As a few people know, I have what is known as Type VIII Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Due to this unfortunate infliction I have a severe case of Periodontitis which is causing early tooth loss for me. Between this month and July I'll be doing (hopefully) several visits to the Dentist to get the situation dealt with. Now depending on what the Dentist finds, one of several things will happen:

- The affected teeth removed and get a Dental Bridge put in to replace them.
- All my teeth will be removed resulting in a month long recovery process then getting dentures fitted.
- The affected teeth will be crowned and others will get fillings

I'm seriously opting for option 2 if it can be done safely as this would eliminate the problem entirely. I do hope to have this all sorted before the first week of September but it all depends on what needs to be done and my work schedule. Either way I look forward to getting this situation squashed after dealing with it for the last 3 years (that's when it started to get much worse than it used to be back when I was married).

My travel arrangements have been made for the first week of September were I will be flying down to spend time with my lovely =Demoneangelo as well as looking for suitable places to live when I move down sometime in late 2009. We're both excited and have mostly planned what we're going to do but I'm not sure what else is on the list as of yet. I have not discussed the situation of me relocating to my current employer as of yet but I have planned on doing that when I get back in September as I'll have more leverage in the negotiations when I get back as to why I am moving.

Things at work for the most part have calmed down at least and things are gradually moving to a less stressful situation. In-fact I was given news that caught me rather off guard in that they have increased my salary by another 10,000 dollars due to my outstanding work ethic (I have only missed one day of work on the count of being very ill the entire 1.5 years I've been with them) and my ability to fix any problem that has arisen. Now this is rather a shock given I know make a salary 50% higher than what is the average for this town.

Unfortunately I feel really bad they put me in such high praise and faith because I will be regretfully telling them that I am moving away from Virginia (slated for some time next year, no exact date yet) when I get back from seeing =Demoneangelo. Now hopefully I'll be able to negotiate it so that I can stay on in the telecommute sense (I will however be hiring someone who will work under me to be there locally). Naturally this will entail that I do fly out several months out of the year for local work (can't be helped) but I have no issues with that, as long as I can stay with the company however. So I just hope all goes well with that because I'd like to keep this job it's solid and has a good salary.

I've taken a review of how I do things outside the office in terms of how I spend my personal time and have decided to cut back on a few things. The first thing I have decided is that I am no longer doing any form of Web or Software development outside of the office, whether it's for contributing work (e.g. NetBSD, Mozilla Foundation, etc) or personal items (web site, personal projects). With that said I shifted my domain (prometheus-designs.net) purely over to a dedicated e-mail hosting service (not Google Apps) and have decided to no longer attempt web hosting or web development of it due to lack of time or motivation given I spend 12 to 14 hours a day at the office writing software.

I have also taken a step away from doing the contributions I have to many open source projects because I can't juggle the tasks along with work anymore and I want to spend less and less time at the computer when I get home (with the exception of keeping in contact with =Demoneangelo). The idea behind this is once I get completely settled in down where she is I don't want to do anything computer related anymore in hopes that I can permanently leave the IT industry by my mid-30s or at least move into more Administrative duties. I need to do this to both reduce my stress and frustration levels as well as getting back into creative hobbies such as Photography, Digital Art and Music Composition which have been lacking as of late (as so proven by my sparse dA gallery).