Dropped the Duece

I must admit that one of the benefits of working from home was that you rarely ended up in an office. This prevents a lot of bacterial contact from other people in an office. So I came down with a sinus thing and ended up flat on my ass friday instead of going to work. This turned out to be a 48 hour bug, so it started around 4 pm thursday and stuck with me until around 4 pm saturday.

Saturday at 7 am was supposed to be The Big Deuce 2 mile open water swim race. I did not end up being able to attend. I did go get the packet/t-shirt. And since I was feeling better on sunday I ended up heading to the gym and put my 2 miles in the pool. That's 144 laps in a 25 meter pool if you are counting at home. I timed it out in 1 hour 17 minutes. That would have put me finishing 100th out of 108 people. I'm just glad I covered the distance. It's an ironman prep thing to build my swim capacity to a 2 mile status. So I got my miles in the pool instead of the lake, big whup.

In other news, Bigun got into the school we wanted after all! I'm very excited. It's a year round school, so it started July 9th with a huge waiting list. By last week a spot opened up and she got in! So she's officially in the Wake county school system now, in 5 year old kindergarten. Here's a picture of her first day at school:

Being in a year round school she goes for 9 weeks and gets 3 weeks off instead of a traditional 12 week summer break. That means she'll have most of september, december, march and june off. We're all really looking forward to trying this new schedule out. I prefer to take vacations in the fall/winter/spring, so I think it will be fantastic.

And now I have to tell an Evil Genius True Story. We're working on potty training her, and it's going pretty good I think. Until Sunday. She did put a nice dookey in the potty, and that's great. But she did not wipe or flush. Instead, she came and sat down on my foot. Because daddy makes the best toilet paper? wtf? She just stood up and there was shit on my foot. Then I found some more on the floor of the bathroom. Wow, the hits just keep on coming. That child is special.

I also got a tattoo yesterday! It's my first, and such an odd thing for a 35 year old to do. Couple of pics:

I got the word "Balance" on my chest. The irony is not lost of putting the word balance on one side of my body instead of in the middle, thereby throwing me out of balance. But I can totally understand why tat's are addictive. I knew that I couldn't swim for a few weeks after getting one, and with that 2 mile swim behind me I knew I could take a few weeks out of the pool. I'm pretty sure I will end up getting more in time, including the m-dot on my right leg after finishing ironman florida next year.

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I've been debating tattoos for several months now. What to get, and where, it's just an urge that wouldn't go away. This one is meaningful because I wanted something small enough to where I couldn't abandon when they were halfway through if it hurt too much. It didn't hurt that bad, so I'm planning the next (larger) one.

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Balance is a goal for me. I've preached for years on here about the benefits of balanced training. We also have to watch for work/family balance, family vs personal time, balancing your friends with your commitments, even beer vs..... well ok you really can only drink beer and be ok (as opposed to wine or liquor - Coffee, water, and sports drinks are still staples).

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But the fact remains that everything you do and every choice you make has a balanced offset sometimes called an opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of taking the wife and kids to dinner could be having beers after work with your cube-mates. Finding that balance can be tricky. Taking time to train takes time away from your (and my) kids, and that can be a tough balance. Going out to lunch with a group from the office often enough might mean you won't have the cash for a race entry fee (a cost cost?). So balance has been on the brain a lot for a long time. I'm hoping this ink will be a reminder to keep everything balanced.

Up next is a metric century bike ride august 7th. It's a local charity ride, and I'm using it mostly as a training race to get a time established for the half ironman in september. Should be a hot blast, I'm really looking forward to it!