An April update

I've been scarce around here but busy, which is the reason for the scarce part.  So what have I been up to?  Working and working out like a fiend, basically.

The job has kept me plenty busy, whether it's been with the regular ins and outs of it or the predictably regular uncertainty of how the whole arrangement will continue.  One answer appears to be close to agreement, which should resolve some issues in the situation and could provide some much-needed freedom and exciting opportunities.  Granted, it also comes with a significant budget cut and the need for some of that to be made up somewhere.  I tend to think it'll be a good thing, assuming it gets approved.  Clearly there are other things that will need to be worked out with another party, but I'm choosing to see this as a step in the right direction.  This has been going on in some form or another for, yikes, around six years, so it will be a relief to put it to rest.  (Or so I hope.)

After ending last year and starting this year feeling banged up, I'm happy to report that I'm feeling much better these days.  The couple of health scares turned out to be nothing (or the lingering effects from that 2010 car accident.) I've been diligent about working out for an hour at least five times a week, whether with a student trainer or on my own.  While I'm resisting doing a hard count of the calories I consume, I have a pretty good idea of how much I should be and am eating.  I can tell that all of this is making a difference.  Without having set foot on a scale, I'd wager I've lost 15-20 pounds so far this year.

I've also taken to trying to go to bed earlier, which is part of the reason why this blog has seen my contributions reduced to almost zero.  I am getting more sleep than I used to, in part because I'm tired by that point in the day and because it's been a conscious choice.

Extra time has seemed like a rare commodity, but I know I'm susceptible to wanting to overdo it to fit in everything.  I think I've done fairly well in balancing how much I can handle with my desire to do more than I'm sometimes able.  (There are always more movies to see than time to see them, for instance.)  Still, I've seen The Black Keys in concert and attended ten NCAA Tournament Division I men's basketball games, including the one in Dayton that President Obama and the British Prime Minister were at.  (I sat just two sections over from them.  That was pretty exciting.)  I'm seeing Bruce Springsteen next week and Radiohead in June.  I'll be making my annual trip to a festival later this month. 

So I certainly can't say that things are boring, even if there are times I'd like more time to catch my breath.  I'd like to be writing here more, and perhaps it'll pick up again on a more regular basis.

Anyway, I thought I'd pipe up for the handful (?) of people who might still peer in here from time to time.

In a mood

Near the end of the work day and a metaphorical fire appears.

About a half hour later another one ignites.

Then I think I've lost my iPhone.  (At least this turned out all right and I found it.)

The fires will have to continue to be dealt with tomorrow.  In other words, I'm in no mood for much of anything tonight.

Unplanned hiatus

There I go letting the daily blogging streak end last month.  Look what that led to: not blogging most of this week.  I couldn't even drag my sorry behind to the blog on 11/11/11.

So what's the deal?  Mainly it's just been trying to keep my head above water.  Work occupied a good share of my time this week.  Then I had to go into scramble mode to clean up my apartment as my brother and his almost one-year-old flew up here a day earlier than expected.  (My brother is in town to attend a wedding.)  I was particularly concerned about how much of a hazard my place is for a baby, especially one crawling around.  Then they got here.  Simply put, there have not been enough hours in the day.

The upsides in all this are that my apartment is straightened up (somewhat), I found my missing checkbook, and I got to see my nephew again (even if I did lose some hours of sleep during his stay).  But what a crazy week this has been.  Or is that the theme for the year?

Off and on the clock

Although I'm on vacation, I needed to pop into the office to take care of a couple things. No problem, I'll be quick and then head over to work out.

Wrong.

I should know better, but I ended up working for a couple hours in the afternoon. If I'd gone unnoticed, maybe I could have avoided it, but I found out about this and that and suddenly I'm dealing with other items. To be clear, this was by my choice, not at anyone's insistence.

So let that be a lesson that I didn't really need to be reminded of. When I'm on vacation, be on vacation as much as is possible. Fact of the matter is, work issues may come up that I need to deal with in some manner. This time, though, I brought it on myself.

Morsels

This and that...

The countdown to a firm answer on whether my sometimes loud neighbors are moving draws ever near. If they are, chances are it will be this weekend. I have a sense that they might be on the way out, but maybe my wishes are coloring what I'm observing. A boy can dream.

I'm working extra to cover in advance what I might otherwise need to do when I take some time off in August. This isn't really how it's supposed to work, is it?

