Scorecard Weekend Wrap

Decent form but my center of gravity is too high.

Like much of my life, my expectations and reality are like ships passing in the night, they can see each other but are clearly not on the same trajectory. But all is well that ends well which is a more elegant way of saying that as long as you wrap up the weekend on a high note, the rest of it will seem that much better through that lens.

And the weekend did wrap up nicely. I finally got out for a very badly needed mountain bike ride, book ended by some laps on the pump track, the later laps with my two boys rolling too. Lots of fun and really a great place for them to get some exercise and learn how to handle their bikes better. So much fun that today actually marks the fourth straight day of pump track fun for them.

New Year, Same Issues

I did not magically expect 2010 to come charging in with all the answers to our many problems. I wouldn't have minded, of course, but I certainly wasn't expecting it.

We've rolled into a new year which means we've cleaned out calendars, thrown out as much 2009 stuff as we can and are working towards packing up our house for an expected planned move in the next month or so. We don't have a place to move to yet which is sort of holding up the process.

Here's a quick rant about the ad spammers who waste time posting garbage rental listings on Craigslist. Please, go wander off somewhere and die. You are wrecking a valuable and needed resource with your spam posts for fake rentals at ridiculous prices. It seems like Craigslist could be doing a far better job of shutting down spam accounts but they seem pretty content to play whack-a-mole with the ads as they crop up and are flagged by frustrated users like me.

Anyway.

The new year and decade have started off pretty much where the last year and decade left off. Which is to be expected since the changeover is more cosmetic than cosmic.

I am still pursuing a better job, still pursuing a less expensive place to live, still pursuing what measure of Kyani dream I can (maybe more on that later but no promises), still working to improve our current lot, still pursuing a better school to place our boys in, still pursuing a new rentor at the hair salon, still pursuing on all our fronts and making slow progress across the board.

And that's just the first line. There are too many secondary projects to even list but are also important to keep propelling forward or they risk stagnating and dying on the vine. I don't know how other people are able to keep on top of the ever-growing piles of things they need to get done. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to get lost under the avalanche of crap to do.

But we plug on, we push forward, we make inroads, we cross off minor goals on the trail to the bigger completions. But sometimes it is nice to take on a short project just for the satisfaction of seeing it from start to finish in one go.

It is going to be a busy 2010 for us. How about you?

Taking Stock

I had a good chat with my mom yesterday, the initial reason for calling was to see if I'd been one of the hundreds in my district getting a pink slip layoff notice on Friday. However, since I'm a classified worker and not a certificated, my possible pink slip gets to float above my head until the middle of May so I don't know what's going to happen yet.

I do have some sense of what's likely to happen and I'm cautiously optimistic that I will just barely escape the retrenchment hammer this time around. But anything can happen so it makes sense to keep as many irons in the fire as possible and hopefully one gets hot enough to blaze a new path.

What are all these irons I'm metaphorically speaking of? Let's see:
- The bicycling site complete with interviews, merchandising, bike and trail reviews. Current status: Paused due to competing priorities.
- The invention, the concept for which I came up with more than a year ago but have only recently gathered the prototyping materials. Current status: Inching forward ever so slowly.
- The editing and publishing of the latest dogs and bikes video: Done and done.
- Migrating IP from eHostPros to BlueHost: Awaiting ignition but should be pretty fast once it gets underway.
- Prepping to photograph not one but two weddings in July: In process but complicated by the loss of the wedding planner for both events.
- Building our distributor pyramid for Kyani: On-going and a priority right now.
- Keeping an eye out for rental houses to relocate to in Santa Cruz: On-going.
- Watching the job postings: Never-ending.
- Probably a half dozen other things that are escaping me right now.

This isn't to say that I'm unhappy or stressed out. I'm actually pretty happy most of the time these days and feel that things are definitely moving in the right direction on most fronts. There will always be room for improvement.

Yesterday was alot of fun too. While my wife napped and the boys were supposed to be napping, we ended up playing in the backyard, Grady hitting balls off a tee, Sully riding one of the cars around and Nande being, well, Nande and thinking that everything was all about her. I shot some funny video of the boys running around screaming and laughing. I wish I'd been able to get a bike ride in but it isn't always possible so I'll just squeeze them in when I can.

This is part of the reason I want to get us back up to Santa Cruz, access to decent mountain biking trails because Watsonville has crap and sometimes those crappy routes are populated by buster douchebag gang bangers looking to fuck other people's days. Have I mentioned how tired I am of this town? Yeah, the prevailing fuck-you-itis does wear thin.

