Jan 28, 2014 - Falling Into What You Love

When I was little I wanted to be a doctor or a scientist.  That's not what I do today.

I am a person who is always engaged, always asking questions and wanting to understand and improve my organization.  Boy Scouts, a singing group, my family, my coworkers, and my company as a whole.  As a result, I've been blessed with many opportunities to contribute: a job (first), a promotion, education, another job, and the place I find myself now.  Which is a job, of course, but I'm able to make connections with people in my company that get things done.  And they, in turn, are able to help me as I try to help them.

The message is hard to articulate in vague terms.  Let me try a different tack.  There is a project that I think my company really needs to devote some energy to.  I don't think it's incredibly expensive.  It will take a certain non-trivial amount of time and attention from some key players in the company, but it doesn't have to cost a lot of money.  My previous company needed the same thing, but I did not have the power to start the project myself.  And I did not have the proper partner to start the project there.

Here I have a partner.  I still have no power, no budget, no positional influence.  Just a passion for this thing, and the possibility that I may be part of making it happen.  It's something I care a lot about, and it will positively affect my company.  The more I talk about it with people who can make it happen, the closer to reality it feels.  And if it does, I'm fairly confident I'll be a part of it.

This is what I mean by falling into what you love.  I do what I do now because I love it.  I started out doing something I didn't love, then (as a complete blessing from heaven) was given a chance to do something I did love.  From then on, it's been a continuous round of doing what I love and talking to other people about it.  And what I find consistently is that if you love something, and you talk about it enough, someone who also cares about it and can help you achieve it will give you access to it.  Maybe not a promotion.  Maybe it's just a few hours of her time.  Maybe it's his endorsement on your budget proposal.  But eventually the opportunity will come.  And you will fall right into it.

And because you love it, you will excel at it.

Jan 28, 2014 - Random traveling thoughts

I'm in Austin, TX for a few days of training.  It takes a full day to get from NY to Austin, so I spent yesterday traveling.  When I travel, I notice things.   Here's a list of things I noticed, learned, and had questions about.

1) My original flight was cancelled, and I left at 12:30 instead of 7:30.  Turns out that the Mon morning 7:30 flight is cancelled "more often than not" this time of year.
2) I have lost all my frequent flier privileges, so sat in seating 3.  I thought it was the last seating.  I have been in seating 1 for the last 10 years.  I was expecting to have to check my carryon due to lack of overhead space.  Seating 3 has plenty of overhead space.  Seatings 4 and 5 don't have overhead space.
3) My earbud noise canceling headphones are still wonderful.
4) I left them in after deplaning in Houston.  I removed them after I had walked through the entire airport, and was almost to the rental car counter.  Turns out that airport also has a significant hum.  I will probably have them on all day long for my return trip.
5) On United, you no longer have to turn off electronics.  So I can put on my noise cancelers, turn on my MP3 player, and read on my Kindle from the time I sit down until the time I stand up.  I had no idea how much better this would make my travel experience.  Also, I can now take pictures during takeoff and landing, which is awesome.
6) There are some clouds at 30,000 feet.  I had never seen them myself before, so that was cool.  Several different layers of clouds are visible in this picture - and you can see some fluffiness just left of the wingtip.
7) When it's -2 degrees in Chicago, the runways are not 100% ice-free.  Mostly ice-free, but not 100%.  Evidently, it's okay for a 2,000-ton jet to hit the pavement at 150 miles per hour in 20 mph wind with ice on the runway.  Who knew?
8) Flightview is really a great app.  Annoying to enter a flight, but then you have everything right at your fingertips - what gate you arrive at, your connecting flight's departure gate, on time or not, airport maps, local weather.  Takes so much of the guesswork out of connecting flights.
9) It is cheaper to buy an entire 3-entree Chinese meal at the food court in Chicago than it is to buy 2 4.5oz bags of nuts at Hudson News.  I went for the Chinese and was glad I did.
10) O'Hare had drinking fountains set up to refill water bottles.  Awesome.
11) I'm an information maven.  Not to the extent of several of my friends (Jake and Nathan, that's you) but in several circles of people and for several different topics, I'm a maven.  I'm reading Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" (Chicago-Houston leg), and found the Maven/Salesman/Connector section intriguing.  This is why I'm not cut out for executive management.  I think they need to be more Connector/Salesman type of people.  I just like to learn things, get things done, and help people out along the way.
12) After years of wasting time playing Sudoku on electronic devices, my ability to do it on paper is severely curtailed.
13) "No impact" exercise is awesome.  This is from this morning - I hit the elliptical for half an hour at the hotel this morning.  I'd never used one before, and it was revelatory.  At the highest resistance settings, it really was a complete workout, my knee didn't bother me at all, and I was up at 150bpm for my heart rate for the last 20 minutes.  It was perfect.  The exercise bike is leaving my basement, and I have to save for a good elliptical now.  I hope Craigslist can deliver in April.
14) Uncle Tom's Cabin is a serious book.  I can't read it as a simple work of fiction.  While it's certainly about slavery, the details of mid-19th century life are stunning.  It's an incredibly dense study of the entire culture at the time, seen through the lens of a racist abolitionist.  I can only sip it.  Hopefully, I'll finish it before I fly home.  It needs to go into the "finished" folder on my Kindle.
15) In "We Didn't Start the Fire", Billy Joel lists "Bernie Goetz" as an important historical figure.  I have always wondered what his story was.  Turns out that he was a white guy who shot some black kids on a NYC subway.  He was acquitted of attempted murder.  It was a key point in the breakdown and subsequent rehabilitation of NYC's subways.  It's in Gladwell's book, too.





