Despite being rather busy this week, these two sport stories caught my eye.   It was funny to hear how the two were treated a little differently.  Most of the press and analysts did say that both were wrong, but that the football player was just doing what was done in every football pile.

Take a look for yourself.

Here is some footage from a women’s college soccer game…

And here is another from a Florida college football game…

Obviously, neither of them are good, but I am not sure that just “being a part of the game” is a good enough excuse for for me.   The football player was initially suspended for a half by the team, but HE voluntarily said he would sit out an entire game.   The soccer player was immediately suspended by the college for a yet to be determined period of time.

This doesn’t mean all sports are bad, but that some of the individuals that play these sports can be bad.

Maybe, in a period where it is very easy to lump all people from certain groups together regardless of race, political party, ideology, race and religion, it might be a good idea to realize that there are GOOD and BAD people everywhere.

It wouldn’t be wise to judge an entire group of people on the actions of a select few.

A recent (like now) event after a morning run and a trip to the gym made my brain head in this direction after a healthy from a friend and the author of Laments and Observations…

So, I bring you, sung to the tune of  “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty…

VERSE 1

It’s a weird day, thinkin’ bout baseball

Cause I left my boxers in the living room

Gotta be sure not to get excited

And to wipe well in case I gotta poo

VERSE 2

It’s a weird feelin’ rubbin’ on my inseam

There’s a callus formin’ on my ball

It really hurt when it got stuck in my zipper

Almost as much as gettin’ it back out

And I’m free…free ballin’

Yeah I’m free…free ballin’

VERSE 3

There’s a stain where I accidently dribbled

Spilled a water to cover up the mess

Everyone is staring for all the wrong reasons

But it kinda feels nice when I shake my leg

CHORUS

And I’m free…free ballin’

Yeah I’m free…free ballin’

Free ballin’, now

I’m a, free ballin’, now

I’m a Free ballin’, now

I’m a, free ballin’, now

I’m a free ballin’

VERSE 4

I got arrested for walkin’ near a bus stop

They thought I was lookin’ for a date

Gonna free ball for the next six months

Cuttin’ grass with the weekend crew…

And I’m free…free ballin’

Yeah I’m free…free ballin’

This is the program that I have written for me to run.   I am proposing that the my job will be to put this program in place.   The outline formatting got messed up in the “copy and paste” from Word to here… the “A-B-Cs” got changed to “1-2-3s” and some 1-2-3s got added…where they weren’t even supposed to be.   Regardless…no time for fixing WordPress/Word formatting issues for the blog…I have real work to do.

1. I. SHORT TERM
   1. Develop immediate smart practices to lower utility usage by maintenance staff through Regional Maintenance Directors
      1. i.      HVAC maintenance schedule
      2. ii.      Water heater settings
      3. iii.      Reduce utility usage during Turn, Carve Out and Down status
      4. iv.      Smarter office lighting and utility consumption
   2. Organize, track and ensure completion of current and future service tickets pending Utility provider action
      1. i.      Street lighting under utility provider control
      2. ii.      Water leaks
      3. iii.      Drainage issues
      4. iv.      Sewer system
   3. Establish unit and building specific footprint styles of every community (size, style, etc.) for long term analysis
   4. Obtain steady flow of unit read data for immediate excess usage and possible leak or hazard
   5. Manage all utility contracts (preventative maintenance and emergency)
   6. Begin a Company staff utility education program
   7. Research Government/Utility Provider assistance for Multi-family green programs and possible tax credits
   8. Provide a single point of contact for all Company/Public Works/Utility Provider issues for project outages
   9. Investigate and report Billing discrepancies
      1. i.      Estimated billing neighborhoods
      2. ii.      Possible infrastructure billed to company using agreed to Points of Demarcation
   10. Manage metering maintenance contractors with each individual districts
   11. Establish a group of core utility contractors that will be placed on the vendor list with the ability to provide emergency 24 hour service to restore utilities.

