I have a lot of fun, usually several times per week. Social events, happy hours, dances, and sometimes even kickin’ it with myself or a buddy.
But one thing I never talk about is the large amount of responsibilities I have, and when I say “I do a lot”, people assume I’m just talking about work and social.
While it’s true, my work responsibilities are pretty big. With my business, obviously it’s a lot of stuff, especially once my intern starts. With my job, I’m responsible an increasingly large amount of areas.
I also need to start writing for my company.
Then there’s my house. I don’t live in an apartment or townhouse, so I don’t have services such as sidewalk shoveling. So when it snows, I get to shovel, either when I wake up or before I go to bed, usually the latter.
I have gotten very fast at it. Actually, I’m a total shoveling demon. Compared to last year, now that I’ve had my airway improvement, I can shovel super quickly! Also, the snow is lighter. Of course, I’m not sure if that’s because of more oxygen or increased studly muscles. I’m guessing the former though. Once I get back to lifting weight frequently, who knows?
Besides snow shoveling, I have a pretty big house for one dude. It’s just a big area to keep clean. I do a decent job. The areas in which I live are usually spotless.
However, I am an accountant, so paperwork gets out of hand. Always.
In the summer, I love having a yard. Last summer was the first year I started doing any landscaping. It was quite a bit of clean up, and I added lighting.
Next summer, I’m doing quite a few upgrades, mostly in the energy-saving improvements area.
I’m not old, but there’s something to be said about the link between keeping life stable enough to maintain a lot of responsibility and maturity. Things are so awesome these days!
Many of you know that I have my own company.
That company also has its own website.
Some (I doubt anyone who reads here) may have notice that the website has been in limbo for the last few days.
So this website is newly mobile, so I thought I could just do the same updates on my bigger site and VOILA, it would be mobile responsive.
And that’s basically what happened. Okay, I’m a liar. Here’s the story.
I installed the same WP widget. That didn’t cut it. It turns out my theme was out of date. Way out of date. (like two whole versions).
Well my business site was setup really well and really complex-like. Adding that to the fact that my IT guy got a job with Thrvient, when my site had issues, I was totally lost.
The combination of all my WP settings and a theme that I and my new IT guy knew nothing about were not good. I wasted about 5 hours spinning my wheels, maybe more than that. I was up until 3:30 last night. My IT guy spent about 3 hours looking. I’ll pay him for his time, but he didn’t accomplish anything.
I started by updating everything. That helped a little. The site would not load for people not signed in to my WP account.
Problem 1 fixed.
Upon reading some posts in the Headway Theme message board, I noticed that they all began with “All widgets were deactivated”. I wasn’t able to save my changes in the theme editor. Once I deactivated my widgets, things saved.
Problem 2 fixed.
Then, the Easing Slider didn’t work. This was a Custom Code block in my theme. I decided to look at the custom code. It was once line of php.
After that, I skimmed the widget documentation. By skim, I mean what I was looking for was easily isolated away from words: A lone string of php. It had a similar syntax but different words. Copied that and pasted into the Custom Code.
Problem 3 fixed.
Next I wanted everything to be mobile responsive. I decided early on that since my Theme had options for mobile responsiveness, I probably should’t use a widget, so I disabled it (Jetpack). I then made the theme grid responsive then each section.
Problem 4 fixed.
The only thing on my “to do” list, besides add meta info, is updating my images to say “TM” on everything.
That and to blog.
Good news – I interviewed an intern today who I will hire – yay!
Other news – I got 3 emails of people who are looking for accountants. Today. Yay!
I like to run outside. In the winter, I used to always go to the gym to use the treadmill. The treadmill is fine, but only if you have a lot of things to distract you from the fact that it is the worst thing in the world, a problem when your headphones break.
In a desperate attempt to avoid buying $5 headphones, and to enjoy my new ability to breathe, I started to run outside. Yes, in the snow and cold, which sounds like a bad idea, but it is awesome!