Although it will be a faster turnaround than I'd prefer, I'm meeting my dad in Cincinnati to go to baseball games on Wednesday and Thursday. Drive there, go to the game, sleep, breakfast, go to the game, drive home. I can tell I'm desperately in need of a break. While this really isn't one, at least it gets me out of the head space of work for a little bit.

I have more or less worked out my plans for a couple weeks off, though. I plan to go to my parents' home for a few days, come home for a few, go to Washington, D.C. to see some Reds games on the road, and then drive up to New York City, where I want to see Anything Goes and possibly take in a game at Yankee Stadium. That should be a full docket, right?

Telecommute

I've not taken time off from work this summer, and today wasn't any exception even though I'm still at my parents' home. Let us say a few words in praise of the good ol' telecommute.

I needed to write and have found that I have better luck doing that outside of the office. So, I let it be known I'd log my time away from my place of business today. This allowed me to extend my visit and still accomplish what had to be done. I doubt this would fly during the school year, but for the summer it was perfectly acceptable.

Yes, there were interruptions and distractions, and I took longer than necessary to tap out my script. Nevertheless, it was a productive day and one that opens up tomorrow for getting other things done. If I'd been in the office, chances are I'd have not begun any of this, fretted about it, and set myself up to be stressed out on Tuesday while I attacked it.

The big benefit was being able to spend more time with my parents. (Hey it's been almost seven months.) I helped out with some technological questions that they needed answered, something I have more patience for, and probably less knowledge, than my nearby brothers possess.

This kind of freedom isn't something that's a regular thing for me. If anything, the work sometimes will follow me where I go even when I would rather it did not. Still, there's something to be said for a day like this away from the fluorescent lights, lack of windows, and dynamics of the workplace. At least for today, it didn't even feel like work.

Petty griping

For fifteen years, including this year, I will have worked on the 4th of July. In that stretch there have been one or two exceptions, although I still had to punch the clock when it falls amid a holiday weekend, just not on the exact day. The holiday loses some of its luster when you don't have it off.

Yes, it's a petty gripe, but it really blows a long weekend like this one knowing that you need to be working when most people are kicking back. Plus, I need to appear kind of happy about it. Trust me, I'm not.

So I've been lazing about today and yesterday and observing with some degree of exasperation as the hours have evaporated. For instance, I conked out for about three hours this afternoon. While I was refreshed after the nap, I felt like I'd wasted the day. It's already 7:00 p.m.! Not that had anything planned. Time just felt like it was slipping away from me.

I suppose I'm just getting the moaning out of my system tonight. Now where's that vacation time?

Shh

It's been something of a strange week. Between being one of the few people in the office and spending time on my balcony at home, this has been an unusually quiet stretch. That's not a complaint. At a point in time when it seems like most people are more comfortable filling the background with persistent noise than dare inhabit a hushed space, this is a rare thing.

I'll confess to being fried here at the end of the academic year and feeling perpetually distracted. I think that's part of the reason why I've turned to reading and sitting on the balcony. (Or, per tonight's activity, I sat outside in the cool evening and began a knitting project.) The wind blowing through the trees and the birds singing provide a subdued, calming soundtrack. Yes, that relative silence can be interrupted by the pulsing of someone's subwoofer, but those low frequency beats can be ignored a little more with some of nature's white noise.

Outer silence makes it easier to find inner silence. For as pushed and pulled in every direction that I've felt for some time, this break in the sonic landscape seems to be letting me regain some peace. It's a nice transition to the upcoming weekend, which will find me out of town going to a weekend series of baseball games. I don't currently have any other plans. Maybe I'll find something else to do, maybe I'll pick something to read and find a quiet spot to become immersed in it. I could surely stand a little more of that tranquility.

The Protestant work ethic

One of my brothers sent an interesting e-mail to the family earlier this week. Essentially it was to indicate agreement that in the rare instances when he purchases a lottery ticket--super-huge jackpots only--that we are already in a partnership with him for a certain percentage of the winnings. The idea behind it is that if he won and wanted to give each of us some money, the gift tax would limit how much he could give without half of that going to the government.

As I read more through it, at heart is him wanting to provide enough money that we could all live off the interest alone and not need to work if we chose to. (My parents are retired, although still working in some capacity.)

I agreed --it's really a can't lose proposition--but it got me thinking. If I had enough financial security that I did not need to work, would I stop working? I have no doubt that this particular brother would. He's talked about it before, and I don't necessarily think it's related to being unhappy in his current job.

