One of lifes firsts...

Today is a breakthrough day for me. I got to experience yet another "first" in my life, and I must say, its a good one. Today, I am wearing my first professionally laundered and pressed shirt. "What?" you say? Don't get me wrong. I've been to the cleaners many times, but always for the "dry clean only" stuff. When I first started working an office job, I was still in college (albeit grad school) and both had the time to iron and the mindset that paying someone to wash your clothes while you had a perfectly good mother to do it for you was ludicrous. Besides, I wasnt going to work for that company after I got outta school anyways, so why bother, right? Finishing grad school, I pretty much walked off the commencement ceremony carpet right in to my illustrious consulting career at... the same company. Hey what can i say? I'm a sucker for the comfort level that comes with familiarity. At any rate, even as a consultant there was really no need to pro launder since while I was in the office the old rules would apply and while I was at a client site I would have to iron anything that came out of the suitcase I was living out of anyway. Then came babies, marriages,and condos (not necessarily in that order and not necessarily plural), and with those things came the need to leave the comfort of what I know for the comfort of being able to stay at home with my family. (*NOTE: If you are not a member of my family please replace the bold face end of the previous sentence with "the comfort of getting a ridiculous salary increase". Just covering my bases.) Now I had a job where I had to focus on projecting myself in a professional manner every day. Even though the environment was casual, I make it a point to at least be business casual. I kinda have to since I look like a meathead (and lets face it, kinda AM a meathead) and have to make personal amendments to compensate for the public opinion that muscular guys are stupid. It sucks, but thats life. And to be honest, its no different from the opinion I share with others that all hot chicks are bitches. (This is definitely a topic for another post). Theres a good chance that its not true, but I havent been proven wrong yet. (*NOTE: If you are my wife, please suffix the preceding sentence with "except by my wife". *swish*) At any rate, the point is, I wear button down shirts and for the past couple of years I have been ironing them myself. Until NOW! *insert dramatic organ music riff* Since time is a commodity these days and it takes me roughly 25 minutes to iron one shirt (yes... I realize thats probably longer than most), my ridiculously, ridiculously (*swish, swish*) hot wife suggested I get some of my shirts laundered. After all, its only a buck per shirt to get it cleaned and pressed, which is like paying someone 2 bucks to give me an hour of free time. She brought the shirts yesterday morning. I picked them up yesterday afternoon. And today, I am wearing my first professionally laundered and pressed, non-dry clean only shirt... and it feels damn good.

Baby Update

May 18th is the new due date. The baby ticker has been updated to reflect this. 27 more days until Alex is here. Sheesh! I'm not even done putting in the closet yet...

---Update to the update
I switched the ticker back to reflect the original "due date" since it was being used by some to monitor the actual weeks of pregnancy rather than the countdown to arrival. So let it be known that the due date is May 25th but the C-section is scheduled for May 18th.

Breaking the hiatus..

Hoo-Wee! So its been a hot minute, and for that I apologize. Lemme give a quick rundown on what has been going on in the past month. I should start with what HASN'T been going down and that is any sort of training. The gloves are underway and I'm not in 'em. First weigh-ins were on the 26th of March, and I didnt even come close to the 178 mark. Well, I came close enough to know that if i did make weight, I wouldnt have been able to hold it for 5 weeks or whatever my participation in the tournament would have been.

I kept thinking about the reasons I wasnt able to cut the weight, since its never been a problem before. I mean, towards the end there I was a cardio machine. I never had been in better running shape, even at the 200 pounds my bouncing weight would average out to be around. Then it hit me. This is the first time I ever tried to cut weight without, um, chemical assistance. I'm a long time away from the stuff you can only get from your favorite mexican pharmacia, but I was still always a big fan of ephedra. I was eating ECA stacks (ephedrine-caffiene-asprin) since the high-school wrestling days and never gave it a second thought. Then the FDA decided to make it illegal just cuz a couple-two-tree people up and died on it. It looks like there might be a change in that scene, but its a little too late for me.

Not that I have any regrets. I learned a lot from the experience. My next training regimine will be a lot more refined because of it. If I need to cut, I'll focus a lot less on weights early on and so-on-so-forth. If nothing else, I'm in a lot better shape than I was 6 months ago, and its not like I am going to completely hang up training or even competing. Martial arts are something that I would want to take an active part in for the instruction of my sons if they decide they want to learn them... And judging from the energy level Max is already at, I'm gonna need to stay in shape just to keep up with them let alone try and instruct them.

In other news, my new job is great. Depending on how the red line is running, my travel time is around 35 minutes doorstep to office chair. This leaves me with 3 extra hours a day that I am not used to having yet. Yesterday, I got home and went grocery shopping at 2 seperate stores (taking 2 hours) and still made it home around the time I would have 2 months ago. The people are cool and the work I'm doing doesnt leave me feeling underutilized. And then there's the city. I love the city. I never realized it until I was gone but Chicago has a great feel to it that I cant explain. Apart from that, we're just trying to get ready for Alex. Now that I am more settled in to my work, I will update more frequently. I am also toying around with the idea of posting pictures. We'll see how it goes. Peaceindahood.