No, it's been longer.
The unimaginative excuse is that I've been quite busy. Busy enough to procrastinate writing something new, at least. Clearly I was doing something during these past ten weeks.
Maybe I should break it down into recent months.
May: Joggling, back to normal running, packing, applying, Cabot Trail-ing
After my five minutes of fame joggling 5k at the Bluenose, I decided it'd be nice to return to normal distance running. That meant doing tempo workouts and strides, all the usual kind of stuff. Workouts went well, though no races to test the waters until June, or so I though.
Out of nowhere I get a message that the Western Team ("Dennis Fairall's Retirement Party") is looking for another man to race the Cabot Trail Relay. The nerve in my leg was just subdued enough to run, so I did. Too much to describe; but long story short, we came in second to Maine-iacs, who broke the course record by five minutes. This is the third time I've come in second on the Cabot relay, so getting quite used to it!
Started collecting many, many boxes for my eventual move to Montreal.
Ongoing application for jobs I was completely unqualified for. Turns out PhD isn't a magic bullet, save for being called doctor, which no one does (thankfully).
June: racing, conferencing, networking, more packing, and driving
Ran the Penguin 5k in 15:55, coming in second. Not a fast day, but got my motivation up from where it had been.
The very next day, the 99th annual Chemistry Conference began in Halifax, which I attended, gave a couple of talks, and networked. Ah networking, linking people to other people. What a tangled web we weave.
Packed all my belongings and drove from Halifax to Montreal. So long and thanks for all the fish! (Oh, but I will be back...)
July: moving, lifting, moving, writing, Tely 10-ing, vacationing, data-ing
Over course of several weeks my wife and I unpacked many belongings, and had a mini garage sale to remove the excess. All kinds of other silliness took place, including hosting friends out of town mere days after moving in. Also lugging a refrigerator, stove, washer and dryer up two flights of stairs...
Decided I want to become a data scientist, more officially than whatever it is I do right now. So I applied to the Data Incubator, a NYC-based organization hoping to train more people in the field. Despite not knowing Heroku, nor many of the programming languages/platforms out there I'm supposed to know, I made it to the finals. Probably botched the interview, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Lucky to have gotten that far and got me curious about machine learning.
Flew to St John's and raced Tely 10. Art Meany and Biped Sports both predicted I would come in 4th, so naturally I had to come second. Third time coming runner-up, which might be some kind of record(?) Oh but there was good competition (Fewer taking his 9th title), a lovely after-party, and a $500 cheque, so happy to participate!
Finally, I am trying to work remotely on research project stuff. It's harder than I expected. Mostly requires means of not distracting myself, which I am an expert in of late, especially when there are actual things needing attention (usually I need to invent them). But my paper is nearly published (literally any day), so that's exciting.
August: things, more things...
Looking for new opportunities in August. Including research positions, more data science, and lab stuff.
I'll be racing Natal Day on Aug 1st, and just signed up for the Truro 21.1 km trail race on Aug 28th. Fun plan: after half marathon race, I'm taking a 20-hour train ride back to Montreal. Why not.