While it sounds tempting to ditch the job and spend every hour of the day as I see fit, I'm not so sure I'd want to do that. Maybe that indicates I like what I do and, for all of the nonsense that's cropped up this year and in the past, am basically happy in the job. Maybe it means I don't have anything else or fear that I don't.

As great as an extended break sounds right now, I don't know that I'd want a permanent one. I'd be glad to have money not be a concern--who wouldn't?--but the work ethic ingrained in me feels like I'd still need to be doing something beside indulging my every whim. What a pleasant problem that would be to have, right?

About time

I heard something from a student today that I couldn't believe. She asked my co-worker what the time is because she can't read clocks that aren't digital.

Surely she was joking, right? It certainly didn't appear so, and follow-up questions about this astounding fact indicated that she was serious.

Eighteen or nineteen years-old and you can't read a clock? Words fail me.

One day at a time

Since I work at a university, I tend to experience the weeks and months according to the academic calendar. To you right now may not seem like a significant time. To me we're headed into finals week and then spring break.

It's been an extremely busy term for me and a tiring one, although more physically than emotionally/mentally, which is a nice change from the previous quarter. I've had a lot to stay on top of in addition to my renewed commitment to exercise. Often the amount of things on my docket has appeared very imposing, yet here I am almost at the conclusion of the term with some accomplishments to be satisfied with.

I made a conscious choice at the start of the year to take things a day at a time rather than letting the totality of what was ahead of me become overwhelming. I credit that change in mindset with much of the success. Sure, I've been stressed about things that are undone and not feeling like I have enough time to complete them. One more of them is staring me in the face before I take a much-needed break. Taking them piece by piece and day by day lets me give myself permission to enjoy the time when I'm not working on them. That's not always easy for me.

This approach has been helpful in my attitude toward exercise and diet. Taking it a day at a time means concerning myself with only one workout than a week's worth or a month's worth and the meal at hand than most of a week eating frozen meals. I've finished ten weeks in better shape and with improved eating habits. There's still plenty of work to be done, but it doesn't seem as daunting now.

Think fast

As you may know, I make some money on the side keeping official statistics for sporting events. Mostly it's for games that take place where I work. I had a couple state high school tournament games to do tonight. No big deal, really.

In the third quarter of the first game the computer's low battery warning came on. Huh. That's weird. It's plugged into an outlet. My colleague, who had set up the computer, checked, and everything was where it was supposed to be. The warning remained.

Uh oh.

We have no back-up. If the computer goes down, we're cooked. So, as we're calling and inputting the action on the court, we're also trying to figure out how to fix this problem that needs to be solved right now. Oh, by the way, the readout says that there's about five minutes of life left in the battery. This won't get us through the first game, let alone a second one.

The best I came up with was to see if anyone else happened to have a similar computer. By an enormous stroke of luck, one person did. His laptop was already fully charged, so we borrowed his power supply. That did the trick. PHEW!!!

Out of the hundreds of games I've worked, I don't know if there's ever been such pressure-filled moments as those while I was trying to type in the codes that describe what's happening in the game and figure out how to keep the blasted machine operational. We dodged an enormous disaster. It was gratifying to know that we were able to improvise and get through it, but that's also the kind of excitement I don't need.

Finished

Ignore what the time stamp says. It is nearly 1:30 a.m. on the 8th, and I am writing this from the office. For real.

Assuming I haven't forgotten something, everything that I need to have done for Tuesday has been completed. Hallelujah. I'm blaming these insane hours on getting a snow day last week.

Anyway, I don't recommend the sixteen hour day at the office, but it did go quickly. Now it's time to go home. I have to back soon enough. But first, a haircut!

Working for the weekend

The relativity of time has been very clear to me this weekend. I was at the office for about seven hours on Saturday and nine hours today. THE TIME FLEW.

Unfortunately, this was a case of it going much faster than I really wanted it to. Did I get a respectable amount of work done? Yes. Did I get as much done as I had hoped? Absolutely not. If it weren't for the Super Bowl, I might still be at the office. (Oh yeah, I picked the winning team, and my 27-17 guess was in the vicinity of the 31-25 final score in favor of the Packers.)

I have Monday and Tuesday to finish up. That should still be sufficient time, but the nice thing about this weekend is that I was almost always the only person in my side of the building, if not the entirely building. Distractions were at a minimum. Perhaps that's why I didn't really notice how all those hours slipped by. (In a darkened building without any windows visible from my space, it really was like time didn't exist.) It will be harder to remain as focused the next two days.

