An interesting way of telling time

Happy Thanksgiving! Can't believe it's actually Thanksgiving 2010 already. My nephew Colin is 1-year-old now, and it seems like he was born about 15 minutes ago...I have way too many things to be thankful for to list here....So, instead of that, I'm going to simply quote my buddy Kevin in describing his recent trip home from Tajikistan, which provides an interesting twist on the skewed reality that we both have with regard to telling time during international travel:

"Well, I left my hotel room during the 2nd quarter of the 4pm set of NFL games on Sunday and got home just in time for the 4th quarter of the Monday Night Football Game, so everything went pretty well." (that was all the same day)

That's what international travel can be like...

Anyways, big things coming up soon - ski season getting into gear (trips to Vermont, LP, and likely Utah on the agenda, hopefully some W's and maybe even some OK classic skiing), Nancy's finishes grad school in two weeks, holidays, big bucks, etc, we'll see, but many many things to look forward too...

A few pics and a new PR!!

Here are some pics from the wine tour that Kevin and I took our Georgian friends on a couple weeks ago. Any time that Kevin and I are in Tbilisi, Temuri and Ivane not only make us feel at home, but also include us into whatever they have going on with their friends and/or family. These visits have really taught both of us a lot with regard to the importance of the time that you spend with your friends and family. With that in mind, we felt it was appropriate, during their visit to Rochester, to take them on a wine tour in the beautiful Finger Lakes Region with some of our close friends and family. Some pics:

Ivane, Kevin and I. One very successful businessman and two aspiring businessmen.

Nancy, Jason and Anne (Jason's girlfriend).
Ivane and I. For some reason, Georgians don't seem to smile too often in pictures, but believe me, Ivane was very happy on this particular day.

Kevin, Nana (Ivane's sister) and Kate (Kevin's sister).
Right to left - Anne, Temuri, Alice (Temuri's wife), Nana, Brendan, Alice's friend (She's a Georgian living in Toronto, so she came down for the weekend to visit), and Jason.
Nancy and I with Temuri and Alice.

Overall, it was a great day spent with friends and family. According to the famous Georgian philosophy, time spent with friends and family doesn't make you any older. I truly believe that none of us aged that day (although, I will say that my liver may have needed a little recovery).

In other news, the Romanians left yesterday, and that was also a great visit. I am continuously amazed by the great friendships that I've developed over the years and developed a few new friends over the past several days.

Final note, I have been very (cautiously) curious about my fitness level going into ski season given that the past month has been spent hosting customers and getting slammed with other work. My weekly training volume has been a little bit down and my weekly sleep hours have been very much down. I have been working out a lot, but also spending too much time in bars and restaurants with customers. Given that, I figured, for better or worse, I needed to get a baseline, so yesterday, I did a roller ski time trial on a course by my parents place (it was opening day of deer season, so I went hunting first thing). After reviewing my training log, my previous PR on this course was 22:57 (coincidentally on opening day of deer season in 2009). Yesterday, I was happily surprised to see 22:08 when I passed the "school bus stop ahead" sign that marks the finish. Not sure what that means, but it definitely gave me a nice mental pick-up going into the final weeks of training before the snow flies and it's time to break out the spandex!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Wow...I think in early October I wrote that things would calm down and return to a normal routine, that couldn't be farther from the truth unless this is my new "normal" routine, in which case, life will be one long endurance race....I do not remember a time in my life where I have had this little down time - it's been a never ending string of "leave the house at 730am and get home at 10pm, rinse, repeat" since I got home from the Ukraine a few weeks ago.

A couple notable events of the past few weeks are:

- I hosted a visit to Rochester from my friends Temuri and Ivane from Georgia. They were here on business, however, we did make time to do some wine tasting in the Finger Lakes region two Saturday's ago. I'm not sure they were impressed with the wine, but I'm positive they had fun and enjoyed our time together.

- Last weekend was my good friend Knodel's 30th birthday party. It was held in a bowling alley in Buffalo, NY. As such, I bowled for the first time in like 10 years. It was a good time, and I wasn't as embarrassing on the bowling alley as I thought I would be, although Nancy did beat me the first game.

- Following the 30th B-Day party, I met the Ogbornes (Ron is a good buddy from Penfield), at the Sabres game, which was a lot of fun. They live out in Arizona now, so we don't get too many opportunities to see them, so the timing of the game with the 30th B-Day party worked out perfect, and the Sabres won in OT to top off a great day with a variety of old friends.

- I'm now in the middle of hosting a delegation from Romania. They are many of the same guys that I spent a week with in Washington, DC last year, so it's been good to catch up with them, and to show them around the area a little.

Other than these events, it's been "sipping water from a firehose" at work and it doesn't seem like there's an end in sight.

One of the positive's from the past few weeks is that I've managed to re-institute a morning workout regiment. When I was in college, we had baseball practice at 6am for about 6 weeks each year during the winter. I absolutely hated "6am's" and swore I would never put myself through that again for any reason. This is a tactic I've used when on the road for work, but have never had to consistently implement while in Rochester, but the last few weeks, I have managed to get in some quality workouts in the pre-dawn hours. I'm still not sure that it would ever be sustainable for me as a long-term training regiment, but for short periods of time, it has been re-assuring to know that when things get hectic for a few weeks, I can manage to keep a training schedule and obey my alarm clock, even when it reads 545am and it's 35 and raining outside.

I have some good pictures from the events mentioned above, hopefully I'll have a chance to post them soon.