Where the hell have I been??

That's what you may be asking, and rightfully so. Well, let me fill you in; I'll do my best to give you the short version...

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Techagony

Some of you my recall my sporadic mentions of computer woes throughout the year. My old early-2011 MacBook Pro suffered from a well documented graphics card issue and slowly deteriorated over the course of like 8 months. Well, right around late June, it really shit the bed on me. I was able to do some hacker-style shit and bypass the graphics card and only use the integrated GPU, which bought me a few additional weeks of functionality. My last couple of posts were made during that time. I only delayed the inevitable though. Before long, the logic board itself started to fail and even the boot screen at startup started displaying in fucked up colors and distortions.

^^^Yeah, these should be white text on black screen.

Then, it died. I mean for good. The power button wouldn't do a thing. Not even a slight response. The slow death of my computer has been the main cause of my absence. The good news is that a few days ago, I receive a new (to me) 2015 MacBook Pro and it's ready to rock the shit out of Steemit!

^^^My brand new, three-year-old computer! I hated how the new MacBook Pros got rid of all the ports. I intentionally went with an older model. Though a 2015, it's been upgraded to 16GB of ram and a 2TB ssd hard drive. Hopefully, it will last me a good 7 or 8 years like my last one!

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The Work

While the computer has been the main cause for me to be away, it wasn't the only one. Work has been insane. Some of my long-time followers may know that I'm an exhibit designer and fabricator by trade. I build exhibits for museums and animal habitats for zoos. Over the last 2 years, I've been working on a public aquarium and reptile zoo that's going into northeastern Pennsylvania. Well, things started really picking up with that whole build and we were projecting an opening date of right around late November. HOWEVER, that deadline got moved up (very unexpectedly) to September 20th! I was working every available day between 12 and 16 hours at a time. It was bonkers, BUT we did hit that target and open to a great reception from the public.

^^^The Electric City Aquarium & Reptile Den is open for business!

During this whole time, I've also been running my own business mind you. There was a 2 month break in the aquarium work due to some major construction issues, so I really amped up my Etsy store business so to keep the bills paid. I make headboards and other furniture out of old wooden pallets and sell them on there. Over those two months, I accrued 28 orders, and these things take the better part of a week to build. Out of no where, that aquarium date got moved up and I had to somehow build 28 headboards!! That AND we took three consecutive trips during this whole shit show; which I'll tell you about now.

^^^One of my reclaimed pallet headboards.

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The Trips

So yeah, while I'm trying to stuff 20 pounds of workload into a 5 pound bag, we ended up taking a trip each month from July to September. Not the best time to travel, for sure, but what were we suppose to do? NOT take up an opportunity to travel?! The first trip (July) was one we talked about doing for a long time. It was the trip to Newfoundland, which my last post spoke of. It was great too. It was actually the first long road trip that my wife and I took together. We borrowed my parents Subaru Outback and spent some nights in the car and some nights at motels or air b&b's. I wanted to see some of those awesome gigantic icebergs that flow down to their shores from Greenland, as well as some whales, if possible. We saw both.

^^^Serious icebergs.

The next trip was a bit more of spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. It was now August and my wife found roundtrip tickets to Iceland for $180. How could we resist? We still never went to the Westfjords of Iceland, so we decided to go for 5 days and only focus on seeing them. We also kinda justified the trip as a celebration of our 1-year wedding anniversary. The trip was awesome. The Westfjords were awesome. AND we got an awesome surprise bonus of seeing the northern lights again!

^^^Just a cool view looking over the village of Bolungarvik, the northernmost town of the country.

The last trip had the worst timing as far as the aquarium job was concerned, but it wasn't 100% our fault. It was booked very early in the year, and before that work delay I mentioned above, the aquarium was ORIGINALLY slated to open in July. So a trip in September shouldn't have been a problem at all, see? Well, it ended up having me leave for the last 11 days before opening. Literally. We got home on Sept 19 and it opened Sept 20. Shit happens.
The trip itself was a blast though. It was an Alaskan cruise and we brought my parents along for the adventure. Kylene and I did a similar cruise in 2011 and I've been itching to do another ever since. Alaska and some of the best scenery, both inland on along the coast. We were really lucky and had nice weather almost every day. We saw a lot of wildlife and we saw a bunch more inland parts of the state than that trip in 2011, including a drive into the Yukon Territory as well as a night in Denali National Park.

^^^I snapped this as we were exiting Glacier Bay National Park. I love how you can see that tiny cruise ship towards the bottom. Even though its a MASSIVE ship from Princess Cruises (like nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall), it is absolutely dwarfed by the immensity of surrounding mountains.

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Well, that sums up the past few months of my life. If you're still here and reading, the important part is: I'm back! I have a functional laptop that's faster than ever. The aquarium is open and given me some free time once again. I'm finishing my last 5 headboard orders, so that will allow more time for blogging as well. Also, there are no trips planned for the immediate future.
The Abandoned Shit Weekly Contest WILL be revived next week - look for a new announcement/theme on Tuesday! I have a ton of new material for the contest from these trips, as well as stuff for the return of my Daily Nature Fix blog as well as the occasional Nomadic Nuggets. It's good to be back on here. For real. Looks like I've missed some serious shit over the past two or three months, like a hardfork. I'm off to refamiliarize myself!

Talk to you soon! - Adam