1. II. MID-TERM
   1. Gather and organize utility system data from multiple sources per house and building style for Long Term analysis
      1. i.      Electrical distribution
      2. ii.      Water supply
      3. iii.      Sanitary sewer
      4. iv.      Natural Gas
   2. Establish defined Point of Demarcation for each utility at each neighborhood for Company review
   3. Begin a resident education program on utility usage
   4. Research relationships with established and new vendors for more efficient products
   5. Run pilot projects on specific units and buildings for utility usage data for comparison to like units and buildings
      1. i.      Lighting
      2. ii.      HVAC
      3. iii.      Water heater replacements and insulating blankets
      4. iv.      Building Insulation
      5. v.      Ventilation
   6. Apply for assistance/tax credits  with government programs for Company
   7. Establish a program for communication contractors (Cox, Comcast, Verizon and satellite installers) working in Company communities to ensure compliance with Company policies and keep common areas free of above ground communication cabling
   8. Educate local Company district staff on specific Point of Demarcation
   9. Install a utility marking program for Company owned utilities
2. III. LONG-TERM
   1. Propose specific small, medium and large scale projects with specific immediate investment compared  with  long term cost benefit analysis calculated for each home, building and community
   2. Track utility usage by District (and community) and institute a program to reward  Districts with the largest utility usage savings by percentage each quarter for both Company employees and residents
   3. Establish a resident utility usage tracking program regardless of feasibility of “billing program” to assist in actual resident participation
   4. Help develop, propose and track all Utility provider infrastructure upgrades
   5. Develop, write scopes of work for contracts and manage all utility work in region
   6. Research possibility of separation from Government owned utilities
   7. Obtain, maintain and track all company, Government and specific utility provider data in a central location
   8. Incorporate utility savings into all Company office upgrades with timers and motion sensors in individual offices and restrooms along with on-demand water heaters in office buildings instead of wasteful large capacity water tanks.
   9. Provide data for future developments using data obtained during research and implementation  of Regional utility saving programs
   10. Provide a complete utility program that can be plugged into any Company community regardless of size and geographical location

Leaving loose ends is not something I like to do, but as a four and a half year job come to an end there are always a few things left in a drawer that you know that you should get done.

For me, it is a set of reports that no one has looked at in four years.

I had them completed for 36 of the 50 months that we have been in operation and no one has even asked about them…not even once.

For that reason, I may have gotten a little relaxed in getting them completed.

Week by week, they have been piling up…and I haven’t been taking care of them like I should have…

2520 pages…

…and I was 800 pages short.

That monster in my drawer was the first thing I thought about when the new position was offered to me last week.   There is a 98% chance that no one will EVER ask about them, but I have spent the last 72 hours straight completing them…with minimal sleep.

And…now that it is done…and as my body lies lifeless on the couch trying to stay awake for tonight’s baseball game, I am glad to have that behind me.

Next on my list is to create the program that will define my next job.   I would like to get it done by tomorrow so I can hit the ground running.

Except…I still don’t know who my boss it going to be.

I can’t believe I accepted a job that has no description on a project that doesn’t exist.   The only direction I have is to cut utility costs and keep the utilities in working condition.

Seems easy enough.

I don’t generally do a lot of planning when it comes to blog posts, but today’s was set to be another in the series of  “Five Thoughts” since for some reason “funny” came back to me this morning.

“Funny” got sucked out of me at 11 am when an email from my boss requesting my presence at a meeting at 1pm came through on my Blackberry.

The meeting was going to be with someone else in the Property Management side of the house…and it was going to be about something that we wouldn’t meet about.   I would just take care of it without a meeting.

This meant something was about to happen.

Work has been getting lighter and lighter for the past year and three people are already gone and January was going to be another point when someone was going to have to go…unless something else came up.

Well…

A new position has been created for me.   A job that never existed before…with this company.

I am going to be charged with saving money for the company.

This seems simple, huh?

One of my construction projects involved installing meters on approximately 9,000 homes and buildings in this portfolio.   Now that it is finished, I am going to collect the data, track usage and find ways to cut utility costs.

Essentially, I am going to reduce the companies utility costs via usage.

I will also be maintaining and repairing these same utility systems along with working with the utility providers and the government to be able to provide tax credits for upgrading of our homes to meet a more “green” requirement.  I will be providing a cost analysis for projects and the impact it will have on our utility usage (and cost.)

