Fast forward to yesterday when I was out and about at shopping with Kimberly when I saw a rotary Norelco shaver on the cheap so my girlfriend being as awesome as she is bought it for me!

So far so good! It doesn’t irritate my skin at all and gives a pretty close shave, although I think I will need to use it for a few weeks to get the best use out of it so my face has a chance to get used to it.

To be able to do my work while I sit in my porch swing in my house in the mountains.

I say “my porch swing” and “my house” in the goal to emphasize the ownership of my own goal but I actually mean “our porch swing” and “our house” as in Kimberly and I’s.

I’m just tired of working in a cubicle farm and being such a slave to corporations, where your every move is open to scrutiny and where there are so many rules imposed on you. Like why should I feel bad if one of my dogs is sick and I need to take time off work to take them to the vet? I want freedom to use my time as I see fit, which means either working for myself doing freelance work, creating my own startup or working for a company that has similar ideals to my own.

I first started forming this goal while I was displaced in Dallas by Hurricane Ike and was sitting in Kimberly’s mum’s porch swing in her house in Mesquite listening to the soothing sound of the wind chimes while I worked remotely on my laptop. It just felt so right to be swinging gently in the swing as I worked on a document detailing the steps of a production migration for a client so that led me to think why can’t every day be like that?

The “in the mountains” part of the goal comes from a life long dream of mine to live in the mountains as to me that seems like the ideal lifestyle, living in a scenic area surrounded by nature with an abundance of fresh air and being able to see the stars at night!

So what went wrong? I blame part of it on Houston’s less than favorable climate and it being such an urban area, where in the past I’ve lived in areas much more favorable to recreational activties.

Back in my hometown of Helensburgh, NSW Australia we literally had bushland (forest to my American friends) within a couple of blocks of our house so that was an endless source of recreational activities - hiking, biking & even swimming amongst other things so I was always outside enjoying life.

Then during my stint in Perth, WA Australia there was the beautiful Swan River and lots of surrounding parkland that made it a joy to either cycle or go inline skating. Plus in both areas the climate was much more friendly to outdoor activities, sure it got damn hot during summer at times and the winters were colder for longer but the life sucking humidity wasn’t there, which makes all the difference in the world!

So how to rectify the situation? First step is to eliminate so many happy hours and in that regard I have been doing better lately, we have also been eating at home more often recently with me doing a lot of the cooking, just need to work on making the cooking more healthy in nature. What I haven’t been doing so good on is the exercising, I just can’t seem to find the time or the energy to get to the gym or out on the bike.

I need to come up with some motivational measures to help me get out there again and get back into shape, maybe I should look at joining a mountain bike racing team again? Any other ideas? Maybe even a bootcamp just so I have a reponsibility to be somewhere at a certain time?

I fully expect the site to hit the front page of Digg before long given how fanatical the Obama supports are there so the site is setup with WP Super Cache and all images are stored on Amazon S3 so it should be able to survive the Digg effect and even a Slashdot effect at the same time!

One of my dogs Trixi in a perfect Loldog pose!

http://isitsteaknight.com/?

A photo of me kissing a pink dolphin at Sentosa Island in Singapore. We had gotten to the dolphin show at Dolphin Cove on Sentosa Island just after it started and midway into the show they were after two volunteers to play with the dolphins that would involve going into the water up into your neck… I did a quick check of what I was wearing and the heavy shorts I was wearing would be a real pain to get wet but I said to heck with it and started waving. to my surprise I was chosen.

So after emptying my pockets I headed down and the first thing the little girl (that was also chosen) and I had to do was hula hoop while the dolphins played behind us and of course I was a complete & utter failure at that! Then it was fun time! I got to wade out and meet the pink dolphin, give it a hug, then it wanted to kiss me (as per the photo) and then I got to feed the dolphin. Overall it was a very cool experience, unfortunately I didn’t get any Flipper like action and didn’t get to hold onto it’s dorsal fin to go along for a ride but maybe next time!