Renovations continue

The last couple of weeks have been dominated by work and renovations. The preparations for the new floor and kitchen are both progressing well.

A few weeks ago we received the wood for the floor (blackbutt)

And last week we put the deposit down on the new kitchen cabinets.

Two weeks ago I got the painting down the hall completed and last week I retiled the toilet.

This week I realised that since I am gluing and nailing the new flooring over the old subfloor I would have to sand the top coat off the existing floor. Not really an issue except that I had stacked the new flooring on part of the old floor that needed to be sanded.

So today with some much appreciated help the wood was relocated outside, the floor sanded and then the wood brought back inside.

Now I need to paint in the kitchen, dismantle the old kitchen, lay the floor, sand the new floor, oil it, put the new kitchen in snd then put the entry cupboards back in then I can collapse. So, nearly done!

Inspecting the sanded floor area.

Getting distracted and getting focus back

So it's been a couple of weeks since I last posted and if I think about it that follows a long running pattern in my life. I'm really good at starting new things and less good at finishing them. That's actually one of the reasons that I started this blog in the first place. I've had some reasonable excuses over the last couple of weeks but really that is all they are and I have to learn to put the excuses to one side and continue to execute the plans.

I've been in the USA for the last week attending a conference on PLM (ACE2013) . I got to catch up with some great people that I met at the same conference last year and meet some really great new people and some people I have been exchanging emails with for a number of years. The kind of energy that gathers with groups like this helps you to understand one of the keys to achieving anything of substance, at least for most of us mortals, and that is a really strong group of supporters. It doesn't have to be a big group but if they all believe in what you are trying to achieve then it helps to keep you on track. It takes an extraordinary individual to succeed when everyone is telling you "no".

I look back on my working life so far and I can clearly remember some key times when this has been demonstrated to me. I worked for a small Aerospace and Defence company for a long time. I recall one day when things looked pretty bleak for the future of the company and I had some bad news for the CEO he put his hand up and said "I can't hear any negativity at the moment. There is too much that needs to be done." I continued to work there for more than another decade and I'm fairly sure that it is only through the positivity of the CEO that we got through that period and turned things around.

Since most of us are not that strong then we must  learn to foster a positive group of supporters and lean on them if required to keep us on track.  I think I have such a group around me and now I have to learn to communicate with them better.  I have a certain admiration for people who plan and execute their lives, sometimes it seems like hard work when seen from outside but the results pretty much always pay off and one of the keys I see here are that they have their supporters and they face the world as a united group. Even if it is only a group of two.

April was a little quiet and unfocused in parts but May is a time to to regroup, replan and move forward to positive things ahead.

Flooring and Kitchens

Having knocked a couple of small "activity" goals off already this year it is time to really get to work on the major renovation/repair activity that is planned for this year and that is replacing the kitchen and 1/3 of the floor in the house.

My lovely wife is a keen researcher when it comes to buying things and likes to know that the decision "we" are making is the right one. So before christmas last year we started to talk seriously about new floors and replacing the kitchen. Truth be told we have been talking about re-doing the kitchen for nearly 3 years but as with many things in our house it doesn't always move quickly. Sometimes we suffer analysis paralysis and other times we just lose focus. Since this year is, for me, about maintaining focus and not procrastinating I've been pushing a bit and we are getting very close to making decisions and outlaying money.

I completely ripped out old kitchen out about 12 -13 years ago and built a new one from scratch then laid cork tiles though a large part of the house a year or so later. The tiles are showing wear and damage in places and the preparation was not in truth all it should have been so there are some "off" patches in places where the substrate has molded to uneven sections of the underlying floor.

The plan is to pull the cork floor up from the living areas and leave it in the hallways. Fix the uneven bits of the underfloor (also a floor that I laid after pulling slate tiles up around 14 years ago) and rip the kitchen out. Then "we" will lay Blackbutt flooring (probably) and put a new kitchen with essentially the same layout as the existing one but with more drawers and factory finish doors/fronts with soft close and push to open hardware. The guy from Monaro Timbers came out and talked to us about flooring options and suggested that we don't need to pull up the existing underfloor, just make sure that the major inconsistencies caused by the house being extended and doors being where they weren't originally placed are fixed up. This was welcome news and will mean that getting a new floor down can be done a little slower than planned since it means we won't have gaping holes in the floor for days on end while the new floor goes down.

