Day 2

Second day back in the saddle for my short jaunt to the office. Weather.com is telling me that my area is 43-degrees-eff currently with a windchill of 35! Woo!

Life be crazzy

Man, this life be crazy. Waking up through the night, "walking" little Miss Babygirl in a marathon around the house, trying to soothe the aches of her first tooth which decided to come at the peak of a cold she's been suffering, trying to compensate for a babysitter that was MIA for four weeks... it's madness. C has been taking the brunt of the work, as not only does her body make the food that comprises 98% of E-boo's diet, but she is also more compassionate and generally more sacrificial than I am. She get's it from her mom. Sometimes that difference between us leads to stress but eventually I find a way to make up for it because, and I believe this, I'm a pretty good guy. Maybe not great, but good. As in not bad. But as usual "not bad" isn't "good."

It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable. - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Anyway, long story short, I told my boss (after months of rallying the "balls" to do it) that I am ending my work as an Environmental Consultant--a title which apparently only means "a wage slave that works in a hostile environment consisting of shitty conditions and long, uncompensated hours." Yeah, I'm over it.

Fall is in full swing and Winter is knocking on the door. With the door to my future open wide in front of my face I am pretty excited, slightly nervous, but mostly full of hope and faith that life will get on to be as awesome as I ever expected it to be. C and I have been extra crafty lately which, in my case, has been partly influenced by my brother- and sister-in-law who are growing an ever-impressive photography business from scratch, and my increasing desire to work on my own terms, which is constantly at odds with my other undeniable ability to be lazy whenever I find a chance.

Today was particularly blustery and bone-chilling and I made myself bike to the office. It's a great feeling, cruising on a bike. I'm obsessed. Unfortunately, time constraints are squeezing me from all angles and I'm averaging about 1 mile a month. Not sure that's going to change anytime soon, and I don't regret anything that's causing that, except maybe not quitting my job earlier... But even still, finding time to ride is much harder than, say, cruising the World Wide Web and witnessing other people doing it. Bleh.

Meanwhile, I'm going to strive to figure out the meaning behind the above quote and turn any lingering stress into profits. Cha-ching!

Pickin

Today we went with our family (including a caravan of siblings, a nephew, and a few cousins) to a pumpkin farm and orchard to harvest sundry things that comprise the cliche cornucopia of this season, including several pounds of Fuji apples (that we picked!), a gallon of cider, and a couple pumpkins.

It was the first time I had gone "pickin'" and will hopefully ripen into years of tradition.

This week we will fashion our Halloween costumes and maybe roast some pumpkin seeds while drinking pumpkin beer and consider the goal of eating pumpkin pie every day of November.

Triathlon - we finished!

This morning my dad and I finished the Little Miami Triathlon: 6 miles canoeing; 5.5 miles running; and 18 miles biking. We woke up to 40-something degrees "eff" and while Monroe, Ohio, may have warmed up to the mid-50's by the finish line, the mid-40 windchill brutalized us. Biking was by far the hardest part. Canoeing, while slow, warmed me up much more than I expected (too much) and we managed to stay upright, unlike a surprisingly high number of teams...

Anyway, not only did I get to bond with my dad and do something awesome today--if only to prove to ourselves that we could do it--but we had the great pleasure of having an amazing support team to pull us through and keep us lifted. C and a very bundled Ellie were there, as well as my mom who brought a ton of food, and my step mom who graciously acted as coach and cheerleader along the route. As my dad said in an email later today, "we are lucky guys."

Update: I just looked at our results online and in the "Parent/Child" division we finished 32 out of 38... Overall I was in 1,010th place out of 1,174.
Question is: would I do it again?

Brain dump: stress and a triathlon

Wow. It's been a minute, eh? If you're reading this I'm not sure why--I'm guessing it was by accident. My life has been "a hot mess," as they say, and busy, so writing has dropped way low in the priority list I lost a long time ago.

A couple recent political items have boiled my blood lately, including the overwhelming outcry against the proposed Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero. The hatred, ignorance, and bigotry against an entire religion that surfaced was appalling.

Oh, and I guess astronomers found a planet just outside our galaxy--3 times the mass of Earth--that has the potential to support life like we know it. News anchor, Brian Williams, made some comment along the line of "it's nice to know we have a place to go when we mess up this planet." Shit. He's right. Now there's a backup plan and I'm sure it's going to be a bloody race to get people there. It's a fantastic thought, and a terrifying one at the same time. Those sentiments sent shivers down my spine just to think of the (distant?) future of Earth and what sort of scary, corrupt, greedy things might come of having a second planet, a virgin planet, that is waiting to be dominated.

This weekend is the Little Miami Triathlon in which I will be teamed up with my dad to canoe, run, then bike our way toward Accomplishment. My "training" has been laughable, but I have faith that come race day I will muster up whatever awesomeness possible to finish in decent time. If nothing else, this whole thing has forced me to get out and run and feel a lot more healthy than I've felt in a long time.

Ellie is growing so much, eating food, and working on her balance. Words do no justice. Hopefully I'll get more videos up here soon.