James and I just returned from our vacation in Michigan with our families and friends. It was bittersweet--we hadn't seen my parents since Christmas and we hadn't been to Alpena in over a year. We were fortunate to see our friends for a night in Lansing. All throughout the trip, beer (micro-brew, o'course) was ever present. I had forgotten how available great beer was in Michigan. Little breweries, beloved by their locals, have blossomed all over the state. Florida, on the other hand, can add one more Schultzgrove disappointment to its list: good, local brew. What an opportunity lost! With all of the wonderful fruit and and different cultures, you'd think this state would be littered with tiny brew houses. Not so, in the Land of Budlight and Miller! Blasphemy in the Commercial Tanks of Carbonated Urine! I mean it really shouldn't be a surprise in a state that elected a criminal and has no bottle deposit (Seriously?!).

My New Job
I don't think I've mentioned it on the blog yet, but I now have a new part time job as an exercise physiologist at two pulmonary rehab facilities owned by BayCare. I'm still working at the gym, but my hours are now split between traveling down to St. Pete for the wellness center and up to Palm Harbor or Downtown Clearwater for to work at the rehabilitation centers. I enjoy not being in the same place all the time and the relatively unstressful environment at the rehab centers. Here is the view from the parking lot at the rehab center in Clearwater. Doesn't really do it justice, but it's an amazing view in person.
The longer we have lived at our current address, the more we realize what a crappy neighborhood it is; especially after going apartment shopping at some of the nicer complexes south of us in St. Pete. We decided that the most logistical place between our jobs and school would be northeast St. Petersburg and have been apartment hunting down there the past few weekends. We finally found a place in the gated community of "The Verandahs of Brighton Bay". Fortunately for us, they were running a special on rent and we managed to get a nice little place for 740 a month. This doesn't include any utilities, but we're willing to pay a little more to be in a safe area. The community has a pool, clubhouse, business center and is also gated.

This will be the last weekend we spend here at NE Cleveland St. Next weekend we are moving the the other side of the peninsula towards Tampa Bay in a gated community. The apartment is wonderful and we're very excited about moving in. It'll be a little tricky because a lot is going on amidst our move; business trip to Washington D.C., going to Michigan, etc. Despite all of those stresses, my eye is still on how awesomely big the kitchen is in our new apartment.

So I am sure that you all (whoever reads this blog) have figured out by my melodramatic posts that life has been pretty rough since September. For the first time in my life I have experienced depression. I know this because I normally rebound from the blues quite quickly but this feeling of hopelessness, empty, and sad has been a constant rain cloud hovering above my head. Most of this feeling stems from the mentally destructive job James and I have been working.

Tonight, a dense fog settled in as I got ready to clock out of my job. The night was still, dark, and full of water vapor; much like my mind has been since landing here in the Sunshine State.

Upon meeting someone new, my first instinct is to offer my hand for a firm handshake and maybe give a polite greeting such as; Nice to meet you! or Hi, how are you? I would then move onto all the usual pleasantries; Where are you from? What do you do for a living? That's some crazy weather we've been having lately, isn't it?

None of these predetermined pleasantries were followed when I met Mr. William (aka Billy) Elmor.

I was just returning from the gym about 2 miles from our apartment where I decided to go for a run. It was 42 degrees outside and for someone who is all too quickly becoming adjusted to the Floridian weather...It was just too damn cold to run outside. The trip home takes me through downtown Clearwater, which happens to be where I met Billy. It's not everyday that I see someone so interesting that it makes me pull my car over to the side of the road and walk out in front of traffic to meet them.

No, Billy wasn't selling ice cream or giving away free pizza coupons; something I would totally run out into traffic for any day. Billy was lying on his back in the middle of the busy road trying to stand himself up. Try as he may, he wasn't doing a very good job. Instead of rolling to his side, getting into the crawling position and eventually standing up as I believe most people would, Billy apparently thought he had magical strings attached to his upper body. Numerous times he tried to get up by violently thrusting his upper body towards the sky almost as if he believed the magical strings would eventually pull him the rest of the way if tried hard enough. Unfortunately he was wearing a shabby, torn backpack that seemed to be filled with heavy objects and every time he would thrust himself into the air, he would fall back and seesaw over it coming millimeters from hitting his head on the pavement.