16) I'm still fascinated by ice.  We headed West from White Plains, and crossed the lower Hudson, where ice rafts are floating down the river.  And as we left Chicago, the frozen landscape showed the city's downtown skyline against a frozen Lake Michigan.

 17) There were some other things, too, but I forgot them.
18) When you rent a car in January in TX, they don't give you an ice scraper.  When you have a layer of sleet on your car, it takes 10 minutes to defrost it off.  And even though you planned for it, when you get to class on time, class will be pushed off for 4 hours and you'll have all morning unexpectedly free.

Jan 24, 2014 - Reflected Glory

Last night, Katrina and I had a surreal experience.  I finished a normal workday, and when I got home the family was busily preparing dinner for the local missionaries.  We ate and chatted, and when dinner was over, they left.  Katrina and I followed them out the door and went to a parents' meeting for the cast of Aria's show.

We were 15 minutes late to a 30-minute meeting.  It was in the choir room, and the door is at the front of the room.  As we walked in, the director was saying, "...the parent's of Ariel asked that the date be moved into April..."  He noticed us and chuckled.  "Speak of the devil.  But that can't happen..."  We took our seats, and were shocked to find other parents react to us like celebrities.

Comments came from all around the room during and after the meeting: "Your daughter is stunning."
"I got chills when she sang."  "The girls were all good, but she was head and shoulders above the rest."  And it was odd, like she was some statue we had sculpted, or were somehow to be credited for her success.  It was a very strange experience.  She earned it on her own - she happens to be intelligent, talented, and an over-achiever.  She's pretty, too, but why would that matter to cosmopolitan adults?  It was a very 21st-century thing, I think.  I can't imagine my parents or those of the casts I worked with as a teen expressing themselves that way.  All the good things Aria is, she has earned. The only thing I am comfortable taking credit for is giving her an environment where she could become the person that could achieve those things.  No more than that.

And how does one react to such a thing?  Do you accept the compliment?  Do you deflect it back to the kid?  Do you ignore it?  And I felt bad because everyone knew who we were.  I don't know who anyone else is, and I should.  Every member of the cast is just as important.  

Modern parenting oddness.  Hm.  I wonder how many times we'll encounter this over the next 10 years.

We had a nice chat with Tracy (I think that's her name, I'm so bad with names) afterward, and we may end up auditioning for a summer show as a family.  It would be fun, we'll see if the schedule works, and if the other half of our family (Christian, Jake, and Libby) are interested at all.  There's lots of opportunity, just don't know what would work for us.

Jan 22, 2014 - Choir! 21-hr workday! Record (for me) cold!

On Sunday, we were finally able to restart choir.  I love the choir.  I do wish there were more of us, even if the larger numbers mean some people aren't as talented.  I just want people who love to sing to be able to sing.  My plan for the choir this winter was to sing "Come Thou Fount" in March, and an arrangement of "Where Love Is" for Valentine's day.  I was certain I had seen a copy of "Come Thou Fount" in the music cabinet, but when I got to church, I couldn't find it.  I'm working on an arrangement of the other song, and I wasn't done with it, either.  So I had nothing.