A part of this position is to have a single point of attack for all of these things.

Training both maintenance staff and residents on conservation is important…along with installing Energy-Star compliant appliances, heating and cooling systems, lights, toilets and just about everything else under the sun.

This is an incredible position.   And something I have almost no experience with other than my specific knowledge of these homes and the industry standards that are in place.

My ultimate task will be simple.  Save more money than it costs to have me doing the job.

Our company will be able to have me in a very public role, which will provide them with good PR, save money on utility usage and create less of an impact on the community utility systems.

It should be a win/win for everyone.

I have more questions than answers about this position, but I would have been upset if someone other than myself would have had it given to them.

My days will be spent around the same houses that I have been dealing with since 1994, but just in a different capacity…my time will be distributed differently and there will be a bit more travel.

The troubling part of this change is that I am going to be the guy that talks about energy usage , carbon footprints and probably annoy most of these managers when they see me coming.

Kind of like this guy…

If I sound like Al Gore…please SHOOT ME!!!!!

I finally caved in…

After years and years of running by myself, I have actually joined a local running group.

I have had my GPS watch (Garmin ForeRunner405) for a little over a year…

…and according to my calculations, I have run far enough to go from Virginia Beach, VA to Lexington, KY.   That is only about 1.5 miles a day, and that doesn’t seem like much to me…but running to Kentucky sounds more impressive.

So let’s go with the more impressive statistic.

All of that running…except for two 1/2 Marathons and a full Marathon, have been running alone…and now I am going to mix it up a bit.

I met last night with a group of people running the hills at a local landmark.  Hill running must be good for you, because I didn’t enjoy it.

Comparing running hills to eating brussel spouts would accurate.  

Just to add insult to injury, 12 hours later, I showed up at another event to run a fast paced five miles…with a 1/2 mile warm up and cool down.

The interesting portion of this was meeting new people…with no introduction.

There were eight individuals at my first gathering.  

The co-ordinator of the event introduced himself and they went around the circle.

One by one, each person bragged described their training and recent race results.  

I was seventh to go, and since the whole thing resembled some kind of sick “Runners Anonymous” meeting in a parking lot…

I said, “Hi.  My name is Steve Burgess and I am a runner.  I haven’t been running in 27 hours.”

(silence)

Joking about runners TO runners doesn’t go over well.

I have been putting off going up to the attic.

For those of you new around here…there have been  many posts about my trips up and down the attic.

October 2007

November 2007

October 2008

I swear that this attic is going to be the death of me.

For the past two weeks, she has been trying to get me to go up there to get the bin of Halloween costumes.  It is a big orange bin that has “HALLOWEEN” written on the top of it.

But this year, she added, “I also need you to get down the target bag of extra costume I bought on clearance at Target after Halloween.”

Me:   You didn’t give me another bag of stuff.

Wife:  Yes I did.

Me:  If you did.  I would have put it in the bin.

Wife:  Well.   It has to be up there.

Me:   Remember the Batman costume from 2007.   You must have put it somewhere else…but I will look.

This morning before work, I drag out the extension ladder (the family that converted this garage didn’t make the opening large enough for pull down stairs and put it in a location that pull down stairs wouldn’t even work if it did fit) and get the bin.

Leaving the ladder up, I make sure my wife goes through it looking for the costumes.  I go back up to look for a bag from Target.

Wife:  There aren’t in here, they are up in the attic.

Me:   There are three bags up here.   One bag of Rescue Heroes figures, one bag of Rescue Heroes vehicles and one bag of Christmas lights.

(I put the Christmas lights in one of the Christmas bins to avoid this same issue after Thanksgiving.)

Wife:  Well they have to be up there.

Me:   They are not.

Wife:  Where did you put them.

Me:  If you gave them to me, I would have put them in the Halloween bin to keep this exact same situation from happening.  The last time we did this, you found the costumes in the hall stand.

Wife:  I wouldn’t put them in the hall stand.

Me:  That is what you said in 2007.  Just check the hall stand, I am coming down.

