managing stress in a fast-paced world

I was out and about this morning in the TT, I started driving it again since the Lexus was in that accident. As I was driving around, I happened to be in a small caravan of converibles, both with their tops down, and it was below 50 degrees out. It was sunny though, so I put my top down too and man it was cold! but so much fun to drive around with a full head of hair in the wind.

I have 2 universal laptop power supplies at home, one of them is an iGo ice90, a 90-watt model. This went with my emachines laptop like 3 years ago, the cable broke, so I need a new cable and a tip if I want to use it with my new HP dv9700… of course the cable is $20 and the tip is $10.

Instead I bought a whole power supply off ebay for $30 shipped. Maybe it’s time to sell this universal one on ebay…

I got into a car accident about a week ago, it was actually really funny I thought. A woman rear ended me, I was waiting at a yield sign and she came up behind me. I think she was looking over her shoulder and saw a car coming and pretty much floored it thinking she’ll get in front of that car. Well there I was stopped waiting for that same car to pass before I merge. I was looking back and saw her coming straight at me, scary sight!

Anyways, after the accident I pull over and get out to go over and ask her “are you okay” to which she replies, “yea, but I’m really upset!” She asks me “how did you get in front of me?” To which I said, “well, I exited the freeway and you were behind me…”

So her car isn’t drivable and I suggested we swap insurance information. She asks me, “so whos fault is this?” I start to say, “well…..” and she says it’s not her fault… I tell her lets not try and assign blame right now, to which she said she thinks we should call the police. I’m more than happy to call the police at this point, I even lookup the number for her.

This is the funny part, she calls the police and an officer shows up, the first thing she asks him is “Officer, who’s at fault here?” the officer replies, “it’s your fault!”

So back to the point, I’m working with her insurance company and I went to their suggested shop, the estimator says the repairs are more than 80% of the value of the car so most likely they will just make an offer to buy my car.

I got a friendly email from American Express today, the subject was “Your 2007 Year-End Summary”.

It’s pretty neat, they summarized all the things I bought and money I spent over the year. It turns out I spend $35k on merchandise, and that accounted for 49% of my spending. It’s actually pretty freaky that I spent that much last year. Some of it must have been company expense that I “hopefully” got reimbursed for.

I went out the other day to buy running shoes, I’m going to start running to get into shape. Anyways, I had asked around and it turns out some shoes are made for certain types of feet and different types of running styles. Who knew?

I didn’t bother with that, I just went into the store and started trying on random shoes. I tried on a pair of Asics and immediately I knew these were the ones, I kept trying on more expensive ones and they didn’t feel right at all. I brought them home and started doing research on running shoes, turns out I bought the perfect shoes for my sever over pronator feet! The other weird thing is that these shoes are MORE expensive online!

My first run will be today, nothing fancy, maybe just 1-2 miles around the neighborhood a few times a week. I’ll see how much change happens in a week.

I watched the 2007 AMA’s and Nicole Scherzinger was my favorite performer… she was the most unexpected star of the show for me!

Today is officially my last day at Tropos Networks, I’ve only been working here for a year, but it feels like so much longer than that. Cleaning out my cube has been difficult, I actually got really used to this place. Tomorrow is thanksgiving, I found out we’re making a turkey last night… I was sort of hoping for a nice quiet thanksgiving. Anyways, tukducken was canceled this year, it’s for the better. There is just too much going on.

I spent way too much at Circuit City yesterday, but they delivered my new TV last night, a Sony KDL 52XBR4. We pricematched Fry’s because I HATE shopping there. All in all I also picked up a PS3 just for the Blue Ray and about $1k worth of power strip, HDMI cables, etc. It’s going to be hard trying to find a stand for the thing, it. I think our space only has about 1 foot of room left for the stand.

This year has been a big year, the year of change. I will have to follow this post up later with more details, but for now I’ll say this. I’ve decided to leave my full time job at Tropos and do something else, it wasn’t an easy decision, but I think it’s the right one. For me, my wife, and Spike More to come…

Someone told me the other day, “great things happen when you over-stretch yourself”

I’d have to agree, whenever things are put to their limits, you adapt and overcome whatever it is that is going on.