5, 4, 3, 2, 1...liftoff!

Well, I suppose I should get the ball rolling. The creation of this blog was inspired by my dear cousin Sarah, who ever so thoughtfully created a weblog for our extended family called Emma's Tree (named in honor of our great-grandmother, Emma O'Brien). Since signing up for Blogger was a requirement to contribute to Emma's Tree, here I am.

Everyone in the family should have received their invitations to the newly-revived O'Brien, Inc. Family Reunion by now. If you haven't, please feel free to e-mail me at cmcgowan@gmail.com. The reunion will be taking place this August, at my parents' (relatively) new home in Fond du Lac, WI. While it's no Clear Lake, they do have a ridiculously large backyard that should work well for volleyball, badminton, lawn bowling, croquet--quite possibly all at the same time! I'm really hoping that we will get a large turnout for the reunion, since it's been five years since the last one. Of course, much of the family was together in Michigan late last fall to celebrate Sarah and Erik's marriage, but I was unable to attend due to a long-previously-planned vacation. I was lucky enough to see pictures of the joyous occasion while visiting Brian & Nancy last month, and it looks like I missed out on a lot of fun. I'm hoping we can make lots of memories this summer to make up for it!

As for me...my life has been fairly busy lately, with three consecutive weekends being out of town and getting less than adequate amounts of sleep. Things are calming down now, thank goodness. I'm going up to my parents' for Easter this weekend, but as it will just be the three of us, it should be nice and relaxing.

I've been in my townhome for almost three years now, which is a bit hard to believe. Making the mortgage payment every month still isn't on my list of fun things to do, but I really enjoy having my own place, and it's so much better than an apartment. Once the weather gets consistently warmer, I think I'd like to finally paint my upstairs bathroom. I'm also rapidly running out of bookcase room, which is an issue I'll have to address. (And no, Dad, I'm not going to start getting all my books at the library. I know it would make sense, but it's just not me.)

As of May 3rd, I will have been at my job 18 months. While some of the work can be a little tedious at times, and one of my fellow engineers is one of the most obnoxious people I've ever encountered, overall I'm happy there. I have an excellent relationship with my boss, which is such a huge change from my previous job. Not only does he give me positive reinforcement for the work that I do, I really feel that he trusts me and believes in me. Which, in turn, motivates me to do an even better job. It's a much healthier cycle to be in than the horrible depression spiral I so often dealt with at The Company Which Shall Not Be Named. Plus, my boss is a big Star Wars fan, so we've bonded over that.

I still have a wonderful circle of friends, and I love spending time with them. We played our third season of broomball together this winter, making it to the league championship game for the second year in a row. Sadly, we weren't able to win a second championship, but given the marked lack of athletic prowess of some of our players (including yours truly), what we have accomplished is pretty impressive. We also attended the USA Broomball National Championships a week and a half ago, travelling to Cleveland for a long weekend. We had so much fun in Minnesota last year, we decided to make it an annual event. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to win a game, but at least we only lost by slaughter rule once.

Baseball season is happily underway once again, and so far the Cubs have managed to not crush my dreams. That should last until about June. :) A group of friends and I went in on a partial season ticket package (which includes all night, weekend, and holiday games) for the third year running, so I'll be attending roughly a dozen games this summer. The first one was this past Saturday, and my goodness, was it cold! Fortunately, beating the hated St. Louis Cardinals had a warming effect.

I feel like I've just written my annual Christmas letter, so I suppose that's enough for now. Have to save something for the next entry!