While you were were away…

Things I have accomplished since my last blog post:

• I turned 36. OK that is not much of an accomplishment, it’s like saying Oh hey good news, you’re still alive! 36 came and went, no big soiree or anything. More than 100 facebook posts and a couple of emails, but very low key. In all honesty I’m good with that because there in no cause for excitement and no need for special treatment. We all get older every day and the difference between 35 years and 364 days in no different than 36!
• I played a lot of hockey! I like playing hockey. It is one of the toughest sports I have had to learn. The balance of power, skill and finesse that you need to perform well on the ice is hard to achieve. I’m playing with people who have been playing this game their whole life where as I received my first pair of hockey skates for my 30th birthday! So up here I am something like 25 years behind on skills! So I try to overcome this with intelligence and athleticism. Honestly, the skills win most of the time, but I can hold my own out there!
• Speaking of hockey I also attended a Montreal Canadiens Game! Great seats and they finally got a win with a lot of offense on home ice. My friends son actually got to play in the Timbits game during the first intermission and my wife managed to score us some seats behind the goal! Below is a shot of the little guy in action, although he didn’t see much action at all. As it typically happens in these Timbits games all of the action tends to happen on one side of the ice so Zack didn’t receive any shots against. Still at 8 years old to actually get a chance to skate and play on the Bell Center ice is something really cool!
• I ate fast food for the first time in months! After the game my wife and I were starving. Both of us had a crazy day that day and neither of us ate dinner. If you think I was going to pay $15 for a hotdog some chips and a soda at the game you must be out of your mind! Instead we went to Harvey’s. For those of you who have never been to Canada this is a fast food/burger joint where you can get your burger made to order. I got a double burger with bacon and poutine in place of my fries. I was so hungry at this point so I basically inhaled all of that in a matter of minutes. As you may or may not have guessed I felt pretty terrible afterward as well! So I did the only logical thing and that is go home and go straight to bed with a belly full of junk food! Oddly enough I felt OK the next morning!
• Speaking of food I have nearly perfected my Orzo Bacon Mac & Cheese Recipe! I’ve only got four words for you, creamy bechamel cheese sauce… and bacon! OK that is five words, but lets face it even the word bacon makes everything better! The cheese sauce is one heck of a workout to make from scratch, but oh so worth it! In fact I might even make another batch this weekend! Yum!

That about sums it up other than that it’s mostly the daily grind. There were a few other happening and events along the way, but nothing I will make public. This blogger does have a private life after all! Until next time!

Once a gamer, always a gamer!

Video games have been a big part of my life. I have vivid memories of unwrapping my first Nintendo Entertainment System as a kid. I remember spending hours day playing the Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. I’m the guy who leveled up my characters to level 99 on all of the Final Fantasy games, without cheating I might add! Even weekends at the beach you could find me at the arcade half of the time schooling people at those games and posting high scores.

I evolved through the consoles as a kid. The gameboy, SNES and N64. I occasionally played the Sega Genesis with a few other friends when I went to visit them. As I got older I had the PS, PS2, XBox and XBox 360. RPG, action, adventure, sports games, I have played them all. I still play console games from time to time. Not nearly as much as I used to, but when I do play I tend to binge!

Now I’m playing many different games on my smartphone. Some days I play them a little too obsessively. In fact the real reason I haven’t been online for the past few weeks is because I have been distracted between 3 or 4 different games, trying to level up so I can beat them!

Little has changed! Once a gamer, always a gamer!

Achievement Unlocked – Ninja Mode

I successfully made and ate a tuna sandwich without any interference from my cats!

Just thought I would share!

Recharge by Unplugging!

Too much internet can be a bad thing sometimes, so I have spent the better part of the past two weeks away from it. Between Facebook, Twitter, blogs, photography sharing websites, news and sports websites I was spending far too much time sitting at my desk staring at a computer screen all day. I was still checking everything periodically and posting the occasional status update, but the time spent away, though not productive really in any way has been good. I think of it as a much needed internet vacation!

Putting it all into perspective.

I went for a long walk this afternoon because I needed little bit of perspective. A couple of thoughts went through my head that immediately made everything better. I would like to share them with you.

Seasons change.

The sun still rises in the East.

Earth will be here long after we are gone and forgotten.

And yet I still have managed to accomplish nothing…

The title of this blog post may be a bit misleading! I actually have accomplished some things, but in terms of the big picture nothing has been done at all. Needless to say I have a lot of work in front of me on all fronts.

I must admit however that I did lower my expectations a bit for the month of September. For most of the month it was mission get myself back into shape. I’m getting there quickly through a very intense program that I have designed myself. So building in extra time to accomplish this took time away from almost everything else.

The change in schedule for my personal life is causing a serious adjustment in my sleeping and eating times as well. I’m in bed later each night, so that means I am up later in the morning which means I’m losing hours of daylight that I need to work on some things. It’s a bit of a shame because I have honestly thrown away the best two weeks of the year weather wise while my body adjusts to the change.

Since I wasn’t able to apply myself physically I shifted gears slightly although to probably the wrong project. I had a few ideas based on some conversations I was having and I ran with them while they were fresh in my head. I’m still on the works on those for now. Testing the waters and compiling some data to see if taking the plunge was worth it. So far it looks good and I may pull the plug elsewhere once I’ve had enough time to test things thoroughly. I followed my heart instead of my head a bit on this one, thinking it through as I go. It has helped me to adapt and see a few holes in my process. Holes which can either be repaired or eliminated in the future to help streamline some things.

Perhaps it is the redundancy of this whole process that makes it feel as though I have gone nowhere when in fact I have taken some strides. Still I took time away from other projects that I am working on with other people to pursue my own goals. In a way it feels kind of selfish. Generally I don’t put myself first like this. That simply is not who I am.

Don’t get my wrong I do fit somewhere into my own big picture yet I believe that in order to truly accomplish what you want in life you have to help others get to where they want to be. I simply have not worked for the greater good of anyone but myself recently so that must be why I feel the way I do.

In any event I am not down on myself about it. Tomorrow is a new day after all and comes with new opportunities!

Hopefully all of this hard work will have been worth it.

I have spent the better part of the day diving back into my Google+ account and setting up a Google+ page for my photography. I was actually one of the early users of Google+, but I was finding it a bit redundant to be posting the same information in so many different places and I never really had a use for it. That is until now.

So far things seem to be going fairly well in the exposure department with a few of my posts within certain communities actually getting some attention. At the same time I realize Google+ is just another social network and in order to be noticed you will have to participate. Lets see if the extra time spent there is worth it. As long as the time spent promoting doesn’t interfere with the time spent creating I think I will be OK.