Happy and inspirational Friday!

Someone told me there was a debate last night...

The only debate I know about was the one I had with my brain about doing a second workout for the day. When the body says stop (and thats really your brain) you have 80% left. I ended up learning some Thai Boxing and even though my knee hurts today, it was great training. Spent almost 3 hours at the gym in total, tonight is a night off and I really need it.

Working hard to stay in top athletic condition because prepping the body is just as important (and perhaps more important) than a lot of things people focus so much time on. This picture includes my coach, he is fighting next week in Bellator MMA. He was in the UFC reality show, fought in the UFC and currently is the RFA welterweight champion.

We work around some of my limitations he always makes me work hard so I don't let myself down. If I'm only going to be here this one time, I'm trying to fill that dash (the one between birth and death on the headstone) so they have to buy an extra long stone.

It's an amazing day, I hope everyone has a great weekend. Get out there and push those limits, exit your comfort zone, do something new.

Blue skies, smiling at me

nothing but blue skies do I see.

I sang that in the chorus in school and in church choir as well. I was thinking about the blue skies this morning on the way to work. It's nice that it's light when I drive in and when I drive home and it's been blue skies for days and days and should be for a while. Temp's in the 50's and 60's.

We had a wonderful time in Dallas, the weather was in the 80's and the humidity was in the 200's... pretty much perfect for us for a couple of days of training and relaxing. The house we rented ended up being really close to the airport but for some reason the noise helped me sleep soundly every night. The drive was 10 hours each way so we are hoping to find some good weapons training closer to home but we don't mind having to drive for now.

I was hoping this trip would be zero business, but that ended up being a dream. With some serious HR issues, allegations of inappropriate behavior, harassment and all sorts of other things I've been dealing with (not me, but I'm involved in the investigative process and interviews). I drove a lot but when my phone started to have a meltdown we switched and I got to work. Hotspots, the new 'don't tell me you can't work'. I am also dealing with an building and lot expansion at work, had to make sure they were breaking ground and had all the sub-contractors ready to go.

I try not to eat fast food but Sonic was next to the gas station and I didn't want to eat any more beef jerky or dig into the cookies. My workouts are into warp speed mode, my knee isn't complaining too much anymore so I'm back at it. Running, cross-fit, power lifting, boxing and kick boxing. I'm hoping to start grappling and jiu-jitsu soon. Should be up to working out 3 hours a day 4 days a week and 2 days of running only for an hour+.

We are heading to the cabin, have to start on a few projects. We know spring isn't here yet but the snow should be melted enough to get the woodshed refilled and get up on the roof to see if the chimney needs cleaning. Need to measure a few area for a storage container so we can figure out where we want one dropped. Some shelves need to get replaced with wider boards in the kitchen area and we are going to remeasure for some area rugs/runners before we order them. If all of the snow is gone from the dog run area that needs to get cleaned up too.

Hibernation season is almost over. Both houses have a 'to-do' list. I've got a trip to Miami Beach in a couple of weeks followed closely by Vegas and then we both will head to Cozumel for some diving before work really starts kicking into the busy season. I hope everyone has a busy year planned, I'll make my way around some blogs this weekend and see what everyone has been doing.

Is grocery shopping romantic

Just picture it, walking down the isles together, pushing a cart with a busted wheel that scares even the most seasoned shopper. Walking past the pop-tarts, the ramen noodles, sketchy looking ground beef.

While probably not the most romantic setting, we have learned over the last few months to enjoy the little time we spend together so we actually enjoyed our little hallmark holiday together for a few hours.

The boss is out of town for the holiday weekend with his wife so we are house and dog sitting. When I say we, I don't mean me. While I love most animals I don't enjoy having to leash 4 dogs in order to take them out to a fenced yard. You can't leave them alone for one minute or they are eating a plant, eating mushrooms, rocks, socks, toilet paper, etc. It's a real pain in the ass and takes a lot of time so that bit into whatever time we had planned together to be surrounded by roses and chocolate (and by that I mean laundry and vacuuming).

The cabin was amazing, high 50's for a temperature on Saturday and very peaceful and calming. I managed a 2 mile run without too much difficulty so I'm hopeful my knee rehab is almost complete. I won't be running every day but I'll try every other and see how things progress.

Rock and I managed a lot of hiking as well, he enjoyed splashing in the mud and getting dirty and thought it was spectacular that I had to clean him off by walking in the deep snow with him.

