Well I was “complaining” a couple posts ago about how I had too much money sitting around and it looks like my problem has been solved! Since the country has been driven into a ditch and the economy is in the shitter my employer is giving me a (ballpark) 6% pay cut, discontinuing the 401k match, discontinuing my tuition reimbursement and discontinuing raises until further notice. Other things too of course but those are the things that directly affect me. It sucks but it’s better than getting laid off. I know people are angry about things like Citibank buying a new $50 million dollar Falcon 7X and making them cancel the order. I am less enthused at that prospect however since Duncan Aviation has the contract to install the interiors on most of those brand new 7X’s and has spent a great deal of money putting the infrastructure in place to do so over the past year. Naturally that and the general disdain by the public towards business aviation in general has caused quite the nosedive in business around here. Oh well, hopefully all this stimulus talk will do something constructive and pull the economy out of the shitter. I’m in good shape since I already handle my money just fine and could easily sustain an even worse cut in pay if it came down to it. Others are talking about getting a second job but I am wondering how realistic that is when you have a couple thousand people from the same company that you work for who all taking pay cuts as well thinking the same thing. That’s not to mention the rest of the population who are having people who are actually getting laid off who want those same jobs.

Since karma seems to be listening though I’ll throw this out there. “I’m not banging near enough supermodels lately”. There, now in a couple weeks I fully expect to have the problem of having too many supermodels wanting my junk and not enough time in the day to take care of them.

… from sunny Lincoln, Nebraska! I’m not up to all that much right now, just downloading some movies and doing some badly needed cleaning around the house. I’m kind of irritated because I just located a urine spot on the carpet that has evaded detection long enough to completely dry which is such a pain in the ass to completely get out. Damn dog. Chad the fish is easier to deal with but I have to change his water completely every week because he likes to coat the surface with slimy bubbles. I was reading that bettas lay eggs in the bubbles so Chad is probably giving me the hint to buy him a lady friend. I’m not going to do it though because it also said that they might kill each other if they are in the same bowl even if they are different sexes and I’m not going to waste my money for that. If I can go through life not getting laid so can he.

Went out last weekend to the hockey game with Ed and Shellie and their friends. I had a few drinks but not enough to get more than a buzz and then a headache. I would have said that it was a good time until I got food poisoning from some bad chicken wings a day or so later. I was then cursing Ed’s name for the 18 hours or so I was on the toilet crapping out everything but my lungs and then completely drained and dehydrated for another day or so after that. That hurt so bad I was literally crying. Awful.

We have a new president. I was going to go on a spiel about Bush but eh… good riddance. All I can say is I hope he lives a very long life so history can tell him how horrible he really was. Not that he will see any of it, just like his presidency he will be surrounded by lackeys telling him how great he was until the day he dies. I like most of the things Obama has done so far as far as making things more transparent and open, as well as the stances on torture. He hasn’t really done that much else yet except rile up Limbaugh and O’Reilly so let’s see if anything else gets done or if the same old Washington clusterfuck resumes just like it always does.

Well I got my bonus money yesterday, they also announced drastic cost cutting measures for everyone like pay freezes, no new hires, overtime cuts etc. since the economy is going in the shitter so fast and the bottom is falling out of the private aviation industry. Weird that they are doing both at the same time but what are you gonna do? They seem to do a pretty good job of keeping the company in the black and they are committed to not laying anyone off so I guess you just gotta push on and hope for the best. They might be cutting my tuition assistance as well so that kind of sucks but I would rather be employed with no degree than unemployed with one.

Since I was sick last weekend with he food poisoning I missed my long run. I tried to make it up this week by adding on miles but I didn’t get them all in. I was going to go in tonight and finish it off but I decided to take today as a rest day instead since I was completely spent yesterday and almost couldn’t finish. I’ve learned that a rest day can be more beneficial if you aren’t feeling it and I’ll just go in Sunday fresh for this week’s long run. 13 miles this week which pretty much equals the longest I have ever gone in my life at one time and things are still going pretty good. I’m right on track to start week 8 out of the 16 week training schedule and am looking forward to the March 28th Olathe Marathon. I hope the weather is nice.

I got lucky though and am working the desk this week. I also took all my daytime hours (which means outside hours) off this week so it’s Ed who is having his nuts retract into his body cavity instead of me. Screw -25 wind chill.

Duncan is paying a profit sharing bonus for the second half of 2008 in a couple weeks. Not a pissant one either, that sucker is maxed out at 7% of what I earned in the second half of 08. Very surprising indeed considering the way the economy is. I’m just having them put it all in my 401k instead of taking it in cash though or they will just take half of it in taxes. I’ve got enough money anyway, I don’t really need more. I mean I wouldn’t turn down a winning lottery ticket of course but I’m starting to have the problem of too much cash building up and nothing to spend it on. I don’t need any more stuff at this point, and I don’t have anyone special to piss it away on either. I guess the only thing I would like right now is to own my own house but that is kind of ruled out until mid 2012 when that damn foreclosure finally goes off my credit report. Damn ex wives. I don’t know that I have enough laying around to really pull that off right now anyway. By that I mean a nice place in a nice neighborhood and not a ghetto shithole. I guess I could get a nicer vehicle but to be honest I really don’t care much about that either. What I have now costs me nothing and gets me from place to place just fine and I guess that’s all I see a vehicle as being, a tool used to move me from here to there and then be forgotten about until I need it again, not a status symbol to impress people. All this good money management will do me no good anyway once the revolution starts. For that I’ll need my guerrilla warfare skills and catlike reflexes. That my friend is something money can’t buy.

The marathon training is going very well. I simply can’t believe that at this point I could complete a half marathon without all that much trouble after a little over 5 weeks of serious training when it felt almost impossible after 12 weeks of training a year or so ago. The miles are going by faster and easier and instead of feeling intense pain afterward I honestly feel really great. Each week that goes by there is less and less lingering soreness and it just feels easier overall. I’ve been reading that long distance running is mostly mental and it seems to be true because the barriers that were there before don’t seem as impossible now that I’ve really applied myself and stopped half assing it. I might even try an ultramarathon that is coming up in Ames in May. It’s not the 100 miler that my friend Dave did a couple months ago or anything, it’s a 50k (31 miles) which is the shortest of the ultramarathons but the idea of pushing the limits of what was previously impossible to me doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. I suppose I should finish the regular marathon though before I start talking about ultras huh? Hopefully I keep feeling as good. One thing that I wasn’t expecting though was that I haven’t lost any weight at all since I’ve started training hard like I did before. I’ve gained 7 pounds in fact and now weigh more than I did when I started running at all. I don’t see all the flab that I did before though. Maybe it’s because I stopped eating fast food or something. I don’t know… It’s a mystery.

(Read on …)