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He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
- Douglas Adams

I've played the spades, I know I'm a jack of all trades

I haven't written in a while, things have been really crazy the past month. So many cool things have happened - I should've been writing as I went along but you know how it is.

I think the last time I sat down to write any personal stuff about my life it was the end of last month when I was worrying a lot about my career but was suddenly told that I'd soon be assuming more responsibility. That's actually still in progress and like everything here at work it seems like changes happen at a very gradual pace. We had a company picnic last week - one thing I noticed is the huge change in my relation to coworkers. Last year I felt a lot of hostility from a few people while this year I get along pretty well with most people I work with.

I told J. the other day about how grateful I feel for all the good things that have happened in my life, ever since we got married - maybe even as far back as a year ago when we first started dating and talking about moving in together, it seems like things have been changing at such a rapid pace in my life. I'm constantly amazed at how happy I am, and I know K. feels the same ways, as she's always saying stuff like 'I love my life'. I told John that perhaps K. is the main reason for all the positive developments in my life as they seem tied in my mind, but he told me that I deserve some credit too for letting all the good things into my life and having some self respect, which is valid I guess.

Family and friends are the most important things in my life, with my wife and my baby coming first, my immediate family coming second, and my friends third, although I have to admit my friends are a lot more entertaining than my family sometimes while my wife is probably the most entertaining person of all. I can spend days on end with her doing hardly anything and be perfectly content. We do this practically every weekend, although I manage to get some guitar playing, working out and hacking in. Last Saturday we sat around, watched tv, I played guitar, worked out, went to therapy, we went out to eat at Wishbone - we ran into C. from work there, a nice surprise - got rained on, came in, dried off, I went back out and got dinner, then I read to her in bed before we went to sleep early. Weekends are frequently like that. Sometimes we go out and hang out with friends or hang out with my mom and dad. My mom loves K. and loves to have us around.

K. graduated last week, me J. and C. attended her graduation at Navy Pier, took pictures and went out for ice cream afterwards. Yesterday my family took K. out to celebrate her graduation - my parents, brothers and even cousins all got her presents, which is a lot more than even I did for her. I'm really blown away by how much my family loves her, although it's not surprising to me really. We went to Marcello's for brunch, which is awesome - but I always feel bloated for the next 2 days after I go there.

Probably the most important events of the past month were my bachelor party and our wedding reception in the UP. This has been a very memorable month, probably one of the best in my life, which came as a little bit of a surprise. I had actually not really been looking forward to my either my bachelor party or my wedding party - for a long time they just seemed like these events on the horizon that we always talked about in the abstract. I didn't feel ready for them because I was 'fat'. and they always just seemed like something 'planned', but when they actually happened, they were much more enjoyable than I thought they would be and brought me a lot closer to my family.

We got so hammered at my bachelor party - it was funny, we kept talking about how we were 'going to make it rain' but we actually only spent about a half hour at the strip bar. J. J. P and D. came as well as my cousins and brothers. There were about 11 of us in all. We started out at Smith and Wollensky, which was awesome, then went out to this club Moda - J.'s hs buddy was a bouncer there and got us in free. Me and J. went around approaching girls just for fun again and I did really well - bringing some hot latinas over to talk to my family and friends. I haven't lost my 'magic' - and actually I think the wedding ring actually helps, it's sort of a disqualification and dhv all in one. Later on everybody agreed we should have stayed at the club we were having so much fun, but since it was a bachelor party we all decided to drive over to the strip club, which sucked. We went to VIP's which is this club next to Crobar - what sucked about it was that it was really crowded and there seemed to be very few strippers - there were like 10 of them for 300 guys. So we got a few dances and everyone went back to L.'s, P. in particular was blown away by L. and M.'s swank pad. The wedding party was pretty awesome, everyone had a great time, I was actually surprised by how well the two families got along. We were there for 5 days. My dad and bros played a lot of golf while K. and I went around and visited relatives. I won't be able to write enough to adequately describe all the cool things that happened last week. There's just not enough time right now. One thing - when Uncle Tod called me and K. out to dance our first dance in front of our family and friends, that was probably the best moment of my life.

There's not enough time for me to write today. A couple of things - I've started on a cool software project outside of work, using the Google Data API, J.'s bbq last night was cool, I'm learning Bury Me by SP on guitar, we talked to a mortgage officer at the bank last weekend to refi our mortgage, and we came up with a really good plan to deal with our impending housing problem with the new kid coming, which I'll probably go into in detail later on. I have to get to work.

