John Harbaugh's week

We did our analysis of time distribution of our typical week, well here's another perspective. ESPN had an article on John Harbaugh's approach to his job. It has a week outlined so I did the same process with the same groupings as I did for my time:

Some notes:

1. If you ever wondered why college and pro coaches make so much money here is your answer.

2. I was flexible in the characterization of family time. Daily calls with his daughter were placed under family time as was 1.5 hours spent watching game film with his Dad. Not exactly what I think of as family time but okay.

3. I also put phone calls with other coaches and NFLers outside his time in the "social" bucket.

Bottom line: this guy eats and sleeps the NFL quite literally. Is the $5M salary worth committing 85% of waking hours to your job? I can't pretend to be able to answer that question.

New Family Addition - Rocky!

Yes, we got a puppy!  His name is Rocky and he's been with us for three weeks now.  He is 14 weeks old and is a goldendoodle, half golden retriever and half poodle.  I'm pleased to report that he has quickly adjusted to the family and his new home, is crate and potty trained, and is looking forward to meeting a lot of his extended family when they arrive for Thanksgiving. 

Over the first week I wasn't sure we made a wise choice.  He pooped in his kennel, peed on the tile, and did what every other 11 week old puppy does.  He constantly required being let out in the middle of the night, whined and barked when kenneled, and reminded me how long it had been since we had a baby in our house.  He was 24-7 work.  Yeah, he was cute (and still is) but man I wasn't ready for the shell shock. 

Fortunately, Holly was. 

She was endeared to him almost instantly and pulled most of the late night shifts.  It was really important that Rocky and her bonded and that was one place he excelled.  I remember after just a few days with us Holly touting, "I'm the Alpha".  A collective sigh of relief came from the kids and from me. 

Rocky also did us proud by potty training really quickly, sleeping a reasonable amount at night, and by adjusting to kennel time without much whimpering and whining.  He's growing quickly and was under nine pounds when we got him but he's burgeoning to a healthy 15 pounds as of last evening.

The kids love him and have committed their limited time at home to walks and playing with him.  He's a great dog, and I'm amazed how quickly we are adjusting to Rocky as another member of the family. 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has always meant a lot to Brad (that infamous holiday scrunched between two commercially driven holidays that bully Thanksgiving on both sides), but this year is it's extra special to me for a couple of reasons. 

First, since Thanksgiving last year I have a lot to be thankful for.  At this time last year I was underemployed (my HR consulting business) and had been in that status for about six months.  My family and me were drowning in anxiety and worry about what the future held.  Tension was high and I was leading the charge.  I appreciate more than ever this year that our status has changed.  I'm working for a great company in a great place and the family is adjusting to our new life in Denver.  Sure, the transition hasn't been a bed of roses but my perspective is so different based on a year of do-it-yourself employment.  And I'm better for it, and so is my family.  We are stronger, more thankful, and less entitlement driven than we were before ... thankful.

Second, we are hosting the family here in Denver for Thanksgiving.  What a blessing!  The attendee list is mostly family from my side but we'll also be joined by a few members of Holly's family living in the Denver/Colorado Springs area that I don't think we've ever spent Thanksgiving with.  They were so instrumental in supporting our transition to Denver and I'm so thankful for that.  I'm also extraordinarily thankful for my family that is coming to join us.  Brad and his whole family, Mom and Dad.  I relied on them a lot over the past year and they delivered - just as you would hope and expect from family.  I'm also thankful for Marc and Jen, although regrettably they are not able to join us. We'll be thinking of them and wishing they were with us.

Thanksgiving is all about blessings, giving thanks for what we have and not wanting for what we do not.  Mentally I'm in that place more this year than I probably have ever been.  And that will make this Thanksgiving extra special. 

I'm so looking forward to it!   

  

36F, 2nd Boarding Group, ORD to DIA

Oh yeah.  Flying again but honestly I didn't pen this blog while in the air.  Hence, the content is very grounded. 

We haven't been blogging at all in the past couple of weeks so I thought I would do what I could to kick start us on a few topics.  In the past few weeks a few material things have happened in our family that might spark some banter:

• Grandma Strempke turned 99 years young!  I know I had some discussion with both Marc and Brad about how much insight we obtain about how we ourselves will grow old when we get to see it play out first hand with our mothers/fathers and grandmothers.  Sure, it creates some anxiety.  Idiosyncrasies expand and become full blown craziness.  But it also creates a feeling of blessing and the hope that we each have the genes to be some long lived.  You can look at this as glass half full, or glass half empty, but either way you have to be realistic about what you see coming in terms of your own personal attributes!
• We started a fitness challenge.  Like all little ploys we've come up with in the past to challenge ourselves from a fitness standpoint, this is a really good thing.  We are only two weeks in and I'm already wondering how quickly the end of March will arrive.  What this stresses to me is how diligent and "hard" it is to make certain that amidst the myriad of priorities that I find time to go to the gym and work out.  Yes, I'm there a lot but usually to serve as a ride for my kids.  To actually commit the necessary 60-90 minutes to working out has been more of a challenge than I thought.  I can't imagine if I wasn't dropping off or picking up kids whether I would be meeting the fitness goals we set.  And they're modest.  4 hours a week, easy right?  Yeah, not so much, at least for me. 
• Marc got deployed.  I could take this a million different ways.  Uncle Sam, Goodwill trips, the politics of military spending, etc.  Not sure I am comfortable initiating any of these rabbit trails.  But I'm proud of what Marc does and know he's a great military man.  His commitment to his job and his country has been unwavering and I'm so thankful for what he and millions of other Americans do every day to preserve our freedom. 

