Congratulations Sheldon and Kim. Your priorities have just changed.

Take good care of Ella Lilliane.

Our house is ringing with peals of children's laughter. One of Banana's buddies is over for a sleepover, and we are home to the class guinea pig for the weekend.

I better watch where I step.

Swimming tonight was so hard, I thought I was gonna die - no, wait.

Swimming tonight was so hard, I wished I could die, but knew I wasn't gonna be that lucky.

_{(to tell the truth, it felt good to have some healthy hurtin' going on in my arms and chest.)}

I'm back, I'm tired, I'm sluggish from lack of exercise, I'm ready to eat properly again.

It's nice to be home.

Business trips are a workaholic's dream. You are relieved from all family and personal habitat responsibilities. You don't cook, you don't clean up after yourself, you don't have to deal with relatives (face-to-face, anyways), you don't even have the regular at-your-desk trivialities ... you are free to slave for The Man until you drop.

I *am* putting in quite a bit of time at the office, but I did notice the sun shining through the window just after lunch today and took a whole Saturday afternoon off. After all, I'm in New York for the first time. I walked through most of mid- and lower Manhattan, seeing Times Square and Union Square, Soho and Greenwich Village, Little Italy and Chinatown, Battery Park, Liberty Island, the World Trade Centre site, the Brooklyn bridge, Wall Street, Broadway, Park Avenue, and lots of interesting folks on the street. I'm totally impressed by the vertical scale of this place. Everything is straight up.

The entrepreneurial spirit is deep-rooted in these folks. There are thousands of junk shops, operating under the guise of "Trading Companies". The goofiest, tackiest stuff is up for sale - plastic purses, shelf dust collectors, throwaway electonic and cloth goods, ... and there's SHOPS full of just one or two things. And there's several shops with the same twisted idea that this stuff will sell. I guess they have the best chance of finding someone buy it, here of all places. There are so many people around, all of the time.

Boy, I must sound like a country bumpkin. I do love the excitement and scale of it all.

Coming here for work means that I get to hang out with the locals, too. I was taken out to a homey Italian restaurant on my first night, and a swanky Manhattan place called the Park Avalon on the second night. They've threatened to take me to Dukes next, so I get to see the seedier side of the city. I hope they come through for me. I haven't felt threatened in the slightest during my trip. I've been all over, but just not to upper Manhattan or over to Brookyn or Queens. Maybe I'll save that for next trip.

I'm taking pictures with my trusty digital camera, which I hope to make available as soon as I get home to my required cables. By Monday evening, I'm sure I'll be ready to tear myself away from the office and all the work that there is here, but for now, I'm still digging right into getting things set up my way.

Whoo hoo!

Surprise, surprise! Things got moved up on my trip. I'm getting packed, preparing to climb on a plane to New York. I hope I have everything I need.

I certainly am able to pack a lot of fun into a week. This week includes:

• big hullabaloo at work while we sort out some last minute details of a big, big deal
  
• a surprise outing to a Calgary Flames game
  
• a social get-together for my old farts swim team
  
• booking airline flights unsing frequent flyer points, for eight people, all with different arriving and departure dates
  
• a trip to New York for myself with only two days notice
  
• Banana's city final ringette tournament
  
• Geek work that just won't seem to leave me alone

Pile wanting to spend time with my kids on top of that, along with the fact that I am single parenting this week (The Missus is in Newfoundland with work), and my life begins to feel pretty busy.

On the drive into work today, I passed by one of my coworkers as he was walking into work. I saw him and drove right by.

The reason for not stopping wasn't a snub - it was done out of respect for his privacy. We all need quiet time to be with ourselves and prepare for the day. For me, the trip to work has become a transition period, where I put away all the home thoughts and mentally pull out the work "to do" lists and bring forward the knowledge and memories necessary for dealing with coworkers and job issues. Having someone cut that time short really throws me off.

As I drove towards him (he on the sidewalk, me on the street), I saw him purposefully striding towards the office, still blocks away. I decided to let him have his time. A simple gift that will go unnoticed, but one that would be missed if it were snatched away.

Another weekend spent in Edmonton. The ringette tournament was a great success as long as you don't look at the standings. No deaths, minor injuries and a good time had by all.

A drive from Calgary to Edmonton with my dad meant a little bit of father-son bonding. Being with my dad brings out the redneck in me. We rode in a pickup, made some ethnic slurs, bemoaned our in-laws, cursed the eastern government and ate a greasy-fried lunch at a truckstop just barely off Highway 2. You can't get much more Albertan than that.

I'm needing some new music.

Everything I listen to these days seems to sound like Top 40 radio or 'old-rock' radio. Some of my work buddies have shared out their iTunes playlists. If I was sitting still at my desk for long enough, I'd troll through their selections. Yeti has some interesting stuff.

Perhaps tonight ...

Tonight was a tough workout. 2900 metres, but they were hard ones. 10 x 200 m with 10 seconds rest in between seems to be a blast from my age-group-swimming past. After the good, healthy hurt I feel from my shoulders, lats and biceps, I'll happily revist more of those memories.

We be building some muscle for summer!

tirathlon? triathlon? tire-athlon?

There's a freudian slip if I've ever seen one.

I was all over the place today, learning about computer speech recognition, child psychology, what part of New York the La Quinta Hotel is in, what a good ringette goalie ought to know, the difference between ECC and non-ECC 512 meg 168 pin SDRAM DIMMs, the need for reverse-lookups on your domain when you're running a mail server, and lots of other stuff.

I'm also reminded that switching tasks involves driving from place to place, and driving from place to place is a terribly inefficient way to spend your time. Better to stay in one place and get everything done. I'm gonna try to do less for everyone and more for just a few.

Had a great workout today, too. I think (because I've been told) that today is the first day of tirathlon season training.

Experiencing cerebral difficulties.

Please stand by.