Finally Official!

My job for next school year is finally settled and official! I'm teaching 6th grade math and science at Henry. Woohoo!

12 more weeks of DTR to go!

Progress

Marni and I had a date night on the home wall tonight. It was 60 degrees out and almost too warm for anything slopey but much nicer to hang out in between burns without wearing a down jacket. And it was beautiful out during my lunch time run at work. After JJ was in bed I warmed up on a handful of problems and then got to work. I finally made the second ascent of Pink Tiger V4 (FA Chad) after my 2nd night of projecting it. To celebrate, cake!

Marni did a great job cruising the green traverse several times and sending the leopard traverse for the first time. Now to link them into the circuit ;)

Next up is getting these guys into a regular rotation to get some endurance back...

Sore all over

Climbing, running and more climbing over the past few days. So awesome. My road bike is almost ready for commuter duty as well. Hopefully I will know about my job for next school year this week and things will finally assume some positive stability.

Fatty can't wait to train more and get back to the alpine! More to come...

The light gets brighter

As my semester ramped up (and my blogging vanished) I was given a chance to get my final long stint of student teaching done early due to some unforeseen issues for another resident in my program. What that meant was a full throttle month of teaching and graduate school throughout February with less than a week to prepare by the time my "plan" was approved by the powers that be. Nevertheless I jumped on the opportunity to tackle the "known" ahead of time rather than wait and deal with an unknown load of spring classes.

The last month has not been easy. Burning the candle at both ends with limited exercise (just enough to stay sane) is trying on a person and a family. Marni has been fantastic as always, supporting a stressed out and tired spouse. I'm grateful JJ is so young. He won't remember that I had to lock myself downstairs to work instead of play with him. With the month almost over and very successful, everyone is looking forward to respite. My winter evaluation at school was very good. For the first time in a long time we have a family vacation planned to Moab for spring break and our sweet lodging should be finalized this week. With "only" grad school to look forward to for the next month and a half, I feel like a big weight is lifted off my shoulders and another chapter of these crazy 13 months is finished.

There is more to go. The paper writing will not be finished until June 30th and June itself promises to be a whirlwind month of hard work with both of us teaching summer school, a final mini-semester of classes, plus two endorsement tests. The battle for the job I want is just beginning though so far prospects look promising for me. But Marni and I have Friday off to spend with JJ and the light at the end of the tunnel seems a whole lot brighter.

And damn I can't wait to climb, ride, and run outside a whole lot more in March and April!

Here goes nothing...

Winter break has been fantastic even though I didn't get to do everything I wanted. I packed all my bags for Zion but had to bail last minute. I'm tentatively rescheduled to try again in another couple weeks. Our plumbing backed up and the guy took forever to show up and things just didn't feel right to go on the trip. Then JJ got sick and I was glad I was home to help. A sniffley baby doesn't sleep well and while Marni is a great mom, it's hard to care for a sick baby alone and tired.

Tomorrow Marni and I go back to work and that means back to my program full time. This will be the real test of sticking to my workouts. At least break catapulted me off to a good start. I ran two days in a row for the first time since either broken ankle and today Marni and I took JJ to the gym. Climbing with a toddler is difficult but he actually did really well. We both bouldered for about an hour and a half, trading off watching JJ and working problems. I managed to flash my hardest indoor boulder problem yet, who knew? I'm even planning to ride home from work on Wednesday and Friday so anyone still reading, feel free to poke me on this blog or Facebook and hold me to it. Hopefully I can start riding at least one direction (20 miles) 3 days a week plus keep up my running and climbing. It's going to be a challenge for sure but at least now it's January and I've got less than 6 months to go to finish my program.

Alright now time to organize my stuff for another semester while Marni is at yoga!