James reminds me of Freddie Mercury for some reason
Today was another good day for me in the four-walled court of pain. I put James in the hurt box winning 7 games to none. James hasn't played in about 5 years but I'll take a win (or seven) whenever I can get one. I don't even want to mention that the last 3 games I played left handed and still juiced him up. All joking aside, James is pretty good and fun to play with and once the cob webs get dusted off I think we'll have some really good matches. Until then.....I DOMINATE.....
On a side note, the guy in the court next to us yelled at us for being too loud. I tend to yell when I miss shots and celebrate quite obnoxiously when I win points. He was quite scary looking so we toned it down for the rest of the game. You never know what those handball guys are capable of doing to you.
Jen and Budinski clowning around. Bubs looks so serious.
Jen at 32 weeks pregnant. Fit pregnancy 101.
The Zacks were in town this weekend and I dominated this game of Risk.
Steve & James plugging away at the deck.
We're starting to get somewhere with this thing. Having fun along the way.
Recap:
On Tuesday I finally played Tyler one-on-one at racquetball and squashed him like a bug. I've improved quite a bit since I started 5 weeks ago and am really enjoying the process of improving at something that I started off being absolutely terrible at. I think I'm going to try my hand at the challenge court next week to see where I stand against some of the top guys at the Y. It could be a very humbling experience but it never hurts to have a little extra motivation. I am really digging racquetball. It's a great sport and I have a ton of fun and laugh a lot while playing.
The deck project is coming along. We don't know exactly what we're doing so we've had to take some steps backwards in order to move forwards but I think we're in a good place now. We've got the frame up for the one side of the deck and we'll put up the frame for the other side either next week or the following week. I feel like I'm getting a little better with the tools and that's a good place to start.
Eric and Laurie spent the weekend with us so I cooked dinner on Friday night and then we played a game of Risk. For some reason I really like that game. We are all very competitive so there were a couple of semi-heated moments but it was all in fun. It's tough not to take it personally when someone is attacking you!! On Saturday we hung out and then Eric helped Steve and me work on the deck for a few hours and noticed that our frame wasn't square so we had to fix that. It was good to have that extra set of eyes and hands on the job. After working hard we went out to dinner for Jen's birthday at Mickey & Mooch (our favorite restaurant). On Sunday we hung out with the Zacks a bit and then I went over to watch one of the NFL playoff games over at Brooke's house. It was good to catch up with him since it's been a while.
Other than that I didn't get a whole lot more accomplished. It was a good week of keeping in touch with friends and having a good time though so I'll take that tradeoff anytime. Jen and I are getting very excited for the baby girl to arrive in March. The time will come before we know it!! We've still got some things to do around the house before she arrives.
Another thing to note is how well Jen is handling her pregnancy. You hear about all of the women with mood swings and midnight runs to get ice cream for cravings and such and Jen has had none of that. She's just her normal self with a belly that pokes out. Her arms are even pretty ripped. I've noticed a few things that she's done that might play a role in her feeling good and not having a lot of the normal pregnancy issues. 1) She's been forced to exercise do to her job and running groups...even when nausious the first 16 weeks. Her pace has slowed tremendously but she still gets some exercise each day. 2) She eats often and eats healthy foods to keep the insulin levels fairly stable which will help thwart off mood swings. 3) She drinks plenty of water to keep away typical symptoms like constipation, hemorrhoids, etc. 4) Jen eats a small treat of about 200 calories every day in the form of cookies, chocolate, etc. She doesn't deprive herself so she never feels like binging.
Next Week's Goals To Focus On
* Improve programming skills and finance/business knowledge for work
* Stay fit & healthy - shred some fat this week w/ clean nutrition
* Be a great husband and (soon to be) father
* Improve handyman skills
* Nurture and improve relationships with family, old friends, and new friends
* Improve cooking skills
Our racquetball games look very similar to this....but with racquets.
Today I was able to scratch off one of my life long goals:
* Beat Tyler at Racquetball
Ever since I started playing racquetball......5 weeks ago......I knew that if I could beat Tyler then I'd be on my way straight to the top. Well, after weeks of hard work slamming that rubber ball against the four wall court I've finally done it. We played two games of singles today and the first game I beat him 15-6 and the second game he beat me 15-10. Since I beat him by more than he beat me that means that I officially OWN HIM until we play again. Bata-bing, bata-bang, bata-boom!!
Broiled chicken breast tossed in olive oil, garlic slivers, salt & pepper with sauteed mushrooms & onions along with garlic mashed red potatoes. Quite easy to make.