But the choir is great, and we had exactly a double-quartet.  2 of each part, if I sang Tenor.  So we put the chairs in a circle, picked up hymnals, and sang songs by request.  One of the choir members suggested 102, which I had never heard before.  It turns out that "Jesus, Lover of My Soul" is a lovely song.  We sang through it a couple times, sang through it a capella, and I asked if the group was up to perform it this coming Sunday.  They were, so we did it a couple more times, and then we moved on.  It's a lovely lovely thing to spend 20 minutes on a piece to make it nice instead of 6 hours.  It's wonderful and simple.  This week I'm working on my arrangement, and I found a royalty-free arrangement of "Come Thou Fount" from Sally DeFord that we'll use.  So we're back in full swing.  It's going to be a little lighter this year, and we'll do more, simpler pieces, instead of a couple hard ones.

And I'm done with my weird work schedule, which means I have a weirder one.  I spent mid-Dec to mid-Jan working 12-hr days for one half of the week, and having a lot of days off.  Now I'm back to M-F, but I meet with my night shift team at midnight every other Tuesday.  So yesterday morning, I got up at 4, like I always do when I have certain responsibilities at work, and hit the office at 5.  I worked all day, and then stayed through until my team meeting ended at 1:30am.  I missed meeting with them while I was on my other schedule, and it was really nice to have an "air your grievances" session with them.

When the meeting was over, I sat in my car and turned the my car thermometer read -3deg F.  This was a now record cold for me to be out in.  It didn't feel that different from 15.  I got home at 2 and went to sleep.  When I headed back in to work at 9:20 this morning,the car temp was 2 deg.

Work is really fun and challenging still.  I do love it.  I always hope for the best, and work to make it even better.

Jan 18, 2014 - Reason #2 I love NY

I love the weather here.  The unpredictability drives a lot of people crazy, but I love it.  I've seen sheet lightning, been in a hurricane, driven through a white-out, slept in my cozy house during a -7 degree night, hiked through a 10-degree morning over an inch of fresh snow, sweated through a muggy hot summer, and this morning I took my little electric chainsaw to some fallen trees during heavy snow.  The snow flocked the trees heavily.  This is one of 3 evergreens on the property.

It's lovely.  The pounding rain, the sun that blinds you on so many bare-leafed winter mornings, the wind that makes the trees creak, snow sneaking down the back of your jacket collar.  It's majestic.  And it reminds me regularly of how inconsequential I am in the grand scheme of things.

Today was a relaxed day - did the wood cutting, stacked it on the porch, and then went for a walk while the snow coated my stocking cap.  The snow did that creaking thing it does when the flakes are large and it's in the high 20s.  Then lunch, and took the boys to get their hair cut, returned an item to the Amazon seller, and then a nap.  No Saturday is complete without a little Rock Band and video game football.  Took down the huge Christmas snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, and finally bought a decent watch.  I've been wearing a watch I bought at Wal-Mart for $11.84 nearly 2 years ago with a velcro wristband.

And then I registered Aria and me for the Warrior Dash in July.  I'm excited.  It's going to be super fun to climb obstacles, wade through muddy water, climb muddy hills and stuff with her.  I'm smiling just thinking about it.

Got a bunch of stuff to do tonight - Sunday School lesson to prepare, music to arrange for choir, need to make some more progress on my Japanese course materials.  I think I won't get it all done.

Jan 17, 2014 - The cast list is up!

Aria had call-backs for The Little Mermaid on Thursday.  After I was home from work, she told me that there were 4 girls being considered for Ariel, and those who didn't get Ariel would be her sisters.  So she was very pleased to know after call-backs that at the very least she'd have a good role.  But she was confident in her performance, thought it was likely she'd get Ariel.

The cast list was posted during 1st period on Friday, which was a half day.  I was at work.  No phone calls, no FB posts, no emails. Nothing.  Noon.  1pm.  2pm.  Finally, I called Ari's friend Maggie.  I was happy to learn that Maggie got Scuttle (the Seagull).  And then I was able to talk to Aria, and she told me that she did get the part.  My girl got a lead role, and all on her own.

She has been very fortunate in many ways - she's made it into everything she has auditioned for, unheard of for any girls I knew growing up.  And she's done some good stuff.  Not a lot, but some.  She has worked very hard at her school for over a year in choir, and built a solid reputation with the choir director, and of course she nailed her solo at the concert.  Hard work, talent, and encouragement.  And she got it done.

I couldn't be prouder of her.  I have a lot of pride in her academic achievements, but I feel for some reason, that they are more attainable for more people.  An artistic achievement like this one is something she'll never forget: the one person cast as Ariel for the show.  The lead role.  She may never get another.  I have never had the lead in my career.  And I'm proud of her for trying again, and so very glad she'll be working with this director, who is an excellent acting director.  It will be such a good experience for her.

