Update October 2017

I am going to be an uncle very soon. It's weird to think about. I assume that my parents always thought I'd be the first parent among their children. But dating continues to be a fruitless endeavor for me. I recently went on a couple dates with a girl that initially hit all the right spots for me. She was attractive, intelligent, outgoing, educated (she was in a PhD program), pursuing a meaningful career, and wasn't shy about sharing opinions. But she didn't seem, well, very fun. She hardly smiled, joked, or got excited about anything during our conversations. She also had an air of "I'm on this date because the church told me to date" attitude. In other words, it felt like she had a responsibility to be on the date rather than really having an interest in getting to know me. Maybe I'm being harsh, but most (really all) of my optimism in the realm of dating has been beaten out of me.

On to other topics, work. Work is going well for me right now. I enjoy the job and I feel like I am not only needed there but wanted as well. Things have been particularly stressful lately but nothing I can't handle. I am still technically still a temp scientist but I have been assured that things are moving well so that in January I will be hired full-time. I really hope that is true. More than anything at this point in my life I just want stability (a girlfriend would be nice too, but see above). I don't want to go back to the darkness that was the year and a half of unemployment and looking for a job that was part of 2015, all of 2016, and a chunk of 2017. *shivers*

In other things, I'm still reading and loving it. 2016 was a record year for me in terms of reading. I broke several personal records notably:

Most Books Read in a Year (43, previously the record was 32)
Most Pages Read in a Year (16,606, previously the record was 15313)

I wish I could say the same trend was continuing for 2017. Alas, that is not the case. It's been a slow year for reading. With the new job and average 50 hour work weeks I simply have not had the time to read I once did. However, I did spend most of 2016 (almost all of it actually) without a job. So all-in-all things are better despite not reading as much. I also haven't written in this blog much. I am considering, not very seriously, in taking this blog thing of reviewing things I like and why I like them and joining the ranks of Youtube. I know of some Booktubers (people who review books) and I have noticed that most of them lack any serious editing or video making skills. Most are just of people standing in front of their book cases talking. It get's the info across but misses on the entertainment portion that makes a lot of successful Youtube things. Now I have no skills, none, at doing videos but I am considering learning it along with python math coding (I know, two very different things) in my spare time. I think it could be fun. I believe that doing something akin to what CGP Grey does (at least in style) would be a way to go.

Anyways enough rambling. I'm going to bed now and I will be writing my Favorites of 2016 list along with short reviews of the books themselves. Then I'm going to get on a more regular schedule with this thing-a-ma-bob (is that how one spells that?)