Almost Athletic

I got to be near an actual athletic event recently! My friend KC from the RAM team did the Swim the Suck 10.3 mile open water swim race. She asked me to pilot for her, so I hopped in the kayak. No way I'm going to pass up another road trip to Chattanooga! KC and I also got to hang out with her husband Chris, and another couple (Fred & Lisa) made the trip too. Fred swam, Lisa kayaked. I only took pictures while we were on the river, but the entire weekend was filled with craft beer, BBQ, and lots of laughs. Nooga is a really fun town.

Selfie in the house the night before. Feeling it.

Me with KC before the race

Suit up!

the Tennessee River

Selfie with a girl taking a selfie behind me

This is actually KC and Fred in the water

Lisa on pilot

Good form

My view for 4 hours in the water

Finally the clouds starting to break

They had an inflatable cow at the finish line

KC and Chris at the finish

Here we go!

That whole trip was a blast. It really makes me miss swimming open water, swimming long, and swimming on the RAM team. At least I can still run, but it only happens once or twice a week, and usually not longer than 3 miles.

Last weekend was the NC State Fair. I don't go to the fair, and usually complain about the traffic. But this year the traffic didn't bother me, my commute goes in the other direction now. I do love to run by the fairgrounds while the fair is going on, it's always so nice to see all of the people who come out to the fair. So I went out for an easy 3, and it was cool. and it felt good, and I took my phone so I could always call for a ride home. Then I decided just to keep going towards the capital building, my regular 10 mile route. And funny thing, I never fatigued! Finally I discovered I was too close to getting back to the fairgrounds to call for a ride so I decided to just finish it out. It was the first time in double digits since the marathon in Colorado, and the really I have only hit 5 miles once since then.

On Hillsborough St

At the state capital building

a farmers market downtown

the NC State Fair

So I'm feeling good. When we were in Chattanooga, Chris suggested I try CBD oil to medicinally help with the inflammation. Amazon can't sell that, but I did get some hemp oil. Funny thing is, it really seems like it's working! My hands, wrists, and elbows were in really bad shape for weeks, and I was really debating going back to the rheumatologist because the current meds just weren't working. This hemp oil does seem to be the real deal. We'll have to see how that works out.

Mentally, I'm only doing ok. Summer lasted way longer than it should have, so now we get absolutely no fall in NC. No leaf colors, they are just dropping. Went overnight from high's in the 90's to high's in the 50's. insane. I'm not ready for the holidays to be here yet. More sleep and less weight would be nice. Road trips and great long runs like this really help! But finishing the porch project would be really nice too.

1 down 10 to go

Well my first class in the MBA program is in the books. No clue what my grade is yet, I'm just glad it's over. This class took a lot of time. I was still able to work in normal life stuff, and we did have a couple of hurricanes blow through that delayed the class by a couple of weeks. 7 weeks down, 70 weeks to go in this program. I really wish I had done this 10 years ago, it sucks trying to do it now. Plus I already know most of this stuff after 15 years working in management. It's not challenging or interesting, but at least it takes a lot of time.

So this first class (Management - Organizational Behavior) finished on Thursday and the next one (Accounting) starts on Monday. This free weekend I'm loving. But I got to get back on that grind tomorrow. In the meantime, there has been not much running, too much working, and plenty of this:

We do still have the cat

The kids got to go to a concert, here's Evil Genius

The concert was my brother Michael opening up for Jump, Little Children in downtown Raleigh

The beard is coming back

I'm working on the front porch project. Here are my architectural drawings

Digging a ditch for the foundation

The victim of hurricane Michael: the sawhorses holding up my boat

Flooding in the hurricane turned my ditch into a moat

Hurricane Florence came through, and it really wasn't a big deal in Raleigh. We didn't lose power or have any real damage. But it did take me a couple of afternoons picking up limbs and debris from the yard. Hurricane Michael 2 weeks later actually had more of an impact. Tons of rain and wind. I tried to finish the ditch for the porch before the storm hit, turns out I dug it about 8" too deep! I got the boat built up to a point then I've had to wait on supplies to come in. Like, I'm still trying to find the $800 for plywood and epoxy, so I decided to start up this porch project in the meantime. So the boat sat, covered, and the wind was so bad the sawhorses holding up the strongback collapsed. Well, 2 out of the 3 of them fell over. So I rebuilt them this weekend and got everything standing upright again.

Eventually I'm going to finish that thing off.

I've got the bricks and concrete blocks for the porch, and have the foundation poured now. Time to build it up, then floor it, then put up some stairs. Oh yea, and running. I need to do more of that. And I'm still trying to lose some weight, but the stress of grad school isn't helping that. Work just cleared a huge deadline too, so I'm looking forward to the holiday slow-down in the office.

So that's this chunk of life from down in NC!