NikkelNet

Fellow human,

You might be asking yourself: “Where on earth has Jon Nikkel been?”.  You also might be eating a bowl of Kix right now, devoting more neurons to pondering the milk dripping from your chin than you are to me.  Either way, it is my duty to update the world on my life situation, and breath new life into my blog, which has been bereft of life this year.

“Travel” best sums up late 2009 and 2010 for me.  I’ve been extremely blessed to have seen a lot of neat places in my short life, and met a lot of incredible people along the way.  I have been on the road more than I have in any other year (I think), for both work and pleasure.  Nothing too exotic (yet…), but varied, and fun.  Prose is never fun, so we’ll sum up the destinations in a nice readable list:

• Eagar, Arizona - Weekend in October, 2009
• Sedona, Arizona - Weekend in November, 2009
• Mt. Wrightson Summit - Weekend in Late November, 2009
• Yuma, AZ for Work - December, 2009 - March 2010 (off and on…3 months of madness)
• Hollister, CA for Work - April, 2010
• Nova Scotia, Canada for Work - May, 2010
• Hollister, CA for Work - June, 2010
• Socorro, NM for Work - July, 2010
• Michigan and Indiana for Weddings and Fun - August, 2010
• San Juan Islands, WA and Vancouver, Canada for Sailing - August, 2010
• Coming Soon - Israel, to meet with our heroic counterparts at IMI

A few noteworthy events for 2010:

I seem to be headed down the path of becoming a “nav guy” at work, and now have a “rep” as a “GPS guy”.  Amazing technology (as everyone knows).  Hopefully will get to branch out into other some other genres of navigation in the future.

Old news at this point for most, but I met lovely Elizabeth, and her companion Lucy the Dawg, in October of last year.  Liz has been a huge blessing in my life.  We have tons of fun together (so do Lucy and Kitty), and I have no fear in saying that I love her about as much as the ocean is vast.  There are big things in store for the two of us me thinks ;).

I had the privilege of working with a number of Israeli Military Industries engineers this year on a 120mm mortar project for the US Army (if you want details, use your power of Googling).  They are some of the most hard working and fast thinking people I have ever met.  They are fearless and wily in both work and life, and have more than earned my deepest respect.

I have been giving serious attention to Roman Catholicism.  Liz opened the door for me and made it accessible.  I’ve since learned quite a bit about the church, and very much like what I’ve seen and read.  I still have much to learn.  I’ll not get into the details here, but to sum it up, what I’ve seen in recent months attending some Masses and reading up has pretty much completely trashed what I was “taught” about the Catholic Church growing up while wandering through various Protestant churches, and raised some very intriguing, fundamental questions about the basis of most Protestant Christian church theologies (or the lack thereof in some cases).  Probably more to come in the future on this one.  Conversion is not a sure thing for me yet, but it’s fair to say that at minimum I have a new-found respect for the Catholic Church, it’s people, and it’s teachings.  If you let the occasional news blurb about a bad priest mar your thinking, you are but cheating yourself.

I am studying for the GRE.  I have put off actually taking the test many times now, because I have not felt ready.  I am not going to take it until I can ace the damn thing.  After all, whats the rush?  I still hate thinking back to what I could have achieved on the SAT/ACT if I had studied for them.

2010 is only half-way over….