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.