So today we re-measured the kitchen cabinets and confirmed the units that we wanted to get (flatpack of course) and will send away a request for quote tomorrow. The aim is to get the cabinets built well in advance of the old kitchen being pulled out and probably while the flooring is acclimatizing in the house (should be two or more weeks with 50 square meters of flooring cluttering up the family room). In the next couple of days we will get final quotes on flooring and then we are off!

Timeframe sees us getting the floor laid in the 2nd or 3rd week of May, hopefully before it gets too cold outside thus requiring us to run the heating all day and drying the wood out before it is laid.

Renovations and home repairs

Well Easter is over and done with, chocolate has been hidden and found after a quiz hunt that took the kids well over an hour this year thanks to some fairly cryptic clues hidden around the house including frozen in ice cubes!

Whenever we get a long weekend the TV fills up with ads for hardware stores telling us that now is the time to embark on those larger projects because with three, or in this case four, days you'll have all the time you need to get them done. So after spending a really enjoyable time on Friday with some friends I decided on Saturday that the pergola which has been in need of repairs for going on three years now was the perfect job to keep me busy and productive.

The pergola is 6m x 3.6m with a clear roofing material. Well it used to be clear. In recent years due to dust and heat parts of the roof had gone almost black and were seriously warped having drooped in the heat, almost like a slumped decorative glass bowl just not very decorative. It had also become increasingly brittle with quite a number of holes from the last significant hail storm we had. When it rained the deck under the pergola was a slightly drier place than the paving just beyond it but it was a near thing. When I built the pergola 10 or 12 years ago and we put the clear roofing on we quickly found that it was too bright and so for many years there has been shade cloth stapled to the underside beams. Not a particularly attractive look, especially when bits of it were starting to fall down having come adrift of the staples.

So, I pulled the old sheeting off, pulled the old battens off (they were always too thin) and worked out that only one of the bearers needed replacing. Then I measured up (8.1m x 3.7m). Worked up what I need and headed off to get the appropriate materials. $500 odd dollars later I'm home with 10 sheets of 850mm wide roofing giving a coverage of something like 800mm each. It's then that I measured again and realized that it is 6.1 not 8.1 and I'm two sheets over what I need plus I have more battens than I need! Oh well.

So to paint. I don't love painting. It's messy and boring but it's got to be done. Fortunately I still have the paint I used on the exterior last time I did the pergola and something else outside. If I'm putting newly painted bits in then I also need to paint the existing stuff. More time, more mess but it does look fresher at the end.

I put the battens up and am pleasantly surprised. What I thought were 5.4m battens are actually almost exactly 6.1m so they stretch the entire length of the roof without having to cut and overlap. A win, although now I have too many battens! Oh well I guess I can just space them a bit closer together and secure the roofing a bit better. The old roof would rattle in strong winds although it never came loose!

Now to put the actual sheeting up. Rather than moving a ladder five times for each sheet I put a loose board about 2.4m long and 600mm wide up on the roof and climb onto it and work from here, moving it around as required to give me a solid working platform. I only knocked the box of 250 roofing screws off the platform once!

Got three of the sheets up on Sunday and finished it up Monday morning. Since I had two full sheets of bronze translucent roofing material left over I decided to replace a couple of the corrugated iron sheets on the garage to let a bit more light through. That job only took an hour and has also made quite a difference to the inside of the garage.

I'm pretty pleased with the end result of the weekend repair work and think that the last two months at the gym definitely helped to make it easier to complete the job. I'm still a little sore from using different muscles and crawling around on the roof but all in all a good weekend.

Now I just have the floor in 1/3 of the house, the kitchen to replace, the driveway...(I'll stop there before I get discouraged!)

Airfare craziness

I'm travelling to the USA soon for a conference so today I was arranging flights, you know that thing that used to take a travel agent, was lots of hassle and always left you frazzled and now you routinely do in 20 minutes on the internet.

I went to my preferred airline website and logged in and went to Multi-city planner. Put in my plan. Canberra to Sydney on day 1. Sydney to Dallas Fortworth on Day 1. Dallas to Detroit on Day 1. Coming back a week later Detroit to Dallas Day 5, Dallas to Sydney Day 5, Sydney to Canberra Day 7.
OK now to see what flights it could find.
Error. Sorry you can't have three segments on the same day. Since I'm flying back in time to the USA I arrive in Dallas 20 minutes after I leave Sydney after being on the plane for 14+ hours and then I want to leave Dallas on the same day. Sorry. Can't do that.
So I went to a flight comparison site. One of them couldn't do the dates I wanted and the other suggested two airlines, my preferred carrier and another I am less fond of. When I had a look at the dates etc, I couldn't get it to come out to an estimate that I had made a week ago so I put that aside and went back to my preferred carrier website.