When thinking back on the week there really isn't any one thing that sticks out at me. I'm really enjoying my new schedule because it has a lot of variety and I'm learning some new skills. I didn't get to a couple of my goals for the week because of some substitutions like putting a bed with drawers together. I find that if I don't look at my list of goals it is very easy to slack off. Here are my actions from last week:
Last Week's Goals & Actions:
* Improve programming skills and finance/business knowledge for work
* Read 250 more pages of the ASP.Net 3.5 book
* Read two articles daily on various technical topics
* Stay fit and healthy
* 3 days of strength work last week and getting stronger
* Mountain biking at the White Water Center on Saturday
* Racquetball w/ Tyler & Seth on Tuesday & Thursday
* Ran twice for 6 miles each
* Be a great husband and (soon to be) father
* Cooked dinner a couple of times (improve cooking skills goal)
* Cleaned out and arranged the baby room and our bedroom
* Continued to read the Baby Care Book each night before bed
* Improve handyman skills
* Worked on the deck from 2-5pm Saturday and 9am-5pm Sunday
* Put together a space efficient king bed w/ drawers underneath
* Nurture and improve relationships with family, old friends, and new friends
* Had friends over for poker night on Friday night
* Had dinner with Clarke on Saturday night at his place
* Worked on the deck with Watkins
Recap:
Since my last triathlon I've put on about 10 lbs......some muscle and some fat. I went hog wild on the cookies over the holidays and I'm ready to trim things down again. My approach to doing this will be to continue what I'm doing for activities and eat more clean foods like fruits, veggies, chicken, lean beef, fish, and good sources of fat like avacados. I'm going to start looking for some cleaner recipes that are tasty but don't have quite as much fat. If I find any good ones maybe I'll share them.
The deck project took a step forward, then a step back, and now we seem to be in a good place. Neither Steve nor I really know exactly what we're doing so the process is taking a little longer than it should. That being said, we're still having fun and I'm learning a lot. We put the deck band up we didn't realize that flashing was supposed to go behind it as well so we spent the day Sunday ripping off the deck band and installing the flashing. It wasn't easy to take the 40' deck band down with 3 nails every 6".
I had five other guys over for poker on Friday night. It was a different crew than last time and I didn't know most of them very well so it was a good opportunity to get to know them better. I had a great time. We were playing texas holdem and one thing to note is that on one hand I flopped a royal flush. I was holding JT of spades and the flop came AKQ of spades. I slow played it and ended up taking in a good sized pot.
Saturday I rode my mountain bike at the WWC for the first time. Those trails are awesome. So far that's my favorite place to ride. I ended up riding with three guys that headed out on the trail just before me. My technical skills are still a bit shaky and I went over the bars 5 times. The good thing is that I was fit enough to get back on my bike and catch back up on the uphills after dusting myself off. Crashing in mountain biking isn't as bad as on the road. The pavement hurts much worse at 20+ mph than the dirt does at less than 12 mph. I came away from the ride with a solid workout (156 bpm ave hr, 190 max hr) and only a couple of bruises.
On Monday's run I had a conversation with one of the triathletes and he asked why I couldn't just go back to training 8-10 hrs a week instead of giving it up completely. I guess I just don't see the point. If I'm going to train to race then I'm going to train my best to race my best. Since that doesn't appeal to me anymore I'm only going to do the things that make me happy. I'll still go out and run occassionally.....but only when I feel like it. I'll still ride my bike.......but only when I feel like it and mostly on trails because they're FUN. I doubt that I'll swim much unless it's in a lake and possibly after crashing on water skis......because staring at a dark line for 4-5K isn't all that it's cracked up to be. I've been having a great deal of fun just doing whatever I feel like doing so going back to a routine of SBR for the sake of competing at a lesser level just doesn't make sense to me. I think a lot of people think that I stopped training for triathlons because I wouldn't have as much time to train with the baby coming soon. That is a part of it but it's mostly because I just didn't enjoy it all that much anymore. The training was becoming stressful to fit in with my other obligations and it was also quite boring because I've nearly tapped out what I can learn from the sport. I enjoy learning and attacking new things and once I get to the point where there isn't much left to learn it's not as fun for me and it's time to move on to something else.
Next Week's Goals To Focus On
* Improve programming skills and finance/business knowledge for work
* Stay fit & healthy - shred some fat this week w/ clean nutrition
* Be a great husband and (soon to be) father
* Improve handyman skills
* Nurture and improve relationships with family, old friends, and new friends
* Improve cooking skills
I'm putting the "learn spanish" goal on hold this week because we've got the Zack's staying with us this weekend and I'd rather focus on finishing the Baby Care Book to ensure that I can get to the other book that Jen is reading before the baby actually arrives. We haven't seen Eric & Laurie in a while so it will be fun to catch up with them this weekend.
Watty's ingenious idea for how to get the 16' boards back from Lowe's.
I started reading the ASP.Net 3.5 book last week.
Last week was a pretty productive week for me. I've got a list of goals that I'm working towards and at the end of each week I plan on laying out which actions I took to work towards those goals. The format will be:
* Goal
* Action
* Action, etc.