I have modified shoes, a paid of which I am making for Dennis this week that cost about $30. The shoes allow me to run on ice and snow with no problems whatsoever. Then, I bundle up.
I put on running pants (sweatpants) plus snowpants. I have two pairs of socks because, while the shoes are great on ice, they still have issues with the cold / are poorly insulated.
Besides a sweatshirt and jacket, I wear an old, tattered headband around my neck to serve as a scarf-type cloth. On top of that, I have a bigger man scarf that shields my neck to my nose. I also have a stocking hat, because just a headband leaves the whole top of your head bear. Headbands aren’t like hats, but are closer to earmuffs.
I then wear mittens, because gloves are simply inferior.
Then I do some pre-workout stretches, and go for a run. It’s awesome.
Today was negative 2 degrees. It was a pretty good run. Here are the results from the Map My Run App:
I’ll help you interpret the figures. It was only for a mile because I had a busy day today.
Ignore the big “Pace”, and go off the pace of the first mile. The reason the last 0.02 miles impacted my pace so much is because I had to stop, take off my mittens, unzip my pocket, get my phone, unlock my phone, and figure out how to turn off the dumb app.
In terms that people actually know, my pace of a 10:46 mile is 5.58 mph. Keep in mind that I’m just getting back to running after not running until December because of my surgery, and only running a few times in December.
Not too shabby. It’s still only 1 mile, though, and I could probably push it more. When it’s negative temps, I won’t run for more than 1.7 miles because my toes will freeze off. As for going to University like I did in the summer, well, I’m still working up to it, plus I won’t do that route at night.
Tonight I went out with Allaina and Dennis. I drove, but she was steering. I wanted to go to Seven, but she wanted to go to The Loop which is her favorite dance club.
We were originally going to go to the Hennepin and 7th area – Crave and, I figured, Seven afterwards.
She had different plans. She was starving, apparently a recurring theme, as she’s trying to gain weight (she said she weighs 127 but wants to get all the way up to 132. She was being serious, too).
She recommended some place on Washington and 3rd Ave N called J.D. Hoyt. First of all, the atmosphere was awesome. Nothing particularity special. It was just enjoyable.
Dennis got a couple beers and scallops. I got garlic bread. Allaina got swordfish.
It was amazing! Swordfish is my favorite fish, and it sets the standard. It had a great, non-fishy taste, and it had a meaty texture! Yum!
Then we walked to The Loop and danced there until 1:30.
I’m hoping to get an awesome picture on her phone of me and her. I had a lot of fun!
I have the problem of dancing too much and not just chilling. Meh – it’s a dance club, although I noticed that guys why do dance a ton (meaning jump around) kind of look like idiots.
Since KOOL 108 upgraded to sort of (sometimes) display the song and artist names so I don’t have to Shazam while driving to make sure my guess is right (which it always is, naturally), I decided that I could sort of upgrade my tax website so it’s mobile responsive.
It’s sort of because it’s not pretty, has no branding standards, etc. I’m going to fix that soon, but that won’t be free.
I just took one of those quiz things: What Song Represents You, or something like that. It then gave me the results and the music video. I won’t share the quote or even the quiz, because I don’t care so much, but the video was awesome!
This is a good song. It says that people should chase their dreams and not passively give up. Don’t give up (“anything is possible”), but keep your eyes and mind open, because, as I’ve said before, no one knows what the future will be (“going wherever it leads, working on the mystery”).
Well that and I also thought it was a crazy video.
Tonight I was thinking about going to the International Happy Hour at Clubhouse Jäger, but I was kind of tired, and I had work to do tonight.
Well, I took a 45 minute nap, and that charged me right up! My friend Allaina said she was going to go at 8:00, so I said I’d be there around 7 or 7:30. Even though it started at 5:30, the HH was still very busy when I got there. It was a huge crowd.
I met a few very nice people.
It’s weird when I go to events that are not my own. People all know me. I had so many dudes just walk up to me and say, “what’s up Justin?” It’s neat.
