Oh Shit It's March. 2010.

Strike that. Its _late_ March. March 21 to be exact. What the fuck happened here? This was supposed to be a veritable cornucopia of pithy insights, devil-may-care winks, and profound wisdom. In fact, my last blog was all about making fire without smoke, so really, where did all of that good juju go?

Well...where to start? Life has been busy. Days are over in an eyeblink, they blur into weeks, which morph into months. And here I am. Late Spring 2010.

Kids and Lopa are doing well. Lopa is teaching as much as she can as a sub in the M.I. school system. I found a 20 times for $20 Bikram Yoga coupon for her and now she's all excited to 'get back into shape', I use quotes here because she's not exactly out of shape, I'm scared to see what she means by 'in shape', I think it means being able to see her six pack or something like that, and since I can only see mine in the morning, this could be bad :) She actually looks the same as she did 10 years ago, which makes me look like her older sugar daddy.

Kiran is eight now, and did you know eight year olds sound a lot like Beavis and Butthead? I love him but he is a little twerp right now, saying things like "wouldn't it be cool if the car exploded and that guys head flew off and he died?". WHAAAT?? What happened to my little boy...oh wait, he's still in there, I can see glimpses of it at the most unexpected times. I guess I'll have to wait until he's 25 before I deem him a complete moron, if I use myself as a relative measure.

Leela is six and she insists on cuddling with me every night she can. Kiran wanted to cuddle with me until he was seven, and I did it as much as I could because I knew that one day he would be over it, and I would be sad. And I kind of am :)  So now when Leela asks, I do my best to cuddle, because after her I won't be holding any more kids until I'm a grandad, and who knows when/if that will happen?

There is nothing better than lying down with your kid's head on your shoulder and listening to them sleep. Of course, I tend to do more sleeping than listening, and that's pretty awesome too. Leela is a very sweet little girl, but can still be a complete hellion when she wants to be. She's going to be a handful. She's as sure in her convictions as her mother, only more fierce. Yikes.

We just adopted a new dog. He's a year old lab and he was a stray in Tacoma who was brought up to the Seattle shelter, where Lopa's friend MJ volunteers. MJ is a dog-whisperer, she knows dogs and can pair them up with people really, really well. So when we met this dog, we knew that he would be great. We struggled a little bit with taking on an additional responsibility right now, but in the end decided it would be 'good for the kids'. Well it's really turned out to be good for everyone.  Shadow is a sweet, sweet boy who loves everyone and thinks he's a lap dog. I'm really glad we made the move to get him, our lives are that much fuller and better for it.

Professionally I'm working hard. Not as hard as I was in November/December/January, but still at a solid pace. I work 8-9 hours during the day, a couple more after the kids go down.

I can't say I'm learning a ton of new things right now, most of what I'm doing is cleaning up some messes. However I am doing a lot of refining on how I write code. Specifically I'm trying to write less, and make it easier to understand. The crew up in Seattle has been really, really great to work with because they all feel the same way about code (Code is the Enemy :) and software architecture (Less is More). So I feel like I'm hitting my stride as far as being able to deliver software in a complete cycle. By that I mean get requirements, estimate, implement, test, and hand off. Lather, Rinse and Repeat, and eventually what looked like an overly complex, untested clusterfuck is starting to hang together much better.  I'm hoping that once we get the fire under control, I can start to focus on big data and get some real world machine learning experience under my belt.  But the guys I work with are great, management is good in that they do a good job of keeping on top of priorities and staying out of the weeds, and business is booming. So I'm happy I made the move from Evri.

My triathlon season hasn't started, I think it will really start in June/July. For now I'm focusing on the bike and the run. I'm doing a lot of running, basically doing the opposite of what I was doing last year when I was full bore training for the marathon. I'm going relatively short distances, but running hard. I'm doing things like hill sprints and stair hops, and I've incorporated a lot more TRX based leg conditioning. So I feel reasonably strong right now. Not super fit or fast, although I did tie my PR for my mercer island 2 lap bike TT the other day. 1:23 in March isn't bad, I'll take it.

I've also been able to get up and skate ski a lot this winter, because Kiran is taking ski lessons. It's been great to finally feel balanced on the skate skis because I've become semi regular at it. I like skating way more than snowboarding in bounds, unless that in bounds is Whistler, Stevens, or Alpental and it's a 20+ inch powder day. I'm thinking of getting a nordic pass for next year, b/c the kids are both going to be taking lessons and I'd like to get up and skate whenever they are up there.

Lopa was encouraging me to take my 40th surf/kite trip this spring, but I decided to punt until next year when Jay can come out and do it with me. These things are way better with friends, and Jay always takes it up a notch :)  We sealed the deal with a handshake and a fist bump. He's going to be a father in August, so come next spring (2011) he'll be primed for a Man-cation!

Hopefully I'll be posting more frequently, but I can't promise anything. I do want to look back on these posts and remember what it was like to be 41 in 2010.