New Gig

So last Monday I continued the job hunt. I completed another coding challenge for a company I was interviewing with and had several follow-up calls and emails. Monday night I roasted some veggies and went over to Markus and Christie's house nearby for their monthly ping-pong night. It was a pretty relaxed and fun night, although they were all pretty skilled ping pong players and several levels above me.

I was thinking about skiing last week with Lew, but I ended up getting and accepting a job offer that started last Wednesday. So I've taken a full-time, work-from-home position with a company called Social Communications Company based in Mountain View, California. I wrote more about it on my professional blog over here. During the job search, I was very seriously considering relocating to San Francisco, and now that I ended up taking a work-from-anywhere job, I'm relieved and excited to continue to grow my roots and expand my social activities here in Boulder.

Speaking of social activities, it's been pretty busy lately. Turtle Dove is back rehearsing now that Matt is back from his road trip, and Afronauts are going full steam as well. This week will be our one year anniversary of the first Afronauts rehearsal, so I'm going to cook a little celebratory meal for rehearsal tomorrow.

Last Friday I ate in old town Louisville at Lulu's BBQ and enjoyed the beer can chicken and a surprisingly substantial side salad. Then I had a relaxing night at home, watched a DVD, and painted my fingernails. Saturday morning was a gorgeous sunny day, so I biked into Boulder, picked up some pants at the tailor, and then up to the Bouler Circus Center for open workout. Afterward I had a meal with Aaron and Jill before biking back home. It's really much more pleasant to ride home while the sun is still out. Saturday evening I went to hear Zoe Keating at the Soiled Dove in Denver. I hadn't heard of the venue before, and it's a bit out of the way, but it is quite nice and the sound system is great. I brought a new OKC friend on a first date and we went to Bar Louie up the road a bit afterward for some food. Tried some popcorn with shitake butter (or something like that) and parmesan, which was really yummy.

Sunday I did some organizing of my various closets and drawers, which is extremely soothing. Then I met up with Julia for Vietnamese at Chez Thuy, which we hadn't tried before but was highly recommended. Definitely tasty. I'm looking forward to leftovers tomorrow and using willpower to not eat them tonight. I think I've about found the bottom weight I can reach with the slow-carb diet and now I'm experimenting with loosening the diet restrictions to see if I can maintain a steady weight, but man, it's tricky. These days I'm in a cycle where I can be on a strict diet Monday breakfast through Friday lunch and be pretty loose over the entire weekend and have about a 3lb down/up cycle in that time, which is fairly sustainable, but I do miss snacking.

Today I had off work and did a bunch of chores. I also filled out a bunch of paperwork toward refinancing my house. I took the bus into Boulder and met Brenda for lunch at Southern Sun. She's really into beer and this month is Stout Month so she was all about trying some exotic stouts. She got an amoretto stout and I got a chocolate nitro stout.

Tomorrow I'm cooking a celebration dinner for the one-year anniversary of The Afronauts. I think 2012 is going to be a great year for the band and it sure is a ton of fun performing with them.