Anyway, time to get to it. Got a cranky new PC with a bad image that refuses to boot up and play nice.

Last Day of School

Today is the last day of my contract with the school for the year. Which means tomorrow is the first day of my summer vacation. Only it won't be much of a vacation because I will be either working on projects or watching the kids so my wife can work on projects.

I spent about ten minutes listing out some projects I'd like to tackle during this break and it quickly spanned the length of the page. Not all of them are things I can tackle, like the electrical and plumbing work, but the majority of them are going to be all on me. Which is totally fine.

But the list will have to wait until Thursday at the earliest as we are going up to the city tomorrow to do a zoo and Exploratorium day with the boys. It will be a good break to get away from the house, go do something fun as a family and I've heard nothing but fantastic things about the Exploratorium (with the exception of the fact that it gets crowded but everything does these days). We're also going to be staying at a cool hotel for the night which will be fun too. And I think there are some cable cars in the schedule as well.

It really has taken a huge load of my shoulders to know that I've got a contract for the fall. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll be working full-time but it means I have options open to me and I can pursue other avenues without the taint of desperation hanging over me (which makes any sell about ten times harder).

Not that I especially want to change jobs but I owe it to my family to keep an eye out for a better paying position back in my regular line of work. I am looking forward to possibly being able to sleep in a bit more as this whole getting up well before 7 got old after about two days (and yes, I know I could be setting myself up for an even earlier wake up time with a new job).

My Father's Day Fun

I did not get a nice long bike ride through Nisene Marks today which was one of my Father's Day wishes. But that's okay, I'm still cleaning out from this spring cold I had earlier this week and biking is a lot less enjoyable when you're horking out lung butter all the time. I will be bringing my bike to work this week though so I can get a ride in after hours.

Nope, instead we did some major damage on the mess that is our garage. Well, my wife actually did most of the work on the garage itself, I did a few projects, made a run to Orchard Supply with Grady and played with the boys.

My main project was removing the skanked fabric covers on the bunkbeds. The slats are all held together on a frame and that frame was covered in what was once a nice floral print. Those days were long gone though and it was nasty with stains and broken slats and worn out cardboard. I removed the million or so staples holding the fabric to the frame first with pliers and then with a screwdriver which made it about ten times faster and better since more of the staples pulled out.

After getting the two slat frames ready and figuring out how many replacement 1x4's I'd need, Grady and I went off to OSH. In addition to the boards, we got a cool coiled up hose that's see through so its like a 50 foot long crazy straw! And a spearmint plant so we can have some kickass mojitos whenever we want them. Which reminds me, I still need to get a dwarf lemon and a dwarf lime tree!

Getting the broken slats removed was really easy as they were basically stapled in with these big staples. I could just pull the broken stubs off, then I flipped the whole thing over and pounded them out with a hammer. The new boards got cut down to the right size and I screwed them into place. It was actually alot faster and easier than I was expecting which is always nice.

Not much more to go before the bunk beds are ready to put into the boy's room. We need a new mattress for Sully but then we'll be really close to being good to go. I'm excited about getting them!

After I was done with my stuff, I helped organize my bike and motorcycle stuff, designated some stuff for the upcoming yard sale, some for Ebay/Craigslist and called in an order from one of our favorite Mexican places. My wife got the vegetarian taco salad and I tried the Al Pastor Chimichanga which was full of win!

After dinner all four of us went for a hot tub, the boys had a ball swimming back and forth between us, jumping off the sides and just being the funny little guys they are.

When it came time to put Sully down for bed, I read a book to him, skipping pages as I could barely keep my eyes open. When the book was done, we closed our eyes together and I feel asleep half on and half off his bed. Not for a long time but fifteen or twenty minutes.

Now the house is quiet, save Nande's somewhat freaked out whuffles after each of the fireworks explosions goes off. Oh, did I not mention the idiots around here have been shooting off fireworks randomly for the last few days? Yeah, with the super dry conditions, the fires burning all over the state and these fools are still lighting them off.

When I checked in on my internet stuff, I came across a great deal! Two years of Wired for a shockingly great deal of $6! Today only and today's just about done. I am very, very pleased!

Time for this tired but happy poppa to call it a night. Tomorrow's the start of a good week, I hope. I hope all the dads out there had a great day, just like me!