Time For A Change

Good morning ladies and gentlemen!

My apologies for missing last week's blog post, I seem to be a bit disorganized since the beginning of the new year and haven't been keeping up with the blog the way I should.  I'm trying to get myself back into a normal routine here and get everything working the way it should.

Contrary to that though, I've got a major shake-up coming in my daily routine!  I've just recently accepted a position with Five Mobile and will be working downtown with Graydyn making software for cell phones.  My last day at Computershare is February 17th which will give me a 4-day long weekend (with Family Day on the Monday) before I start work at Five on the 22nd.  It's all pretty exciting; this is the first time since I got out of college that I've changed jobs.  I've been at Computershare for over 7 years now, so I think it's going to feel pretty weird not going there anymore.  Still, I needed a change of pace in my life, and this was the perfect opportunity.  I'm going to be working with some really exciting new technologies, and I know I'm going to learn a lot while I'm there.

The flip-side to all of this, and what makes it relevant to my travel blog is that I'm losing a lot of vacation time in the deal.  Going from 5 to 3 weeks of vacation time is going to be a difficult adjustment, and is going to heavily impact my ability to travel this year.  I don't have any travel plans at the moment (outside of a couple days for our camping trip in May) so I'm going to have to think long and hard about what I want to do with my limited budget of vacation days.  I can see myself really trying to do what I'm doing in May and just use a day or two to extend out a long weekend and get the most bang for my vacation day buck.

Working downtown should be an interesting experience for me.  I've only been downtown a couple dozen times in my 7 years here in Toronto; it's just not somewhere that I go very often.  I know that Graydyn has really developed an appreciation for life downtown since he started working with Five, so maybe this will be an eye-opener for me in regards to urban life.

In regards to the camping trip that I'd mentioned earlier, it's still a bit up in the air at this point.  I don't foresee it being an issue, but I will need to confirm with my new employers that I can get a couple days off around the May 24 long weekend.  I'm just going to wait until I'm in the office on the 22nd to confirm all of that, and I'll get back to you all then.  Dad wanted me to mention though that this may be one of our easiest and most luxurious camping trips yet, so anyone who feels like a camping trip but doesn't want to subject themselves to our usual routine of portages and dehydrated foods may want to get in on this one.

That's all for now folks.  I hope you're all doing well, and I will do my best to talk to you all next week as promised!  Until then, have a wonderful week.