OK. Let's get an idea of the cost. Drop the Canberra to Sydney leg. Try again. Play with the dates a little and it suggests $1,820. OK that looks acceptable I'll work out what to do about the Canberra leg later. Move on to the next page of the booking process. Price changes from $1,820 to $2,460. WTF!
Call the airline, wait 15 minutes on hold. Speak to a very nice person who tells me they can ticket me for $2,790. Explain that I can do better through the internet (their site) and told sorry the only way you can get a price like that is to book it through the internet. OK. Thanks anyway.
Go back and try a simple Return trip. Canberra to Detroit. Sure I can do that. It selected exactly the same flights as I would have selected on the multi-city planner and was ready to charge me $4,700 EACH WAY.
Really WTF!!
Go back and try Canberra to Dallas to Detroit to Dallas to Sydney to Canberra. Some flexibility on the dates. After a bit of back and forth and testing I can book the flights for $1,871 if I leave Dallas on the Saturday instead of Thursday or Friday. Or I can pay $2,500 if I leave on the Thursday. It turns out that with accommodation and sundry meals it is still going to be $250 cheaper for me to spend another two nights in Detroit and fly back on Saturday.
Bottom line is if I wasn't a little careful I could have paid anything up to $9,500 for exactly the same flights and class (economy) as I have now paid $1,900 including credit card surcharge!.

So while the simple travel plans are now much simpler to arrange with the interwebs some slightly more complex plans are still apt to get you a bit frazzled.

The bonus is I get to fly on the A380 from LA to Sydney so that will be a new experience for me.

7 Weeks at the Gym

My last couple of trips to the gym have been interesting from the point of view of comparisons. Now I don't go to the gym to compare and I try very hard to pay attention to what I am doing and only what I am doing but the other night (Friday) I was going through my new routine: I changed from 2 sets of 20 reps to 4 sets of 10 and I'm still adjusting the weights. There was a young lady there who isn't much bigger than my daughter. She was on the leg press machine when I got there and about 30 minutes later was still going. 6 or 7 repetitions at a time then off for a quick walk around and back. After a couple of sets she would go and find some more weights to put on. Now the carriage weighs 53kg to start with and by the end of her workout she had 160kg on the carriage and was doing her 6 or 7 reps with apparently no real strain. I'd be surprised if she weighed 55kg herself.


Only being 7 weeks in to my program I'm still taking it a bit easy trying to work my way up to some heavier weights but still keeping it challenging. So I hopped into the machine loaded up with 80kg and I could do my 4 sets of 10 but I could really feel it starting to burn at the end so I think I have that weight about right at least for the next couple of workouts. So this young lady had me in awe of the power that can be packed into well toned and not huge muscles. I'm guessing she is a dancer or martial artist.

On the whole I'm really pleased with my progress. When I signed up I could just barely do 10 pushups and certainly couldn't have gone back to do 10 more after a short rest. Now I can do 4 sets of 10 and while the last couple of the last set are a real strain still it shows real progress.

Tonight I had a Pilates class that still left me wobbly on my legs and again there was another young lady pushing heavier springs than me and she was another tiny one.

It's definitely a good thing I am firmly in the "this is what I have to do for me" not to compete mindset because otherwise I might be inclined to give up now and where would be the fun in that?

On the side effect side of things I work a (home) office job at my desk at my computer and have suffered neck and shoulder pain for quite some years now. While there is still stiffness and some soreness to be had it isn't as bad as it was and I feel I'm making progress from the increasingly couch bound sedentary life I was sinking into, back into a more active participation in everything. This is all probably a good thing because soon we will start the rather large renovation task of replacing the floorboards in 1/4 of the house and replacing the kitchen and for that I will need to be fitter than I was at the beginning of the year. And I am :-)

Bullying awareness week

With all of the Pope related news at the moment I almost feel like I have to start with "Forgive me readers for I've been slack, it's been 10 days since I posted..."

I'm not religious but I do appreciate that we live in a world that is strongly affected by the views of the major religions. For that reason I hope that the new Pope - Francis - can make positive improvements within the Catholic church in areas that are most out of line with progressive reasonable thinking especially in line with the sanctity of marriage, choice in sexuality and other contentious issues.

