A couple days ago I watched the movie Rocky Balboa with two of my best friends Mondo and Cooney.  It was a good movie.  I like boxing and it was just good in general.  One thing in particular I liked was this quote, which relates to some of my year:

“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean, and nasty place an’ no matter how tough you think you are, it’ll always beat you if you let it. It ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! If you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits and not pointin’ fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, her, or anybody! Cowards do that, and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!” - Rocky Balboa

Continued…

Part of which sums up my year pretty well.  ‘It ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep movin forward…’  Life hit me pretty hard this last year.  Three hospitalizations, Two surgerys and a partridge in a pear tree (well, two out of three at least).  Last March I almost cut my finger off, and because of it I won’t ever be able to play guitar again (It’s been 9 months with no improvement, blah blah I’m tired of bitchin about it, and you’re probably tired of hearin me bitch about it).  Kidney Stones… WOW… don’t EVER want to go through those again, drink plenty of water kids.  And finally a mysterious skull fracture, which my leading theory is that I got hit by a car, since I don’t actually know what happened.

Academically, this last year (fall 06/spring 06) has been my best ever at Tech.  I’ve got the best grades yet, managed to pull my GPA above 3.0 (3.045) which makes me dual-enrolled as a grad student now.  No turning back now.  This semester I’ll be starting Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for the High Speed Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (HSAUV) team and will continue to help out with the human powered submarine team.

LASIK from last year is still awesome, eyes are perfect 20/20, the Dr can’t even really tell that I had the surgery, so I highly recommend Dr. Dodd out of Annapolis.

A certain trend I’ve started to notice is I’m taking more risks.  I used to be one of those people that didn’t think I changed at all through college.  But I’ve become a little more aggressive, solidified some personal beliefs, had a million crazy ideas and even attempted a few of them.  Hell, I asked a girl out on the craziest date you could ever imagine (she ended up saying no, but I can’t really blame her… and there’s always next year).  Despite all my personal injuries I’m even going to start snowboarding (I went for the first time on my new board last night and it was amazing.)

Whats funny is that every year so far I’ve been cocky towards its outlook… It’s going to be the ‘Year o’ Martz‘ or some such.  I think hope I’ve outgrown that.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s going to be a good year, but I’ll just be happy to get through it in one piece (sadly not a joke).  It’s time for me get down to the good stuff…

Year in Review: 2006