Big things going on over here Today!

Hey all,


I just wanted to post a note and let all of you know that Taunya was promoted to CFO today! She has worked many hard long hours and it has finally paid-off. She is now considered by definition a kind of a "big deal". Not only is she a great wife and mother to our son, she is well respected in her field and the now has the title to go with it.


Take the time and send her a message if you can, she would love to hear from you.

2008 in review

Wow, what a year huh? We had a presidential election as well as a baby in the same year! Not to mention it being a historical election as well. As I sit here listening to Mad Season drinking a cappuccino stout thinking about all of my great friends and family I am in awe. 2008 has been nothing but a stellar year for us. We have managed to stay employed amidst all of the financial issues with this country. We celebrated the gift of life with our son who I like to refer to as "Maddogg". I will tell you this, for all parents that read this blog, I can tell you that this guy "gets it now".

There are a lot of things to be grateful for this year but as I mentioned earlier, my friends and family are truly the greatest. I would like to thank the Gaufins personally for being there in a time when we really needed them. Frank and Brenda I really cannot say enough about the two of you. The love we share for my son and your willingness to be there for us has been truly outstanding. I would like to say you are appreciated and even though despite our differences we do share our love for one another. Thank you for being so great. U are appreciated.

Friends are also a great part of our existence and I would like to point out someone special to me. David W. Dave and I grew up with one another and I would like to say that although we have drifted apart, he really still does mean the world to me. He and his wife Megan just gave birth to their 4th child and I wanted to say congratulations! For Dave, although we might not talk as much as we should, I really do miss you and look back at the times we spent together as kids and would not of done it with anyone else. Thanks for being such a great friend. Congrats to you and all of your success!

We stayed here at home for the holidays this year. We threw the Thanksgiving gig here for our family and friends. We threw such a shindig that we had 16 people over. It was a great time but a lot of work. We were so burned out this year that we even considered not getting a Christmas tree. In the end, we decided we would but just not put up all of the decorations. So, this is what we did.

Some of the highlights of 2008 for us were Barack Obama, Thaidra's Graduation, the birth of our son, Me working from home now, connecting with family and some lost friends and progressing in our careers. Well folks, that's going to be a wrap. I will post some more pictures here shortly. Thanks for reading.

Bored on a Friday night and I cannot sleep...watching Letterman

Well in the spirit of blogging and not being able to sleep..Here I am! Its getting late and I can here Maddox waking up for his late evening snack.

Well, it was somewhat a busy week. I recently just had the end of quarter for work and I think I did well. Although all of the final numbers are not in, I think that I did good. I am now getting ready for the 4th quarter and I just have 90 days left until the year is over. For those of you that are not aware, the year ends for me in November with is great. It gives me the month of december to recharge my batteries and to get ready for the year. Some of you are aware, but I am trying to win a trip to Marbella, Spain. It should be a good time.

Maddox is still growing like a weed and as I sit here and type he is sitting next to me as his mom feeds him. He is getting longer and making all different kinds of noises now. Nothing much really going on around this topic other than he still smiles all the time and looks like has not a care in the world. He is just so comfortable all the time. Mona has managed to be on the bed all night these days and I think its TLC 's way of making sure that she still feels like #1 to us

As I sit here watching David Letterman, he makes me laugh. On another note, I just saw a show that said Mccain's wife's outfit that she work for his acceptance speech was worth approximately $313,000.00. The earings alone were 3 karat diamonds. LOL. They compared this amount of money to the $900.00 dollar dress that Michelle Obama worse during Barak's acceptance speech. Where am I going with this? Well, I guess I am just really trying to figure out how Mccain and the hockey mom from a Alaska can relate to most americans.

I created a facebook www.facebook.com account about a month ago and I have managed to meet alot of old friends on there. Its a great way to connect and catchup with people that you used to have in your daily lives. Geez, time really flies. Most of my friends have had kids and really have gone off in their own direction. Like either moving to New York, Boston, Florida, etc. Some of them have remained the same and others have done something completely different. One particular guy I found this week I have been looking for awhile. He got an academic scholoarship to Stanford and was a high school all american in football as well. Turns out he lives in DC and he has an 8 month old. Him and I are going to chat, but I am glad we finally connected.