I met some cool gals, too, and since I enjoy this part of the story the most, I’ll describe it the most.
The first young lady I met was Stacey. Now Stacey travels all over the world for her job – way jealous. But she and I hit it off pretty well. I got her number, but she said FB is better nc she’s literally out of the country every other week. I thought that was prettu bad ass, so we connected on FB, too. After telling her about my flying for free, she suggested joining her on one of her trips. Cool.
The next young lady I spoke to was Lilly. Lilly was actually going to Mexico by herself for the next week, but she seemed really nice. Not in a dating kind of nice, but just in the “good person”kind of nice.
Eventually, around 9:15 (uggh… so late!), Allaina came. I was texting with her all night. So she and I chatted for a bit. Then we just kind of hung out by the music and has wines.
There were some people dancing, first in a dumb circle like people do, but then with partners.
Well naturally, there was a young lady not occupied but only because of a shortage of guys. I then led her in some salsa. She said she knew some other Latin dances, so I waited for a song that wasn’t just another spazzy salsa, then we did I cha cha. Apparently, I do “ballroom cha cha”, so I’ll have to learn what the other one is. But we had fun. Allaina took a picture, so I might add that later. But that was Courtney, and I got her number, too.
Then Allaina and I went to the Loop. The Loop is a pretty cool bar. We’ve gone there before, and we’ll probably go there in the future. It was fun.
We’re fun when we go out dancing. First of all, Allaina doesn’t dance with me. That’s not how she rolls. But when we’re out, we sometimes dance right by each other, but we often get separated. We actually got separated right after we came in. She went off with her Russian friends, and I got distracted. So right when I came in the Loop, there was a bunch of women.
Well I was dancing, just goofing around, but one of them was enjoying me and grinding with me. Definitely not something I’m used to, but that’s fine. I still goof around to make it fun. Then her friend joined in, and I had two women rubbing against me. Afterwards, a guy said I was going awesome because I was dancing with three women, and they were all nice-looking.
It was fun.
I also had a lady from that group take my hand when I offered it. I don’t remember if this was before or after the grinding gals. But the girl took my hand and we danced super well. It was some cool-lookijg West Coast Swing-ish. It looks really good, anyways, compared to the dancing you see in clubs.
Come to think of it, I dances with her right when I came in the door because I still had my jacket. The tri-partner dancing came after I checked my coat.
So I was dance-walking around the bar, looking for Allaina. I complimented a lady, and she liked it. I saw her standing by a table and asked her if she wanted to dance. She explained that her the husband was sitting at the table.
“Dude, can I dance with your wife?”
Obviously, I had already explained about my kind of dancing, ect., and he was fine with it.
Long story short(er), I recruited s couple more clients for my friends’ dance studio. If you didn’t know, I love supporting the people in my life, including my friends, and I do what I can.
Sometime after 1:00, it was time to go. I talked more to Allaina. She’s going on vacation for a bit over Christmas. She works for a hotel so gets free rooms.
We went to her dt place. She was working the next morning, so we didn’t have much time. I basically got some water then left. Overall, awesome night! Way more fun than working!
There’s also this:
An awesome movie and skit. it gets funnier at 1:30.
Life is great. I’ve significantly changed this year. I told you 2014 was going to be an awesome year!
For me, I was condoned my master’s degree, business is at unprecedented levels, I got a job, I got in the best shape of my life, and I’ve relaxed my personality quite a bit. I don’t worry about little problems that used to cause me a lot of stress. Combined with the fact that I had to buy all new business clothes because I am simply more broad, I would say that 2014 is the year I manned up. In more ways than will be mentored here.
On top of that (or building on the manning up thing), I decided to do the procedure I did on October 20 because it is going to give me better health, less illness, better old age, and is another big way I’ll help myself. This is the last side effect from my accident from 2006 that I will fix or that is a hindrance.
Overall, I am turning the page. I am putting all of the past behind me and entering in an all new chapter of unprecedented awesomeness!
