When it rains, it pours.  When the sun is bright, it’s blinding!

Since we don’t delve too much into our personal lives, some of you may or may not know details of what goes on for us on a day to day basis.  But in the interest of getting to know you better and for you to do the same, I’m going to write a bit of recent personal history.

Andrea and I moved to California slightly over one year ago for her to work on a Ph.D, and it was very tough from the beginning.  The whole thing started with me trying to transfer with a company (Lowe’s) that I had been with for about a year and a half.  The whole time I was an exemplary employee.  But lost in the amorphous mass of corporate structure, I had to take what was only a part-time job here.  On top of this, I was working another part time job, and so I was driving about 1 ½ hours a day.  When I landed a full-time job elsewhere, I was thrilled.

Well, it turned out to be a place with quite possibly the highest level of disfunction imaginable.  At any rate, my time there was brief (4 months), and I was then beginning my 4 ½ month journey of being jobless.  I had found a way to scratch out a meager existence with some savings and a bit of other routes and came to my wits end.  About this time, and I won’t give the details about this (except to say that everything turned out fine), I had to get a colonoscopy.  I don’t recommend ever getting one.

At any rate, let’s just say that the last 4 ½ months were pretty rough for several reasons.  I have no food, no job, my pets’ heads were falling off (either you get the reference or you don’t)—I wasn’t liking California during this time.  (When it rains, and it rarely does rain here, it pours.)

However, I did learn some valuable pieces of information about myself and began to have a lot of clarity concerning my thoughts on several issues.  Something happened not long ago that made me really rejoice: I got a three-pack sample from Buckbean. (See, this is related to beer!)  That might sound trite, but it was the proverbial straw that, in this case, mended the camel’s back.  About four weeks ago I landed a job that seems like a reward for my time of tribulation.  It’s going to be a great place to work, the benefits and pay are great, and I’m going to get some management experience, which will perhaps help for a future brewery.  Furthermore, I’m going to be meeting some very talented people would could very much design some beer labels.

Well, I’d made it through the storm and the sun was beginning to smile upon me again when it decided to come out full blast.  I’ve gotten a new motivation for the future of the brewery and have met some people who may really be able to help with the startup.  In fact, I am seriously looking into the nano idea in the meantime.  Time after time, recently, things are beginning to look up.  Of course, the good beer stuff is part of the equation, which is what makes this, in my mind, a justifiable post for the site.

Part of why I wrote this post is because I want to be able to share the full gambit of what is happening in my (mostly beer) world.  But I like the idea of hearing where you guys and gals are at and where beer is bringing you joy; the little things matter.  Conversely, I know that some of need to hear that life can be bipolar like this and that things will get better.  I don’t remember the last time life for me was just so-so.  It’s either famine or feast.  Anyway, I guess you could generically say that I’m sharing from the heart but, to me, there’s nothing generic about authenticity.  What about you people?