Cookouts!

Well, the semester is over. No more classes and it's generally pretty nice outside. Now what do we do? Cook Out! The first weekend of May I found myself at four cookouts, from Friday through Monday. It was nice to get outside, grill and eat some burgers, fajitas, other things, and hang out with people I won't see for a while, or maybe forever. I'm really going to miss some people who are either graduating or not coming back to school in the Fall. I wish everyone the best of luck with future endeavors. I hope we meet again my friends.

stormy clouds over Syracuse on Friday, May 1

a rainbow!

at professor Sung Park's house grilling some fajita meat and doing random who knows what

Stephanie Makosky was Sara and mine's adopted daughter for the weekend. We had lots of fun and will miss her a lot.

Drew and Stephanie chillin' in the backyard. They were smoking.

On Saturday we went to a birthday party at Barry Park. There were pinatas.

The birthday kids Brad and Allison

Sunday, May 3, had kids over from The Cage, where I work at SU

Birthday!

So this past Saturday was my lovely wife Sara's birthday. Also, our good friend Tim Fescoe visited us from Massachusetts. Also, it was Easter on Sunday. Pretty busy weekend. For Sara's birthday her wish was to go out to eat for every meal, which we did, and go to some bookstores, which we did as well. I feel bad that I didn't plan some big elaborate awesomely fun thing for her this year, but my mind has been so preoccupied with stupid school stuff I couldn't get inspired for her birthday. Maybe next year...if she still loves me.

Sara on the phone with her Grandma.

Tim trying to figure out what to order at the Sugar Pearl Cafe

At What the Crepe for dinner

Our friend Stephanie looks confused, or mad, I don't know.

Sara doing something interesting (sleeping? on her birthday? in public?)

The classic "I'm getting older and going to contemplate about my life" blog post

Well, I'm 25 today, that means I should be having a quarter life crisis right...about...now. Nothing happened. Oh well, maybe next time. However, I think I had my quarter life crisis about a year and a half ago. I realized I wasn't doing anything with my life and didn't want to be stuck doing things I didn't want to do. So I proposed to my then-girlfriend (now wife) Sara and started applying to grad schools for a career change to be a photographer. I'm definitely happy with where my life is heading and am definitely very happy I married Sara.

I don't know, I was thinking about getting older and stuff and thinking "is this what I pictured my life to be like when I'm 25?" But then I realized I couldn't answer that question because I never really pictured what my life would be like at 25. I mean, I have dreams like owning a house and having kids, but I always just thought that stuff would happen in the future and I didn't need to think about when. Well, my future is here I guess.

It's not a bad thing, though. I feel I've accomplished a fair amount of things and have had some cool experiences, but sometimes I feel that I haven't done enough. I think what I need to do is really think about and probably write down everything I would like to do/accomplish/get out of life and every August 14 take a good look at and see what I've accomplished that year and what's left.

I tend to pile on dream after dream and get caught up in thinking about what I haven't done that I forget to live in the moment and enjoy what's happening now. Like being able to sit on the nice porch of my nice apartment on a gorgeous day in a city that's not Los Angeles and not hear car alarms go off every minute or sirens every two minutes.

I'm not really good about making goals for my life, let alone sticking to those goals, but I need to make making goals a goal. I don't want to have to keep asking myself every year if I'm where I thought I'd be at that age and either not have an answer, or have that answer be no. Take That quarter-life!