When I arrived, another man had reached him moments before and together we grabbed Billy by the arms and dragged him to the edge of the sidewalk out of the traffic which was still flowing dangerously close to him. On first inspection after we set him down, I thought he had been hit by a car. His right hand was torn apart and bloody, there were dark blood stains contrasting his thin faded black jacket and his bottom lip was split open and somewhat swollen. He was surely a homeless man by the condition of his clothing/hygiene and the packs of belongings that he was also carrying. I asked him what had happened and he replied in a very matter of fact tone (as if he hadn't just been flopping around in the middle of the road like the weird uncle that can't dance but always does the fish at family weddings) "It's an equilibrium thing. You people wouldn't understand, I got a problem with my inner ear!"

I then asked him his name and he gazed at me for a few seconds as if he didn't trust me and then cautiously said, "Billy." He then repeated his inner ear statement and offered to shake the other mans hand. The other man said, "I don't want to offend you, but your covered in blood." Billy was silent for a few moments and then looked at me and said, "Who are you?" with an overly inquisitive look on his face. I told him my name and about that time he decided to try and get up again. He attempted his awkward thrusting again and finally managed to get himself off the ground.

Standing but very wobbly, he started to walk away just as a police car pulled up. (A women had stopped and called 911 while me and the other man were helping Billy off the street.) The officer walked up to Billy and said, "Let me guess, William Elmore?" Billy hesitated again for a few moments, obviously contemplating whether he should deny knowing who this William Elmore person is. Billy finally reached a decision, broke into a huge grin and said, "Yup, that's me."

The officer asked him if he had been drinking again and at this point I made my escape back to the car.

It seems as if life has been on autopilot lately. I wake up, fiddle around on the computer, do some random errands and go to work, repeating this same process five days out of the week. The weeks have been flying by in this autopilotish fashion. It's nice seeing that paycheck at the end of the week, but lately I feel as if I've been somewhat disconnected from how I really want to live my life. Here's a few of my realizations.

Realization 1
I eat shit. Working up to and over 60 hours a week sometimes combined with working a very mentally draining job makes cooking fine meals not so appealing. I've been trying but sometimes the need for (me time) gets in the way of a healthy meal. I don't go out and buy junk food, but I often exclude more than one food item for dinner. For instance, I'll bring a bowl of potato soup but no fruit, veggies or protein sources.

Realization 2
I haven't been exercising regularly. Juggling two jobs, I have found it difficult to set myself a clear pattern of exercising throughout the week. I sporadically get in a sort run in the morning or a ride in the mid afternoon before work. Sometimes I just feel too exhausted or mentally damaged from working with brain impaired people to motivate myself to go. Bottom line is; exercise helps keep me sane. It reduces my stress and running races gives me something to work towards.

Realization 3
Our lives are in danger. It didn't really hit me until Linsey's family came to visit, how often we hear ambulances, firetrucks or police cars roll by. Probably one every five minutes. Linsey's mom mentioned this while visiting and since then I've become more cognizant of all the crazy stuff around us. For instance, when traveling down to Fort Myers to visit more family, we didn't even make it to the end of our own street before someone cut us off and almost drove us off the road. Last night I was driving some of our residents to the movie theater and witnessed a car hit a cyclist. The man was able to stand up and walk away, but the funny part about it was the vehicle directly behind the guilty driver was a police officer. On the way back from the theater; the main highway heading up through Pinellas County was shut down from an accident that left a 22 year old girl dead. She hit a light pole, flew through her windshield and I believe she died there on the highway. There was also a eating establishment called Super Country Buffet, that was closed down for a few days for human trafficking a half mile from where I work. Stuff like this is a daily occurrence. Long live Florida.

Saturday was the Foster Grant World Championship Triathlon. Many of the top half ironman athletes from around the world came to Clearwater to compete against each other in what was for many, the culmination of many hard months of training.