Finally, I just switched to ATT cable and my phone is not set up yet. If you are calling the house and getting the busy signal this is the reason. This will be resolved in the next couple of days,

Football is back!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited for the season to be here. With the Padres not being competitive (nice way to say they suck). I think we have a really good chance of going to the big game this year. We will see how it goes. I am currently in 3 footballs pools as well, so every, I mean every game means something. Anyway, I am going riding earlty in the morning so I gotta run. Oh, by the way, I got a new tattoo as wel. If you want to see it, send me an email.

Lots going on around here now...

Well? Where do I start? It has been awhile and let me tell you I am can honestly not begin to tell you everything or maybe I will. Maddox is about 15 weeks old now and he is really starting to come into his own. Relatively a happy baby(keeping our fingers crossed), he has been going to day care for about a week now. TLC drops him off and I pick him up M-F. I must say that it is one of the more exciting times of the day for me.

Work has been good and we are getting close to closing the 3rd quarter. Things are good and I have not been doing any real traveling at all. This is good. It gives me more time to spend with the kids and really helping out with Maddox. I have recently started playing golf again and getting "back" into it. I bought a set of Taylor Made irons and they are doing me right. I am considering taking lessons from a guy that lives in our complex who is a golf pro. Nothing major, just a day or two session. This might make a big difference as I have never taken lessons before. Who knows?

Maddox has been growing by the hour it seems. He is always kooo'ing and looking around at things. Taunya does the drop off in the mornings and I do the pickups. When I pick him up I put him the the jog stroller and cruise him around the neighborhood for about an hour. He likes it and I really enjoy this time.

We are going to the Dave Matthews band concert tonight so we are looking forward to a night out. It should be a good time and we have a great friend that is going to watch Maddox. I will be posting more pictures and videos over the weekend. Stay tuned.

Latest addition...iPod Classic 160GB

I finally bit the bullet and went for it. I ordered a new iPod classic. Its like the original iPod, but it holds a ton of music, videos, etc . Something like 40,000 songs and will play 7 hours of straight video or 14 hours of music. Since I have been traveling a lot, my smaller iPod nano would not stay charged long enough and it would die on flights. This makes those trips just that much longer. The cool thing is that I can now watch my movies and other things all on this thing too. Wooo Hooo.

The 4th of July is approaching and I am looking forward to a little relaxation over the 3 day weekend. I plan on doing a 50 mile bike ride here in Scripps Ranch. TLC and I did the 25 miler last year, but this year she is going to sit this one out. We are going to probably ride this weekend. Enjoy the 4th!

Tick tock, tick tock, ko koo, ko koo...

Well,

To sum it up that is pretty much what is going on now.  Its like watching paint dry around here.  As I sit here watching Truman and Mona chew their bones, snorting and making noises, I am waiting for the day.  Tick tock as I watch the clock and want the little guy to get here.  The ko koo for what I am going to be when he actually arrives.  Like I said, its like that long day at work, or sitting thru a 3 hour lecture and looking up at the clock and saying "OMG, its only been 22 minutes??"  Yeah, thats me.  I am THAT guy.  

As I sit here I am supposed to be in San Jose right now for training.  I talked to my boss and he let me get out of it which was nice.  I was worried that I might get stuck up there if Taunya went into labor.  Its only an hour and 15 minute flight, but if she went into labor I would probably not be able to get on a plane to come home until around 5:45 which would put me home somewhere around 8am. Not good.  So I decided to stay here and hang out to be more of a help.

I did a triathlon on Sunday that I was pretty much 100% not trained for at all.  Having been traveling and recently coming off of back spasms just a week ago, I still went ahead and did the race.  The distances were as follows; 1 mile swim, 26 mile ride and then a 6 mile run.  The last time I ran was about 3 weeks ago just before the back spasms.  I have not swam that far since about a year ago.  It was brutal, but amazing what you can tell your body to do when dealing with pain and issues when it comes to endurance events.  Some of the highlights or lowlights if you will from the race for me.

1. Swim-Took in 4 mouthfuls of San Diego Bay.  It was windy causing some chops in the bay.
2. Bike-26 miles, I think I did it just under an hour.  If I averaged 26mph that would be impressive.  I will wait to see my split times.
3. Run-Just trying to hang on. The first 1.25 miles was on beach sand.  Brutal.
4. Run-Ran with a 69 year old guy for awhile.  Cool dude.  Really nice guy.
5. This race is called the Superfrog/Superseal Triathlon.  Its done in Coronado and on the NSW(Naval Special Warfare) base where all of the SEALS train.  
6. My heat was with the military and I was running and swimming with some 20 year olds with 2 percent body fat, that were navy seals.  Alot of them passed me on the run needless to say.  
7. Finally, I did the whole race without stopping and walking at all.  I was proud of that fact.  With the exception of the Ironman, I have never stopped or walked in a race.  I am proud of that fact.