This week, aside from having a new Pope elected is also Bullying awareness week with a number of programs being run in the schools to raise awareness of the issue and suggest strategies for dealing with bullying. This topic is much closer to home for us than the larger world issues as our lovely, clever daughter (DP nearly 14) was the target of bullying for her last couple of years of primary school. Now DP has always been a bit shy and we never thought that she would grow up to be a motivational speaker or stage performer (and she probably still won't) however, her last two years at High School have brought about all sorts of positive changes in her personality and willingness to get involved in activities that take her out of her comfort zone. She is always volunteering to assist with something.

Two days ago DP told us that she was going to be giving some talks about bullying to a number of groups within the school. It transpires that these are not planned, prepared speeches but talks about her bullying experiences and some of the things that have helped her deal with and grow from the experiences. It also turns out that DP has volunteered for these speaking opportunities not as a result of students being asked to volunteer but because it is something that she feels strongly about so she asked one of the teachers if it would be possible.

DP was routinely in tears from bullying during year 6 and to see her standing up before her peers and talking about the experience from the point of view of a bullied student is a wonderful and warming thing. I continue to be amazed and impressed by the way she is growing into a confident young lady from the timid little girl she used to be.

In unrelated general goings on I've been getting to the gym almost as planned and feel that it's starting to pay off at least a bit. I can see the progress that I've been making on the workout sheet. My writing is coming along a little slower than I had hoped but is still progressing. I'm at 17,000 words in a revised draft of my story where I kind of planned to be closer to 30,000 by now. However, I'm happy with the way the characters are developing this time which was one of the major flaws in my first draft.

So six weeks in progress is good and the motivation is being maintained.

Stubborn or determined?

We were having a chat with the kids the other week on different personality traits that people have and our son GP said that he thought that stubbornness was probably one of the easier traits to deal with.
After I stopped laughing we went on to demonstrate through some role play just why we don't think this is the case.

Me: "Let's start with an easy one: 'Do you want something from the kiosk?'" This asked at an indoor soccer game a few years ago.
GP: "Yes"
Me: "What"
GP: "An ice cream"
Me: "Sure. Here's the money just go up and tell the lady behind the counter what you want"
GP: "Can't you do it?"
Me: "No. You can do it. They won't bite you. In fact they want to sell you something. That's why they are there."
This sort of discussion goes on for two, three or five minutes.
Finally. Me: "This is your last chance. Go and buy something or you get nothing."
GP: "I don't want anything."
We drive home.
GP: "Can I have an ice block?"
Me: "No. You had your chance earlier!"
GP: Sullen look on his face as he plops into the couch.

Now I understand that his reluctance comes from being in an uncomfortable situation but this sort of thing was quite common. It took until GP was nearly five for us to get any sort of lever to curb his behaviour when he got it in his head to either do or not do something. He was, as they say, born with a stubborn streak about a mile wide.

We went through a number of other simple scenes from our lives together and I explained, again, that I had truly learnt the meaning behind the phrase "You can lead a .... to .... but you cannot make them ...." only after GP started to exert his personality.

So a couple of weeks after this discussion GP had started high school and we were talking about homework, effort that needed to be put in and other stuff around how to make the best of the opportunities that would present themselves over the next few years. I chimed in with a comment about the conversation on stubbornness and pointed out that the flip side of the coin was determination. I think of stubbornness as a negative, reactive trait and determination as a positive pro-active trait but really they are the same thing. It's just a question of what you get your mind fixed on.

Stubborn people dig their heels in and won't get out of their own way while a determined person drives forward and won't let anyone get in their way.

For my personal goals my determination is paying off. I haven't managed to get to the gym as often as I planned but I'm still going and seeing improvements and my writing is progressing fairly well. The games room was down to be cleaned up so we could set up the scroll saw by 1 March. Well I didn't quite get there due in part to hurting my back while putting a flat pack cupboard together. It got better but I lost a few days at the cleaning and the gym for a few seconds on careless lifting. This weekend should see the scroll saw shifted and it looks like we will be having a garage sale to get rid of some accumulated stuff from over the years.

So our challenge to GP and to ourselves is to be more determined and less stubborn. Choose something and stick at it rather than letting someone or some circumstance choose for you and then fight against it.

Short term Amnesia

My 12yo son (GP), bless his little heart forgets things all the time. Which is funny really, since he actually has a fantastic memory for anything he thinks is important. Names are difficult for him as they are for me. I can't remember the number of times I have met someone and literally 20 seconds after being introduced I can't recall their name! Heck, six months after leaving my last job, where I had worked for 18 years I struggled to remember the names of a number of people who I had worked around for up to 10 years.