Not only was I excited that the home base for the race was only about two miles away at Clearwater beach; I was also very excited that the bike portion passed right in front of our apartment! The night before the race, Linsey and I didn't get to sleep until 1-2 am, so I decided not to wake up early to see the 6:45am pro-start. But I did wake up at about 7:00am and was able to cheer on some of the bikers as they passed our apartment.


An hour or two later, Linsey and I biked over the causeway to check out the transition area/other stuff that was setup near the beach. We took a few pictures along the way and were fortunate enough to catch the womens 1st place finisher Britian, Jodie Swallow as she passed by heading in on the last 3-4 miles of her run.

The bike hangers and part of the transition zone.

Two riders approaching the transition zone.

View down the causeway.

This week has been a rough one; in and out of work. Our car is giving us headaches again, the residents are, well, being themselves but at a higher ridiculousness level than usual, and things just don't seem to be improving.

I believe that almost everyone, at some point in their lifetime, has always wanted to be a super hero of some form or another. Maybe Superman, deflecting bullets and swapping uniforms faster than Garavani's runway models, or Batman the caped crusader of the night, swooping in on his bad guy victims with the same finesse that Tom Cruise uses when mounting a sofa. I have always wished I could be immortal like Mr. Manhattan or the Specter, but I'm coming to realize that you cannot choose your own superhuman strength, it chooses you.
Therefore after much resistance to accepting my superhuman powers, I'm coming out to the world, letting all know; I am the Master of Redirection.

No, I don't physically unhand people who are so inclined to hurt other people. I don't step out in front of bullets, or leap from tall buildings to save damsels in distress. I don't have a long cape or even a cool costume unless you count my cycling spandex. Can't fly or even jump higher then Lebron. I don't even have a superhero logo for crying out loud! I wake up in the morning, put my blue jeans on one leg at a time, iron my shirt, pack my healthy dinner for work (not immune to cardiovascular disease either) and drive my car the seven miles or so to get there. This is where the magic that is my superhuman power is unleashed. As I said, I am the Master of Redirection, "Hey did you see the Rays game the other night?", "Where did you get that cool shirt?", and "Is that coffee you're drinking?" are my weapons of choice. These words will give the intended target a swift kick in their verbal bowels. The wrongdoers will hopefully forget who they were about to pummel or possibly what they were about to do long enough for me to come up with a solution or another redirection. To keep the story short, I'm pretty much a bad ass!

When James and I go to the beach, we enjoy doing a few things. We have a favorite parking lot we park our PT in (it has NEVER been full and is really quiet), we like swimming and riding the waves, and what I really like to do together is walk the shore and look for shells. The shore is a wonderful place for discovery and serenity. We tend to go to the beach later in the day, close to sunset and it is just awesome. The whole experience is calming, simple, and easy. We pick shells that we like, and it doesn't have to be a consensus--you just pick up whatever you like and put it in the bag. Nothing perfect, nothing worth a lot of money, just the shells or fragments you think are pretty or that catch your eye. We take them home and put them in our large, green bamboo bowl. They're like our little collection of the things we like about living here. The last couple of times we went, there have been jellyfish blooms (baby jellyfish) washing up on shore and they have been fascinating! They are just odd-shaped clear molds of gel. I think a lot of them are moon jellies. When you swim, you can feel them all around you (which is quite scary but once we realized that they are just blooms and that most of them are harmless, it wasn't so bad). The shore has so much to offer--so much to learn about! I've learned so much about tides, jellyfish, shells, and the beach from just walking and looking around! Its the only place here that I've felt a connection to nature (which I long for often) so we try and go as much as possible.

When I was in high school I was obsessed with oddball things like numerology and astronomy. Ten itself is a very lucky number according to numerologists.

I'm going to take a step back in time to our days in Ann Arbor. I was still busy working at my internship site in Novi, MI where I met a great friend/coworker named Cristina Noble. Cristina is pretty much who I want to be when I "grow up" in the sense of athletic capability and dedication. She's married with two active twins, works part time at Botsford, takes a karate class with her kids and does a crazy amount of other activities all while training for triathlons throughout the year.

