Next goal on the list is to learn a foreign language. Somehow I managed to take almost 3 years of Spanish and get all As and Bs without learning to speak any Spanish. Funny, but also a missed opportunity. In high school we had a soft-spoken red-headed Irish woman as our Spanish teacher. One day someone pulled me out of class early for a tennis match at Ponderosa High School an hour away. After that I made Mrs. (anyone remember her name?) believe that I had to leave class early every Tuesday and Thursday for tennis matches – even when we were playing at home. It is still a little funny but I feel bad. I am sure she was a really nice lady but this was before I realized teachers were actual people.

I really dislike running on a treadmill. Outside, 25 minutes goes by pretty fast. On a treadmill every minute feels like an hour. But what I found out in January is that if I don’t run first thing in the morning before the day gets hectic, it doesn’t happen. I only ran 5 times last month. That is not nearly enough to help me reach my goal. So late last night we finally set up our new treadmill down in the basement. No longer have an excuse (like the weather) not to get my running in.

By the way, I left out a statistic yesterday. Hours of volleyball in January: 42

Today I want to thank everybody for the overwhelming support. Your words of encouragement have meant a lot to me. I cannot believe January has already passed! I definitely need to kick it up a notch in February with my fitness goals:

Pull-ups (dead hang)
Starting: 2
Current: 3 
Best ever: 8
Goal: 10

Push-ups (military)
Starting: 8
Current: 13
Best ever: 15
Goal: 25

Run 5k (at altitude)*
Starting: 8:50/mile
Current: 8:30/mile
Best ever: 7:46/mile
Goal: 7:30/mile 

January Totals
# of pull-ups: 275 ** 
# of push-ups: 475 ***
# of sit-ups: 830
# of miles run: 18
# of total lbs lifted at CrossFit: 10500

This blog had 1299 visitors in January. Thank you guys!

WEEKLY WEIGH-IN:
Last week: 148
This week: 147
Goal: 137

* I say ‘at altitude’ since I ran 7:36/m by the beach in CA – way less than my time here.
** The goal is dead hang but workouts include assisted, negative, and kipping pull-ups.
*** I did girl push-ups the first two weeks.

“I am not trying to make a statement.
I just want poor people to know someone loves them on their own terms.
I want them to know they are not alone.”
– Bob Hentzen

http://blog.changemyselfchangetheworld.com/?page_id=142

When we started our basement we wanted to get far enough along to watch Super Bowl on our new projection screen. That was last year. Now more than a year later we are close to being able to watch this year’s Super Bowl down there but it is mostly riding on whether or not our projector gets here in time. In the meantime we still have a lot of work to do between now and next weekend. A lot.

After talking about work all week I should mention what I do. I am a software quality assurance engineer for Oracle. My main area of responsibility at the moment is a set of tools that helps users create and manage databases. Originally my goal was to do something at work that would either make life better for me, my manager, or my team. Also, Oracle officially bought Sun a few days ago so my manager is making way for new team members. I have an chance to help make that transition a little easier as well. Given how this week started, I have decided to try to address all four of those opportunities. Since a couple people from my team read this blog I won’t go into details. I will tell you what I did when I am done.

Now that I am back on track, I can look into the original goal which is, aside from keeping up with the regular workload, to excel somehow. This is an elusive goal because whether or not you excel at work usually depends on who you ask. On one hand I need to take a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance approach and know intrinsically the Truth of whether or not I achieved Quality work. After all, I am the only one who will truly know if I cut corners or if my work was Complete. In quality assurance, however, the Truth must be backed by measurements. A customer can say a product is great or terrible without providing metrics but a quality assurance engineer cannot. Likewise, it won’t mean anything to say I did a great job without information to back it up. So I have to come up with some concrete goals.

The stress from screwing up my deadline at work almost caused a meltdown in the “Eat Right” department yesterday. I could not stop imagining myself on the couch with a bag of Doritos and a handful of Oreos. But I stayed strong and it passed. And because of extenuating circumstances, I was later relieved of guilt for missing the date. Even though I am forgiven, however, I am still starting off the “Excel at Work” goal with a deficit. Being forgiven didn’t decrease the workload. Yesterday and today I started work at 5:00am. Just a small setback though. Today I should be able to finish catching up and cover two additional tasks assigned for early this week. Then I can get going on this goal.

I started off this goal by missing a deadline yesterday. I never miss a deadline at work so I am a little distraught. Until a team meeting yesterday I thought I was kicking butt and right on track. I estimated my work would take 12 days and with the Martin Luther King holiday it put me at this Wednesday. I emailed my boss to confirm but she had email problems and never received it. I never followed up. The deadline was yesterday. Today is not my favorite day. Back to work.

The Sleep Number Bed is definitely helping with the soreness in my hip and knee. I have finally been able to start running more often. Saturday I ran 9:00 miles pretty easily. In February I need to run a real race to see how I am doing. My midway goal will be to run under 8:30 per mile, a little high considering the eventual goal of 7:30s but not bad since I really only started running regularly last week. With some hard work I still should be able to get close to 8:00 miles by the end of February.

WEEKLY WEIGH-IN:
Start: 157
Last week: 150
This week: 148
Goal: 137