Wife:   They won’t be there.   I’ll look in the kids’ closets.

I come down and go for the hall stand.

Wife:  You are wasting your time.

Me:   Alright.  I am going work.

(I take down the ladder and put it back in the shed.)

At 1pm, I get this message from my wife.

Wife:   Good News.   Found the costumes.

Me:   Cool.  You didn’t have to tear the closets apart to find them, did you?

Wife:  Nope.  They were downstairs.

I know what “downstairs” means…

It means the hall stand.   But I didn’t even want to get to an “I told you so…” moment.  So I left it there…

Me:  Cool.

I’ll find out from my oldest son if they were in there.

This happens every year.

We will go through this thing all over again on November 27th…when I drag the ladder out and bring down the Christmas decorations.   They are going to be some new decorations she purchased on clearance after Christmas that she “gave me” to stick in the attic…but never actually did.

But, I’ll be up there looking for it anyway…and maybe climb on the roof.

HANG ON FOR THE END OF THIS ONE…TRUST ME!

I knew from the time I left the house this morning that something crazy was going to happen…

Crazy was an understatement.

I made it home to pick up the kids for soccer practice.   The 1996 Sentra is what I take to all the practices and games.   It is our third vehicle, gets 36 mpg and it stays kid ready at all times with the car seats.

The funny thing was that I had to actually get gas for the car and we had to leave early.    It had been a month since we last got gas for that car and we had been joking about it for the last couple of weeks.    We put gas in that car so infrequently, Hayden had to get out and check which side of the vehicle I needed to pull up to the pump.

As I stopped the car I noticed someone walking in the general direction of the car.

Running shorts are my normal attire for soccer practice and, since they don’t have pockets, my wallet is kept folded over the elastic of the shorts.   I pulled the credit card out of my wallet and saw that the scruffy and disheveled 45-year-old man was coming closer to the car.

I swiped the card, and before the man-made it within five feet of me.  Even though I didn’t have time to hit the necessary buttons to be able to start the pump before taken the hose, I put the nozzle in the tank putting the hose between myself and the approaching stranger.

“Can you spare a few dollars?”  He asked.

This was a point where a decision needed to be made.  Due to the abnormal amount of side work I have been doing, there was an exorbitant amount of cash in there…which was visible as I looked down at my wallet.

My calculated reply was that I didn’t have anything small and if he could wait until I came out of the store (which I didn’t really need to go into…but I could always use a Mountain Dew) I could spare a bit for him.   Although I thought, he couldn’t see inside of my billfold, I knew quickly that I was mistaken.

He quickly came back with, “How ’bout I just take what you have there?”

Instead of hanging the wallet back on the elastic of my shorts, I went ahead and dropped it down inside.   Running shorts, for those of you who do not know, are very similar to swimming trunks.   They have a snug fitting inner liner.

“Excuse me?” I asked rhetorically.

“Maybe you should give me what you have in there now.”

Many of you are new around here and might not remember the posts I made about learning body language and the “physical training” I have had in my past.    I am VERY confident about being able to “handle” an untrained aggressor…especially when he is approaching me…even if he outweighs me significantly.

An “altercation” with someone this summer left the instigator with a broken collarbone and me with a sore wrist.  Not really because of any special abilities I have, but just some knowledge of leverage and weak parts of the body.    Collarbones are very vulnerable…no matter how big a person is…

This man was “sized up” when he changed from “heading to my general direction” to approaching me and any member of my family.

We were the same size and, in the minute he had spent in front of me, I could tell that he had nothing weighing down his jacket pockets.   He was also carrying his hands outside of his pockets.

Someone carrying a weapon in a situation like this would generally have one hand on this weapon as he was asking me to give him the contents of my wallet.

You might think the best way to handle this situation would have been to just give him the money and let him go…but there is no guarantee that this person would leave.   It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for this man to attempt to use my vehicle, with my children inside, as a means of escape.

I needed to quickly assume control of the situation and I was eerily calm.

I placed the hose between us a minute earlier to act as a barrier in case something bad happened.   But now it was kind of in the way.

