Thankful

We got back Saturday from another trip to Ames on another thanksgiving.  This time it was me, Jennifer, Leah and Guy at home.  The weather was unseasonably warm, which made cooking outdoors extremely pleasant.  While I miss the hustle and bustle of having everyone home at the same time, it was nice to turn down the intensity a little bit and spend time with Leah. 

She's always been really fun to pick on because she reacts so intensely to any and every provocation.  That said, going in to a conversation where you expect someone to flip out can wear pretty thin.  I've been making an extra effort to just be nice and not be the jerk older brother that I was when I was 17.  It seems like it's paying off.

Miami is weird

I'm in Miami Beach for a NABSA board retreat this week and Jennifer came down with me a day early to take in the sights and check out the richest city in the country.  One of the other board members runs CitiBike Miami, and also has some fairly deep connections with the hospitality industry here. We are getting, what I can only assume must be, a steep discount to stay at the Mondrian South Beach.  It's kind of insane here.  Like $42 brunch buffet, yoga-class-bikini-babe insane. That and the air has been pumped full of some sort of weird perfume that smells a bit like powder-puff and a bit like gauche aspiration.

Our room overlooks th street, but you can also see the Atlantic as well as Biscayne Bay.  It is bigger than our first apartment together in Philly. Also it has a giant orange mirror on the wall, just because.

We spent the morning exploring Miami Beach a bit, then rode over the Venetian Causeway to Miami proper to check out the Wynnewood area.  The whole city is chock full of touristy shit and people wearing a lot less clothing than is the custom where I come from.  I would need to really hit the gym hard, and get a lot more regular grooming regimin if I were to move here.  Fortunately, that is unlikely to happen. Miami; probably not the place for me. 

Sleepy peepy

I went to bed at 9:30 last night. I've rarely been that exhausted when I haven't been actually sick or jet-lagged. I woke up feeling somewhat refreshed but wow. 

Perhaps it was the two bottle Tuesday where Jennifer and I did one of our wine-down dance parties catching up to me, or maybe it's the residual effects of daylight saving time.

Philly Bike Expo

Last weekend was a bike-ful weekend for me.  This is generally a good thing, as I really like bikes. I did to longer, harder rides than I've done in the three or four months.  I'm whupped again, but in a different way, in a good sort of way that ends up with solid slumber.

Yesterday was the, maybe 8th or 9th Philly Bike Expo.  I've gone to all but one of the prior editions, and it's always cool to talk with the folks at the various booths from companies big and small.   The highlight of the show for me was seeing the incredible paint from Velo Color out of Toronto. It is absolutely the most incredible paint I've ever seen. I've done a bit of painting in the basement on my various bike projects, and having done so makes stuff like this seem as though it's done by magical robots. Check out their work on this Bishop which won best in show at the expo.

Whupped

I seem to end many weeks like this--feeling as though there is not enough sleep in the world to re-energize my heavy head.  It probably doesn't help that I sleep like shit many nights.  It's probably stress, but it generally feels like an itchy back, or a full bladder, or some goddamned noise outside. Last year it tended to keep me up and awake for hours, but of late it just seems as though I'm waking up 3-5 times over the night.  I can live with that.

I remember reading something about the evolutionary cost of humans developing big brains.  Apparently consciousness burns a lot of calories, but despite all of my consciousness and thinking and ruminating and stressing, I am not getting any skinnier.  It's generally been the opposite.  Probably it's the not exercising part along with the 'chronological upgrade points' that are doing that.

Potato Pal

We didn't have any pumpkins to carve, but Jennifer did manage to get a great deal on 20 pounds of sweet potatoes.  They're organic, and the biggest goddamn sweet potatoes that I've ever seen.  I can only imagine how much manure went into the fertilizing of these beasts.  This grapefruit sized specimen is by no means the biggest in our larder.

Now to get Barbara's Sweet Potato Pie recipe!

Regularity

I was reflecting back on how I really like looking through my blog archives for perspective on the past 14 years.  It's a sporadic record at best, but I think that a regular check in here would do me well as a marker of time.

These days I find myself working hard to work smart.  I always got the heebie jeebies at the thought of business school or anything like that.  Right now I wish I had some of that training; cash flow analysis, strategic planning, SWOT analysis have all become pretty crucial to making Indego a success, or even keeping the whole thing from falling apart. Becoming more comfortable with being confused is a skill that I'm working on, and I hope that it will lead to good, or at least not bad, decision-making without enough information.

On the good side, I'm actually feeling like a muthafuckin' boss from time to time.  Having gone through 7 bosses over the last two years and lost all of the original team that built Indego has been a gut punch, a rollercoaster, and a mental mire. I'm finally getting the feeling that this shit is MY shit, and have some great people to work with and to work for who are keeping that in perspective.  Having Waffiyyah and Patrick has made a big difference.  Getting a raise didn't hurt, and getting a sense of what my actual pecking order in the office is. Now to get a room with a desk and a door on it.