Wednesday 1 November @ 2000

Greetings Fair Readers,

It's November and I realize now that I have fallen behind in my updates. Please accept my sincerest apologies...

A brief catchup of the past few weeks -

We turned the heat on today as we made it all the way through October (my goal this year) on our carbon diet for the sake of the planet. I was very happy we got to indulge tonight after school as this am the inside temp on the house was 49 and by the time we arrived home, it had only warmed to 51. It's good the for the planet and good for the pocketbook but there were a few times I was definitely tempted to give up on this quest for saving anything.

We signed Henry up for winter basketball today and he is excited to get started with that in the next couple of weeks. He is still bowling and is consistently one of the better bowlers in his league both in scratch and handicap but because there are such high handicaps involved on some of the other teams, his team the Bombin' Bowlers remains in 5th place of 8 after the past few weeks.

Stephen King visited the office today for a reading and book signing so I attended and yes he is everything we could expect of him; strange, eccentric and quite hysterical in his demeanor and stories.

Yesterday was Halloween and Henry was the devil from the 2006 Starbucks Halloween marketing campaign. Both his Mother and I were very proud that he was so original in his choice. We had a few last minute issues as the costume his Mom worked on wasn't exactly as he had envisioned but we worked through it and on to the downtown Edmonds merchants Halloween festivities where we all had a great time and even indulged in the Edmonds bakery yearly treats of fresh mini donuts...MMMmmmMMM! Henry had a great time and decided to stay with me for a couple hours while we handed out candy to the neighborhood trick or treaters. He was at first quite disappointed that we had so few although we purchased 4 bags of (good) candy this year. We finally hit the mark he set to be happy about it after 10 and we had a total of 11 kids. We spent the in between time finishing his homework to much bitchin' and moanin' but it got done nonetheless. I could not find my camera so pictures will be forth coming once I get them from Henry's Mom.

I kicked my fitness regimen into full gear about 4 weeks ago. At first, I decided to just get to the gym and workout 3 or more times per week and didn't really make much progress but at least I went. I made it 6 weeks and found that I was actually missing it if I didn't go.
At that point I enlisted a trainer and paid for a nutrition plan and have followed up for the past 4 weeks. Well since 10/02 I have done pretty well; Dropped 36# of fat, gained 18# of muscle and dropped total body fat from 38.7% to 29.5%. My lean body mass is 196#. I'm getting stronger everytime I go to the gym, my arms and legs are getting bigger and my waist and ass are getting smaller. I remain positive and am excited that at the age of 46 I finally like exercise and I'm paying attention to what I eat w/o being militant about it. I drink less but still indulge on occasion with pizza, beer, whisky and other not so healthy alternatives but these remain in moderation and even though I went a bit nuts yesterday for Halloween I counted it as a "free" day and I'm back to where I need to be in my eating today. Life happens so I just need to moderate when I can, indulge occasionally and then moderate some more.

I have a new manager @ work and things are going well. My work partner, Eva and I are moving out of the Help Desk and this is my first job move in 12.5 years working for another department. We're going from support to provisioning and will be responsible for managing not only service providers for all stores and support persons but will soon fold all phone carriers and hardware providers into our quiver. We will go from about 5 suppliers to almost 20 in the next 12 months. Gonna be busy.
I'm also still pursuing jobs in the International IT department with the blessing of my new manager and hope this will pan out. That is the direction I would like to go and I see more than ample opportunities for growth there but even if that doesn't pan out, I am excited about the direction of my current positions and the changes we are making as we look to the future.

That about wraps up the last month or so and I will diligently work to update more often as well as get some pictures out here of the past few weeks. It's getting cold, down to 31 @ night so winter is upon us.

All the best,

Jim