What a winter I've had. So busy that I have not written for several months. A mortal sin in this blogosphere of compulsive key-pushers (myself included). This morning I decided to stop procrastinating and redeem this blog. The least I can do is summarize my winter and share with you my newest obsession: vegetables.
First, the winter. This was probably the best winter I've had. Ever. I'm attributing that to my Eldora season pass. Because the mountain is so close, I was able to treat skiing more like going to the health club or going for a run than a vacation day. I would go up there for a couple hours and be back in time to still work most of the day. Not only that, I would spend $0.00 each time, unless I had to stop at the Kathmandu lunch buffet. I bought a ski helmet with headphones built in, some nice fat skis for all the powder we got this winter, and studded snow tires for the Black Stallion (a '97 VW Jetta that I can't bear to part with after 10 years). It was the ultimate ski setup for someone who still lives down here in the Flatlands. The only improvement I can imagine is actually living in a real ski town, where you can walk to the gondola. So that's the first reason I had a great winter.
The second thing about this winter that has made life a little better is my incorporation as an S-Corp. On January 11, 2007, Falesafe Consulting, Inc. was born (thanks to Andy for his creative genius in coming up with that name!). I found myself really enjoying the process of learning all about how a small corporation is set up and run. There were many visits to the lawyer and accountant, but every step of the way things started to run a little more smoothly. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually like using QuickBooks now.
Even more than being a cool learning experience, incorporating has helped me to impose a better work/family boundary in my life, both financially and just in the everyday things. Something about being incorporated feels more legitimate. It forces you to get serious by making you accountable to more people (the lawyer, the accountant, the IRS). I look back at the way I managed things as a sole proprietor and just cringe at the disorganization and confusion I tolerated.
Somewhere in all of that skiing and incorporating, I found time to teach a Ruby/Rails course. My friend Ara and I had a lot of fun introducing some people at NOAA to Ruby and Rails. It was a great learning experience for me and a nice change from coding and consulting.
Through all of this I have been working hard on TravelersTable.com, a website which will make it easier for traveling professionals to connect to talk about their business or other interests. It's akin to Meetup.com, Upcoming.org, and Evite.com, but intended for more spontaneous meetings between people whose jobs take them all over the world. We'll be launching a beta very soon. I'll post an update when the site is live.
So that's what I've been up to this winter. This spring, I've been inspired by my friend Ryan to change my diet. Eating right has been a major focus for me for about a month now. His secret to success is brown rice and lots of vegetables, and so far, it is working for me too. I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't think I ever would want to be one, but I'm making a real effort to eat meat only occasionally. At the moment, that means only when I go out to a restaurant. I read somewhere that Americans eat more meat than anyone else, and more than the average human by a significant factor (I can't recall the exact number). That motivated me to reduce my meat consumption just to see if I really would get skinnier, since we're also one of the fattest people on the planet.
Another motivator behind this new diet was my friend Jeff's post about eating. His rule "Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food," is a good one to follow when you're in the grocery store. Try it--you might be surprised at how many groceries fall into this category of alien-food by 19th century standards.
So far, I've had pretty remarkable results. I don't work out (no time), other than walking to work, and I haven't changed anything except cutting down on meat (and processed stuff). In 3 weeks I've lost like 15 pounds and, even more exciting to me, I have a very consistent level of energy throughout the day. I expected to lose weight, but this energy bonus I did not anticipate. I always thought of vegetables as being really wimpy (rabbit food!), but I seriously get more energy out of a few carrots than a granola bar. If some vegetarian had said that to me two months ago, I would have told them to go sit on their carrots. But now I'm eating carrots and peppers and mushrooms and whatnot and I'm loving it.
This is probably the longest blog post I've ever written, but it's also the longest overdue. Hopefully for those of you who are about to delete my RSS feed from your reader, this post redeems me enough that you'll reconsider. I promise to be more blog-happy this spring and summer, and keep you updated on the vegetables I'm eating and other nonsense that will help you waste more time at work or wherever you may be reading this.