But other things tax him too. It seems that his school hat, a simple black bucket hat, is destined to spend almost as much time in the school lost property as it will spend at home. Notes are given out by the teachers and are left in his bag until the day they are due. Nothing new to most parents I'm sure but it's still incredibly annoying to have to go back home to get something he has forgotten that he had under control 10 minutes before you left.

We've been trying to get GP to come up with a method to organize himself. We've told him an unlikely number of times that now he is in high school he needs to be working these things out for himself because he doesn't want to get known as the kid whose parents come in to do every little thing for him. After some discussion he settled on a piece of paper that he could attach to the front of his folder and write notes about important things on as they happened through the day. At first he came out with a piece of paper smaller than A5 and dug his heels in when we suggested that maybe a larger sheet would be more use. I think this particular reminder process has only lasted a little over a week so far and three of those days were at camp so they don't really count. I'll be a little surprised if we aren't having the same conversations with him in another fortnight and trying to convince him that he needs to come up with a method for reminding himself what other people think is important, like homework and changes to class schedules.

Maybe when he grows up he will find a wonderful girl to take care of him and keep him on track 'cause unless he changes something he's going to need someone.

I do hold out some hope for him in this regard as my memory is somewhat the same. Although I find I'm a little less distracted than he is this might just be because I have had a good deal more practice. I'm sure my mother or brothers would be only too happy to regale me with tales of things I forgot when I was a boy.

My office at home and when I worked away from home are not neat and tidy but I can pretty much always tell you exactly when something was put. I don't have a system as such I just remember where "it" is. People would come into my office and ask about a file or paper and I would reach under a stack of other files and pull exactly the one they were looking for out.

I have thought about this a number of times and come to the conclusion that the better a person's memory is the more likely they are to be, shall we say casual, about their personal organisation. If you have a bad memory and know it you will file things away properly so that you can find it again.

Maybe that is just a soothing rationalization I make to stop myself feeling too bad about having a messy work space and maybe it is a profound statement on the workings of the human mind. You be the judge.

Routine enables routine

I'm coming to realize that long term goals are achieved by lots of small decisions and actions along the way. I guess I always knew this but it is becoming clearer as I try to stick with the goals I have set.

I went to Auckland, NZ, for 8 days getting back yesterday. I knew that I couldn't go to my gym for that week but I also knew that there were several exercises that I could do in the motel room that were consistent with the Pilates and weights routine I am trying to establish. So I had a vague plan to do these exercises every other day or something. Well I am here to tell you now that since it was only a vague plan that there were only vague exercises. I set out to do them on two nights and only really gave it a good go on one of those. Even small amounts of alcohol are inhibitors for achievement.

Not to say I didn't get some exercise in. I did play a round of golf on what I will happily describe as a very forgiving course and also quite a flat one. That was around four (4) hours of walking and hitting followed by a BBQ and some beer/wine that probably undid any benefit from the walking. Oh well. That turned into a late night which left me less motivated the next day. I walked around 5km the day after golf just to get out of the motel and get some lunch.

I also had every intention of writing every week night. I managed two nights not six. Why? Well there were some nights when I was otherwise engaged with dinner or drinks and some where I was actively travelling. All good excuses but still they distracted me from my goal.

I have been Coke Zero free for around three weeks now and it turns out that has been the easiest change to persist with.

So what am I learning from all of this? Routine is an enabler of more routine. Back in a familiar environment and into my simple routine of getting up and going into my office off the bedroom has allowed me to slip back into going to the gym today (and I feel good about that). When I was away the entire daily routine was so different from my home routine that it was really easy to just not do the little things that contribute to the bigger goals.

The other thing I'm learning, again, is that goals are just that. Something you aim for that is achievable. If you don't hit the small goal and it is still meaningful then don't beat yourself up over missing it and recommit to it for next time remembering that it is a promise to yourself and not just idle words.

Unexpected consequences...

I posted last time that I aim to have the games room cleaned up and set up with the scroll saw by 1 March. I got back to tidying over the weekend since I actually started cleaning it up two or three weeks ago.

Now like a lot of people with children we have accumulated a lot of stuffed toys over the years. They are commonly referred to in this house as "The guys".

As the children have grown the guys have been in and out of favour and while my daughter (DP) has quite a number of guys arrayed around her bedroom there are some that have gravitated to the games room and sit or sprawl on shelves or the floor or on other games depending on where they were last left.

It occurred to my unthinking adult brain that since they don't play with at least some of these guys then it would be reasonable to ask them to say which of them they didn't want to keep. So I asked them to come into the games room to tell me, no pressure, which they wanted to keep and which of them could go.