So I finished work, came home, ate, etc.  Finally I went to pick her up.  We were all on media blackout until she called her grandparents.  Once that was done, we posted away.  This is her "I got the part!" face.  I've never seen her so happy, it was really a special night to share as a family.

And now I hope we have the same kinds of experiences with the other kids.  They are all just as special and wonderful as Aria is.  We're hoping she doesn't cast too long of a shadow.

Jan 14, 2014 - Auditions and training

Today Aria had her first set of auditions for The Little Mermaid.  From what I've been told, she did really well.  Callbacks are Thursday, and the cast list is due on Monday.  She really wants Ariel, and she's been singing her heart out for weeks.  She's certainly in (we're not worried about that) but we're hoping she gets something juicy.

We all tried to encourage Christian to audition.  He'll make up his own mind, but he certainly has a supportive family.

Work today was a day of class about transition from individual contributor to a leader.  It was quite good.  I must say, the training stuff we have in place at work is consistently useful and relevant, and the entire management team actually uses the concepts.  Highlights from the training today for me was a reminder of how important team meetings are, and the realities around the importance of employee engagement and the facts of employee engagement.  Some research shows that 21% of all employees are "actively disengaged" at work, while only 18% are "engaged".  The phrase I hear at work that refers to these disengaged people is "they don't care".  I hadn't thought about this phenomenon as a measure of engagement, but rather as a measure of dedication or commitment.  Maybe the frame of reference will help me find better strategies to coach and invite them to move at least into the middle 61%.

And then tonight at home, a quick 5K run, writing some materials for my Japanese class, and now some reading time and sleep.  Katrina has been working on a new filing system for household finances and things, and it's nice to see little things in our lives get under control.  Last night, the last of the Christmas decorations went to the basement.  Little by little, we're making progress on the projects we've had on the list for a year.

Jan 13, 2014 - Teaching again!

Soon after we landed here, I thought about teaching a Japanese Conversation course through some Continuing Ed program.  Last Fall, I decided it was time to pursue it.

I've been teaching for the huge majority of my life - helping other kids in my elementary school classes with math, the high school drama kids with whatever I knew about theatre, etc.  And then I went to Japan.  And I was teaching all the time.  I learned a ton.  Maybe 7 tons.  A lot.  And I taught the Gospel.  And I taught English.  And whatever else I knew and could share, I did.  And I realized I was good at it.  And I loved it.

So when I returned to the States, I went to college and naturally started tutoring everything I could.  And then as a freelance interpreter/ESL instructor, I did the same for a year.  And then I took time off to be an engineer, have a bunch of kids, and start a career.  And then I wrote a Japanese Conversation course.  And it went well.

So now we're here, and I finally interviewed with the head of the local Continuing Ed program in early December.  And she green-lighted me!  The flyer arrived in area mailboxes last week (20,000 copies), and there I am!  I'm really excited.  The last few days I've been mulling over how to approach the class: language-centric?  Culture-centric?  How-to-get-along-as-a-traveller-or-business-person-centric?  I'm no longer concerned about any of the directions.

I have recently decided to poll the class on the first night and understand where they want to go with it.  But regardless, we'll start with a full session of written language introduction.  And they'll all leave being able to say 'hello' and 'what is that?' and 'this is a book'.

It should be a blast.  I'm going to put a copy of the flyer up in the break room at work later this week.  I want to get at least my 6 minimum students to get the thing off the ground.  And then I'm committed.  I'd like to eventually be running a Japanese 110 and a 210 series concurrently, just one night a week, 3 hours in a row.  So class starts in March, and I've got about 6 weeks to take the materials I've written over the past 20 years and coalesce the textbook out of it.  I've already got a language textbook - it's the other stuff I have to build.

Lots o' fun and lots o' work for the first time, and then just fun afterward.  And I do expect to eventually leave the semiconductor industry.  Best to plant the seeds of the second career earlier, gain relevant experience, and make a little extra cash now.

Jan 12, 2014 #2 - Random musical ruminations

Entry #2 for today, because the one I wrote at 3 this morning was really about yesterday.

I was up until about 7, then tried to get a few hours sleep and get on a normal sleep schedule.  I had slept so much by Friday morning that my back was hurting, and I entered a 24-hr period where I'd be up for 5-6 hrs, sleep for 2-3 hrs, and repeat the process.  Today's goal was to get back on track for a normal work week.