I'm prepared to log twelve to fourteen hours at work on Monday, so what I'm saying is there's going to be at least one more day of this blog garbage until I have more mental energy to devote here.

Procrastinator's lament

The call, text, and e-mail came around 6:00 a.m. The university is closed due to inclement weather. Great! I can work in peace on the massive amount of writing I need to finish.

Except I didn't. At all.

The first thing I did was turn off the clock radio alarm. Hello 9:30 rise. Apparently I wiled away some time online before lunch and a nap. Then I made some snickerdoodles from a mix, did laundry, and spent more time messing around on the computer. Some TV, another nap, dinner, and then TV and the computer simultaneously.

So what's my problem? I know that there's a lot to get done, and with no one to bother me, I could have made a critical dent in my work load. Obviously I didn't want to do that bad enough. I had my foot on the gas all day Tuesday, which may be a sufficient explanation. The comfort and distractions of home made it easy to avoid working. Good to note, I suppose, but not very helpful in getting me closer to being finished.

Plus/minus

Plus: Due to the weather, my employer has closed the offices...
Minus: ...but it's only until noon.

Plus: I can still get some writing done at home before heading in...
Minus: ...but I'm going to lose at least twenty minutes scraping through the thick ice coating my car.

Plus: (4:24 p.m.) Due to the weather, evening classes are cancelled...
Minus: ...but I still have to be here because I've been doing all this writing for the show taping around 5:45.
Minus: ...but this means the fitness center will be closed too.
Minus: ...but I'm still going to be at work until almost 8:30 anyway.

Plus: I won't be needing this bag that I packed in the event that the roads were too slick and I felt better just getting a hotel...
Minus: ...but now it's one more thing I have to carry as I try to keep from breaking my neck getting across the parking lot to my apartment.

Plus: Getting my wireless router working properly after yesterday's power outages reset it was pretty simple...
Minus: ...but I wish I'd realized that last night.
Minus: ...but why couldn't either of the customer service reps explained it rather than trying to get $40 out of me?

Plus: Chances are decent that school will be cancelled on Wednesday...
Minus: ...but even if it is, I'll spend it working at home on stuff I need to get done anyway.

Pushing through

It's time to face the facts and admit that I feel overloaded with everything on my plate right now. There's a lot to get done and a shrinking supply of time to do it. How am I going to pull it all off? One way or another I will--it's not a question of if but when--but that mountain in need of climbing keeps looking steeper.

I'm going to try to apply a lesson from my exercise yesterday and today to help me see everything through. Yesterday I got on the treadmill and set it at the four miles per hour rate that I've been using. Typically my calves take awhile to loosen up, but I was more than a mile in and really feeling the pain. I was struggling to keep up and finally took it down to 3.8 mph because I could tell that 4 mph was more than I could handle at the moment.

Even this slightly reduced speed was a challenge. My legs continued to hurt, but I kept going. I felt like I needed to push through. Yes, there had been easier workouts, but this one was challenging me to summon the willpower and toughness for those days when I'm struggling. I'll be all the better for gutting it out.

The thing is, I never hit a point when I felt good. It was a tough slog of a workout, and I occasionally bargained with myself that I'd stop after 40 or 45 minutes. Somehow I made it through the full hour, but did I ever hurt. Plus, I zonked out around 8:30 p.m. and woke up after 10. I "won" by completing the workout, but it exacted a toll.

I decided to give it a try again today. I can't explain it, but I felt really good and had maybe my easiest sixty minutes of exercise this year. (Well, that's excluding the interruptions by accidentally knocking my iPod onto the treadmill and having a fire alarm go off halfway through.) I was tempted to keep on going after time was up because I was killing it.

Did slugging my way through the difficulties of Monday provide me with additional endurance to succeed on Tuesday? Maybe, maybe not. Still, the idea of pushing through the resistance and knowing that it will pay off in the long run certainly seems like something applicable out of all this. At least that's what I'm telling myself to get through it.

The return

Technically speaking, today has only been 23 hours long for me as I traveled from the Central to Eastern time zone. It's seemed like anything but a short day. In fact, it's felt endless.

