Wednesday 6 May 08 @ 1945

Greetings,

Apologies for my lack of posts the past few weeks but I've been going through some stuff...

Feeling like chucking it all and trying to keep my head about me while keeping up with work, the boy, the dog, a kitty dying, being broke, getting the garden in, yada yada yada...excuses all but they're all mine and I'm not giving them up.

Work is pretty much the same, busy all the time and between the work projects, new suppliers, learning more about how I do what I do, setting up more processes and getting them accepted by all required parties, cutbacks, more work with less headcount, etc, etc, etc...and I'm very involved with the Memorial Day golf tournament once again which is to be held out in Bremerton and we have both courses this time so we are working with almost 300 golfers and enough volunteers to put us over that number. I am in charge of getting all our business partners set up both as players and as reps for their companies plus I help out with everything else like just today the chairman and I took a ferry ride over to meet with the pro and the food & bev director there to work out some of the last minute details and then back all with a couple hours work before and a couple more after so needless to say I'm keeping busy.

The garden is going well and I have some photos to upload but haven't gotten to them yet. Not happy with the strain of bok choy I have in this year but we'll see how that goes, everything else is going gangbusters and we'll be eating from the plot before we know it.

Henry and I are riding and getting ready for the 2008 Tour de Cure, this year getting ready to ride the 45 mile look up over the Sammamish plateau and then back up and over; it hurts just thinking about it but it will be good for us and I'm confident we'll make it. We start @ 9 and I'm hoping to be done in 4 - 4.5 hours. Henry has raised almost $800 this year and regardless of how much he raises he gets to meet Greg Lemond this year since he missed out last time. I have new tires en route for our bikes to reduce road friction from the knobbies on our mountain bikes and we're getting our 20 mile training rides in all of a sudden but it's been a crappy Spring for training and cold & rainy most of the time but we will prevail.

Henry has progressed to his yellow belt in tae kwon do and he was very proud that he was able to break a board the very first try. I missed it but I do have some photos of the belt test and ceremony as well as some sparring photos of Henry so as soon as I get them uploaded I'll get some up here and a link the rest out on the photo albums for all to see.

I've been reading alot lately, it's cheap and I do love it a great deal so I've been hitting the library pretty hard and reading about 4 books a week the past month or so. It has been a nice escape during my midlife crisis or whatever it is I've been dealing with. One really great thing that has come out of the last month is my lack of driving, I've been really trying to use my bus pass as much as possible and last month I drove a total of 210 miles. The goal for May is to get it under 200; baby steps...I'd love to figure out how to live w/o a car but I just haven't figured it out completely yet although I am considering going back to old beater Volvo wagons or something and then renting a car when I need something nicer to haul others around or go on a road trip. I'm tired of car payments and tired of being broke.

Not much else, Spring has been teasing us in between the cold and wet but at least I got the first of the season local asparagus last Saturday at our opening farmer's market; came home that afternoon and whipped up a porcini and asiago risotto with grill asparagus with a little cheap chianti I had hanging around and had to wonder what the poor people were doing, ah well let 'em eat cake I say. If they can't learn to cook fine foods for cheap then twinkies for everyone!

Hasta