Thursday, January 28, 2010

Week 12 - "Cross Training"

“The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If this is the case, then I have a lot of wisdom.

Yesterday was an early release day for the girls. Sarah had plans in the mid-afternoon and she asked if I could come home at lunch to see Ellie off the bus. With business becoming more mobile, this was a no brainer.

I left the office around 11:30AM and hit the house about 10 minutes before the bus. Though the kids had a half day, Dad still needed to work. I reviewed a few remaining year-end evaluations that my directs had written on their employees, analyzed a couple policies and procedures, talked to my tech group on an issue with the system and put the final touches on a data base for scoring work performance. Grace walked in the house about 1:30PM with her entourage of friends in tow after getting off the middle school bus. A quick glance my way, a “hi dad” she and the group headed to other parts of the house for the rest of the afternoon.

About 4PM I had accomplished as much as I wanted to get done in my business job for the day. There would be some calls and emails that I would answered up until 6:30PM or so, but it was time to switch hats and put on the “repair man’s hat’.


The oven has been acting up lately. First, it was the temperature sensor that went out and now it was the baking element that had fried itself.

I spent about a half an hour removing and figuring out the wiring (some of the wires fried as well) to replace. Then the hard part. I went online to search for the part or an appliance part store in the area. GE does not make the process easy in locating parts. After about an hour and surfing through blogs I found out that GE wants its customers to use the repair man route instead of doing it yourself. Fortunately, there is an underground of “doers” that had blogged the best place for online parts. I found the part needed after peeling back the layers of the websites only to find that most of these places charge an arm and a leg to ship the product to you. 30% in shipping and handling of the price of the part is a little excessive.

After continued search online, since there are basically no appliance repair stores left on this earth, I found the part nested on Sear’s website under an obscure part number. Therefore, today’s journey will be to head over to the "dreaded" North Point Mall to order the part.

I finished the search, put another coat of primer on some trim, got a “after 5PM” cocktail, answered a few communications, cooked burgers on the grill, we all settled down for dinner together as a family. Sarah and I make it a point to have at least 5-6 meals a week together as a family. We know as the girls grow older and activities and hopefully PT-jobs come into play that these family meals will be minimized. This is an important factor in our family and both Sarah and I will continue to make sure this part of our lives continues. It builds and holds our family together and gives us all a time to relax, eat and talk.

Onto this morning.

I was a little longed winded above so I will skip the hum-drum and jump right to the swim:

Coach Mike’s Workout:


400M Warm up
100M Drills
3 X 100M I.M on the 2:10

3 X 400M – Fins
100M Swim, 100M Kick, 100M Swim & 100M Drills

Main Set
1 X 500M
Each 100M everyone in the lane takes a turn in leading.
200M @ 3:10
50M Recovery
Repeat Main Set


8 X 50M – ALL OUT
20 Second RI on the wall


200M EZ
150M Kick


Our lane was filled with Jerry, Jeff, Chris, Evan and I. 5 in the lane is 1 too many, but Mike wanted Evan in the lane. With this many in a lane, there needs to be some protocol set prior to the workout. Who will go first and when we are leaving are the two main issues that need to be established.


Working in the office, working from home, working on the home, working on track calculations, working on this blog, working in the pool and working on protocol in the pool. I think I am the wisest person I know, for today at least.

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