Chime in as you see fit boys! 

My Prized Possessions

I've been staring at a blank screen on this topic for awhile now, mostly because I'm not sure what direction to go with it, other than to just think about some things that ARE important to me.

Jennifer surprised me with a hand-made solid walnut sea chest at my commissioning ceremony.  It's big, heavy, and beautiful, and has become the central store house for all of my Navy "junk" that probably wouldn't sell for more than $10 at an auction.  But everything that I have in it has a memory attached to it, and I could bore someone to tears "spinning yarns" as we say in the Navy.  My boot camp ID card, the paperwork requesting promotion from Seaman Apprentice to Seaman, a set of "cracker jack" whites, my "egg division" from Chief Petty Officer initiation...  I know that in the event of a fire, I won't be able to drag that chest out of the house, but I will dearly miss everything in it.

By the same token, Jennifer and I have a few rubber maid storage boxes that are simply labeled "memories."  We don't go through them very often - every few years when we move.  They are chocked full of stories, and they all weave together to form the story of our life together.  Unfortunately, they are up in the attic... it's not something that we can easily access, so in the event of a fire, that stuff is gone too!

To be honest, I can't think of many other things that I'd be terribly disappointed about going up in smoke.  I don't mean that to sound like I'm some anti-materialistic hero, but as much as I love our furniture, my clothes, our cars, my bikes, etc., they could all be easily replaced.  I have a few tools from Grandpa that I would be sad to lose, and perhaps some jewelry (the ring that Mom and Dad gave me in high school, my wedding ring, my 20th anniversary ring).  I'd definitely be sad to lose all of our pics... but as strange as it sounds, I feel like most of them are imprinted in my memory.  The usage of photographs has drastically changed over the years... not many people print them anymore.  

What am I missing?  Am I neglecting anything?

Entitlement: A Perversion of the American Dream

"Here here" on both your comments on entitlement.  I think that our entitlement culture is the result of the perverting over the years of the American dream.  The opportunity for prosperity and success and upward mobility, the original American dream, has been bastardized to mean, "I should be as prosperous and successful as everyone else".  Of course the key missing element in all of this is that ability or effort.  Yes, everyone has opportunity, but it depends on ability and achievement, and those must be obtained - they cannot be given.

I don't have a lot of patience for the entitlement attitude, as I'm sure neither of you do.  I see it in the young people that are joining the Navy these days.  They want the respect and privilege that comes with the accomplishment achieved over the course of a career without having to earn it.  I realize I probably sound like our dear Father sometimes, but I often find myself telling stories to the younger Sailors about how things were when I joined the Navy.  I got paid $600 a month, had to live in the barracks, and didn't own a car until one was given to me in Rota, Spain, four years after I joined the Navy.

I don't have any magic answers for curing the entitlement epidemic.  Perhaps we need to have a discussion about immediate gratification??  That's another staple of the American culture, right?  I want it, and I want it right now.  Delayed gratification is so 1960s man.  Why should I have to wait?

What am I, the President of the United States?

And the part of Fox News will be played by Brad Baldwin?

You did a fine job of taking one of my comments, twisting it, and applying it to a scale that I never intended.  What I said, as you so accurately quoted, was that the American appetite for extremism and the "all or nothing" attitude were killing our culture.  CrossFit is a product of those two appetites that is thriving because of them.  There is a difference there Shipmate!  Political gridlock, rampant drug infiltration, and the erosion of family values can all be tied to extremism and "all or nothing" attitudes, but as we like to say here, that's another blog for another day.

My Week

I feel like this is a bit fabricated, so I'm not sure that it is very useful to me.  At first I just put in time amounts based on what I estimated for each day, but then when I set up a formula to calculate total times, I came up about ten hours short for the week, which translated to a couple of missing hours per day.  So I set up a formula for each day of the week and massaged it to make each day add up to 24 hours, and hence 168 for the week.  

Really no surprises for me.  I had a bit of a hard time with the categories.  The media category is a total wag, as I'd like to do an actual computation on that for a week, but I'm just too lazy to do it!  The "other" category is another one that is a bit of a wag.  When I'm just sitting here on a Saturday night and trying to think of all the things that I do during the week... well, let's just say it ain't science.

I love that I spend less than a quarter of my life working during a typical week.  Now if I can just get my sleeping up to 50%.