I am out of shape

I joined a gym last week. Over the past week I’ve had things come up that have made it difficult to get in and start working out again. I’ve put on the pounds since moving up here. I’m back at the weight I was when Jess and I got married… unfortunately, that’s substantially higher than I’d like it to be. By about 35 pounds. So I joined a gym that Jess has been going to.

Anyway, we got up, had some breakfast and then headed for the gym. We got our workout on and about 25 minutes into it I was DYING. Holy crap am I out of shape. I’ve got a couple months to get myself into at least slightly decent shape for ski season. Not to mention drop some pounds so that I don’t look so round. Thankfully Jess doesn’t think I’m too fat… though she grudgingly admits I’ve put the weight back on.

I can’t believe I’m this out of shape. I’m gonna be hitting the gym fairly often from here on out.

Happy birthday to The Dad!

Today was my dad’s birthday. I won’t announce how old the guy is out of respect, but it’s awesome that he’s made it another year. He always jokes about not being around much longer but I hope he’s around for a ton more birthdays. He’s the best friend I’ve got. It’s also the first time in several years that I haven’t been around to help him celebrate. Kind of sucks. I’m still adjusting to not being around my family since moving to Montana.

As you can tell from the photo, he’s quite the fun guy. I really enjoyed the past several years since I moved back to Colorado and a large part of that was getting to know my dad a lot better. We never really had a strong relationship until I came back to Colorado. Then he made a point to get to know me and spend time with me. Basically being the most kick-ass dad you can have.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! May this just be one of many, many, MANY more.

Phone companies suck

I went and looked at our Verizon wireless bill trying to figure out where all the charges were coming from. As I worked my way through the bill I found out that they were still charging us Colorado taxes. We’re talking over $10/month in taxes that we aren’t supposed to be getting charged. We moved our numbers and account to Montana in May but they’ve been charging us taxes for Colorado.

So I do what any normal person does and I shot them an email requesting them to fix the problem and credit the account the charges made in error. So I get a response that says “Sorry, we can’t do that, the state collects the taxes.” Bull. You collect the taxes then give them to the state. Plus, it’s not MY fault they screwed up the billing. I shouldn’t have to pay for that mistake.

I sent them another email tonight letting them know that their response wasn’t acceptable. We’ll see what they do. If I have to, I’ll work my way up the chain of command until I get Verizon to give me my money back.

Jerks.

If there were options here in Montana I’d consider changing phone companies… Unfortunately, none of the other networks really have any coverage up here. There’s Alltel but they’re even more expensive than Verizion. Unreal.

And the hit’s just keep on coming…

Yesterday was fun… Today was long… I went in to work early today, 10 a.m. For me, that’s an early start. I normally go in at 1 or somewhere after that. Today though we had a meeting to discuss updating and redesigning the paper’s website. If you’ve checked out our website, you’ll know it definitely could use some work. So we had almost a three hour meeting to discuss options and what we’d like to see. We made some progress and have another meeting next week to continue the process.

After that, I ran home and got some lunch in me. Then, back to work. I worked for another seven hours. 10 hour day for me. Long one. Fortunately, there’s only one more paper for the week so once I’m done tomorrow night, it’s time for the weekend!

No big plans yet but I’m sure we’ll come up with something. I know we’re probably going to Missoula at least one day. Other than that, not sure. There’s not a ton to do here in Montana. If the weather’s nice, maybe we’ll go for a hike and I can get some pictures. That’s not a bad idea…

What a day…

I got up this morning and got ready for the father-in-law to show up. He had some medical thing done today and came to our place to crash for a few hours before heading home. He’d been under anesthesia so he was pretty messed up. He came in, passed out and pretty much stayed that way until after I went to work.

When I got to work, I got started working on tomorrow’s paper. Things are going along smoothly when all of a sudden, BOOM… power goes out. Fortunately I’d just saved my work so I didn’t lose anything… anything except an hour of work time. The power was out for 40 minutes or so and it takes about 20 minutes for us to get our server back up and running after a power outage. Since today was one of the bigger papers of the week that put me behind. I was doing well and then one of the typesetters at the Missoulian went down. That meant I had to send most of the pages I’d already sent to a different typesetter. That put me about 30 minutes further behind. After all of that, I JUST made deadline. 17 minutes to spare! Yeah, I’m just that good.

After all that, I was ready to come home and relax. Ahhh… Two more papers to put together before the weekend.

Two fun things for today

I learned tonight that my wife, who is strong and independent (most days) has an unnatural fear of mice. Turns out we have a mouse in the house. She opened a drawer, the mouse was in it and freaked out. She freaked out and screamed. Loud. I came home from work to find her sitting on top of the coffee table because she was afraid to put her feet on the floor cause the mouse might show up again. We’ll have to work on getting rid of the mouse.

The second great thing from today was… SNOW! I went to work today looking at the nearby mountains. (A double bonus, I could actually see them, no smoke!) It was nice to have the fluffy white stuff make an appearance so early into the season. Gives me hope for a nice wet winter. The more snow the better. And soon.

Heck yeah!

Three games, three victories. The Dallas Cowboys are having a very good year so far. Tonight they beat the Chicago Bears who are the reigning NFC champions. They’re not having a very good year though. It’s so nice to see my team back at the top, even if it’s only for a little while.

Welcome to the new home… maybe.

I’ve always liked wordpress… wonder if I should make the switch…