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I have been out of school for just shy of two months, and I can’t help but think about the journey I have ahead of me. So many decisions to make, both in the short term and for the long term. I just can’t get over the fact that my undergraduate career is over, and I feel like I was thrust out into the world like a bird getting pushed out of the nest. I do know I want to enjoy life, yet that seems to be the problem. So many of my friends, also recent graduates, are out and about, trying to become members of the workforce. I fully admit that there is not a job I can specifically define as an “ideal” job. I know I want to find a job I can be passionate about, excited to work each and every day. My parents come from the school of thought where work is not something of passion, but something to provide for your family.

I came across a post by Rob Goodlatte entitled “Passionless Pre-Professionals.” I cannot agree more with his post. Everyone should be passionate about work; it is after all something you are probably going to be doing for the good majority of your working life.

I want to work for a company that is open-minded about the future, and is focused more than just financial growth. Sure, it’s in a company’s interest to have sound finances, but what about not forgetting the people who work to fulfill that mission every day? I want to work for a company where I have the opportunity to travel, and utilize my language skills in Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic. I want to be able to work for a company that values an employee’s personal development, and time away from work. It’s not as important that I have immense amounts of paid time off, as the opportunity to have more than just two weeks a year off, even if it’s not paid vacation leave. Three-day weekends here and there, especially around the holidays, add up fast.

I’m very happy working for Apple, and I intend to stay as a part-time employee. I just hope that I can continue to find jobs where passion is a prerequisite at the workplace.

Sadly, I will be working most of the day today at Apple in the Mall of America. Leslie is with her family at her cabin in McGregor. This is my first time away from the largest of my family get-togethers. My uncle Tab is a minister in Duluth, and for the traditional holiday gatherings, he and his family are in Duluth. So the Fourth of July weekend is a time for everyone to migrate back home, to celebrate our nation’s independence, but most importantly, enjoy family.

This day is a chance for my extremely large, Iron Ranger, Italian extended family to enjoy one another’s company, catch up on the gossip of recent happenings, but most of all, to show other newcomers to our family what “family” really means. From Florida to Oregon, Wisconsin to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, my family has trekked back to Eveleth to watch the annual Eveleth Fourth of July parade since I can remember. We stake out that certain street corner on Grant Avenue in front of the bank, and plop down our folding chairs, park the strollers, and get ready for one of the best parades I’ve ever known.

My favorite of any summer activity (yes, even more than my recent disc golf hobby) is the annual bocce ball tournament at Bootsie and Louie’s cabin on Saint Mary’s Lake. It’s the most official-yet-relaxed sporting event ever. Wimbledon and the like: take note. Yes, we pay a friendly entrance fee, but the money goes to the winning pair and the runner up pair. Ever since I was little, I wanted to win that tournament.

I’ve had several moments in the past few years where I was worried about making an appearance. I worked in the Boundary Waters at Charles L. Sommers – Northern Tier National High Adventure Base during the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. Yet, I was able to make the trip down, and I even brought a co-worker away from his family in Illinois. Four summers ago, Leslie and I made the trek from northwestern Wisconsin from Tomahawk Scout Reservation, our first summer “dating” (even though as co-workers we couldn’t really say that). In the summer of 2006, she and I drove up from the Twin Cities to play in the bocce tournament, Leslie a returning newcomer the family was expecting. Last summer, I was scheduled to work at 4pm back in Hibbing on the 4th, so although I made it to the parade, the Elk’s Club after-party, and a good portion of the bocce tournament, I had to jet early, and I even made it to the final pairing, albeit playing as a stand-in for my cousin Jillian’s boyfriend (who I heard never actually showed up).

I think that growing up makes a person want to move away from his hometown, but to an extent, there are always those memories you want to rekindle and re-live. No matter how far from the Iron Range I move, I promise my family that I will make it back for them- to be with them- every 4th of July from this day on.

I hope all of you have a great Fourth of July weekend with your family and friends. I never wanted to admit it, but sitting here alone at my desk in my apartment in Little Canada, absence does make the heart grow fonder of the ones you love.

Today, I will be in the company of co-workers who are also far from home. I will share with them my stories of family at the Fourth. Tonight, we shall create history of our own: Downtown Minneapolis on the Fourth of July. I will post pictures and videos as soon as possible.

I love you and miss you all! I will be calling to talk to you several times today. A call to everyone: don’t let Richie rig the tournament brackets and somehow manage to get to the finals AGAIN.

This post is going to be short, disjointed, and slightly confusing. I just want to get it out there that I have been working on a blog, just not this one, per se.

Recap of the past month: Leslie and I took photos and video of our visit to the Witch’s Hat Tower in Prospect Park for the one day a year it is open to the public. I do indeed have pictures of our trip to McCarthy Beach State Park. And recently, while working at the Apple Store at the Mall of America, I met several members of the band Lonestar. The tour manager gave me several Meet & Greet passes to the 1st Annual K102 Country Splash concert in Somerset, Wisconsin. We were able to see Lonestar, John Michael Montgomery, and Clint Black. We left before Gretchen Wilson performed.

Those posts will come in due time. If anything else, I want to share with my family and friends what I have been doing.

However, I have been working on a side project with my friend Mike, regarding beer. Yes, to many it may sound superficial and sophomoric. However, ask me anything you’d like about beer, and why I decided to embark upon this journey to create a site centered around beer. I can tell you. I won’t be able to tell you the URL of the project I’m working on; we haven’t quite gotten the coding of the site completed, but when it goes into beta testing, please let me know if you’re interested.

I do know many people at work are interested in beer, more than just the standard “American” beers: Miller, Coors, and Bud. Some are even as interested as I am, and have quite a bit of personal knowledge about beers, breweries, and trips to Europe/Asia/Latin America where the beers are much different. That is why Mike and I originally began working on this project- to create an educated-yet-casual dialogue about beer, where people can join an online, organic movement to share the knowledge they’ve gained over the years with other beer aficionados, or people who just want to know a little more about beer.

