Back to Reality

I wish I could put together a well thought out post about my weekend adventure in Boise, but honestly I just don't think I could do it justice. Instead, I'll just give a quick summary and some pictures. If I have more time later this week, I will try and post up some pictures of the better costumes from the weekend.

Weekend in a nutshell: got to see everyone I wanted to for at least a few hours. Ran 20 miles across two days. Drank some alcohol, had some craziness, had some fun. Did some thinking, did some reminiscing. Saw a couple movies, ate out a bunch, and started missing my family pretty badly by the end of it all.

I stayed at a place also know as the "Myrtle Morgue". Home of a promoter of the Boise death metal scene. This is picture of the back fence...



Friday was pretty relaxed, I started with a run and a lunch date with old co-workers, Rick and Jennifer. Both are doing well, all things considered.



After a 2 hour lunch, I had a few hours to kill, so I caught a movie: Dan in Real Life. I was expecting a comedy, but instead got a drama about a Father with 3 daughters, trying his best to be a good Dad. At one point in the movie, the youngest girl tells him, "You're a good Father, but a bad Dad." It nearly broke my heart, and for a long time after that I thought about what that meant to me.

Friday night was mostly relaxing, very little drinking, and basically just some nice socializing. I spent the time with my old drinking & gaming buddy Winston, and his girlfriend Marta. (hope I got the spelling right)



Saturday was a long half marathon run, followed up with 3 hours of thrift shopping. Crazy, I know. Just go with it... Then we met up with some other old gaming friends for coffee and another movie: 30 Days of Night. It should have been called, 30 Days of Suck. It was the worst vampire movie I had seen in a long time.

Saturday night was a bit of everything. I didn't quite make the connection that this weekend would be the big "Halloween" costume time for young people. Downtown was full of everyone in costume, and I got quite a few pictures. I also let loose and enjoyed a bit to drink, just enough to enjoy myself but not enough to regret anything in the morning.

Sunday was supposed to be the long 12 hour day of sitting in airports and planes. Instead, I asked about possible flight changes. Long story short, I was able to get a direct flight for a charge of $50 bucks. I got home a good 5-6 hours sooner, which was great. Gave me time to see the family sooner, tell Andrea all about the weekend, and unwind.

And now... the long road to reality. And work. Sigh.

Not a moment too soon

Here I sit, the day before my vacation, with a small moment to catch my breath. The week started out on such a good note with two out door runs. First a 10 miler on Saturday in CRAZY good weather, and then another shorter 4 1/2 mile on Monday night. That one was a bit colder, but still nice.

Despite that great start, I'm sitting at the highest stress levels I've been at in a long time. I woke up this morning with a major stress headache, and even two Excedrin didn't make it go away. You'd think the day before a vacation, I'd be de-stressing, but for some reason the exact opposite is happening.

I'm not trying to be vague, I simply can't put my finger on where the stress is coming from. It's just a combination of many things, with the biggest piece being Megan's ever changing abilities to find new ways to get into trouble or things she shouldn't. In other words, the fact that she's 2 now!

Work is no small part either... I confided with a co worker how I've given serious thought to finding a way to get a different manager. Not that I think that's an actual possibility, I still entertain the idea. Something rather funny happened this week at our group meeting. I reminded everyone I would be out for 3 days, and someone chimed in that maybe we should delay some things because I was a "major linchpin". Being the vocabularaly challenged person that I am, I wasn't sure at first what it meant, if it was a joke or a complement? I thought it was some derivative of the word "lynch", i.e. hanging. Turns out, linchpin refers to "a central cohesive element". That was a nice pick me up... maybe all my hard work does get noticed.... Naw! Who am I kidding!?!?!

Hopefully I can come back after this weekend with a fresh perspective on things. Relax, let the worries flow away for just long enough to re-center myself and focus on a few tasks over the next few weeks to lower my stress levels.

Did I mention my roof work hasn't started yet?
Did I mention I'm going to have to get new brakes on my car?
Did I mention I'm going to get my wisdom teeth pulled before the end of the year?

Oh sorry, what was I saying? Oh ya, back to my regularly scheduled worrying! Pictures of the trip when I get back!!

Something Positive

Been feeling pretty negative lately. I'm sure my blog posts have reflected that in some way. I attributed it mostly to the change in weather, and the fact that if I'm lucky, I'll get maybe one or two more outdoor runs in this year. The cold, the waking up in the dark, all the rain this week. Think it's finally starting to add up.