Last Week's Goals & Actions:
* Improve programming skills and finance/business knowledge for work
* Read 300 pages of the ASP.Net 3.5 book
* Read two articles daily on various technical topics
* Goal setting session with manager on Wednesday
* Set up meeting to sit with clients to learn more about their business
* 60 continuous pushups and 20 continuous pullups :: stay fit and healthy
* 2 days of weights this week including 60 broken pushups and 15 broken pullups each session
* Mountain biking w/ Harris on Saturday
* Racquetball w/ Tyler & Seth on Thursday
* Ran one day this week on the way to the gym
* Be a great husband and (soon to be) father
* Did laundry 3 times last week
* Cleaned out and arranged the baby room and our bedroom
* Cooked dinner 3 times and breakfast twice (improve cooking skills goal)
* Movie night with Jen on Friday night
* Continued to read the Baby Care Book each night before bed
* Improve handyman skills
* Worked on the deck with Watkins on Saturday afternoon and got the ledger board up
* Nurture and improve relationships with family, old friends, and new friends
* Had Clarke over for dinner on Saturday night
* Had Steve & Farrell over for dinner on Sunday night
* Had beers w/ Watkins while working on the deck Saturday
* Worked with my parents to get their web cam up and running so they can see the baby when she arrives
* Spent time with Harris while mountain biking
Recap:
This past week I plowed through the baby room and got a lot of work done in there. It's almost complete! In doing so I had to clean out a lot of our old junk that we don't use anymore (or never used). This is difficult for Jen to watch so I did it while she was away and she was okay with that.
On the work front I had a goal setting meeting with my manager at my request and we nailed down some pretty good areas for me to focus on for 2010. I haven't done the best job of updating my skills at work lately because I was so focused on triathlon over the past couple of years. My skills aren't way behind but they could use some minor updating. It shouldn't take long. My plan is to read a book on ASP.Net 3.5, C# 3.0, SQL Server 2008, TSQL programming, MSRS, and a book on finance and the stock market to learn more on the business side of things. On top of that I plan to read two technical articles daily and spend a little time each week messing around with new technologies on a pet project.
I have to admit that I've been itching to get out and run but I don't necessarily miss the full on triathlon training schedule. I got in a run earlier this week and it felt great. I might try running a few more times next week but don't want to take it too seriously. I think I miss the interaction with my training partners more than anything. Also, it's tough to get as good of a workout as a solid run and strength session combo.
Next Week's Goals To Focus On
* Improve programming skills and finance/business knowledge for work
* 60 continuous pushups and 20 continuous pullups :: stay fit and healthy
* Be a great husband and (soon to be) father
* Improve handyman skills
* Nurture and improve relationships with family, old friends, and new friends
* Learn to speak fluent Spanish
* Improve cooking skills
Seasons greetings from the frozen tundra.
Jen and me with our soon to be baby girl in the works.
My parents, Mike and Julie, along with the newest addition.....Baby Ben!
My sister Melissa with her husband Tony and their baby Ben.
My sister Sarah with her husband Kevin, daughters Summer & Savannah, and 13+ yr old dog Steeler.
Our nephew Vincent at Xmas. The only good photo with Jen's family before our camera battery died.
We like to learn while traveling. Here were a couple audio books we listened to while driving.
Jen and I just got back from spending 12 days in the midwest with our families. Our usual travels during the holiday season have us driving from Charlotte, NC to Chicago, IL........spending a couple days there with her family and then driving from Chicago to just outside of Madison, WI to visit my family for 4-5 days.........then driving back to Chicago to spend another couple of days with her family before making the drive back to Charlotte. This year was no different. Luckily the driving conditions complied with our plans and most of the driving was relatively stress free.
This was the first Christmas vacation in quite a while that I didn't have to go out and train. I could just relax and enjoy the time with our families. We still got out for a few walks and I did 3-4 strength sessions though. Here are some notables from our vacation:
* Spending lots of time with our families and meeting our newest nephew Ben.
* Getting both of our parents' computers running.
* Setting my parents up with a web cam so they can feel like they are closer to us once the baby comes.
* Going to Toys-R-Us to let the kids pick out their own gifts from us.
* Cooking a few meals and helping out.
* Playing Tiger Woods golf and Rock Band on the Wii.
* Reading half of my Baby Care Book in one sitting.
* Giving a goal setting workshop to my family.
* Going out to dinner with Jen's family.
* Bowling with Jen's brother.
* Breakfast with Jen's friend Beth and her boyfriend Mike.
* Listening to audio books on the drive home.
All in all there was a lot of quality time spent with our families and a lot of good laughs. I also hope that the goal setting workshop will give some of my family members the spark that they need to start accomplishing some of their goals.