Bring on the dirt...

So the Birthday is over.

I have to tell you I have a very thoughtful wife. Amy (my wife) thinks that it is ridiculous that I never had any birthday parties growing up. I'm sure there are others out there that will share her sentiments, but it's just something that we never did really, I'm not sure why to be honest but it never really bothered me, perhaps because I never really went to any extravagant birthday parties of my friends...and so I had nothing to be jealous of.

Anyways, I woke up Sunday morning to a plethora of balloons all around me. 27 of them to be exact. Amy had organized them by colour where each colour represented a time of the day that I needed to 'pop' the balloon. Inside of each balloon was some form of gift, or a paper that represented a present that I had to open. It was definitely not something that I expected, but it was pretty fun. For breakfast Amy made me some apple pancakes and then we went to a place that has a driving range (golf)/mini-golf/and go-karts. They had a special on this weekend where you could pay $30 for two people, get 2 medium buckets of balls, a round of mini-golf, and 6 laps each of the track. I was very impressed because Amy had never golfed before so when we went to the range she we open to some tips and actually did quite well for her first time! After that the go-karts were next, I had a pretty fast kart definitely faster than Amy's. I wanted to bump her a little bit, maybe run her off the path and into the tires, but I was feeling nice so I didn't. We finished with the round of mini golf. We opted not to keep score because we were just looking to have fun. Because of this, we ended up doing a full round of mini-golf in about 10 minutes.

When we got home, we had some pizza for dinner and then a couple of drink to wrap up the evening while watching the Survivor season finale. Survivor, now there is a show that I want to be on, if they ever open it up to Canadian contestants I'll be the first one in line to apply.

Today was a very nice day out. We spent the majority of it outside doing chores that needed to get done. I cut most of my 1.75 acres, but left part of it un-touched as the grass wasn't coming in completely. I also put in an order for 8 cubic yards of dirt, it's set to come tomorrow. We have some patching to do, and a fairly large section over our septic bed that needs to be re-seeded because we had it torn up in the fall as a result of an un-even bed. So tomorrow I'll skip my gym session and come home and move some dirt. 64 wheel barrow's worth I anticipate.

Next weekend, I'm thinking I will get a backup sump pump that is battery operated to put my worrying mind to ease. I stress every time the pump runs because if it were to ever fail, I'd have a problem on my hands. And with the recent power outages (luckily none of them were lengthy) it's just a smart move in my eyes.

P.S. New hockey season starts Wednesday. I'm stoked.

Cheers.

Busy Busy!!

So some good news I suppose (depending on how you look at it)....work has been incredibly busy for me as of late.

My job here is to start implementing a product lifecycle management tool, it's like pulling teeth, because there are a lot of senior individuals, that are against change. Rather than use one tool to manage all of the data and be your nucleus, they would much rather use multiple systems, and have multiple sources of data. I'm getting there, but it's a slow process.

Recently the company made a decision to roll out SharePoint here, and found that I have quite a bit of experience with it, so I've really been thrown into that mix now as well. The good news about that however, is that they want to do some custom stuff with it and want me to learn ASP to make an interface that can look into their various sources of data. I'm always up for learning new technology, and it also gives me motivation to do some stuff on the side that I've been thinking about lately.

The one crux to all of this is that now that I have become spread so thin at work...I had to cancel a presentation I was scheduled to do at a conference in Nashville in a couple of weeks. I hate having to pull out of commitments like that at the last second, but if I am going to put myself out there for everyone to see then I will not accept anything less than 110% effort. It is too bad, but I was finding that stressing about it while at work was taking away from actual work that I get paid to do. I am still going to the conference which should be nice since I have not been to Nashville before.

Anyways, a pretty random blog today, but I'm having a random day. This weekend is birthday weekend for me....27 years old...no plans really because I am a very simple fellow and like to keep things relaxed.

Have a good long weekend (in Canada).

Over before it started

Well I think my jogging career has come to an end. I had been running pretty consistantly on the treamill for a good number of months. I then recently took my training outdoors, however running on the pavement and even the shoulder of the road have taken it's toll on my left knee. At the top of my knee where my quad comes down to meet it, there is definitely some inflammation. I am hoping that over time it'll go away, yet I know I am not helping it by playing hockey twice a week/baseball once a week and then training on it on the other days. However all of those other things do not make it hurt like running on it does, and it's something that is new as when I was running a few years ago it never hurt like this.

Perhaps with the advances in sports medicine I should go see someone, but I'm either too lazy to do that, or too scared of the fact that they might tell me to stop doing what I am doing. So I think what I will do is stop running for the summer (as much as that will suck), and start trying to strengthen it. In the interim for cardio I'll ride the bike, use the elipticle, stair stepper, or row.

To be quite honest, I think age is finally catching up with me as lately my back has also been sore. Not enough to put me out of commission, but enough for me to know that it's sore. I am thinking however of getting into some yoga to help that out, as I'm sure it's something I can stretch out.

I refuse to slow down.