If that wasn't enough, a large percentage of the people I work with are sick or have been sick in the last few days. So sure enough, I've got it also. So far it's just cold symptoms, but it's hitting me hard. Especially with my insistance that I only need 6 hours of sleep a night. I'll try to run it out this weekend and hopefully start to feel better by mid next week.

Reason being... I head out to Boise next Thursday night! One week, and a nice long weekend break for me to visit my old friends and coworkers out there. I've been looking forward to this trip for a long time, for various reasons. I'm going to get some running done each day, with the goal of doing running 13 miler along the Boise Green Belt. In addition to that, just being able to visit the people that had a big impact in my life over the 6 years that I lived out there. It should be great.

So that's my positive thought for the week: Vacation, vacation, vacation!

Feeding Addictions

Oddly enough, blogging is NOT one of my addictions. If it were, I would be posting a lot more then I do now. Alas, once a week is becoming more and more the norm...

Obviously, I have a very addictive personality. I'm pretty sure it runs in my family to some degree. Addictions can be both positive and negative in my mind. It's all about how you spin it. Basically, some of my main addictions are:

1) Worrying. I worry way too much. I worry about everything, my job, my family, and yes, even my addictions. It gets to be a bit much at times. It has to be prematurely aging me somehow.

2) Video games. Always been on the top of the list. World of Warcraft being the current choice. How long can video games be my only form of entertainment?

3) Running. Finally, a positive addiction! The funny thing is, I can even find a slight negative with this one. My insistence to run run run has prevented me from achieving a secondary goal of weight lifting on a regular basis.

4) Alcohol. Ahhh finally the only one on my list that could be considered an official addiction. The positive side of this one is that it's more or less fallen out of the top 3. About once every other month I find myself having a few drinks to de-stress. Okay, maybe more then a few.

I thought about how I feed my various addictions at some length this weekend. Not sure why, but it centered around my choice of video games as my primary form of time wasting / entertainment. The thing is, with an addictive personality, you HAVE to feed something. You can't just quit an addiction. The only thing you can do is replace one addiction for another. If I cut back on video game playing, all that would end up is my other addictions would get more time. And looking at the above list, I'm not seeing more negative then positive alternatives. So video games it is!

In other news, Megan loves her new Dora fort... Great birthday present! (if you are reading this, thanks!)

Birthday Weekend

I'll just let the pictures do most of the talking for today. Megan's 2nd birthday party was a huge success. Lots of family from all over came to celebrate, and Megan had a great time opening gifts. She also got everyone to give her rounds of applause, as she would clap for herself. For some reason she just loves clapping and having other people clap! Or, she just loves being the center of attention...

If one birthday wasn't enough fun, we have even one more this weekend! It's at a place called Just Jump, with tons of inflatable jumpy things. Megan has been there once before, but she was much younger then. I think she will have a great time today climbing in some of the bigger inflatable toys.

Here is Megan in a very cute birthday dress:



You have to stay cool on your birthday:



Megan enjoyed reading some of her cards more then the gifts. Especially the Shrek card from Grandma G!



Cuddling with Uncle Scotty:



Enjoying her Gelato cake. The cake was a huge hit with everyone! We might be doing this again...



Finally, the day after, with her new clothes and new toys.

Slacker

Blogging has taken 2nd fiddle to a lot of my time lately. Weekly posts are just not going to get the job done, I know that much. Still, I find myself struggling to find the time to blog. Why? Dunno....

I've gone on and on in the past about my thoughts on anger as the most useless of human emotions. Tonight I might have finally found a potential use. I'm not sure why I was so angry today. I think it all started with my morning. It didn't help that today was Monday either.

First, I slept in due to staying up to late and the fact that my alarm clock sucks. After that, traffic was horrible because of an accident. I got so frustrated that I actually ended up going SOUTH just so I could turn around and go back north.

Then... work. Not much more to say about that, other then things are getting to the point where I either have to do something about it or just give up. I tried to get Andrea's opinion, and her only response was, "Why does everything have to be so black and white with you?" I don't know, it just does.

So what did I do with all this anger? You guessed it, I RAN! I ended up doing an all out 5k of about 23:30, although the last 2/3rd was at a 7 min/mile pace. After that I did a cool down run of another few miles. It helped, a little bit. But it's just like anything else, it's only a temporary fix.

The long term fix? See below: