back in the swim of things!

Wow! Things have been so busy and moving sooooo fast! I can't believe that it is the middle of November, where did September and October go!?

So here are a few updates:

Car is good. Honda came through and picked up everything except the battery and the tow! Woohoo!

I'm battling with a graphic design client for the cash that is owed to me, over $1000, and he is playing games. I, of all people, totally know what it is like to be without cash but I just feel like he is totally screwing me over and feel like I busted my ass to get shit done for him and now I've been waiting (and still waiting) for several months for him to compensate me. :(

Work still rocks! It is hard some days and very draining on all levels. But I really like all the people I work with and I don't let the grumpy (some completely justified!) residents get to me. It is frustrating that I can't do more to help though! :(

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This past Friday I attended the OPC Zoning and Planning Workshop in Westlake. So much fun and really informative!!! I hope that we can implement some of the ideas from the workshop in SEL!

Saturday I met up with a couple people from the Cleveland Bioneers group so we could talk about revamping the website. We settled on using Ning, so we can have something that is more interactive and easy to update/transform! Stay tuned, I'm going to use you guys as guinea pigs so we can get some feedback.

Today was the first day of the awesome Reddy Tri Swim Clinic. I did the clinic last year pretty consistently until my hip got all weird and I really think that I benefited from it. So I signed up this year so I could hopefully improve even more! Today was great! And for not swimming in at least two months, I did pretty well and was able to keep up with the rest of the gang pretty well. My goal this week is to fit in at least 4 swims. I would really like to get my distances up so I'm thinking of working up to an everyday swim of at least 30 mins and then the Sundays I don't have the clinic doing a nice hour long swim to keep my endurance up.

I'm hoping that some money comes through before Janaury so I can take advantage of my discount at the bike store. I would really like to get a new trainer. Mine isn't horrible but it is used and just a plain wind trainer and I would like to get something a little more high tech. I bought it off of another tri club member form $75 so I figure I'm not out alot of cash if I get a new one this year. Plus Steve can hook up his bike to the one I already have.

So my goals for the winter training season are as follows:

-improve my stroke mechanics and endurance
-improve my running endurance and times
-build a good bike base

Here is the thing. The first one and the last one I truly look forward to. However, the running part - not so much. It is something I've never been very good at and last year just when I started to hit my stride, I had a hip that decided running was out of the picture, for a while. So I haven't been very good at getting back into the swing of things for several reasons. Hopefully, once I start to get in a better swim and bike routine, the running will fall into place!

I have another training session/workshop tomorrow, so I need to get some work done since I will be out of the office again.

I hope everyone had an awesome weekend and stayed cozy warm! :)

the good, the bad and......

The wedding!

Congrats to Jon and Deborah! :)



As Friday began to wrap up, I got a phone call from my brother around 3pm. My car was not working/running. In fact when I answered the phone he said, "You're car just broke!" I was envisioning a wheel falling off. I said, "It broke? What do you mean it broke?"

Apparently, my alternator went. :( which makes me very sad for several reasons:

1. My car is an '05 with about 46,000 miles on it. That just shouldn't happen!!!
2. I have no car until it is repaired (possibly Tuesday) and the rentals are $25 a day.
3. Because I don't have an extended warranty, it is going to cost almost $900 to fix, the majority of my paycheck.

So the dealership wasn't very helpful in terms of going to bat for me with Honda, so I have to call myself tomorrow and see if I can get them to cover some of the cost for the repairs. I was able however, to get the service guy to admit that not only was it odd that my alternator went but that it shouldn't happen and that he hasn't seen an '05 with this problem. Not that that is going to ensure any sort of success with Honda corporate but a girl can hope!

As a result, I wasn't sure I would be able to attend my friend's wedding. Thankfully, one of our mutual friends was able to bring me down to Newark, Ohio for the wedding.

The wedding was beautiful and it was sooo awesome to see some great friends that I don't often see! Needless to say, the weekend rocked and I was super happy we had an extra hour this am! :)

I hope you all had great weekends and good luck this Tuesday when casting your vote! :)