Okay, now I'll take some time to explain what's been going on. If you look at the older posts on this page, you'll see some evidence of me getting married, dealing with moving, buying a house, etc. One of the posts was about my shoulder surgery, which went fine and the recovery went just as well. That was back in 2010 though, and since then I've gotten mostly back to normal with it. There is the occasional ache that comes and goes, but it's usually not too much for me to handle.

Also in the time since I last blogged, I've received an official medical diagnosis of having Ankylosing Spondylitis. At first, I wasn't too convinced about it, but since then I have started to understand why. My sacroilliac joints are nearly completely fused, my spine from the thoracic/lumbar region down to the sacrum is mostly fused and I've noticed some issues with my neck as of late. I occasionally have "flares", which are just acute pain situations. Sometimes they last a day or so and are mostly manageable, while other times they almost completely cripple me with pain.

I've also discovered that I have some early signs of glaucoma. Whee.

There are plenty of other issues going on that I could fill an entire book describing. I'll stop here though.

Emily and I have been married now for just a little over 6 years. We've had 2 different apartments, lived with her mom for a bit, and bought our own house. Our house has had some issues of its own, but we have been able to manage...so far...

Last September we had the overwhelming joy of meeting our firstborn son, Tim Jr. He's now 13 months old, has several teeth, is walking all over the place, and is just starting to be able to say some words other than "Dada". He's such a smart little guy and is most usually a bundle of happiness.

Emily does such an awesome job with everything. No, she didn't hold a gun to my head as I wrote that; I really mean it. She's been working so hard to keep the house in order, to make sure that (reasonable) groceries are bought, she takes care of the baby nearly 100% of the time, and somehow she manages to find time to take part in La Leche League, spend time with the family, and various other activities that she takes part in. I don't know how she does it, but it's simply amazing to watch.

My job has evolved so much since I last grumbled about it. I think last time I was blogging, I was a Software Engineer II. Since then, I've gone up to Software Engineer III (very briefly), then on to Team Lead, then into a basic single-team manager role, and now I'm manager of 2 teams that are spread out between Houston, Dallas, and Austin. When I started off here in Houston, I worked for The Planet. The Planet merged with SoftLayer and the latter was the surviving entity. Since then, IBM has acquired SoftLayer and merged us into their Bluemix brand. This is the most recent happening, but I'm sure it will get a bit more interesting as the next few months roll on and the re-branding really completes.

Last March was probably one of the roughest points in my life, as it was for the rest of the family. You may recall that my Dad and I were pretty close and that I got a lot of my skill and traits from him. Unfortunately, on March 12th of 2015, God decided that Dad had completed his service in this world and called him home by way of a heart attack. It was quite sudden and none of us had really expected it, but we're slowly coming to grips with it. Some of us have been able to at least put up a facade that says we're okay, while others have struggled with it daily. I'm somewhere in the middle, and it does get me choked up once in a while when I think about it today. It will never be the same without him, but I do know - aside from the fact that he was my father - that I wouldn't be the same person today if I hadn't had the chance to get to know him as I did.

Okay, that's all my brain has for now. I'll possibly post more another day. Who knows, I might actually get a project around the house done and have pictures to share.