We are still going through boxes of stuff, as I supposed most people are.  We happen to have many boxes of books that don't fit on shelves because I'm a bookaholic.  So I was moving these books from cardboard boxes in the basement to plastic boxes in the basement and came across a box full of familiar-looking binders.  But I wasn't sure why they were familiar until I opened one up and saw sheet music.

Sheet music.  And not just any sheet music, but sheet music for "Axel F", arranged for barbershop quartet.  And "Three Chanteys", arranged by Marshall Bartholomew.  And "Lady Let the Rolling Drums", a musical setting to Tennyson's poem about women allowing their men to go and die on the battlefield.  And "Ward, the Pirate" by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  And close to a hundred others.  Some were arranged by members of my quintet, the Morning Stars.  Some were by pros.  Some are a hundred years old, some are new.

I have really fond memories of rehearsals with that group of men.  They were stand up guys, all of them - Nick, Jake, Evan, Jim, and Christian.  We weren't always a quintet, the lineup changed, like it always does in musical groups.  But we would all take our musical folders, and stand in a circle and sing to each other.  We had a lot of really good times and made some great music.  One of the best investments of my time and energy I have ever spent.  They are the closest friends I've made through Church in my life, with the exception of the Hawkins family.

Another, and much more recent, investment came by chance recently.  I thought my PS2 had broken when it wouldn't work on my new TV.  I tried a new cable, no luck.  Tried the Wii, it was fine.  So I decided to give up on the PS2 thing entirely: to buy some games on the PS3 and start afresh.  And then I saw a PS2 with Rock Band for $40 on Craigslist.  That game was always intriguing, but not worth $200 to get into.  For $40, I'd give it a go.  3 weeks after Christmas, we have Lego, Beatles, and Rock Band 2.  Libby loves the drums, and she'll sing as well.  Aria is our guitarist.  Katrina will sing, but hasn't worked on an instrument.  I'm starting to get the drums, starting to be able to keep a beat with one hand independent of the other hand.  It's a ton of fun.  Libby loves Yellow Submarine.  Jake started playing drums tonight.  He's no good yet, but he'll get there.  Libby keeps trying, and she'll get it, too.  I see an electric drum kit in our near future.

We collect instruments that don't get played like some people collect cats.  We're the crazy instrument family.  We have a lovely piano, a kids electric guitar, an adult electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, an electric piano, a kazoo, a harmonica, and now a set of Rock Band instruments.  The drum kit makes the most sense to add to our menagerie.  For us crazy people, anyway.

But it's just awesome to see the kids have so much fun with a video game that teaches them something.  I love the reductionist way of turning sheet music into colored buttons that come at you.  It's very different than reading sheet music, but tells the same story.  If I could only get the Beatles harmony vocals to give me sheet music notes, then I could sing it better, though.  I'm old school I suppose.

Anyway, music is great.  I'm pretty much over my sickness, got in my first run in 3 days this morning (5 miles, 7:19 pace), down to 203 lbs (down 32 lbs since last May), sorted some financial stuff out, removed the track lighting from the bedroom, and cleaned up the random garbage from the woods.  Then I did 2 loads of laundry, sang some Beatles, helped Aria with some graphing math, and now I'm pretty much ready for bed.  It's a good life.

Jan 12, 2014 - Bipolar weather

I woke up Friday not feeling well.  It was the same thing that everyone else in the house has had over the last 2 weeks.  I thought I would escape it, but no luck.  It's a flu thing, with some stomach nastiness.  It didn't hit me as hard as some others, so I'm grateful for that.  It was still unpleasant.  Haven't had stomach cramps like that since I was a kid.

At any rate, the week has been one of crazy weather again.  Lows near 0, 3 inches of snow on Thursday night heading into Friday.  Saturday morning I woke up to nearly 60 degrees and hard rain.  The Christmas lights came down on Friday, Saturday they made it into a box in the basement.  And Katrina and I installed some shelving in the kitchen.

Going through some papers in the basement, I found the old binders from the Morning Stars.  I sang through some of the songs in my head as I filed the music into folders.  I really loved doing that.  I wonder if I could restart something like that...on my "want" list for sure.  But I'd have to get all new stuff for SATB instead of TTBB, because it would almost certainly be a mixed group.

2 pics for today.  One is Friday, an incidental pic that I took while taking down Christmas lights.  And those are snowflakes falling that you can see.  And the other is a deluvian rain from this afternoon.

Jan 6, 2014 - Feeding the beast

What beast?  The oil furnace, of course!