The job hunt is still on, and I hold hope for the promise of a great job; not a job that makes the “big bucks” but a place where I can be happy, enjoy the people I work with, and make enough money to get by.

Disc golfing season has kicked into high gear, and I have been to three courses across the metro in the last month: Bryant Lake Park in Plymouth (off 494 and 55), Acorn Park in Roseville (off Rice and County Road C), and Lakewood Hills in White Bear Lake (off White Bear Ave/McKnight and Orchard). I hope to try out some courses in the south metro, especially since I work down there three days a week and many of my co-workers are disc golfers.

But, in summary, please continue to follow my blog posts. I am constantly working to improve my blog, the theme, layout, and media integration.

UPDATE: Check my link above “Elsewhere on the Web” and click on .Mac gallery to see pictures and videos from camping, the Witch’s Hat Tower, and Country Splash.

So this summer has quickly raced towards a close, and I really don’t know how to feel about it. I really look forward to getting back to the grind of things with classes and such, but at the moment I still have to take care of a few things with my finances before I can actually register. Tricky things called promissory notes that need to be co-signed, and there’s the rub. Another signature.

Anyhow, work at the MSP airport has been alright thus far. I have made a decent amount of money that I would have otherwise not had, and I have a chance to spend my day selling language software and learning Dutch in the meantime. To be quite honest, I have actually learned a fair amount of all the languages we sell, namely French, Portuguese, Italian, and the three key Asian languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Now to get better at them, that will serve to be a trick.

George moved here from Oklahoma and he got set up with the apartment I found for him on UTank the one day I was actually on the site perusing the goods for sale. He’s a great guy, and to think that my friend group has slowly shifted towards the older end of the college spectrum. I guess I have to realize school (well undergrad) is actually halfway done, and that having friends with real jobs and postgrad schooling is actually healthy to have around. Plus, now with George being here, I have someone to hang out with that loves Jiu-Jitsu, and he can help me get better… well actually I need to learn some first, but whatever. Semantics.

I am struggling with where to go for the spring semester, being that Beirut is not the safest place al momento to study if current trends don’t cease. I want to go somewhere in the center of the Middle East, but Jordan looks lame, and Saudi Arabia’s Embassy site lists the student visa process to go there. You seriously need to give them two copies of your birth certificate and your high school diploma, as well as a medical record, and a criminal record. Not too thrilled about the prospects of having to do that for whichever place I end up going. Maybe Kuwait or one of the Emirates. Omar from DKE is Bahraini, and he told me the University there is stellar. I guess I still have hope for Lebanon though. Maybe Damascus otherwise. Don’t really want to go to Cairo, nor do I want to learn Arabic in Morocco, at least not right now.

I think that I am going to stop the addiction to Facebook and MySpace cold turkey, and drop the MySpace altogether. I mean it’s nothing but a waste of time when I could be doing something else entirely more productive. Facebook is still a useful tool, although the new features they keep adding draw me back in. It all started with extra photos. Then events, and the high school Facebook. Then companies and regional networks. Now global groups and Facebook mobile, and today they introduced the equivalent to a blog, and also Facebook signature cards for your email or your website.

I need to start running on a more regimented schedule again. People always ask me to run with them, but I like to go alone and listen to music, and moreover, run at my own pace, at my own time of day. I should really get serious about it and quit saying I will and just do it. But I need to pick a time of day that works, and I think mornings might actually be my best shot.

Brittany moved to UND and she started school this week, and Lyric is en route to MT-Bozeman right now. I never managed to make it back to the Range since the 4th, and I really wanted to just hang out at home, or what I can try and construct as home. Home to me is Hibbing and the house on Tamminen Road. The back yard and the trails that I grew up running through behind the house. It’s the basement with the dard red carpet and the deck behind the house with the creaky boards and faded stain. The numerous pine trees in the yard and the lawn that was a pain in the ass to try and cut all the time. It was the garage where there was the three-wheeler dad took out and drove us back to the river in the evenings with. It was summer nights watching movies and getting excited for TGIF and the new episodes at 9 o’clock of Are You Afraid of the Dark after the end of the Snick line-up. It was the fact that I lived down at the end of the hall and I had a room with a view of trees and not of a cold apartment building. The five creaky stairs from the hallway that were always a feat to try and navigate at night so mom couldn’t hear me sneaking down and eating the school snacks. It was playing Nintendo 64 and Goldeneye furiously and the late nights at Lyric’s house in the basement pulling marathon N64 stints where we would trick out cars on Top Gear Rally. It was also the late nights he and I would spend messing around online looking at random things and watching MST3K when it was still airing on TV.

Even though I love what I am learning, I still feel like I am a displaced person down here in Minneapolis, and I don’t really have a home. I live in a perpetual state of quasi-mobility. My laundry basket never gets emptied, and there are times when I have to try and sort out the dirty clothes from the still clean clothes in the same basket. My toiletries are in a travel bag that hasn’t been unpacked since I left for college in June 2004. There have been a few things taken out, but more or less there has been the majority of my stuff in a travel kit. No matter how hard I try to make my room feel at home, I really can’t. And just as much as I love the metro for all the good things it has to offer and the nightlife that never really existed in Hibbing, I really miss the slower pace. The fact that every restaurant closed at 11 most nights, and that only a handful of places were open past midnight. The fact that some traffic lights blinked red past a certain time, and that I drove on city roads that only have two lanes, not the ten lane, one-way beasts we have down here that never have a lull in the traffic.

I realize this blog is going to be gargantuan, but I have to try and get things out so maybe I can try and make sense of them later.