5k training week 5

I'm gaining a lot of cardiovascular endurance. Yesterday I went for my Sunday 'active recovery day', and I kept running even after the 40 minutes - I wound up running about 5 miles, which seems a lot for me. I don't remember being able to run that distance comfortably in the past. I also received a couple compliments on looking trimmer. I'm probably not losing a lot of weight though. I generally watch what I eat when I'm at home and there's nothing going on - but this summer's been really crazy, there's a party every week. Yesterday I tallied up my weightwatchers points and I'm slightly over my weekly points as well. I'm just going to keep training and trying to watch what I eat as I go forward, what else can I do? I also told my family about my 5k at the beginning of August, so now I have to be accountable to that. I'm going to start cooking some weightwatchers recipes too this week.

5k training week 4

I double timed this week so that I could fit all my training in during the week of our big wedding reception. The longest run is now 3 miles, which I'm doing fairly easily. I'm doing about 2 days of strength training here and there, and about 150 crunches a day. Working out in the morning pretty nice in the summertime, I'm going to keep doing it until the fall when it starts getting too painful. I don't see how these guys at the gym can stand to be on the treadmill every day, it just gets too boring - although I'm going to have to do it in the winter. I'm enjoying it now though, I bought a new pair of shoes and shorts when I was in the UP so I look cool ;).

So I'm keeping up with my training but my diet is another story. The wedding party was pretty awesome - I'll probably write about it later. But I ate so much, we all did. We also drank a lot. It felt like I was eating for 5 days straight, but it was a great time so I'm not going to regret it. I'm not even going to weigh myself, I'm just going to concentrate on getting to the gym and getting my running in every day.

5k training week 3

I'm keeping up with training, it's not so difficut yet - longest run is 2.5 m which is not a lot for some people, but I am definitely tired at the end of it. Still managing to do my yoga and weight lifting on top of the running (cutting down on the weight lifting though). This week was tough, the workouts were manageable but I'm tired a lot of the time, I have no energy after work to do anything other than sit on the couch, the house is a mess because I'm too tired to clean, or just lazy. K. is of course pregnant and not in any shape to clean, so the place is a mess. I'm also hungry all the time. Weight went up last week and I gained back the 3 lbs I had lost. This week will be even more difficult as we have the wedding party coming up and I'll have to squeeze in training this week as well as watch what I eat and drink all weekend in the UP, which is really tough to do. I'm just hoping not to gain anymore weight. They have an exercise room at the hotel so I'll be able to do something over the weekend which may motivate me to watch what I eat.

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Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963), Vedanta for the Western World, 1945

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The best way out is always through.
- Robert Frost

5k training week 2

I had a good week of training last week, but I fell off towards the end. On Saturday my brothers threw me a bachelor party, which I'll probably elaborate on in another post, and I was so hung over on Sunday I laid in bed all day with K. So I only wound up working out 4 days last week. Since I believe in balance and moderation in training as in life, I will just leave it at that and not try to make up the extra training day this week. Energy levels are down from last week, I really struggled to complete my long run on Saturday, and even my short run in the middle of the week, I had to stop a couple of times and walk on Saturday, but I made up for that by running a little farther towards the end. It seems to be harder to run on the lakefront due to the excessive wind resistance, vs. running around my neighborhood with all the tall buildings to block the wind for me, however it's a lot more 'scenic' if you catch my drift, running on the lake. That's a nice perk of this new running routine actually. I did a really good job of watching my diet last week, even with K's birthday dinner and all the eating out and partying last week. I lost a pound, which I'm satisfied with as it's a healthy weight loss level especially with all the training.

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Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
- Thomas Fuller

5k training week 1

Finished first week of my 5k training, so far so good. First week was pretty easy for me actually, as I've been sort of doing some cardio work already, but not seriously and for the purpose of eventually entering a race. I now seriously want a pair of those Nike+ iPod shoes. Today is a rest day - I like how I don't feel guilty about taking scheduled rest days. This week I'm aiming to work in a couple days of weight training along with all the cardio. Not too tired - even after the double work out yesterday. I don't even really sweat that much compared to how much I used to sweat on the treadmill. Maybe that will come. So far I lost about a pound - one pound a week is pretty good progress. By the end of the summer I should be in great shape, and have a 5k under my belt. Note to myself to pay more attention to stretching and yoga this week.