Where does the time go to? It's been nearly a year since I last posted here, so let me dust away the cobwebs and vacuum the floor...

First, education. As you may remember, long, long ago I took a class in event planning and meeting management. Not only did I like it, but I was good at it. Then along came June 2007 and with it the end of my consultant programming job at Ethicon. At loose ends, I decided this might be a good time to see if changing careers would be a good thing. So I enrolled myself back at Raritan Valley Community College, and (shortening a long story) on May 14, 2008, I got my certificate in event planning.

Next, work. Like I said above, I'm not at Ethicon any more. As part of my certificate work, I had to get an internship with a company that either did event planning or had a large event planning component. Fortunately, I got an apprenticeship (definition: an internship with pay) at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick. This lasted from the beginning of February to the middle of June, when the apprenticeship period ended. I'm now on the job hunt, which I'm hoping won't last too much longer. But it's, well, discouraging.

How's Bill? Thank you for asking. He's currently working Sunday thru Thursday for New Jersey Democrats. And he'll be doing some exit polling work for an outside firm on election day, too. And both are paying jobs. But as usual, there aren't enough hours in the day for him to do everything he wants to do in the way he wants to do it.

Anything else? I'm planning to take a long weekend around my birthday and travel down to Disney World. I'm still editing Challenge, the newsletter of the Gay Activist Alliance in Morris County (GAAMC). I'm starting to get active in another gay group, the Garden State Bears, mostly setting up events -- a small group of us went down the shore in mid-August, and there's a couple of informal dinner meets in September. Not much to start with (there's also a monthly beer bash in Asbury Park), but the potential is there.

What about Mensa? I'm not active in my local group, although I do get to their RG each year. I still go to the AG every year -- the last one was in Denver, the next one's in Pittsburgh. And I still participate in GaySIG. But I'm not as heavily into it as I was, and that's a good thing. I think members need to take some time to step back, especially if they are active in Mensa governance like I was.

Any comments on the political scene? OH, yes! But that'll be for another post...