Anyway, enough of that  We might get some drizzle tonight but the weekend is looking to be a warm one.  I am looking to scoop up some new wheels for my bike pretty soon so I am excited about that.  Other than that, my next race is a bike, race again.  I am looking forward to it.  The only bad thing is that its a 100 mile race.

Oh yeah, Taunya finally had her baby shower this weekend.  Talk about waiting to the end?  Thanks to Katie her friend for putting it together as t really went well.  Thank you all for your help and baby stuff.  Its all gonna be put to use.

Happy Easter! Vegas, Boston, Tampa, baby news and my 1st bike race

It has been awhile since I have really sat down and typed.  I think that may have of been underestimating the work that it takes to get ready for the boy.  I will say that between the both of us working, the dogs, home projects and the like, we have been really busy.

We went to Las Vegas about a month ago for a close friends of ours 30th birthday party.  It was a great time for the both of us.  A much needed break and we just relaxed.  We were there from friday thru sunday.  Taunya bought her much wanted diaper bag and I got a shirt and hat.  Not just any hat, a Kangol.  Fun, Fun, Fun.

The last two weeks I have been traveling for work.  The first week I was in Boston and the last week I was in Tampa.  Boston is a great town and I really like it.  It was around 44 degrees so it was not too bad compared to the 23 degree's it was the last time I was there.  Other than work, one of the cooler things that we did was go to a Boston Bruins hockey game.  It was fun and exciting to actually watch professional hockey.  Something to note on the way back was that I sat next to a woman who had two kids.  One was 15 months old and the other was 4.  It did not bother me at all,

 but I gave her a hand with alot of things. I was helping her so much that people were asking me how old my kids were.  When I replied "I have one on the way, but these are not mine" they seemed amazed that I was not annoyed with all of the noise.  Well the truth is that the kid screaming the entire 4.5 hours of the flight was annoying and almost drove me nuts, they are kids.  They really do not know what is going on and quite honestly the poor woman was doing everything to try to keep them quiet.  She was extremely thankful when we got off the plane, but I felt its was the least I could do.  The funny thing is that we never exchanged names at all.  It was not really necessary I guess.

That same weekend Taunya's parents and came down to visit and give us some help putting up wainscoting in the babies room.  Man, what a task.  I can say that between the nail gun, the mitre saw and tape measure I thought I was going to lose my mind.  Frank and I (my father inlaw) began on Friday afternoon and finished around 9pm on saturday night.  I was so tired the day after I could of slept almost the whole day.  Overall it looks really good but I spent sunday morning and pretty much all day cleaning up

.  

The following monday I took off to Tampa, FL for guess what?  More meetings.  I had some delays in Denver flying United and I ended up getting into Tampa much later than I had planned.  It was really no big deal.  I stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel which was nice and had a great view of the city.  After being there for 3 days, I headed back home.  The flight was uneventful which is always good, but it was extremely packed coming from Denver to San Diego.  The plan was full of spring breakers!  My next trip is the second week of April that will put me in San Jose.  Its going to be a long one..ugh.

Everything is coming along fine with the baby these days.  Taunya is getting bigger and sleeping and overall moving around is getting tough for her.  She is still working and will probably work right up until the baby is born.  She is probably going to take off the following 3-4 months after the baby is born and then go back to work.  Working is essential for Taunya as she really enjoys what she does and her co-workers.  There is a woman in our complex that lives about 5 doors down who does daycare.  We have known here since we moved in here and she comes highly recommended from others.  Well we really lucked out because she has an opening for us!  So the plan is that Taunya will stay home long enough for her to have an opening and then we will shift over to using her.  Childcare is expensive let me tell you from some of the research that we have done.  I can understand why some people just choose to continue to stay home.  When you do the math, it can really make sense to stay home.  About 3 weeks ago we had the whole house painted.  I was going to take on the task, but between work and travel and everything it just was too much.  The colors are dark and light with some accent walls around the house.  This is just one more thing to check off of the list.

