Punkin Knows Things

diamond-dogs

This exchange contains all you need to know about what kind of dad I am.

Me: “Did you know the Halloween Jack is a real cool cat?”
Punkin: “Yes.”
Me: “Where does he live?”
Punkin: “On top of Manhattan Chase!”
Me: “Did you know the elevator was broke?”
Punkin: “That’s why he slides down a rope!”

Calling Dr Benway

William S. Burroughs

I had my overnight bag from our trip to visit grampa. My pain medicine and anti-inflammatory pills for my ankle were in that bag. Taking them out the lid popped off. I found myself digging for pills in my dirty underwear. It was just like being in Trainspotting, or maybe some junkie character in a William S. Burroughs novel. I definitely have had finer moments.

“Calling Dr. Benway, can you write me a script, kind sir?”

Picture by Richie Brown, CC licensed via Flickr.

Lunch, Eat to Live Style

Big Ass Salad

For those curious about what it is like on the Eat to Live plan, this is my typical lunch. I can’t actually eat the whole thing, it usually takes two sittings to consume all that and sometimes three. It is spinach, roma tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, avocados, carrots, mushrooms, raw sunflowers seeds, a sprinkling of flax seed, and topped with a bean (I lean toward various white beans.) Recently I’ve started adding a small jalapeƱo to the mix, since it acts as a natural appetite suppressant.

When I talk about how I am never hungry on this plan, this is why. It is a pretty enormous amount of nutritious and tasty food.

Dream Job Part 17

Working until midnight? Check. On a thing that isn’t even really mine, just helping a coworker improve her examples in a course? Check. And conscripting a third coworker for a few hours of that to solve a technical hurdle I couldn’t get past? Check.

As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos, “Welcome to the NFL.”

Day Job Moment

Talking to my boss about my first quarter on the team:

Me: “I always feel like I’m not getting enough done and the things I do I’m not doing fast enough. Then I think about the team and wonder how people would be getting by if I wasn’t here.”
Boss: “Yeah, welcome to my life!”

We Are Fine

Just to let people from around the country and the world know, we are fine. Our area had some places that were hit hard but our immediate neighborhood and our house were never in any danger. Within a half a mile or so there were some road closures as creeks overflowed onto roadways but it was not too bad for us. People in Charleston and Columbia had it much worse than us, and Little River to our north had 20 inches of rain in the worst day, washing away some road beds.

I appreciate the concern people have, but we are fine and always were. For us it was a minor inconvenience. I feel for the people for whom this was total devastation.

Down

My weight loss is much slower since getting off the strict plan, but still happening. I was 173.5 lbs this morning, finally getting me under the psychologically important 175 pound tier. I am now ten pounds lighter than the day I started college in 1985 and I hope to keep going more. We’ll see where I finally stabilize at. I hope it is at a point where I have nothing jiggly hanging over my belt, which I will continue to have for at least another 15 pounds.

One More Thing

Faces on the Street in Mumbai

I don’t know if I made it clear, the important thing about the training course I taught last week is that it gated my internal transfer. With it done, I’m now at work as a developer evangelist/solution architect. My new boss and I worked out a list of my goals for Q4 yesterday. When it was done, he asked me how I felt about the list. I said, “Frankly, I feel bad taking money to do all this.”

Photo by Willem Velthoven

Final Tally

I spent five days in San Diego at the main office, preparing for and then conducting our training session. Basically, as my partner and I move on to other roles in the company, we trained up a squad of consultants and partners to do the work he had been doing.

The training was well received, with no one in the room feeling unprepared to face the future. I’ve seen complimentary emails moving about, so both higher-ups and the trainees seem happy with the whole deal.

On top of that, I was prepared to take a weight hit, hoping to confine it to a few pounds. Even though I still ate salad at the cafeteria every day and only budgeted one single meal (at Eureka Burger, of course) to go crazy, it seemed possible that just traveling and eating airport food, higher beer consumption, etc might catch up to me. In fact, this morning I was half a pound under where I was last week.

So, all told it was best case scenario all around.

Class Day Two

Gearing up for day two of the course. Funny thing, it gets real easy for me now. Most of the talking is done. From here out, they mostly work labs. The are designed to be challenging, so there will be a lot of interaction, but the solid multi-hour blocks of me with Powerpoint are over.

Writing these labs and creating the special version of our product with just enough problems to make this challenging for them was laborious and like pulling teeth. Conducting the lab by comparison should be a cake walk.