Being a grand parent is simply the best thing ever. What an amazing privilege it is to spend time raising a grand daughter. (more…)

Well now, there aren’t many days like this one. God has blessed us with our first grand child in Summer’s daughter, Delilah Natsuko Bowers.

I don’t use this monicker on a music project lightly as it is literally the name of the road I grew up and where I dwell to this very day, but that is the name of my new band. I finally found myself in the company of two dudes with ability who aren’t scared of rehearsal.

We are about 6 rehearsals into building a powerhouse rock trio. I’ve really been enjoying it. We are routinely getting together 2 or 3 evenins per week to work on the sound in the room. This takes me back to my formative Absolute Zero days.

Well, it’s been a crazy year. School, a new contract, School, New CG Projects, School, Horror Con, School, finishing the album, School, 2 new live music projects, 150 clinical hours to burn off before September and you guessed it, SCHOOL.

I wish had more insightful words to offer but things are crazy as I draw ever nearer to the crossroads called, “Fifty.”

I am definitely on the cusp of being able to step away from IT contracting forever when I add the L.M.T. To the end of my name. Then much more so than now my work life will revolve around the store and all that goes on there. I’ve been a fly on the wall for 12 years and look forward to becoming more involved here.

The Last night, along with 4 of my musical friends, I stepped on stage to kick off the 12 show series for 2019, dubbed the “Last Tuesday,” concert series. Having anyone with me always increases the energy level but having a 5 peice band, even in our formative stage as it were, was really a lot of fun.

While we are far from what we can and will be at the end of this series, I thought our first show was quite nice with a few high points. One of which was our rendition of the deeply personal, “Late Summer.” We played that with some pinace and I enjoyed hearing the playback.

I wanted to espresssly call out my musical amigos.

• Paul Tharp – Keys & Backing Vocals
• Daniel Medley – Bass
• Chris Gutierrez II – Drums
• Tony Torres – Harmonica, Flute & Percussion

With the current configuration of work and school my Wednesday’s are really tough but my Thursday’s are absolutely brutal. Check this out. I typically get home from school Wednesday night around 11:45 PM from a day where I needed to leave the house around 8 am. 

Thursday mornings I shower around 6 am and get out the door as quickly as possible. Then I am at work by around 7:30 am to avoid the big traffic. I leave work around 4-ish to head to school in Maiden 50 minutes away. School official runs from 6 pm until 10 pm. After the hour and a half drive home, I’m getting in no earlier than 11:30 pm. By the time I will have spent around 4 hours in the car and have drive just shy of 190 miles.

I want to remember this in the same way I remember basic training in the US Army. My classmates and I are going g through some real gut check shit together. We are all enduring our trial by fire to improve ourselves.

I am of our course proud of my wife, but I’m also proud of the other strong, intelligent women in my class. They’ve all sacrificed to improve themselves.

So, despite the fact that I’ve got 8 months to go on Massage Therapy school and somewhat out of the blue, I was offered and accepted a new contract role with Wells Fargo.

I’ve been away from the organization, this time for almost 3 years. Things have really changed here. Very few familiar faces to be seen, largely due to the advent of something called, “Flex Space,” Many folks now shuffles between various Flex Space cubes in two separate.

I did find one common sight from back in the day. These two gents eating lunch in the 3rd floor break room.

Bill Bailey a peer from way back in my design days ran into me this morning and went so far as to hug me. We are both Veterans from FUNB and Wachovia. Those were heady times that always warm my heart. 

There is so much construction going on downtown it’s hard to believe. In the light of a clear morning I can see that’s what’s causing all the difficulty with the traffic on Independence Blvd. 

For the next week I’ll be dealing with that daily but expect to largely avoid it with flex time allowing me to drive in post rush hour and home pre-rush hour.

The new position is legitimately interesting to me. To seriously over simplify it, the role is User Acceptance Testing for New sure functionality. My many years experience with authoring in SDL Tridion sort of feeds into this position as I’ll be working with those authors in this job.

For now it’s pretty dry until I get my laptop. Looking at lots of walk through and taking notes on my phone.

I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth but the free green tea here is a far cry from the Happiness Green Tea at Albemarle Nutrition.

I’m happy to be back in the game.

We are drawing ever closer to the end of the line on this record.