Year by the numbers...

Reflections, Last year I:

Hiked 68 miles and found a great new hiking partner
Re-plumbed my house
Ran 245 miles
Visited Vegas for the first time
Ran the Sound to Narrows for the first time
Found a church family
Drank myself sober
Went to Bumbershoot for the first time
Ran my first half marathon
Spent countless dollars on my house
Experienced a whole year with an amazing lady
Drank countless Rainiers
Spent two nights in an octagon
Celebrated my 30th birthday

Looks like 2009 is going to be even better!

Into the Abyss

I've been on a search for the last month - a search that started win an innocuous blog post and some web research led me to strange parts of town and to stores I don't usually visit, I've braved snow, been lied to, and thoroughly disappointed.

What could cause me to get this crazy? Not the gotta have Christmas toy, or some needed remodeling supplies?

Of course not

Happy T-day

Lots to be thankful for this year!

LW
mornings when I'm the only one up
Family
Friends
Gluten free stuffing with gravy
second helping of stuffing
hot buttered rums
football

One post a month - that's all you get I guess, so be thankful for that too!

Only in the northwest

I've started using my Y membership - and not just because I still don't have a shower!

One of the things I do at the Y twice a week is a spinning class - it's really kinda strange when you think about it. A bunch of people sitting on bikes facing a person on a bike telling you what to do.

"ok folks we're coming up on a big hill - increase your resistance"

I like it because it makes me get up and exercise, and it's easier than riding in the rain during the winter, and it makes me focus on basics like cadence, pace, and technique.

And it totally kicks my butt...

Genius

I'm not always an early adopter of technology - which in many cases is a good thing, so I'm just finding out about the "Genius Toolbar" in iTunes 8. Pretty freaking cool. The Genius scans your iTunes library (takes a while but I'm at work so who cares???) Then when you play a song you can click the "genius button" and iTunes spits out a play list of similar songs.

I tried it first with "Caring is Creepy" from the Shins, one of my favorite songs, and it spit out a mix of Travis, Coldplay, Gomez, Guster, Pete Yorn etc... very cool. Then I tried a Sonic Flood song and I got a mix of Jenn Knapp, David Crowder etc... also very cool. Then I broke it - for some reason it doesn't know who Subset is (dream band of Sir Mix alot and Presidents of the U.S.) - tried a few other obscure/random songs and got similar results. The lesson here is if it's not available on iTunes, or if it's a MP3 you got from a friend with no title/artist info you aren't going to be very genius.

Thanks Apple for a cool tool, and thanks for wasting a billable hour this morning!

What a difference a day (or two) makes

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the weather in your life was shifted one day forward/back from your actual life? Like that snow storm that hits on a sunday instead of a school day, or your friends who schedule an outdoor wedding and it pours but the next day it's sunny...

I've been trying hard to work four/tens lately and take Friday off. And I've been trying to hike on the Fridays I take off - it's good for me and the mutt and it gets me to my goal of at least 12 hikes this year.

Because of this I've been watching the forecast all week. I check it every morning, I check it a few times a day, and just to make sure it hasn't changed I check it before I go to bed.







It hasn't changed - don't you wish we could have Wednesday weather on Friday?

It's all about Balance

I broke out of work today and went hiking - all it took was a creative out of office message and a few 12 hour days earlier in the week.

Asia - (Asia the wonder dog if you're nasty) of course accompanied me. With the remodel she's been home a lot lately and needed to get out as much as I did.

When I think about all the things that I try to juggle - relationship, family, faith, friends, hiking, remodeling, work, (at least grad school is done), I constantly feel like I'm not devoting the time I need to everything.

Maybe I'm too busy, or have too many things on my plate. I haven't even blogged in a few months!

I guess it's something to think about. Usually I don't fix things until they are broken, the problem with all these things is I don't really want to wait until they're broken.

At least I got some quality time with my mutt outside today.