Good things, week of Oct 19

* My daughter's first 6th grade progress report came in the mail. A's and one A-... And the real shocker was that it said she puts in great efforts in PE! (she's pretty averse to much of anything that resembles exercise)

* As she already said, Lisa started a new job this week.

* I've gotten totally jazzed about the idea of building bike frames. Or at least learning the process... Getting the equipment to do so is a little daunting $$-wise.

* With the turn of the weather to "seasonal" (meaning the string of nice sunny weather is over, and we're back to rain), I still got to ride my bike to work 2 days this week.

* And we have a date-night tonight!

it's been a very long week for me at work and at home. Lot's of in depth work and detail reporting going on BUT one HUGE project at work got final approval from our administration and Board so now I just have 4 months of running it and validating the data is accurate before it goes on automatic with only minimal validation every month. This report was a 6 month project for myself and 2 other people so I am pretty excited by it.

Home is good, we got our new dresser last weekend plus a weekend visit from my wifes parents. Cut down most of another tree in the yard and now have about 2 chords of hickory wood for winter fires this year (tree was mostly dead already so it does not need a lot of curing luckily!) our lake got stocked with it yearly quota of triploids last weekend too so all I have to do to catch something is look in water.

This weekend is shaping up to be a great one with tomorrow all day being a dedicate time to have fun for my wife and I. (pumpkin patch, corn maze, running fun errands, shopping at a home improvement store, going out to lunch etc)

Less than a month until my first IM!  (wait, is that good news, or not?)

We got the word that a friend is going to lend us the money to pay for my immigration - which is HUGE.  I don't think he has any idea how much he's saving our azz right now - I had waterworks flowing freely when we got the word that this friend would help us out. 

Impromptu hanging out with my BIL and SIL yesterday which was very cool. 

I am on vacation this weekend. OK, Stay-cation.

I used some of the time to put together a presentation in which I identified most of the roads frequented by cyclists in the northeast quadrant of our parish (equivalent to county for you non-Louisianians), then identified locations on those roads where cycling awareness signs would be of benefit. I then made that presentation to the board of directors of a local civic organization with a request for them to fund 50% of the cost of the 42 identified signs if the tri club funded the other half. At yesterday's meeting that board approved the funding.

As we were leaving a board member who heads another non-profit said his organization would fund another 20 signs on roads adjacent to my quadrant.

Love it when a plan comes together like that.

This started as an idea a year ago when the sister of a long-time friend was killed while cycling on area roads. I had worked casually on this since the summer trying to identify governmental funding sources before deciding if it were to get done it would be through private funds. Th idea became an urgency when last week one of my tri club members was struck from behind while cycling. She was airlifted to a local hospital, where she underwent four hours of surgery and was placed in a drug-induced coma for a few days. Reportedly she is now stable although still in ICU.

In the scheme of things this is just one small sector where our area cyclists ride, who knows if it will make any difference. But it is a start, and hopefully we can extend the project to the rest of the parish and beyond.