No chance to blog yesterday.  It was warmer yesterday, still nice and brisk, though.  Katrina and the kids stayed home from church because of the stomach thing she and Christian had.  I went in to teach Sunday School, and we discussed what the kids needs to do, be, and become to be ready to serve as missionaries.  It was a good discussion, deeper than some we've had recently.

As one of the kids was saying the closing prayer, my phone vibrated in my pocket.  I left right afterward, and as I left the building, I checked who it was.  It was Katrina.  So I called back, and she told me that the furnace had stopped working and that we had leaking pipes in the basement.  2 thoughts came into my head: 1) How bad could this possibly be?  In the worst case, how bad could it have gotten in the last 10 hours, and how long would it take to fix it? 2) Is there really anything broken?

So I went straight home, and assessed the situation.  The furnace was the biggest thing.  If we don't have water, we can survive.  Without heat on a 25 degree day, we're not in good shape.  So I checked the power to the furnace, it was off.  Katrina had flipped the breaker to be safe.  So I turned it back on and walked down to see if I could see any lights going.  There wasn't anything visibly wrong, so I reached down to the red button and pumped it a couple times.  10 seconds later, I heard it kick on.  I went up stairs, and in 2-3 minutes, we had warm air coming out.  I'm guessing an air bubble got in the line or maybe a little snow got in the tank when we had it filled on Friday.

So that was a good thing.  Easy fix.

The leaky pipe took some more investigation.  The pipe is the dead end for the line that used to feed the hot water boiler.  Many houses in the East have radiant heat, with a furnace that heats water, and the water is piped throughout the house in water radiators.  They look like baseboard electric heaters in the West, but circulate hot water instead.  There must be a logic to it that I don't understand.  At any rate, the house used to have that kind of setup, and the pipe that fed the system is still there.  There is a stem pipe that comes off the main cold water line, then a valve, then a nipple.  The nipple was leaking.  So either the valve had gone bad, or the nipple had gone bad.  It was just dripping, not squirting, so no worries.  There was a bucket under it already, and it was fine.

Once the house had heated up a bit, it stopped dripping.  So there's a seal in there that is leaking by a bit when it gets cold.  I 'll replace it on Wednesday.

The takeaway from this?  Something I've thought repeatedly about this house:  I love that everything is visible in this house.  The full basement gives me complete visibility to wiring and piping without getting dirty or staring at desiccated opossum remains and other unpleasantness in a crawlspace.

The work week this week is crazily busy, but short.  I worked a half day on Sunday, 12 hrs today and tomorrow, and then a couple hours on Thursday, and I'm done.  I'm preparing for our monthly meeting with customer management, and it's an intense effort.  The team members all put their best foot forward, and we always have a good product.  But it takes effort to gather the information, shape it, and package it in a way that is useful for us and our customer.  So that's what I'm working on.  Made good progress today.  Tomorrow I should be ready for the premeeting.

Pics: the leaking nipple and Hopewell Junction.  I was out picking up something at the local hardware store.  Not Home Depot!  We have one relatively close, but we've got a local odds-and-ends hardware store as well as a building supply store closer.  I love both of them.  As I left the store, I was struck by the Hallmark Village I was walking through.  So I snapped a photo.

Jan 4, 2014 - Reason #1 Why I Love New York

There are many reasons why I love New York.  The distance from my birth family and friends is tough, and I do miss biking and the proximity to real mountains.  But otherwise (and this is truly truly true) I love it here.  I'll catalog random reasons why over the next year.  These are obviously in random order as well.

Today's reason is sledding in my back yard.  We have a nice sledding hill, and today I made a good run down it.  Libby enjoyed it later.  It has a corner in it, which I reinforced with additional snow, and then I added a berm at the end.  My entire life, sledding has been something I get to do once or twice a year, and it's a whole day affair.  We've had 2 good sledding snows already this year, and this snow is still powdery soft.  It was lovely.  Libby and I both had a blast - about 30 minutes of sledding and running up hill is about all a person needs.  Then it's time to come inside and do something else.  Jake did some sledding, too, but he made his own track.

Lovely day.

Jan 3, 2014 - The oddness of fitness

A late night last night made for a later morning this morning - an 8am start for me.  My first 2 hours of the day were spent clearing the snow from the driveway, and then a 4 mile run on the treadmill just to prove to myself I was really insane.  I had intended the run to be 8 miles, but had to cut out halfway in.  The left knee was a little odd (probably due to the long trail run yesterday), and I didn't want to push it too hard.

