2015

2015 has come and gone. And what can I say about it? One word...Interesting.  It started out like just like any other year...quiet.  Then the summer rolled around, and it is when things got interesting.  

Around in May, I made the decision to get braces on my lower teeth.  I have had braces two other times in my life but I wanted to fixed my 4 front teeth due to an accident back in 2000.  For the most part, I fixed my teeth but they were misaligned and not looking good.  So, I got my lower braces on and it looks like that I will have them for 1 year.  As I type this, my teeth look much better and almost to where they were when I was a teenager.  

Early July rolls around and my life gets even more interesting.  I went back to school but not for a degree since I have plenty of those.  I wanted to pick up my Spanish again since it is the 2nd most common language spoken in this state...not shocking, not at all.  The most shocking common language spoken is Russian.  Anyhow, I did my Spanish class through one of my alma maters but through their Ecampus since it is 60 miles away.  I did relatively well in the 4-week class that is normally taught in a 11 week period.  While, I was doing this class, I got very unexpected news from one of my friends, that our two characters had the potential to become official.  When I got this news, I was just baffled and thought I was in a dream even though I was indeed awake.  I just did not know what to say since I never suspected that a project of mine would become a reality after working on it for 4 years.  Now, there was a catch...I had to change the character's name.  This was somewhat difficult for me but after some thought, a new name was developed and still suited the character.  So, his name became Ion Storm from being Storm Front for the past 4 years. Now, is our job done after both him and Nova Storm became official? No...it has not but I am glad that all of the G1 seekers are all named and I mean the ones that show up for more than a brief second.  To this day, I feel that what we have done was just a gift to the fandom and we left a footprint if we ever chose to leave the fandom.  I truly hope that sometime in the future, the fandom would be able to fully enjoy them as characters since they were a ton of fun. 

My other educational journey that I have been working with is a Professional certificate on free-choice/informal education.  Even though I have a Master's degree in Education and was hoping that I would be able to teach in a classroom setting but after I started my internship at OMSI and continued to volunteer there, I have truly loved it.  So, I have been working on several graduate classes just on free-choice learning through OSU.  Sometime this year, I should have completed it.

Now what will 2016 bring? I have absolutely no idea but I look forward to it.