Well we started well enough. The elephant (not seen above) can go.
Dad - How about Clifford the big red dog?
Kids - OK we don't need him.
D - Sleepy?
K - Get rid of him and Doc.
D - Tramp?
K - Um. OK he can go too.

We got through about seven or eight when I noticed that DP was looking less and less happy about this process and in fact had a single tear forming that rolled down her cheek as I watched. I told her we didn't have to get rid of any of them if she wanted but that I needed to know so I can find space for them. After a hug and a few deep breaths I asked DP what was wrong and if she thought I was asking her to put her childhood behind her. She nodded and took a few more deep breaths and we agreed that with the exception of the elephant we would keep them all.

So the tidying process stalled and it seems I will need more cupboard space than originally expected for some of the games and guys that we are not going to get rid of yet. It's actually quite a big house that we live in but it has so little storage space, despite various efforts over the years to either add more or throw stuff out.

I'm not sure what lesson I could take from this. Maybe just a reminder that growing older doesn't automatically mean growing up.

The nature of goals

I can close the book on the first week of my year of deliberate choices. Generally I think I am on track. I went to the gym twice this week for Pilates and twice for a weights workout. I'm happy with that as a starting point and whether it was from technique or just determination I found I was able to do a little more on the second visit for the weights. Mind you I didn't have much left in the shoulders/upper arms after the end of the weights session. I guess this indicates that the program is not too light anyway.

Last night as the cricket wound up (Aus vs West Indies 4th ODI) I was relaxing in my chair and realized that I had not done any writing during the day. It would have been easy to let it slide. It was already nearly 10.00pm. The commitment I made to myself and the fact that I had written it down helped to persuade me to go and make the effort to at least spend some time on that goal. As soon as I sat down words seemed to come to me so it was a pleasant hour or so writing the prologue to my story.

I've been pondering the nature of goals over the last week. We see ads on the TV all the time about weight loss and fitness and enough comments at this time of the year about "New Years Resolutions" to sink a battleship. Truth is I think most people make new years resolutions sometimes in their lives and many people take out gym memberships and barely use them or buy fitness equipment and then fold it neatly under the bed to be pulled out in six months, used for a week and then slotted away again.

Why don't these resolutions stick and what can we do to either make better resolutions or stick to the ones we do make. There is nothing new in my answer to this but I will list what I see as some important factors:

• You have to be making the resolutions/goals for the right reasons.
• You have to make achievable goals that stretch but won't break you
• You have to have an understanding of what setting a goal means

These might seem pretty self evident and self explanatory but I think most of us see people setting goals that do not meet the first two criteria and many people don't really understand what it should mean to them when they set a goal.

What are the right reasons for setting a goal? Well actually there aren't any right reasons that apply to everyone. There are only reasons that are right for you at this point in time. I can't set goals for you that you don't believe in. Its one of the things that fails in many performance appraisal processes in the workplace. Someone sets a goal for you or asks you to nominate a goal for the next period. You may not be wholly committed to the goal so you won't try. It's a lesson that my oh so stubborn son has taught me many times over the last 12 years. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink! It has to want to drink, or read, or waterski or whatever. So you have to want to reach the goal. It has to mean something to you otherwise you are wasting your time and energy.

Set goals that you can meet. If you don't you are setting yourself up for failure. I looked hard at the list of goals I have set and don't think, given the time I currently have available to me and the direction my life is or isn't going at the moment, that they are unreasonable. If I worked 60 hours a week or more my goals would have to be different or I just couldn't fit them in and still maintain some balance with the rest of my life.

So the crux of it all. What is a goal. To me it is a promise we make to ourselves. The word promise is one that is not used very often in our house. I told my kids some years ago that I was very careful with the use of that word. If I promise someone something then I am saying that pretty much come hell or high water I will do what I said. I don't make idle promises to people. If I don't think I can get something done then I tell them that, I don't promise it then fail to deliver. It looks bad, it affects my reputation and makes me feel bad. It doesn't after all take many failed promises before people just accept that your promise means nothing. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who think along the same lines when they are making promises to others. When they are making a promise to themselves it is often a different story. "Who will know if I skip this activity?" "Who will it affect but me?" "Who will know if I eat this cake I promised I wouldn't?" "Who will care if I don't go to the gym?" The problem with that is that it doesn't take long for you to start doubting your own commitment to promises you make to yourself. It gets easier the more often you make and then break a commitment.