Then, in line with my New Year's resolution to be more present with my kids, I spent an hour in the Lego room, sorting through Legos and preparing to start building a large Lego car.  My objectives right now are a working steering wheel and locking doors.  It is going to be a much-larger-than-Lego-scale vehicle.  It was nice to hang with Jake and Libby for an hour.  Then I made pork chops for the missionaries for dinner and delivered it.  And now my day is about done.

The subject of today's post is one I've meant to write for quite a while.  Here are some odd things I've learned through my process of weight loss and training since March:
1) weight loss happens all over your body, not just where you think you look chubby.  I was surprised to find the rubber gloves I wear at work fit much better than they used to - I used to have to wear the XL gloves or my thumbs would get sore.  Now the L gloves are perfect.  Who knew I had hand fat?  Weird.
2) shirt sizes are determined both by weight and length.  My long sleeve shirts are L, or the sleeves are too short. My short sleeve shirts are now M, or the chest is baggy.  It's a problem I'm happy to have.  I've had an M shirt for 10 years that I have been unable to wear for 8 years.  It is now my favorite shirt.
3) I read in a book recently that intense exercise is addictive.  I find that I do have withdrawal if I skip a day.  I get jittery, and can't wait to spend some energy working out.  I can concentrate better and work longer more comfortably now than I used to.
4) The protein shake thing works.  I started drinking a chocolate whey powder, and I think it's helping to bulk me up a lot.  I thought it was snake oil.  No longer.
5) Strength training helps with distance.  This was a real surprise.  I trained for the first Tough Mudder solely on the treadmill.  It never goes above a 4% grade on a program.  The second Tough Mudder is on a ski slope, very hilly, very steep.  So I've started doing my 5K short runs with a 10% grade for much of the distance.  It is quickly exhausting, and I can't go very fast.  So I settle in for a 10-minute pace for a mile or so at the 10% grade.  It's kindof like doing a couple thousand single-leg squats in a row.  Now I routinely find myself in reach of record times on my flat runs of 3, 5, or 8 miles.  The only thing I've changed is adding the elevation to the shorter runs.
6) The endurance mind game is all the same.  Whether running or biking, you reach a certain point of zen, and the most complicated thing going through your head is  "Is this how fast I want to go right now?"  At first, learning to run, how to warm up, build a cadence, etc, takes time and concentration.  And then muscle memory takes over, and your mind is free to defocus on details.  I expect swimmers experience the same thing.  I hope to find out in the Spring.   I have my sights set on a triathlon in 2014 (a small one, not an Ironman)
7) A marathon doesn't scare me from a muscle perspective.  My knees couldn't take it, but I can certainly keep up a 6 mph pace for 4 hours in a day.

Despite my long history with biking, I think the last 7 months of running and strength training has changed my body more than those 10 years of consistent cycling.  It's a holistic thing, and fascinating to experience.

I took my new snowshoes for a spin this afternoon, and had a Grizzly Adams moment, looking back at my snowshoe prints and our snow-covered cabin in the woods.  Snowshoes are cool.  My mom has great taste in Christmas gifts.

Jan 2, 2014: Today, on the Appalachian Trail...

I worked a long week this week - 6 hrs + church on Sunday, 12 hrs Mon, Tue.  Then a New Year's party on Tuesday evening, followed by 12 more hrs on Wed, followed by watching my Ducks'defense shut down the Texas Longhorns' inept offense for an entire game.  I got to sleep at 11.

We've been hearing all week about a huge snow storm and cold snap that is supposed to hit us late this week.  Temps falling from 65 on Sunday 4 days ago to 20 on Thursday.  The snow storm (some are calling it a blizzard) arrives Thursday (that's today!), and Friday's high is supposed to be 10, overnight low of -7.

So I woke up this morning at 8 after this crazy work week, knowing it's going to dump snow in the afternoon and stay well under freezing all day.  So I did what any rational person would do: I put on my running shoes, a stocking hat, and went for a run in the woods.  It appears I may be the only rational person in the Hudson Valley, because there was nobody, and no sign of anybody, on the trail today.  I started at the SW end of Canopus lake at 8:30.  It was 11 degrees.  Cooler than previous outings which were both about 22 degrees, but not unreasonable, thinks I.  I have a set of good gloves, my stocking cap, a t shirt, a long sleeve biking jersey, long biking leggings, running shorts, a medium jacket, and a backpack with water, 2 cold sausages, and some peanut butter candy.

The lake is not suitable for swimming.  First, it would be instant hypothermia.  Second, there's a layer of snow falling on the lake's frozen surface.  So you can't swim in it even if you are immune to hypothermia.

