I just realized I hadn't posed since... well, too long (July 10, 2006 if you want to be precise) . Some things have changed, some have not. I was running on a treadmill this morning and, having almost 3 hours of unchanging surroundings, I let my mind wander.
My daughter turned 2 last week. That should have been a post by itself, however with family in town, and both sides at that, there was little time for posting.
Then, this past weekend, I had the honor of singing for a very good friend's wedding. With an out-of-town wedding there was much traveling and little time to post.
So how does this all relate to a treadmill? It's actually more direct than you might think. As you may have guessed, I'm training to complete the Chicago Marathon come Oct 22 -- yet another huge time commitment leaving little time to post. With the travel this weekend I had to squeeze in a 16 mile run at some point.
However, local weather at the wedding turned from the best Cross Country weather to absolutely squishy over our first night, eliminating running outdoors. Not only was I likely to get lost, I was certain to be wet. Not a good combination. While I've always held a level of disdain for running on a treadmill I now have an even better reason to avoid it in the future.
I thought pavement was hard to run on for long distances, but the treadmill at the hotel, featuring "SoftTouch" technology, seemed more like a very constrained trampoline than a solid running surface. Add to that the lack of any appreciable circulation in the A/C of the workout room and a TV that worked as long as you weren't operating the equipment and you have a pretty good picture of how I spent 2:20 of my morning.
The most amusing part of the entire run wasn't running but stopping. WHEEEE!!! I swear the room kept moving. In that awkward moment as you re-assert your control of your perceptions, and in my already crazy mind, I started to see how it really framed where I'm at right now. Several things are stopping, coming to a natural conclusion, while other things are still moving and I'm carried forward without conscious effort.
Let's start with the best part: Right before my daughter turned 2 we received confirmation (more like an affirmation) that we are now expecting our 2nd child. The first one is asserting her own identity more every day and we're well on the way to the next. Steady legs, steady.
Then there's work. I've been acting as Tech/Team lead for 20 months of a 3 month, temporary assignment. The new employee additions to the team are coming into their own. One has agreed to accept the Tech Lead role, relieving me of that responsibility while another has had to accept the Project Manager role as our existing PM found a job closer to family (another long standing transition that finally triggered).
All-in-all that wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't also at the end of the contract and with the new employees holding down the fort I need new work. I'm sorry, but it's been 3 months of promises that "we're 90% sure we have incoming work -- a year-long new development effort" that haven't had the i's dotted and the t's crossed. I'm about to jump off a cliff here with the end of the existing contract and I'm supposed to be happy that we're managing to get a temp badge put together?
Anyway, the other item coming to an end may (finally) be my usage of VB6. I'd been laying the groundwork for the technology conversion/upgrade to .NET for the existing VB applications for some time. There's now (2 years later) enough momentum to see it happen. I wish the new PM and Tech Lead much luck with the effort and I hope I could at least be around to see it happen.
This does, however, mean I need to get back up to speed with .NET and with Java -- both of which have had releases since I last touched them for work. Hit that wall, slide down, and get caught in the rush of progress! This would normally be exciting if I wasn't more concerned with planning for child #2.
Finally, there's the wedding. I truly couldn't be happier for a good friend of mine and I was honored to have the opportunity to sing for the ceremony. We met in church choir back in college and I count him as one of the few, rare people who actually understands me.
I'm sorry that I did not have the time in recent years to remain as available to random events. In my heart he is a brother and always will be, his wife not far behind in that category whether she knows it or not. They will be missed and yet their marriage represents one of the best outcomes I could have hoped for either of them, truly reflecting the beauty their relationship contains.
How time continues to move us forward, I'm still trying to catch up and right myself. I did remember to stop the treadmill, right?
