Well, after my last post not much has changed. My leg is better so I can at least walk normally for the most part. It still hurts a lot sometimes though, not sure what causes it though, I'm thinking maybe when I turn too quickly or something.

One of the high points in my life the last week or so was driving up to Boston for my buddy's birthday party. While I was up there another friend tossed me a great paying consulting gig for four days. It paid me enough to hopefully get some of my bills under control and to also help accomplish my move to Florida. I finished my work on Friday and started driving back to PA around 8:30pm.

With about 120 miles left of my trip that's when the low kicked in. I was driving along happy that I could start getting shit taken care of again. As I came up to a point on the turnpike where it split, I needed to change lanes. All of a sudden, there was a guy cutting across my front end to change into my lane! To avoid hitting him I had to swerve to the left. This unfortunately sent my car into a nice spin which ended with my hitting the concrete median wall and tearing off the front end of my car. This happened at about 70+ miles per hour and I came away unscathed. I was surprised and happy that the air bag didn't deploy.

I got the car restarted and limped her over to the shoulder out of traffic to check the damage. Basically the whole front is gone except for the headlight arrays which are pushed up under the hood. I looked across to where the front of my car was laying in the road. I contemplated rushing out and grabbing it to hopefully find a way to salvage it so the repair wouldn't be expensive. Just as I was about to make my move a big rig hit it and that was that.

I hopped in my car and got her running and started my drive back home. Luckily, I have excellent night vision so the lack of useful headlights didn't cause me any problems. Although I was scared shitless that I would get pulled over before I made it home.

Labels: Life

posted by WarWolf at 12:30 AM 0 comments

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Friday, February 17, 2006

My Life Blows

I've recently had my life go from "pretty damn cool", to "this fuckin sucks" in the span of a few weeks. Where to begin. I know, the beginning...no not from childbirth, just from a few weeks ago.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I quit my job with Nekton because of the isolation and not being able to take care of things in my life that needed taken care of. So I gave my notice, and my last day I get injured helping dock the ship. That accident is covered in more detail in another previous post. Long story short, I've been stuck with a bad leg for the last few weeks. I can barely put weight on it, which working as a scuba instructor is a bad thing considering I'm lifting a lot of heaving gear all the time.

So after I leave the ship, I figure I'll crash at my buddy's place until I heal. Nope! He moved his younger brother down so there is no room for me. So instead of giving my leg a rest I hop in my manual shift car and drive 20+ hours back to Pennsylvania to crash at my dad's place while I heal. This burns up a ton of my cash in gas, btw.

It's about this time I realize I'm fucked. I'm getting calls from creditors (car, motorcyle, Visa, etc.) because a lot of my bills are past due. Any money I pay them goes to cover late fees and not much else. Awesome. I then realize my car needs to be inspected by the end of this month and to get that accomplished I have to get car insurance.

I also need to buy insurance to be a Scuba Instructor. So if I want to go to Florida and start working I need to spend money on that. But, I also need money so I have a place to live until I get things caught up.

To top it all off, the checks I've gotten from Nekton and deposited have bounced. So my balance is now negative $300 or so. At this point I'm not sure what the fuck I can do. Good times.

Labels: Life

posted by WarWolf at 1:43 PM 0 comments

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Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Career Change

I've been less and less interested in my computer-focused career for awhile now. Seems like I end up following the same trend at every job. I get all the computer systems working smoothly, then people notice that I don't have a lot to do. So they figure, 'hey why pay for a guy when our stuff runs great!?' It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

So last Saturday I was driving around with my aunt helping her pick stuff up for a huge auction. Since we were driving all over the place, I brought along one of my old scuba magazines. While flipping through I noticed a paid advertisement about careers underwater. There were a number of schools mentioned in the ad to contact about getting started.

Initially I was on the commercial diving bandwagon. It seems like the path that leads to high paying jobs. Most of the jobs seem to be weilding on oil rigs and stuff like that. The downside is that it's union with all the pitfalls that entails. I was talking to a guy and it sounds like you make a ton of money while on a job for a few months, then you're out of work for a few months.

I then started looking into the recreational diving side and liked what I saw. Initially, the pay isn't too high, but it'll get up there as you work at it. I researched it quite a bit and I'm going to take a 14 week course that'll have me certified as an instructor in many areas. That should make me very attractive to potential employers.

If everything goes to plan, I should be in Marathon Key, FL from Aug. to Nov. training. I'll be learning how to run a dive operation from top to bottom, along with learning to use wet submarines, rebreathers and diving deeper than recreational limits.

For the first time in a long, long time I'm actually excited about the future!

Labels: Life

posted by WarWolf at 12:31 PM 0 comments

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