonna let anyone poke around in there. if i go home, i can get a knee specialist to do it within a month. that's a lot more pleasant.

there are some upsides though: i can save a ton of money while i'm home, see my parents and friends from home regularly, go to the great american beer festival in september (which is essentially going to be the coolest job fair in the world), get a car (finally!), and once again have a fantastic beer selection. on top of that, after breaking the news to my thesis advisor that i couldn't take the really comfortable job he had offered me here in montreal, he said that we can work something out to allow me to consult part-time. i'm really excited about this. it's basically the best of both worlds...i can live at home and save money, but still come up to montreal on a semi-regular basis and hold down these two jobs. i always wanted to continue my research (and my advisor seems to be very excited that i can do this as well), and now i can while everything else works out at the same time. as an added bonus, if i can continue the consulting after i find a job brewing, i'll be able to pay the bills even though the brewing job will only pay slightly over minimum wage.

so, i'm happy. i'd be happier if i had more of my thesis experimentation done, since i have to finish it within the month, but at least the decision is no longer weighing on my mind.

what does this mean to my modest, but dedicated blog audience?

montreal friends: you all have been awesome. and that's one hell of an understatement. dry your eyes...this is not the end. i will be back, even more frequently than i expected, considering the consulting position i'm going to have. the nighttrain is gonna run out of montreal, but it will return in full force at times in the future. i also expect some trips for you all down to the states, as well. most of you have partied with my parents, and know that they'd be very happy to have you come stay at my house for some fun in nj/ny/pa.

nj/pa/va friends: brace yourselves. i will once again own an object of vehicular transportation. that means i'm visiting everyone. media folks - you're first...we're gonna tear wheelz' new house to splinters. nugz and bk - if you two can pick up so many weird women in dirty fredericksburg bars, i'm gonna be a damn casanova...expect the nighttrain to make a stop there in the near future for some rocket sauce. tamaquans - we're hitting the M & N again. i think we might be able to do a shot of everything in the bar and it won't be over 12 bucks. state college people - i don't really know why you're still living there, but i'm coming out and we're gonna eat every beer in town.

so, that's enough serious stuff for now. onto a few observations, then i gotta scram:

-apparently wheelz and company are going to see huey lewis and the fuckin' news next weekend. part of me wants to be there, and part of me is SO glad i'm not gonna. wheelz has been in love with huey for too long not to be completely insane at the show. 5 bucks says he gets punched in the face by someone. not because he gets into a fight, but because he'll actually yell "punch me in the face!!" at some random person until either they do it, or he ends up punching himself in the face. yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but this is also a person who had to be forcibly stopped from putting a combination of gold bond and paint thinner on his balls...i'm still not sure why we stopped him then, considering that we stepped aside just months before as he shot a staple through his sack for 30 bucks in front of 40 people. i'm looking forward to the stories from the show, though.

-i just hacked my new cell phone and now i can cut up and throw mp3s on it as ringtones. it's kinda geeky and dumb, but it's hilarious to set rings for people. i'm gonna have the most stupid rings on it...currently i have two songs from the karate kid ("you're the best around" by joe esposito and "cruel summer" by the bangles), one of the songs from rad ("thunder in your heart"), some msi, some cradle of filth, some gil mantera's party dream, etc. if you want your ringer to be any particular song, let me know and i'll make sure i put a dumb one on instead.

-i've been slamming coffee in recent weeks to keep my energy up for my long thesis writing sessions, but i guess it can only help me.

-everyone should watch "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" on FX. if you don't laugh at this, we're probably not meant to be friends in the first place. "This is classic Tammy..."

-i recently got an email in my spam folder that had the subject "you always wanted to use your penis as a billiard cue". i'm not sure which is more unsettling: that someone actually put time and effort into sending out this spam or that there may be people out there that are thinking "you know, they're right! i would love to have a cock that i can play pool with. sign me up!". ouch.