It would be an understatement to say she's good at triathlons. She recently won a triathlon in Tawas, MI for the 4th  year in a row and last week actually qualified for Team USA, where I believe she will represent (US) over in Australia next year.

Knowing my interest in running and triathlons, Cristina told me about a sponsorship contest that she had just won with the makers of Snickers candy bars. Snickers has recently released a product aimed towards endurance athletes called Snickers Marathon Bars; a high protein/carbohydrate bar with a variety of vitamins for athletes who participate in any type of endurance event. In order to promote their bars, Snickers formed a marketing wing called Team Marathon, made up of amateur athletes who are given a mini sponsorship to help promote the bars. Any amateur athlete who wanted to participate had to fill out a few forms and submit them on the sponsor website. 200 winners from all across the US were selected for the sponsorship based on these answers and awarded a sponsorship package consisting of, a triathlon racing top, running tech t-shirt, cycling jersey, jacket, hat, running shorts, triathlon shorts and 200 Marathon bars to use and give away at events. There is no obligation to do any promotion of their product, but to have priority for next years sponsorships they give a list of requirements including, submitting race pictures in their gear, passing out bars at events, etc.

I submitted my info on the site and was notified last week that I was one of the lucky 200. A picture of the free swag I won to the left. All this sportswear is definitely not cheap, an inexpensive pair of tri-shorts or cycling shorts can easily go for 50 bones. They sent me roughly $300 worth of stuff. Can never have too many cycling Jerseys, running shorts or bike shorts. I'm hoping to meet all of the requirements so that I can continue a sponsorship with them next year. I'm not really a big fan of candy bars but I do really like the Marathon Bars.

Linsey and I ran our first race of the fall season today. Linsey hasn't been running very much in the past month so she definitely had a good workout today. I had to use some of my trainer skills to stretch her out after the race. Not a bad opener for me; I took fifth place in a crowd of roughly 150 people with a 6:20 min/mile pace. Nowhere near my prime but I thought it was a great baseline to start working from. I've been conditioning myself over the past month to get back into competitive racing shape, which I have not been in since the Grand Rapids Marathon back at the end of (2008?) I'm planning to do a half marathon sometime in January and then a full marathon a few months later to qualify for Boston. Probably do quite a few smaller road-races and triathlons in between time. Here are a few pictures that Linsey took at the race.

Passing out Marathon bars at the Ace of Hearts 5k race.

2nd place in age group, 5th overall in my new Team Marathon shorts!

Long day at work today, so to celebrate its end and the end of my first full time week on the job, I'm drinking our last Magic Hat #9. Down the hatch! Decent beer is extremely hard to find here. Local grocery stores only stock "name brand" beer, that is Busch, Budweiser, Michelob, bleck, bleck, bleck. Trust me, I check the beer isle in every grocery store that we've been to.

I may have mentioned this before but Florida makes it extremely hard for small breweries to distribute their beer, which in my snobish opinion is usually far better than the swill that takes up the majority of space in the beer isle of the average grocery store. I think this, almost more than anything makes me miss Michigan. Magic Hat is distributed in Vermont but it reminds me of all the small breweries that are so easy to come by in Michigan. You could throw a dart at a map of the mitten and almost always land within 40 miles of a small brewery. So as I roll my head back and allow the last remnants of the almost pale ale to travel across my taste buds; I give a salute to all the microbreweries out there. Thanks for being so delicious!

The new job has been very interesting and very stressful at times. I'm working in a house with four TBI residents. Between myself and the two other life skills specialists, we usually have our hands full. The residents are all great people, but its quite a chore keeping things flowing smoothly in the house. Some of them don't get along with each other, new medications are being tried, poor decisions made and craziness ensues. I feel like Mad Eye Moody from Harry Potter, "Constant Vigilance!" I've only been working there a week and I could already write a book about all the crazy experiences that I have had. Its an experience that I will definitely remember in the future.