My eyes weren’t going to leave him to look down at the nozzle in the tank and I wasn’t going to risk stepping over the hose either.   I also didn’t want to do something THAT aggressive either.

“So…we are at a standoff, ” I said after a few seconds of contemplation, “I am not giving you anything now…you are going to have to take it.”

He looked at me with a confused stare.

“You have a decision to make,”   I said with a confident smile.

As he was trying to figure out what I meant by everything…I made my move.

“CLINK!”

With quick grab and a flip of my right wrist, the nozzle went from the gas tank to the ground without the man ever seeing me make it happen…but the noise was enough to send him running away.

Situation diffused…off to practice.  I called the police non-emergency line on the way and described what happened and gave a complete description of the man, the direction he was headed in case something else happened later in the evening, but I knew filing a report with the beat-cop was going to do nothing more for me.

The dispatcher asked me to meet with an officer, but I declined.  I gave the dispatcher all the information they needed…minus the details of potential confrontation.

In addition to some specialized training I have had in my past, I am also a possessor of a concealed carry weapons permit…which puts my name on a special list with the local police.

The two older kids were in the car and although I let them know that the man who came to the car was a bad man, I didn’t tell them the seriousness of the situation.  I did use it as a good opportunity to discuss strangers with them.

All of my funny was sucked out of me this week.   It is weird how easily that can happen when my focus has to be squarely on other things…like work.

Considering this economy, I guess it is a good problem to have…

The mass blog deletion of June 2009 wound up with a casualty of an item I was looking for just now.    I was wondering what my state of mind was at the time I decided to run the Marathon last year.

My miles are logged and they are unimpressive, but the one thing I can’t go back see is what I was thinking during that period.

Running is an interesting challenge and obviously a VERY individual sport.   For me it is kind of like a microcosm of life.

This morning started my third straight day of feeling “sickly.”   Today’s version was a headache that was strong enough that I knew that medication was necessary…which also meant that I had to get some food on my stomach…which I don’t normally do in the morning.

This week, our second office member came down with H1N1.   The first person gave it to their fiance’ and to their assistant.   This has gotten my normal sense of paranoia on RED ALERT STATUS!!!!

But, it might also explain my recent small insignificant physical issues as merely psychological instead of an actual illness.

My running schedule is simple.   Long run Sunday, rest Monday, short (fast) run on Tuesday, medium (average pace) run on Wednesday, short (average pace) run on Thursday, rest Friday,  short run on Saturday.  The mileage increases as the weeks go by.

Today’s short run was scheduled for four miles at a “whatever” pace.    I have a number of loops for distances around my house and when I headed out of the front door, the swirling 20mph sucked all of the air out of me.

When I came to the end of my street, I had to decide whether to turn into the wind or let it be at my back.

My theory in running, is the same that I have in life.    So my decision to get the bad stuff out of the way early and hope that it can only get better by the end was what I did.

I regretted that decision for the first three miles, but that last mile was pretty easy…and I was glad.

This has turned out to be a successful week of running and has resulted in me logging more miles this week than I have since the end of May.

Physically, I am in good shape.

Psychologically,  I am struggling to get my mind back into shape.

I am going to try this again…another Marathon.

My body might not be able to take the abuse for too many more years, but I think that the March local Marathon is a perfect time of year to run the 26.2 miles.    So I am going to go for it at least one more time.

The plan is going to be to slowly build my mileage back up to where is should be…not being too concerned about the time.   I did a nice 6 mile run at an easy 8 minute mile pace and felt good…even after a hard run yesterday.

I think that my Thursday runs are going to be my faster and harder runs and my Sunday runs are the longer runs.

My running work for the last couple of weeks has been only speed work…trying to improve my average run times down from 8:30 to 7:30 or 7:45.  My knees have been battling me, so I might back off of the quicker paces and drop it back down to 8 minute miles for the sake of my health.   Maybe the Thursday runs, if I am feeling strong can be in the 7:00 range.

I felt VERY strong today at six miles and a slower pace.   I had enough left in the tank to run my sixth mile (after running 5 miles at an 8 minute mile pace) at a 7 minute mile pace.