-i'm really gonna miss the abundance of orangina when i move back to the states. it's everywhere here, and its helped out of hangovers so, so many times. who ever thought that mildly-carbonated fake orange juice could taste so damn good.

-i just had the image of Sahoo driving his motorcycle in my head, and it reminded me just how dangerous that is. i still can't believe he could manage to get a license...that test must be a joke. if anyone has ever been in a car with him driving, they know what i mean. he once almost killed me and Kirby by trying to make a right turn from the left lane, cutting off a BUS that was to the right of us. i also remember the look of absolute terror on Jenna's face when she found out that Sahoo was gonna drive her car back to our house at penn state from downtown. that's a half mile of straight two lane road and i've never seen her more afraid (well that might not be true...she was pretty afriad when she got into the car and saw Bomz' new facial hair design...well, i guess that was more anger than fear).

ok, that's enough for now. time to get to work.

(sigh).

ok, ok, Jen, you're right, my concept of soon is pretty out of whack. time for another installment.

well, so much to talk about, and so little time. little time in the day. little time in my program. little time in my stay in canada. or is it? i can already tell that this is not gonna be one of the more jovial posts. i'm confused. within two months, my life will be significantly different. i will be done with school (at least within the practical sense; thesis submitted, waiting for review, etc). i will be entering the 'adult' world. i will be moving. i will be in one of many different places. and here is where the confusion sets in. i could stay in canada, i could move to NJ, i could move to some other part of the US... i guess i'll break it down:

option uno - i move home for august and begin work at a brewpub in september (i've got about a hundred resumes out, and a few look promising). i start the progression towards my dream without delay.

option dos - i have a job offer here in canada working as a research assistant for my thesis advisor. it pays very well, it's interesting work (basically continuing my thesis research, but getting paid to do it), the people are cool, i get to stay around my montreal friends, i can pursue a possible romantic interest, i can have some cash to put away until i need to either go to brewing school or live on minimum wage while i intern at a brewpub.

option tres - i go to NJ to work in the same job i've done for the past six years (strutural engineering work). it pays better than the montreal job, i live at home and save the money i would spend in montreal on rent, food, beer, etc., i can finally own a car again, i can see my PA buddies more than once a year, and i can put away a lot more cash than if i stayed in montreal. i also can have my knee surgery within weeks instead of about 9 months, as it would take in canada.

if option uno pans out, and i can afford to live off of the minimal salary of being a brewer's bitch, then there is no question about the decision. but if it doesn't, i have no idea what to do. moving back home is the easiest, but then i might miss out on a good number of things here, like: the few amazing friends i have up here, the website idea Dave and i came up with, another chapter in the nightmarish book entitled 'Nick's Badly-Timed Attempts at Relationships', the amazing vibe of this city...all those wonderful things.

on the other hand, my knee gets worse and worse every day, and i haven't even been called yet about setting up a simple consultation appointment with the surgeon, whose waiting list i was added to over two months ago. i need to be able to travel all over the US relatively simply in order to go on interviews at the prospective breweries, which is a little difficult if i have a full time job in canada. i also might need to save about 10 grand to attend brewing school and get a certification, which would be much easier to do at home due to the large reduction in costs.

the worst part about it all is that i have to decide about these things within the span of around 10 days. (sigh).

on a very mildly lighter point, i have my first 10 pages of my thesis written. it doesn't sound like much, but for me, it's given me a small boost of confidence that i really can get this fucker done.

and on one last note, i cannot wait to brew again. and there is not any method of text formatting to let me stress that enough. all i do when i'm not working on my thesis is read my brewing books and come up with new beer ideas. but i have no time to brew them, especially since i might be moving from my apartment within a month. once i figure all this shit out and get my thesis done, these brews are on deck: latte stout (coffee stout with added lactose), mango stout (i really think it will work), pomegranate lambic, imperial ned flanders red (super strong flanders red). more to come.