Work reared in, as it always seems to do, and tried to ruin things. I lost a lot of sleep thinking about why someone would have an affair with someone that works for them. From 'I was told I would be fired if I didn't'  and the old 'that person got more business/financial gain because of the sex' it's just bad news all around. With a couple hundred employees I'm surprised this didn't come to light sooner but these are the kinds of things that businesses have to handle ASAP in order to protect themselves so it consumed a lot of my time unfortunately.

We are heading to Texas this week for a road trip and some (non work) fun and training. Looking forward to a few days together.

29 below, 55 above

As usual the temperature swings somehow still amaze me. I should know better and expect such radical changes but wow... the plows still haven't hit the side roads in town so it's a real disaster for most people. Instead of snow its now slush and ice and if you slide into a snowbank it's like hitting a brick wall. I'm glad we spent so much time shoveling and plowing.

I'm almost rehab'd from messing my knee up, finally able to run over a mile without too much discomfort. Getting hard to recover from not acting my age.

Spending a lot of time in the mountains lately, things are in turmoil at work so I'm keeping my head down. Sometimes that's the best way to avoid being the center of attention. If I'm not in town then I can't just come in after hours or on my days off. Winter has made everyone cranky on top of whatever crankiness and issues are currently present on a normal day. Even I've been a little more smart-ass and cranky but mainly because I can't work out as hard as usual.

Our woodshed cats are still around but we lost one of the three. Either it moved out or was a snack, perhaps this spring we will be able to figure it out if we find a body. We have been leaving water and some food out but Rock doesn't appreciate it so we are going to have to find a new location. I enjoy watching them do cat things as it reminds me of growing up. This picture shows Typhoid and Rabies sharing food (rabies is the mother cat you can barely see). They get along for the most part and I'm glad they made it through the coldest part of the winter.

With the heavy snowfall in most of the state, the mountains look amazing right now. Most of the the snow in town has melted away, our yard is 1/2 as deep as last week. With temps into the 60's we expect 90% of everything to vanish by Monday. Here is the view on the way to the cabin, about 9000 feet in elevation along a long stretch of high altitude ranch property.

I believe in trying to make your dreams happen, not just dreaming about them. This is one of the reasons we have the cabin, we want to live the dream. While we love scuba diving and traveling, we don't see ourselves living on a beach or in a foreign country. We picture a quiet life in the mountains, in a cabin. We aren't sure if this is retirement cabin because we aren't sure if retirement is possible anymore and in 20 years who can say if we will still enjoy the snow.

Our new vehicle arrived finally. It was a great move financially and more practical than having a car and small SUV. I like the new red Rover but feel a little cramped in it so I'll be driving the silver one most of the time. It's mainly a vehicle to transport Rock around in (for me) because I have a company car that I can't put animals in. They probably wouldn't notice if I did, they never seem to clean it as required but I have car wash coupons for the outside.

We are planning our year out for travel. Heading to Dallas next weekend, Vegas the end of March, Cozumel in April and Oklahoma is June. Possibly another dive trip back to Cozumel in October but that's a ways off. Besides the travel we are gathering supplies for some cabin and city home projects that needs get done. It should be a busy year for our days off.

A little snow and the state goes tits up

I played it smart and drove home Sunday, the roads were already sort of disastrous so I figured it was a good choice. Not that I mind being stuck in the cabin but there is something called work and when it's the last day of the month, everyone needs to be present.

It ended up being a good decision, the storm swooped in yesterday with anger and malice. I hung out in my old office watching the display of horrible decision making and vehicle choices as people spun out all over the roads, tried to tackle an icy hill, etc. The only dreadful thing was thinking about how much snow I had to shovel at home.

22:45 rolled in and I had to call it a night and get something to eat. I had a double shot of Calvados brandy from Normady sitting on the counter airing out, something that's a rare treat for me. It made me all warm and fuzzy and I no longer cared about how wet I was. Since my internal temp seems to run in full furnace blast mode I wasn't cold, just wet. My neighbor asked me if it was really t-shirt weather.

Isn't it always t-shirt weather when that's what you have on? An online friend from Europe asked me if I was alive and if I was prepared to be stuck inside for a few days...

Everything is closed today, if you step outside you will die. I'm at work with a few other brave souls and we have about a 50% call in 'snow' already. Lame. It's windy so if you step outside not only will you die but you will get deadly frostbite. If you manage not to die you should stay off the roads or you will really die for sure. I wanted to visit Starbucks this morning but didn't want to die.

Can't wait to text our mountain neighbor and see how much snow we have there (although to be fair they don't live in the tree's and get about half as much). I'm expecting we will shovel a few feet down there. Forecast is wind and sun for the next week so it's going to be messy and fun! Cheers!

