New Year's Resolution?

Gee, kind of forgot about the blog for a while. In spite of the thousands of e-mails begging for the thrilling details of my life. Not! So what have I been up to? (This simply is so I can document any needed alibis because no-one else reads this.)

First of all, Christmas. My present came a few days early unfortunately. I was at the gym a week before Christmas chatting with a friend on my iPhone and he was goading me about my "obsolete" iPhone with it's cracked screen. I adamantly defended it; no replacement as long as it keeps working! Ironically that was the last time the damn thing worked properly. An important strip of the touchscreen stopped responding and all I could do was answer calls. I mulled it over for a few days and bought a replacement. That was the end of Santa's generosity to me this year...

The family holiday gathering, back at my brother's house outside of Woodstock, NY, was another compressed experience with everyone mostly happily jammed together and four nieces alternating between delight and despair with no known cause for either state. It was nice to see my brother's twin girls growing up. Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was watching my son be the responsible oldest cousin; mediating disputes, helping with chores, reading bedtime stories. Maybe that was my real Christmas gift. Chris seemed pleased with his presents;  notably a new Xbox game, some Rock Band accessories from me which opened his eyes, and a little throw-away present of a flowing sand desk toy that seems to have found a permanent home beside his bed. And lots of Toblerone bars, Terry's Orange balls and clothes... As a joke I filled both of our stockings with mainly new socks.

January means New Year's resolutions for most people and since losing weight is almost always at the top of the list the Shopping Channel has been providing lots of fitness buying opportunities. I'll probably have been on air more than ten days by the time this month is out. I got off to a bang with three days back to back starting with January 1st. With between three and six hour-long shows each day that's a lot of working out! My right shoulder (rotator cuff?) has been a bit tender for months now, at the moment it's extra sore from all the punishment.

I haven't made a New Year's resolution myself because I'm down on the artificiality of New Year celebrations. But I have awakened to the fact that it's time to start getting serious about training for Ironman USA this July. I've been adding swims into my usual schedule and I'm starting to focus more on my indoor cycling. I got talked into taking over the Marathon Clinic at the Running Room this time 'round. It's a big step up, but at least I'll be able to treat the Clinic runs as actual workouts. It's been cold out there too, we're in the middle of a deep cold snap. I almost got frostbite in an intimate area on the run in this photo.

Lots of activity on the computer front. My parents bought a new laptop to take with them on a three month trip to Mexico. I got it set up for them and moved over all my step-father's writing from his ancient PowerBook. I ended up having to buy a USB floppy drive to download floppies into their new MacBook! The new MacBook is a bit of a mixed blessing, We can all stay in touch better now but they're inundating me with news and questions. These trips used to be a sort of "time out"... I also helped another friend get set up on her new old Dell desktop which was a bit of a stumbling around in the dark. I got there in the end though.

Professionally, I've landed a contract to re-do the web site for a local gym. Nice to make some money from all my computer monkeying! I'm going to use an interesting Content Management System from Squarespace so they'll be able to do most updates themselves. I've also had to troubleshoot a problem with a web site I helped set up for a friend, irisimages.ca. The hosting company, bludomain, seems to have overwritten almost all the files! Kind of the opposite of what they're supposed to do. I'm doing a bit of forensic work to recover it.

 Listening to: That Old Pair of Jeans by Fatboy Slim from The Greatest Hits: Why Try Harder.