Finally, I did a bike race about a month ago as well and it was really really fun.  At first I was not really sure how much I was going to like it, but after we got rolling I really enjoyed it.  It was a 26 mile race and I started out in the middle of the pack.  I went by myself and met a neighbor up there.  The race was held on Camp Pendleton which is a Marine base here in town.  The course was somewhat hilly.  I finished the race in 1:21.  This is an average of just over 19 miles per hour.  In racing, this is quick.  Its not really too fast, but I felt I did well.  I could of done much faster had I not been dropped from the main pack.  I was fighting the entire time to catch up at times, but with the wind right in my face I had to do almost double the work.  Bike races are all about strategy.  Its all about staying with the Peloton and then at the last minute breaking away and heading for the finish line.  I was pretty much unaware of this.  

What I decided to do was to just go as hard as I can for the last 10 miles. The first 16 miles were somewhat hilly, but had a staged climb in there as well.  Hills and climbing are my strong point.  I passed a lot of guys going up the hill which was fun.  After climbing the hill there was a fast downhill.  I tucked down and peddled down.  I reached 45.2 mph!  Wooo Hooo!  I then began my attack to the finish passing a lot of people again.  I was happy, but I noticed that I had like 5 guys all drafting behind me!  I pulled a little off to the right in order to have them switch and let them break the wind for awhile.  Well guess what?  None of them would come up and take the lead.  This made me really mad, so I decided I would dig deep and try to drop them.  So I stood up and really started driving.  I dropped them but then I noticed that others caught up.  So if you can picture this, I was riding in the front of the pack with a line of about 5 guys behind me all in line.  I kept looking down to see how close the guys were behind me and could only see one tire.  Some guy yelled.."you have power".  Rather than get happy, I just got more mad.  I again slammed the quads and hammis and tried to drop them.  Again, no luck.  As we came close to the finish line, I began to sprint it out and head toward the finish line.  I crossed and was pretty much really tired and my legs felt like butter.  After the race about 5 random guys came up and said "nice pull".  This is the way that someone who sat in your draft the whole race says thank you.  I did not say thanks but more like "your welcome".  Next time, I won't be so nice.

Raise your hand if you know or have been affected by one of these.

Workaholic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Colloquially, a workaholic is a person who is addicted to work. This phrase does not always imply that the person actually enjoys their work, but rather simply feels compelled to do it. There is no generally accepted medical definition of such a condition, although some forms of stress, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder can be work-related. Although the term "workaholic" usually has a negative connotation, it is sometimes used by people wishing to express their devotion to one's career in positive terms. The "work" in question is usually associated with a paying job, but it may also refer to independent pursuits such as sports, music, art, or blogging.^{[citation needed]}

A "workaholic" in the negative sense is popularly characterized by a neglect of family and other social relations. The term has no clinical definition, however.

Workaholism in Japan is considered a serious social problem leading to early death, often on the job, a phenomenon dubbed karōshi. Overwork was popularly blamed for the fatal stroke of Prime Minister of Japan Keizo Obuchi, in the year 2000.^[1]

The word itself is a play on "alcoholic". The term was apparently coined by psychologist Richard I. Evans, currently distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Houston. Dr. Evans may have originated the term workaholic in an interview with him, published in the house publication for oil company Esso (now ExxonMobil), in the 1960's, and widely distributed throughout the world. In response to a question by the Esso interviewer regarding the concern by the corporation for workers who were often overworked, Evans replied that such individuals can almost be likened to alcoholics and might be described as "workaholics". James J. Kilpatrick, a nationally syndicated columnist, read the interview and referred to Evans and his creation of the term workaholic in his column, which Kirkpatrick described as a useful new term.^{[citation needed] [2]} (Evans' coinage also prompted the widespread use of the -holism suffix for popular compulsions). It should be noted that "workaholic" is often also attributed to psychologist Wayne Oates because of his 1971 book, "Confessions of a Workaholic." It gained more widespread use in the 1990s, as the result of a wave of the self-help movement that centered on addiction, forming an analogy between harmful social behaviors such as over-work and drug addiction, including addiction to alcohol. Although "workaholic" is not an official medical or psychological term, it remains in widespread usage to refer to those whose expenditure of time on work and work-related issues leads to the detriment of their bodily health, social lives, family and domestic life, or leisure time.