In anticipation of the early hour at which we'd be rising for my brothers and I to catch flights out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and my parents to begin making the drive home, I went to bed around 11:15 last night. About a half hour later I hears this horrid sound like a chainsaw. Oh wait, that's my cell phone vibrating because someone is calling. It's my mom wondering if I or the brother sharing the hotel room with me lost a gift card for a gas station in their room. Um, no. And also, what are you doing up, let alone calling at this hour?!

My brother set the room's alarm clock to go off at 5:10 a.m. I set a wake up call for 5:15. Good to go, right? I slept fitfully all night and at one point rolled over to see that the clocked displayed 4:22. I tried to get some more sleep. When I next awoke, I laid in bed just trying to rest and not get up. After awhile I thought that it was unusual that we hadn't been awakened. I looked at the clock to find that it was 5:42. The plan was to leave the hotel at 6:00 for my brothers' 7:30 flight and my 8:00 take-off. I informed my brother of the time and leaped out of bed to get ready in a hurry. Seeing as we were about a half hour from the airport, being deliberate was not an option. That was quite a way to start the day.

We encountered no problems catching our flights, and by 11:20 a.m., my plane had brought me back to Columbus. I hopped into the car of the person picking me up and was promptly taken to...the university's gym to keep stats for four college basketball games. This two-day tournament is long enough without getting up before the sun rises. It was sure to be a bruiser with how the day began.

To top it all, some things were goofed up on the final game, although I'd like to point out that they weren't my fault despite the inclination to suspect they were. (I was more tired in the middle of the day.) So that kept me around even longer. Finally, around 10:30 p.m., I walked through the door of my apartment.

I have four more games to work on Wednesday--that's what day it will be, right?--so hopefully I won't be carrying the wearying effects of travel or an intense amount of time spent with family for nearly a week. After all of this, I look very much to bringing this year to a quiet close at home and doing the same to start 2011.

Break

I've had plenty to keep me busy at work these past two days, but the relative quiet around the building is unmistakable. We're in finals week, so it's natural that fewer people, both faculty and students, are in and about. It's liable to be a ghost town there on Wednesday. I certainly don't intend to stick around the office all day.

Rather than join the throngs on the road tomorrow, I'll be heading to my parents' on Thanksgiving morning. I don't really desire driving the two and four lane roads in rural Ohio and Indiana on one of the year's busiest travel days in the dark, and I sort of need the time to get ready for the trip home. It's been go, go, go as the quarter has wound down, so being a little leisurely before departing feels necessary.

I'm not dreading going home for the holiday. To the contrary, I'm looking forward to getting away for a few days. This has been a very stressful three months work-wise, and I felt less than good for much of it. Thankfully, things seem to have righted themselves as far as the work situation is concerned. (Of course, now I'm trying to shake the vestiges of some bug.) So a few nights away--I'm hoping to avoid the Sunday night mess and return Monday morning--should be the medicine I need, especially since who knows the adventure that will be this Christmas.

So, safe travels to you and yours. I plan to enjoy the extended holiday weekend. Maybe some knitting will fit in there, finally.

Remainders

I'm feeling a little under the weather today, so I thought I'd use this space to follow up on some comments left on recent entries. I'd reply where the comments were left, but I've dragged my feet doing so, and I figure my replies are more likely to be seen here.

I am amused at how my entry about leaving behind a knitting pattern at a crafts store was interpreted. I didn't verbalize a stance on the matter, but as I understand the comments, there's a reading critical of the store.

That's not exactly my take on it. What happened to the woman who lost her pattern is unfortunate, but this line leaps off the screen:

This is a pattern I bought in Scotland 30 years ago, so it can't be replaced and the store shouldn't have mixed it up with their own inventory.

Maybe this sounds unsympathetic, but it seems to me that she shouldn't have taken this unreplaceable pattern out of her home in the first place. Yes, it's a shame that the store employee promised to keep the pattern but failed to keep track of it. Still, if it was so important, perhaps she should have arranged for someone to pick it up for her in the week that passed between leaving it behind and returning to reclaim it. (It probably doesn't help her cause that she comes off as somewhat entitled/snobby in the first line of her complaint.)

So, in summation, it stinks that the pattern was lost, but I don't necessarily think that this reflects poorly on the store.

As for my stats work at Ohio State, this was a one time deal, although as long as they were happy with how I performed, I could be asked back to fill in. When the initial request came in, I was also needed for a women's game today, but between the first e-mail and committing for Friday, the Sunday slot was filled. As long as my schedule is open, I'd do it again.