It is for this reason that writing these goals down and writing this blog is helping me to meet my goals. I'm reinforcing the promise to myself by making a promise to you. Do you care that I made a promise to you? It doesn't matter. What does matter is that I care that I made a promise to you.

Thank you for being with me through this first week. I'm still working on the right frequency of posts. I don't want to write "I'm still on track" every day but I also don't want to leave it too long between posts. 

Next week will be a bit interesting as I am going to New Zealand on Wednesday for a few days to a week or so. Staying on track will take more effort I think.

New short term goal: By 1 March I will have the games room cleared to the point where we can set up the scroll saw in a clean, comfortable place for Mrs P to use.

The first 10 million years were the worst...

I know that I'm not finding out something new and I know that nothing worth doing was ever easy but after my first resistance/weights session yesterday I can truly say that parts of me that I didn't know I had hurt.

Through conscious effort I managed to ignore the "fit" people at the gym including the lady who was smaller than me but able to lift more weight etc. and just concentrate on doing what I was there for. Something that I learned a long time ago but still have to remind myself of is that 'most people don't care about what anyone else is doing and they are not all looking at you and laughing'.

So my weights program involves:
Push ups
Assisted Chin ups - Counter balance takes 47kg at this stage.
Seated Row
Standing Row
Bicep Curls - 4KG dumbells (yeah you can say it. That's not much is it!)
Tricep Pull downs
Leg lifts
Calf raises
Fitball hamstring curls
Core work

2 Sets and 20 reps of each with various light weights.
I didn't manage 2 sets of 20 for everything but that's why I'm going.

At 2.00 this morning the cat went off. She's 18, nearly completely deaf and a fair bit senile. She comes in the house during the day, looks straight at you and howls REALLY LOUD. Sometimes she does this at night such that we refer to her sometimes as alarm cat. As in the alarm cat went off twice last night! I got up to see her/reassure her and found that my left calf muscle was not happy with yesterday's efforts. Happy to say that with a bit of stretching and walking around today its more or less back to normal but glad that today I'm not planning on any gym or pilates work.

The Coke Zero lasted until last Sunday night so since then it has mostly been water (even when I went to the cinema to watch Les Miserables) and I can't really say that I miss the Coke or even particularly want it. I don't drink coffee or tea so that makes me caffeine free again which if this link is any indication should help me to focus better and thereby achieve more even if I'm not a spider.

So nearly through my first week of this process and I'm happy to say that I have been able to meet my micro goals to keep me on track for the larger ones. Writing it down and telling people about it is helping to remind me to stay honest about it so thank you to the early readers out there.

Ouch, ouch and tremble - Pilates for beginners

I can touch my toes and clasp hands behind my back one over a shoulder the other under a shoulder but that is where it ends for my flexibility. When I touch my toes and push just that little bit harder my toes start to go numb from the pressure on the hamstring and the achilles tendon. Funny thing is I'm more flexible than my 14 and 12 year old children!

I decided that Pilates was a good place to start and tonight I was not disappointed. On the "Reformer" pilates machine (like an industrial version of the Total Fit Gym that Chuck Norris advertises) I was able to stretch and twist some muscles that don't get a lot of work on a normal day.

I didn't break or even trap anything except a little of my overly long hair but I did find myself gasping like a dying fish once or twice to hold the last two seconds of a swimming action while holding my core tight and lifting opposite leg and arm in rapid succession while lying on my tummy.

15 minutes after the class ended I felt I could have done more but at the end of it I was glad it was over. It wasn't even the core tummy/back muscles that were twitching. I rested my feet on the bar at the end of the machine and couldn't stop my legs from twitching/trembling just from maintaining a "table" position with them. It's a good thing that the longest journey begins with a single step 'cause I think I have a fair way to go.

I've also managed to keep my appointment with my story characters. I now know a little more about them and the Universe they live in.

Only a few days in it is becoming clear that to keep working on these goals will require a little more re-organisation of my normal daily routine. I guess in the end that is what change is all about - Change.

Just how unfit am I and writing goals.

So today started with vague trepidation. I was booked in for a fitness assessment at the new gym and wasn't really sure how unfit I would be declared. I turn up on time and get presented with a relatively standard health questionnaire.

I don't have any of the major, mostly heart related, conditions so I don't need a Dr's certificate to undertake even a mild exercise program. OK. First step looks good.

2nd Page. Another checklist.
"Do you have/have you ever had"
Asthma
Arthritis
Hernia
Male > 45 or Female > 55
  Huh. It turns out being a male over 45 is now a condition
Neck/Back pain
  and so on.