So I got on the trail.  It was lovely.  The forest is gorgeous all decked in white.  It's like the negative image of a picture in a coloring book: everything is outlined in white instead of black.  I think that NY natives are spoiled - they have no idea how lovely the outdoors is when it's covered in snow.  They only think of shoveling snow bad traffic and things.  It is really stunning to be out there, though.  I covered the trail as quickly as I could.  This is not a good section for running.  It's very rocky, lots of climbs up outcroppings and then descents down said outcroppings.  This is the most technically difficult section of the AT that I've done.

The trail here goes along the West side of Canopus Lake, and mostly follows the higher ridges.  The lake is usually visible through the trees in the winter.  In summer, you probably can only get fleeting glimpses of it.  I was surprised to meet a canyon of green in the middle of winter.  It didn't last long, but it was cool.













In the woods, you can usually hear water before you see it.  I heard this gurgling brook near the top of the ridge line, and the trail ran right across it.  It was a huge spring: rocks on the trail covered it for maybe 30'of trail.  There were icicles on logs spanning the water, and little islands of ice and snow on the rocks sticking up out of the stream.  Gorgeous.

My minimum goal for the day was to reach a certain dog-leg in the trail near the North end of the lake.  I'm doing the AT mostly solo, and mostly in little chunks.  So I end up covering 1-4 miles of trail, but running/hiking 2-8 miles.  Some trail segments are longer than that, though, so I have to hit them in 2 sections.  This is one of those.  I knew if I completed this hike to the dog leg from the South, then I could get to the dog leg from the North on a different day.  I got to my goal in a little less than an hour.  I was not prepared for what I'd see.  It blew me away.

It looks like the Hudson River, but it's not.  And it also looks foggy, but it's not.  It was somewhere between 9-13 degrees for the entire hike, and a light to medium snow was falling most of the time.  I had brought my backpack because I expected to take off my coat and hat and some point like I had on my first cold-weather trail run.  It was not to be.  10 degrees and a slower pace is a completely different experience than 22 degrees and running.  They stayed on.  I kept moving after I'd reached the overlook, hoping to make my next leg shorter.  I got about another mile in before I could feel that it was time to return.  The forest had changed from the shorter, skinnier trees at the ridge line to taller trees, reaching up from the floor of the ravine for sunlight.   It was 3.75 miles in, and I needed to get home eventually and get some other things done.

The return trip was shorter.  Or it felt shorter, anyway.  I tried to cover it as quickly as I could.  I had done my exploring, now I just needed to clean up and finish the job, which I like to do quickly.  I was also starting to get hungry (I don't eat before these early runs), and I also realized that it was really really cold.  It was like biking, when I realize that I'm going to need to make time to stop, get a drink, and eat a snack before I start to bonk.  This time it would be the cold that would be dangerous.  Writing it this way sounds really dangerous, but it's the opposite: when you've spent a lot of time pushing your body in a physical way, you understand when it's telling you, "I'm fine now.  But if you don't go toward somewhere warm, I might not be fine in a while." It was telling me "I don't have hypothermia yet.  But if you don't get warmer, I will soon have hypothermia." 

I like the warnings, and I heed them.  I ignored them once, on a bike ride in early Spring a few years ago.  I ran completely out of water and blood sugar, and I could feel my body shutting down certain things because my legs had to keep pedaling.  Although I was able to set down for half an hour and let my blood sugar return to a functional level and make it home, it was a scary experience that I did not want to repeat.   So I turned around and tried to move faster home.  I ran where I could, kept my hands in my pockets as I ran and walked, and soon made it back to the overlook, where I indulged in a selfie.  A little more than a mile from the car, I lost the trail.  I'd been following a mix of the trail markers, the obvious trail, and my own footprints (there weren't any others), and I realized that although it looked like I was on an obvious trail, I saw no footprints,and no markers.  I had the lake to my left, so I knew I could get back to the car no matter what.  I use MapMyRun to log these workouts, and I pulled it up to see that I was indeed off the beaten path.  I backtracked about 50 yards, saw the trail markers, and I was back on my way.

I get back to the car at 10:30, about 2 hours for 7.5 miles.  The rest of the day was busy - I got home, showered, went grocery shopping, bought the parts for a generator cable, spent some time cleaning the pantry, did a load of dishes, made dinner, put up some brackets for curtain rods, put away dinner, logged my pics on FaceBook, lifted weights, played a little Rock Band, printed some AT maps, and now this blog post.  I should be really tired, but I'm not.  

Christian and Katrina aren't feeling well tonight.  I hope they feel better in the morning.