a quote I found while cleaning out my office

I wanted to post it here, lest I forget it.

The majority of men meet w/failure because of their lack of
persistance in creating new plans to take the place of those plans
that fail.

I guess that's not a bad word for the day as I clean out my office of
the five years worth of detritus. Tomorrow, a new plan, and if this
one doesn't work, a new plan after that.

I'm done clearing out, but I'm just waiting for my last two backup
files to finish copying. Then, I'll turn the lights off and head out,
no longer a full time employee. For whatever reason I'm not that sad.
Maybe it's because I've been watching the tail spin the past couple
months.

Anyway, I'll post more after I sign the paperwork tomorrow.

I forgot to mention...

the work week there is considered to be 35 hours. Obviously there are ups and downs (which you could probably guess if you were to look at a church calendar... Christmas and Easter? big times, start of the school year and youth programs? big times. But, at the same time, Brian my boss flat out told me, "If you're done with what you need to do, you go home. There's no reason to have to hang around." SO that will hopefully be a nice thing, along with the fact that I'll be able to utilize my Y
 membership more (it's RIGHT across the street). It'll be a longer commute by bike in the morning (about 15 miles) but it'll be mostly all downhill and with the wind. (Wind here generally blows from the north in the morning and the south at night. I think it has something to do with the mountains)

here's one of the routes (with elevation info)
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=78141

the job situation...

 well, today I'm being laid off by the non-profit side of the company I've been working for the past five years. (and contractually for longer than that) There's no more money, and the side company we started to leap to when the money ran out didn't ramp up in time. It'll still continue to ramp up and I'll stay on contractually on the
 for profit side (Red Penguin), but it's kind of the end of the line for me. It's been an interesting couple of weeks realizing that things were coming to a close.

 A little over a week ago we were hanging out at a local mexican restaurant / bar after church and I asked my friend Dave about how our mutual friend Brian was doing at First Pres (the churhc I interviewed at in January). He mentioned that he was a bit streesed since they still hadn't found anyone and had been asking Dave how I was doing. I had promised Brian a call in March and figured I'd check in the next day.
                                  
 We had a meeting Wednesday morning between the other guy I work with and myself about our finanacial situtation and we worked the numbers over, trying to figure if we had another month of salary left. I brought up First Pres and we decided that it would  be best to give him a call.

 Talking to Brian, I worked out the possibility of coming on board for a 90 day trial period just to see how things went. Brian went to HR and talked it over, but they said that since they were an At Will employer (like all of Colorado), it made more sense to just hire me so that I could get benefits. So, I had an interview last Thursday...  an interview that I really feel I knocked out of the park. It was one of those moments where I felt like every word popped out exactly where it needed to pop out. Brian got called back into his supervisors office to talk about the interview afterwards, but he had a glimmer in his eye when I left.

 Tuesday I got a call that they were moving forward, but Jim the worship pastor (the aforementioned supervisor) needed to talk to Jim the senior
 pastor and Jim the executive pastor. Yesterday I got the call saying I'd been offered the job. It was maybe the mostly strangely worded job offer I've ever had.

 he said something along the lines of being "desirous to take the next
 step and engage with me".

 anyway, I go in to sign the paperwork on Monday, which apparently will also be my first day. It'll be a bump in pay along with a budget to buy
 production oriented toys (hopefully including a MacBookPro with the newly released bundle of universal apps until Apple releases the new PowerMacs.). I guess my first task will be to evaluate where the church is currently at with their production equipment and start to craft a new plan to focus where they're headed in the future.

 I turned the position down before in January, but the main issues at that point was this nebulous two months. I really wanted to turn things around
 at Red Penguin so I could stay on board there. Thankfully, with the position still open, now that I know that it's not going to happen I've
 got a pretty great safety net. God's a good God.

 In any case, it's a new adventure... one that I wasn't really planning for. It seems like it's a God thing though, so I'm going to go and be obedient doing it, and be to be able to make a bit more money is I think going to be a real blessing. Thanks to all of those who've been praying the past few months. Ang and I really appreciate it.

Bri

--
not getting enough of my blather?
check out http://flabbyironman.blogspot.com
and the Colorado Springs Film Society at
http://csfilmsociety.com

a proposal... (and not even an indecent one)

this morning while I was driving back from my weekly breakfast, I took
a side route that I drive every once in a while that takes me up and
around the foothills on the north side of the city. I've driven it
quite a few times, but I've never ridden it and every so often I think
about riding it.

While thinking about riding it, I came upon an interesting idea. To
the best of my knowledge Mr. Bolder in Boulder has never actually been
to the Springs. And I, for whatever reason, have never made it up to
Boulder. So here's my proposal... I propose two epic training rides.
One in Boulder and one in Colorado Springs that rides the most
difficult sections of road. Bolder (and crew?) come down here for a
ride and then I'll come up with my crew for a ride... A little give
and take if you may.

On the Colorado Springs side, we'll start on the Northside where I
live and work our way down to Garden of the Gods. We'll climb through
the Garden to Old Colorado City and then work our way up Gold Camp
Road, we'll then continue on Gold Camp and wind around to the Cheyenne
Mountain descent. From there we'll ride back around through downtown
and back up to Centennial Boulevard where we'll ascend up and around
to Woodmen. All said, it should be at least 5000' worth of climbing
hopefully.

I don't have a suggestion for when this ride should take place, but I
definitely think it does need to happen.

I don't know what kind of a route Bolder would put togeher but I can't
imagine that he can come up with something nearly as butt-kicking (and
I can make it even more butt-kicking if I need to)(I think that's a
challenge)

what's up...

not all that much actually, just work and more work. sorry for the lack of posting.

Last monday the cycling season started with an absolutely gorgeous day. the president of the bike club exclaimed that even though dinner rides didn't start for another month, it was definitely too nice not to have a dinner ride. Angela and I rushed across town to get there in time and showed up what we thought was 15 minutes late. We went out for our own little ride and turned around because Ang was hungry. We got back to the park and saw people were showing up. Apparently we misread the e-mail and showed up an hour ahead of time. so, we got two rides in for probably around 26 miles for the dya.

Saturday was ride number two. The Saturday rides with the bike club tend to be a bit more hard core than other rides and so i knew that I'd be in for at least a little bit of pain. It turns out of course that I was in for much more pain than that. 'The Normals' aren't out yet, so it was all hardcore riders and we were starting out by climbing a couple mile stretch to a Fort Carson entrance. Did I mention 35mph windgusts and dust storms? i ate a lot of dust and was still hacking up things this morning.

Sunday was ride number three. Nothing too exciting, the clubs Sunday Social Ride is just that, a bunch of people gabbing while they pedal. my butt REALLY hurt when we started out. Thankfully things settled down. I got some sprinting practice in posting corners and a good time was generally had by all. heh.

anyway, the seasons started. There's a 5k on Saturday, but it's not in our budget and there will be time for races in the future. We sat down and actually wrote out a budget for the first time tonight. We've goofed around with it in the past, but we really want to get serious about paying debt off. I don't think we designed the perfect budget, but hopefully this will give us a leaping off point.

sorry for the quiet. hopefully it will end soon. i'll explain more about what's going on when I can, but let it be known that things are alright. There's still a chance things could dive into the beyond, but we're doing what we can to avoid that happening. next month i learn whether I can go straight from learning to walk where I'm at in the company I work for to learning to run. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that that transition to running is going to happen smoothly. Keep praying if you would though.

more later.
Brian