I ticked a couple of "yes" boxes but not enough to put me in the "don't let this guy exercise in your centre" category. All good so far.

Now to some biometrics and benchmarks.

Measurements:
Chest:  101cm	Waist:  94.5cm	Hips:    109cm
Left thigh:   55cm	Right thigh;  57.5cm
Left bicep:   31cm	Right bicep;  31.5cm
Weight:   88.5kg

While Anu (the nice lady taking me through the assessment) is measuring I comment. "There's not much muscle there." Her reply? "Yes. It is one of the smaller biceps I've measured." At least she was smiling.

OK. What about some benchmark exercises?

Push ups	Wall sit	Plank
10	1 min 6 sec	33 sec

It's fair to say the only way from here is up!

Resting heart rate	Post 'step up' heart rate	Blood pressure
50 bpm	94 bpm	140 / 80

Apparently the post 'step up' heart rate plus my age puts me in the "Above average" to "Good" fitness level. Go figure. If I'm above average then there are a lot of really unfit people walking, or perhaps not walking, around.

So now I have a weights/training plan to be re-assessed in about 6-8 weeks and a commitment to attend the gym three or more times a week for Pilates and twice a week or more for the training plan.

We ran through most of the exercises and machines testing the appropriate weights to start training with. It was a good, if still somewhat daunting experience.

Pilates starts on Monday.

Yesterday I also sat down to review my writing plan.
Actually I started to write a book over 15 years ago. I have 110,000 words written (some of them probably even good) and have been dipping into it at times over the last two or three years. Most of what I wrote happened in the first year or two.
I've become increasingly sure that the basic concept for the book (fantasy) is sound but that the start especially needs to be re-written before I can go too much further. So yesterday I started to write a new synopsis and spell out the major characters and their roles. Over the next week I might not make the goal of 1,500 to 2,000 words a day but hope that at the end of the week I will have a solid plan for who the characters are and how they get from A to B and eventually to Z. I'm unsure of how much of the existing 110K words I'll be able to salvage but there are certainly concepts and encounters that I think can be transferred fairly well.

A starting point

Hi World.
Most of you don't know me and I don't know most of you (and never will).

People who do know me know that I am typically a fairly laid back person who tends to "go with the flow" most of the time. The last couple of years have involved quite a bit of "drifting" in my personal, home and professional life which has resulted in not a lot of progress on many fronts.

Following one definition of Insanity: Continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results. I have decided that this year I will make an effort to live Deliberately and thereby make decisions and gasp! set goals and work to achieve them.

Like a lot of people I am good at starting new things. I have enthusiasm and even some high expectations then after a while I get bored and let things slide. This year the aim is to finish things I have started and to start more things.

So why the blog?
Partly as a record for me to be able to look back on and partly as an aid to goal setting. You know the drill: Write it down or tell people about it and it becomes more real.

Some not so vital statistics:

• I'm 88kg and 188cm (194lbs and 6'2")
• 46 years old
• Married with two kids (14 and 12)
• Work from home as an IT consultant in software development
• I read a lot (mostly fanstasy)
• Have aspirations to be a writer
• Am a fairly dab hand at home renovation work (some of it even gets completely finished!)
• Can put away a 500g pack of Jersey Caramels in under two hours and still feel like eating more sweets
• I drink around 2 litres of Coke Zero every day
• Do no organised or coordinated exercise program
• I'm great at writing procedures for others to follow but lousy at following them myself
• I have an old achilles tendon injury on my left ankle that makes running and sometimes walking painful
• Two years ago I fell over while ice skating and damaged my right shoulder. After physio it is better but like many things I didn't follow through the physio completely so it isn't completely better.

Why did I tell you all that? Well, so you can see a little of the person I am now.

So what is going to be different this year?

• Let's start with this blog. The aim is to update it at least once a week and otherwise whenever something worth noting happens.
• I have just joined a local gym and will be starting Pilates on Feb 4 after getting a health assessment on Feb 2.
• We have 6 1.25litre bottles of Coke Zero in the house. These are the last bottles that will be bought for the year (yikes).
• Sweet and biscuit consumption will be cut back to sensible limits rather than one pack per day.
• I plan to write, creatively, for two hours a day five days a week aiming for 1,500 to 2,000 words per day starting on 1 Feb.
• I have a number of jobs around the house that REALLY need to be attended to this year and have been put off for a number of years. They will be scheduled and dealt with. They include re-building the pergola, replacing the driveway, replacing the kitchen and laying a new floor though 1/3 of the house.