Graduating, Moving, and New Job

So here it is, the long awaited post on how drastically my life has changed over the past few weeks. This first post will be all of the changes. The post to follow this will be about what that means for my music.

 

 

 

It all began back in the fall of 2007. I had decided to go to Messiah College for Mechanical Engineering and was beginning my studies there. Move ahead about 4 years and my time at Messiah has come to a close and life just starts to go crazy.

 

I graduated a few weeks ago on May 14th. I had an interview set up with Alcon Labs, right outside of Reading, PA, where I basically already knew that I got the job. However, I was told it'd be a few weeks after my interview before I could start. After graduation I was supposed to have a nice relaxing few weeks to move out of my apartment, find a place to live, and move again.

 

Then comes the interview, Monday morning. Suddenly people are talking about having me start the following Monday. But it's alright. Kelly's (my girlfriend) dad works at the company and knows a guy with a huge house and a room he could rent to me.

 

But it's not alright. The guy is doing some house rennovations, installng centrail AC, so the whole house is torn up and won't be able to be lived in for quite some time. There's another guy who has a two bedroom apartment that I could rent a room from, but that's kinda cramped for me. I mean, I'm at 7 guitars right now. That takes up a lot of room - more room than a room in an apartment has.

 

So I hop on craigslist that night to look for something. I see a room for rent for a flat fee (covers utilities, cable, etc.) and decide to shoot the guy an email. 20 minutes later I get a call and the guy asks if I want to check it out that night. I check it out.

 

This place is pretty unbelievable. I didn't know there was a nice part of Reading until this. The neighborhood is in the +$250k range with a mansion thrown in here and there. So the house is pretty great with plenty of room for my guitars and even a hot tub. The guy is nice and his dog is too. It was what I was looking for in the time frame I was looking at, so then on Thursday, only a few days after finding the place, I moved in.

front of the house

some of the guitars and equipment

 

The following Monday, May 23rd, I started. Alcon is a pharmapseudical engineering company that works primarily with eyecare products. I'm currently working on a glaucoma shunt that's being brought over from Israel. You can see a video of it here (warning: graphic - it's an eye surgery).

 

Anyway, here's a broken down timeline:

May 14 - graduation

May 16 - interview

May 16 - find housing

May 19 - move

May 23 - start working

 

It's been crazy. I'm not sure what all this means for my music yet, but that will be explored more in the next post.