Tick – tock, Tick – tock, Tick – tock

Time is not on my side right now and there is no doubt about it. This month has been crazy and I have already sped half way through it. What have I been doing you ask? Well, let’s see.

Buy new home: Check!
Start repairs and painting of old home: Check
Apply for new job: Check
Get new job: CHECK!
Begin new job: Check
Ramp up my training for the Bandera 100K: Check
Meet my goal of running 1,500 miles this year: Che….well, I still have a few days.

This has been the most amazing few months for me and the GeekGrl. She got a new job that she loves, we almost literally stumbled upon our dream house, and now I have a new job that, with any luck, will become permanent. All this is falling into place just as our last bird is ready to leave the nest. The GeekGrl is giddy as a school girl and I am spending money like a drunken sailor stocking our new home with goodies.

This year our Christmas will be a bit more extravagant than usual because I am filling the GeekGrl’s kitchen will all new stuff. Yes, we have an embarrassingly traditional marriage in many respects but it works for us. Anyway I’ll leave it to her to fill you in on the kitchen details because I know she is really excited but there is one little oddity that I will fill you in on because it is mostly for me. Off the end of our kitchen we have a big bay window that looks out onto part of our garden and built into that space is a breakfast nook. I’m pretty excited about that because, as I told the GeekGrl, I’ll always feel like I’m eating in a restaurant. I also really like to look out onto our garden when I eat. My chair at the table in our current home faces the garden.

The new job thing has been quite an ordeal. There are very few things that get me wound up but I do get wound up over major things that I don’t have much control over. Oddly enough I have been drawn more to the administrative side of psychology even during graduate school so once I got my Ph.D. and my job I went back to school to get a Master’s degree in Public Administration. While at the VA I have also been to every leadership development course that I was eligible to attend and I have just been waiting for an opportunity to apply for a Chief of Psychology position. The rub is that I didn’t want to leave Albuquerque and I thought our current Chief would be around for at least another 10 or 15 years.

When the position opened I was floored and very excited to have a shot at it. Of course the only problem is that the hospital was looking for an interim Chief and there will still be a nation wide search for the permanent position but at least I’ve been hired for the job once and now I suppose I have the best shot I’ll ever have to prove myself. At least for now I’m livin’ the dream! (Yes, I know it is weird that my “dream” is to be a psychologist administrator in the federal government but what can I say, it takes all kinds.)

In sports news after a quick recovery from IMAZ I moved on to training for the Bandera 100K, my first race of the 2009 season. It almost didn’t feel fair that I should move immediately from IMAZ to training again with no real break between my 2008 and 2009 seasons but once I hit the trails I felt revitalized and motivated. I have been trail running almost exclusively and the majority of that has been in the foothills of the Sandia mountains and two runs took me almost all the way up to the mountain crest. I am lovin’ my mountain running and even though there are some snowy patches on the high trails I am still able to go almost anywhere. Um, ok, it’s snowing right now so I guess now I will need to bring along my snowshoes to go almost anywhere but that’s good training too.

In my training up to Bandera I figured that I needed to get in about 165 miles or so in this month with a lot of climbing and so far this month I’ve run 83 miles and in just my two long runs have logged 9570 feet of climbing so I think I’m on track. I’m also on track for a new PR in annual running mileage. Just 61 more miles and I will hit the big 1500!