About 30 inches, if not more

Note to self: buy a snow roof rake...

We failed to remove the tomato plants last year, now we are growing snow!

Spring to winter again

It's a slow time of year, always hard to get things done on the homestead when you have several feet of snow everywhere. Nothing really exciting to blog about, but as the wether and season changes that will change. Winter in the mountains.

A week+ of nice warm weather did a number on the snow problem but now there is a storm blowing in. It started dumping snow a few hours ago and they expect 1-2 feet here in the mountains. We are debating leaving a little earlier so we don't have to deal with conditions in the morning and traffic. The sun is keeping most of the storm at bay and it's only a few inches so far. I've shoveled once and it was enough to keep the deck snow melting and not accumulating.

Rock and I breaking trail/road

Yesterday the road was dirt and dry. The creeks were running under the ice and the spring pool area had a bit of water in it. I think we've gotten twice as much snow this year as last but it's been warmer overall.

Easy on the eyes.

That was the backyard view last weekend, half of that melted the past week.

We have a list of projects that we are going to start on so we've been sitting around going over them:

Have propane tank installed and plumbed to a new propane kitchen range.
New fridge, large one (ours is only 5 feet tall with freezer included). Need to make sure it's not frost free on the freezer section.
Buy several 'runner' carpets and a few small area rugs. This will spruce up the place and save the old carpet some wear and tear.
Order a new medicine cabinet and bathroom light.
Install a switch so we can run the well pump and cabin on a generator. We have a couple other small things for the electrician to do while he is here working on that.
Replace bathroom sink and redo kitchen sink plumbing
Storage container - still up in the air, depends on how much more long term storage and supplies we decide to pick up. We don't want the place to look jammed up.
Find and install 3 storm windows

It's a bit of money here and there but spaced out of this year it should work out well.  Work continues to be OK, it's nice that we are spending the weekend together because we rarely see each other 6 days out of the week. It's a lot like being single minus the whole being single thing.

We sold the Jeep and Mercedes this past week and picked up an 06 Range Rover for me to use when not in the company car. It's nice to have a full size SUV again, plenty of room for supplies and backpacks. We have another Rover vehicle being shipped in from Kansas to replace the Mercedes. While it was a beautiful car, it was a car and just didn't fit our lifestyle as much as we tried to make it. Once the new one arrives that will be Rover #14 in the last 20 years. It's also nice to have more luxurious vehicles because neither of us are getting younger. I'm almost recovered from screwing my knee up 2 weeks ago, a constant reminder that I should act my age... or not.

Texas paintball and back

Obviously I'm a sucker for punishment and as usual I find more ways to punish myself. This past weekend two friends and I jumped in the car and drove to Texas to play paintball.

Paintball? Yes.

I haven't played in years and just recently have gotten back in the sport. The game in Texas was a 24 hour scenario game with hundreds of players on each team. Back in the day I was on a team that won the European championship two years in a row and some local competitions but I just outgrew the cliques and drama that seemed to follow most good teams.

I'm used to running around and stressing my body but I haven't worn cleats in years. I forgot how much traction you get and how much your body has to adjust to the quick turns, rapid stops, etc. On top of that there was all the usual running, sprinting, low crawling (the night game was great, had to crawl almost 1/2 a mile to wreck an enemy squad), etc.
I gave lessons to people on squad element maneuvers, hasty ambushes, planned ambushes, fire and maneuver, and more. It's all natural to me but in order to be successful the people around you need to know what they are doing (and what you are doing). We were able to hold all the objectives, hold the lines, repel assaults, etc.
We won by several hundred points to the amazement of the other two teams. Our team commander told me that she appreciated my dedication and the quick training lessons given out to the squads before they headed out on missions. I also played a medic for a few hours and had 112 revives under enemy fire, talk about MVP status (had we stayed for the award ceremony anyhow).

One of my friends has only left Colorado to go to San Fran last year when we had a business meeting. Now he has been to a couple more states and wasn't really impressed with New Mexico and only slightly impressed with Texas. I think Texas has the interstate system down really well, we never had traffic issues and everyone was friendly and tried not to impede traffic if they were slow. We based outside of Austin so everything was really green and the weather cooperated nicely and was in the 50's.

One of my friends cleaning his gear after the night game.

My body is almost recovered. I'll give it a few more days before I run and do lower body workouts. As we all know, the older we get the harder and longer the recovery is.

We all had an amazing time, we are debating going next month to Dallas. It was nice to just go have fun for a few days and not care about much else.