Once again, I’m lax on updating the blog. Given the busy start of the school year and life outside, I haven’t had a lot of opportunity sit down and play with the blog. Nor has there been all that much excitement that I felt was spectacularly interesting. But seeing as how I’m here now, how about some stuff?

1) When leaping into the air, always make certain you land on your feet and not, say, your shoulder. Because it hurts. A lot.

You’d think one would know this but sometimes you gotta experiment. About three or so weeks ago, while playing frisbee, I dove for the disk and ended up landing very awkwardly on my right shoulder. The result was a whole lotta pain and numbness down my arm. I have long had rotator cuff problems so I figured I messed it up pretty bad. A visit to the hospital the next day confirmed that ‘Yup, you done messed that up’.

This upset me greatly, aside from the pain. I had been just getting into weight lifting (something I *hate*) because I thought ‘If I build up the muscles, I won’t have shoulder pain and I’ll do better running!’ Hah, yeah, well about that … In any case, a cortisone shot and three weeks of physical therapy later, I was back and able to play again this past Sunday. Not 100% – it hurts more to catch the frisbee than to throw it, oddly enough, but it helps. I’m lifting again and able to run. So things are looking up.

2) I know cool people. I get to do cool things.

Since March 2013, I’ve been a member of a community known as Shack Tactical. ShackTac is best known for games though we do a lot of other stuff (these are the guys that I went to play paintball with back in July). It’s hard to describe us but basically it comes down to our motto – ‘Serious Fun’. We play hard, we play serious, but most importantly, we play for fun. I’ve had a blast in this group and I consider myself pretty lucky that my brother, Jon, is also part of it (joining in August ’13).

ShackTac is popular and to get in, you have to apply (18+ years old, mature, community minded). In 2013, there were over 2400 applicants. Of those, less than 50 got in and of those, less than 25 remain. Hard to get in, hard to stay in, worth every bit of effort. (I think our total membership is somewhere around 400).

Recently, we had a ‘spy’ in our group – a writer from Polygon magazine who did this piece on us – Why We Fight: Inside Shack Tactical, The Elite Military Simulation Group. I was interviewed for the piece (though none of my quotes made the final copy) but it was a lot of fun to see the final story. Figured I’d share that out to all of you.

(And for the genuinely interested – I do vids for ShackTac under my nick, Harrier. My view of the mission around which the article is based is in this vid – Cue Dramatic Exit(s).)

3) Hawaii. We’re going.

Yeah – it’s vacation time. In 13 days, we’ll be flying back in time (time zones that is) to visit Hawaii for a couple of weeks. Never been there but my parents and twin brother have.  Most of our trip will be on Oahu but we will also be spending some time on Molokai. Very much looking forward to some days in the sun and just general relaxation.

And yes, I’m certain there will be uber-loads of pictures when I get back.