I was talking to one of my coworkers towards the end of the shift tonight and compared working at Communicare to having a second life. I leave my perfect little world with Linsey and Neville in our perfect little apartment with hardwood floors, a comfy bed and healthy food in our fridge and enter a new world each day with the staff and residents of Country Side. I've already become quite attached to the residents and their quirky ways. Its a whole new life for these people and being the one responsible for finding their strengths/talents/weaknesses and helping them overcome and use these to their best ability is an enormous task. I commend anyone who does this kind of work and regards it as more than just a paycheck at the end of the week.

The past couple of weeks have been a blur of events, so to summarize a bit, I'm posting a letter I wrote to the employees at the Washtenaw County Health Department as an update on James and I (by the way, the title is in reference to a role-play situation I was in during our training at Communicare--I was a disgruntled client complaining about a roommate's cat that was "shitting on my shit"--sound familiar??):

Earlier this year, I had been pestering James about adding a kitty to our family, despite his reservations about the responsibilities that having a cat would include. I was not very good with the fish we had (James ended up being the only one that remembered to feed them daily and clean the fish tank) so you can understand why he was reluctant to move on to a newer beast. I reassured him that cats can cuddle with you, remind you they need to be fed, etc. So he made a deal with me--when we get jobs we can get a kitty.

Our fervent job searching may finally be over. Linsey had a premonition last weekend that the week ahead would be a fruitful one, and it definitely was. Linsey managed to land some freelance graphic design work at a few of the local screen printing shops and has been commuting to St. Petersburg for the past two weeks to fill in at a small design shop. We were also both called in for an interview at a place called Communicare, a group home type setting for rehabilitating people with acquired brain injuries. Our jobs would be to assist a group of residents with relearning life skills, such as cooking, making their beds, socializing, etc. We interviewed last week and have a second interview lined up for tomorrow afternoon.

I also had two interviews at Best Buy here in Clearwater this past week. They both went very well and I was  expecting to find out if I got the job some time this week, but haven't heard from them yet. I would be working in the home theater department. Not exactly the kind of job I'm looking for with my fresh bachelors degree, but a job is a job when the student loans start to dry up.

Last Saturday was a little sunnier than it has been the past week. We've been getting quite a few rain storms, which are refreshing, but make traveling about outside slightly difficult since you never know when the sky is going to open up. We used the break in the rain to go for a bike ride on Pinellas Trail that runs pretty much the entire length of Pinellas County. It was a great leisure ride, quite a few cross roads but not much traffic.

On the return leg of the trip, Linsey found a giant locust sitting out in the middle of the pathway. It resembled a grasshopper that had made its way into some sort of radioactive substance that caused it to grow to almost four inches long. The bugs are definitely bigger down here.

I've been doing a lot of biking lately. usually get in anywhere between 20-25 miles at least every other day. I've found that heading over the causeway to the islands on the other side is one of the best places to ride. Most of the roadways heading north or south have bike lanes on the side or the speed limit is only 20-25mph so it makes it pretty safe. I just started getting back into running yesterday. The biking has been a lot easier on my foot, which I believe may have a stress fracture from upping my running mileage a little too much a month ago. It still bothers me but not as bad as a few weeks ago, so I think a slow start back into running will be best. 

I went out for a run yesterday morning for the first time in more than two weeks. It was 10:00am and 82 degrees. For some reason, the sun seems extra strong here in the morning. You start to sweat almost as soon as you leave the house. I only did 2.5 miles and was completely soaked. When I go out for a run, I'll usually set my gps out on the sidewalk in the front yard to zero in on the satellites while I sit down on the steps to put my shoes on. The little lizards are always out there every morning and scamper into the shrubbery when I approach. I think it's usually the same lizards I see out there everyday. There's usually a big one that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 inches including its tail and a baby one that is only about 3 inches long that usually likes to stay close to the stairway to our apartment. They are extremely fast runners, almost seem like little darts being shot out of an invisible gun every time I see one fly by. I'm always scared I'm going to step on one or run one over when I'm biking.