Brick!

With actual running! The hip has been feeling good lately. Thought I would give her a spin. I missed wednesday night's bike ride thanks to work so I bricked it last night. 10 miles on the bike in 29 minutes, then 3 miles on the treadmill in 29 minutes.

I started the run slow to really check my form, then added speed as it felt comfortable. It's been almost a month since I've felt ok running, so I was pretty cautious going in. Got the speed up to 6.2 and held it there. Now a month ago, I did 10 miles at 6.8 speed (1 min/mile faster), so this was pretty conservative. About 2.8 miles in I felt the hip starting to tighten up a bit, and I didn't want to push it. Today I can feel the inflamation in my hip flexor, but I iced it and it's fine. So I still have to do more PT movements, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's good to get some confidence back in my running.

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Work

Today is my last day working full time at this old job. I'm going to stay on board for a while contracting at night going forward as needed. And I still have one trip left to Atlanta to hand over control of my projects to the boss. But overall I am not sad to leave this one behind.

Working from home has been great. You get to somewhat set your schedule, control your hours, and work at your own pace uninterrupted. I typically stay in pajamas until at least noon, then I do actually shower and get dressed every day. No office attire, no shoes needed, and other people can come by if they want to interrupt you. Kelley can leave the baby monitors with me while she does errands during naptime without having to haul the kids with her (that may be the biggest benefit of work-from-home - a happy wife). I get to see the kids whenever I can walk back upstairs. With no daily commute, I don't need a car or cell phone. I never have to go anywhere. Walk downstairs to work, walk upstairs for dinner at the end of the day. Blog and bill my hours back, everything gets tracked and paid up. I keep a tv in my office, and watch soaps and movies and talk shows and sports every day. It is background noise. In an office you hear the phone ring sometimes, and other people talking to each other. I have to reproduce that through tv.

Working from home can suck too. I only have one phone number here, so any client or office person can call me at any time day or night and I'm always here. One client called at 8 pm one saturday, when I had the girls in the bathtub. They were screaming loud and he was trying to talk about an access database project. I told him I was tied up with two naked wet chicks at the moment, and he kept talking. Sometimes work keeps you going well into the night. If I could have left the office and gone home at 5:30 on wednesday I would have, but this web site had to go live so I worked clear through until after 8 pm (started working at 6 that morning) and ate a cold dinner. So when you work from home and you never leave you are always at the office! Some weeks it gets really bad. I will literally go from sunday night until thursday night without stepping through the outside doors of the house. I work until kelley puts dinner on the table (God bless her), then it's time to get the kids in the bath and in bed for the night around 8:30 pm, then I can go to the gym. If I don't have to go back downstairs and finish something before xx comes back into the office the next morning. That's one reason I hit the stationary bike and treadmill/elliptical so often, I have to wait until late at night before I can leave the house. If I am able to get away then and feel up to a workout that late at night. There is no "swing by the gym after work" if there is no commute home from work.

So now I have to buy or borrow a car. I think I can borrow for at least the first few weeks. Monday at the latest I'm going to the verizon store to get a cell phone with a Raleigh (919) phone number. Yesterday I got estimates to replace the broken down furnace ($2500) and hire the movers ($4500) to get all of our stuff up to the new house in Raleigh. We haven't found the new house yet. This weekend will be final prep for listings like landscaping, interior paint touch ups, and start packing up boxes. Monday I might have to do some work for the old job still, but tuesday is travel & paperwork day, and wednesday I start the new job. This is incredibly exciting for me.

My current boss says that he wants to hire someone to replace me. I have my doubts if he actually will, he did my job himself. So if you want to work from home (or in atlanta) as a programmer and write vb.net, classic asp, transact-sql, css, html, javascript, and can work on access and sql server databases, call or email me and i'll put you in touch with the guy.

My new job is just building vb.net web sites over sql server databases in a closed envorinment. It's a software company, they build software and sell it to agriculture businesses like farmers and grocery stores. Management loved that I keep the organic garden every summer. About 2/3 of the employees are developers like me. They also need to hire one more developer just like me. They are only considering people who already have a place to live in Raleigh, and they only hire the best developers in the area. My job was open for over a month. There are so many people out of work in Raleigh that most jobs are filled within an hour and they don't have to hire people from out of state. I only got in the door by putting kelley's dad's address on my resume. But since I am going to live with her dad until we buy a house up there, it's a legal move. Still, they interviewed dozens of people, and only offered the job to me. Robert Half technology got me in there, so let me know if you're interested in that and I can put you in touch with my guy at RHI. This is an awesome gig, an incredibly desirable company to work for. They only hire the best, so I will only be working with the best.

Before I had this work from home job, I was self employed. All of my friends went away then, I only socialized with clients and employees, and I worked 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. AAI was a client then, they subcontracted their software development to me. Then 2 years ago I wanted to sell the busienss and become an employee again, and they had a standing offer on the table. We had to negotiate pay and that was it. This was just over 2 years ago. I took a 60% pay cut to work from home. It hasn't been easy only earning 40% of what I used to, but we still got by. And it was worth it. I was able to stop smoking, start running triathlons, and spend time with my kids. But the social depravation has taken its toll. I'm ready to make new friends, set regular hours, learn a new city, and reconnect with all of my old college friends that live there now. The new gig has a significant pay raise to about 75% of my self-employed pay. Leaving my own business went so badly that I have been paralyzed by the thought of change for the last few years. Now that the plan is being executed I am feeling confident that I am making the right change for my family. Of course, nobody else wants to admit that and they are still trying to talk me into staying in Greenville. I hate to upset the balance of my extended family, my mother says to ignore her if she starts crying. But I have to do what's best for my family and my kids.

OK, now this has become a long, honest, emotional post and I'm just rambling. But you probably didn't read this far down, did you Glaven? [he posted the same question earlier in the week] Good luck to Nic, he's trying to break 3 hours in the Twin Cities marathon after missing it by only 7 seconds a few weeks ago! Also sunday is the Milwaukee Marathon that Gazelle and Havs are both running. Good luck to you guys! The SC Half Ironman is also on sunday, but I'm not sure I know anyone running it this year. Coach Katie will be there with her athletes though. Have a great weekend!