Me

I grew up in Plymouth, MN and though I don't live there anymore I'm still a Minnesotan at heart (though I've definitely changed living away). Senior year I became better friends with guys I had known for years but hadn't really hung out with. I'm certainly glad I did. They're still my best friends today. I took a bunch of tough classes, but overall high school wasn't all that challenging. I probably could've gone to a 'better' school but I never had any interest in that. My desire was to stay in MN and go to school with D1 sports so my option was one.

At the University of Minnesota, I knew I wanted to get an engineering degree but didn't know which. Freshman year wasn't bad, as the basic physics and math stuff made sense to me. Sophomore year I started in Mechanical Engineering. The Intro to Mech E was one of the most interesting classes I ever took, if not the best. We did a lot of drawing, which I never thought I was capable of, and had challenging group projects every week. The final project was building a 'robot.' I loved that class, but it consumed so much of my time other classes suffered and I struggled in school for the first time in my life. After a lot of thought I changed my major. I still wonder if that was the right choice sometimes. Civil Engineering is what I chose to pursue next. I focused primarily on structures but enjoyed the variety of topics, from structures to soils to water resources and more.

Junior and Senior year I was a CA (different term for RA) in the residence halls and as a result lived in the dorms for 4 years. Man was I sick of the cafeteria food by the end. Planning events was never my forte, but I liked doing the job not only because it included room and board, but because the expected lifestyle was easy for me. I hung out in my room, wasn't interesting in partying (in fact I never drank before 21) and was just generally responsible. Yeah, I was pretty boring.

It was during this time I met my (now) wife. She was a CA in another building and we met at camp, which is part of training before to the school year. There was definitely some awkwardness at first, but we got past it. I had never met a girl who was (nearly) as into baseball as I was. I think she went to 20 Twins games that year. (It was 2008, ending with a game 163. Thanks Jim Thome.)

She just impressed me across the board and I was obsessed. It wasn't long before we were spending every day together. She went to Carlson for business and worked for Gopher sports marketing on the side in a role that consumed her time, but I got to see her at a lot of events.

I graduated at the end of 2009, as changing majors cost me a bit of time, and she graduated in 2010. She got a job right out of college with Aldi, which was not something she thought she'd be doing but it was work. I was graduating at the worst time for someone with a Civ E degree in decades. Even making various connections through my dad, I never even got close to a job in the industry.

Life isn't what you expect. That's kind of a theme here. Also this is a lot longer than I thought it would be, but I decided to tell a quick version of my life story, so I guess it makes sense.

I took some temp work for a company that does employee benefits and I briefly became an expert in flexible spending accounts. It's hard to even believe now as there couldn't be many jobs that fit me worse, but I answered phones all day and talked to random people. Throughout this I was in touch with a company I knew through a friend of my parents. To be honest I didn't even know what Quality Assurance was, even when I was interviewing for the job. But when both companies wanted to hire me, I was able to turn an offer from the benefits company into an offer to be a QA software testing consultant.

It was now April 2011, more than 15 months after I had graduated college, when I finally got my first real job. I was still only an hourly employee, and I barely knew what I was doing, but QA was a perfect fit. We were doing manual testing for a complete website overhaul, and my new supervisor recognized my ability to organize and by extension lead our band of testers. A couple of the guys I was working closely with didn't always appreciate this, but I soon was the face of the group and after two months was made salaried.

That November, on our first trip together, Danielle and I got engaged in Washington DC, which now, of course, is pretty funny. We got married a year later, in November 2012.

I had bounced around between a couple different clients, but felt secure and hopeful about my career in QA. In 2013 we moved out of our apartment and into our first house. That Christmas we got a puppy, our Lab Cuddy. Clearly we were ready to settle in.

Then came a shocker, at least at the time. Danielle got offered a promotion with Aldi, but it was in Frederick, Maryland, a place we didn't know and where we didn't know anybody. But it was a big deal and we took it. She was then almost immediately gone during the work week doing training. I handled most of the work getting ready to move. We luckily were able to find a place to live in Frederick and moved out here in June 2014. This required my leaving my job in the Twin Cities.

I was un-employed for about 6 months after moving, but I got to watch a lot of TV including The Wire. Maybe not the best way to get familiar with one of the cities near us, but it is an incredible show. Oh, I also entirely organized our new house and did lots of small other jobs.

At the beginning of 2015 I started working again. Through my brother-in-law I got a new job working in QA doing remote work. It was a job where I slowly took over every aspect of the QA process which I eventually entirely owned. I stayed with the company for four years, longer than I worked in QA in MN. Now we never planned to be in Maryland forever and we were already wondering how much longer we'd be here. But the details of that are a story for another time.

In the summer of 2018, our son Jack was born. You can't really overstate how much having a child changes your life. I had generous paternity leave but soon after returning my whole team found out we were getting laid off at the end of the year. It was frustrating but also something we saw coming. Remote work worked great with having a kid in child care due to the flexibility, especially considering Danielle works longer hours and I had to do the majority of pickup/drop-off. But after unsuccessfully looking for work for a couple months, I decided I'd be pulling Jack out of daycare and staying home with him myself.

Again, life isn't what you expect. At the time this terrified me. But I also didn't really know what else to do. And I was ready to tackle a new challenge.

So since April of this year, I've been staying home with our son. That's been my job. We go to what is more or less a baby gymnastics class, and just started swim lessons, and do everything else together including running errands and going to the park. It's been a fun, rewarding, frustrating, and altogether emotional experience spending all my time with a one year old.

I've also had to take on a lot more than I ever expected I would around the house. Since we moved to Maryland I've mostly handled the laundry and the dishes, things like that since I've always been home all day. Now I'm doing more cooking too. Just another reason to start a blog. Anyway, the whole point of this post was supposed to be talking about my interests, which I haven't really covered here at all. That'll have to be the next one, I guess.