Off Track: Job Opportunities Abound!

Many of you already know that I work in the financial services industry and I imagine that you’re all really jealous because of all the good publicity we’re getting right now. As part of my career in the financial services industry I was at one time required to obtain some special licenses. (I’m being vague on purpose but don’t mess with me, one of them may or may not have been a License to Kill.) The licenses required hours of classroom training followed by extensive memorizing of antiquated legalese, culminating in daylong tests. I no longer need or use the licenses in my current position (which is Senior Director of Awesomeness and Time Mismanagment), but I continue to keep the licenses because there’s a chance that I could need them again if I change my career path (read: get demoted) and I’d hate to have to go through the tests again. The downside to continuing to be licensed is that this is public information and I frequently get junk mail offering me incredible opportunities with huge commissions and zero dignity!

Today I received one that just needed to be shared, but before I share it with you allow me to tell you the path this postcard took to reach me. First, it was mailed to the office where I used to work. It was processed by the mail room and delivered to the receptionist there who knows me and forwarded it via internal mail to my new office location across town. It arrived at the correct building and was delivered to the wrong floor so the 4th floor receptionist walked around to several other floors until she found an assistant on my floor who recognized my name. That assistant gave it to an assistant in my department who then marched into my office with said postcard. The point here being: a lot of people have handled this postcard. At first I wasn’t sure why the assistant was scowling at me and holding my mail by the edges until she dropped it down onto my desk with the postcard right on top.

Holy crap! I felt my cheeks flush red with embarrassment and I stammered “wh-what’s this?” She had already turned to leave, obviously not wanting to discuss the sultry postcard that is covered with an alarming number of smudged fingerprints. (Please be smudged fingerprints, please be smudged fingerprints!) After a few minutes of staring at the postcard I realized there was a caption in the upper left corner, it says:

Hi Ian!
My boss is looking for a competent financial professional to work with qualified prospects in your area who want to buy [redacted]. Not small cases either, average compensation per case is $20,000 - $30,000. More details on the reverse side of this card.

Oh, I’d like to see her reverse side, if you know what I mean. So basically my incentive to inquire about a job there is because there’s a hot receptionist and big bonuses? Oh, I’ll bet she gets a lot of big bonuses, if you know what I mean. I can’t even imagine the kind of sleazebags that would respond to an ad like this, but I suppose I’ll get used to dealing with them as I take on my new position. Oh, I’m going to try a new position, if you know what I mean. If that company isn’t being sued for sexual harassment before the year is out, I will be extremely surprised. Oh, I’ll be extremely surprised, if you know what I mean... I don’t know what I mean.

Running for Lunch

As we continue to have wonderful weather here in Denver (and I continue to rub everyone’s face in it) I see more and more runners out at lunchtime pounding the Denver asphalt. I’m glad that they’re out there running while I’m filling up on Jimmy John’s and dollar cookies from the hole-in-the-wall bakery because they motivate me to get out and run when I get home. I envy them being out there running while I’m walking back to my office, trying to figure out how I got mayonnaise on my breast pocket and if it’s worth the condescending glances to untuck my shirt and lick it (it is). I do however wonder how it’s possible to run at lunch, so if some of you run during your lunch break then please let me know how you do it because I have some questions.

It seems like there would be a number of obstacles to overcome. First of all, do you change into your running gear at the office or do you wear your running clothes to the office? If so, do you keep wearing them all day even after they are sweaty from your run?

Speaking of sweaty, do you shower after your run? Is your work so nice that they provide you with a shower? Or are you the stinky person in your office that everyone avoids like the plague. Every office has one.

How far do you run? Unless you’re taking a long lunch or are a lot faster than me (in which case shut up) then it doesn’t seem like you’d have the time to run very far. After you add up the time you spend to change into and out of your running gear and the time you spend showering and the time you spend waiting for your Garmin to find a satellite how can you possibly have more than 30 minutes to run?

Why do you judge the guy with the mayonnaise on his breast pocket? He’s a runner too!

I don’t think there’s anyway I could become a lunchtime runner. I’m either wearing a suit and tie or business casual depending on the day so I’d have to find a place to change clothes. (I do have an office with a door, but it has a glass wall so that wouldn’t work, and I hate trying to change in the men’s room.) I’d also need a place to shower after my run and the only logical choice seems like a nearby gym, but a gym membership is way too expensive for the privilege of running outside at lunchtime. Besides, when would I make questionable food choices if I spent my lunch hour running?

Regular Posting Will Resume Shortly

This week has been crazy at work and I’m quite certain that you don’t care unless you’re my boss in which case thanks for making me sit on that conference call that did not apply to me in any way, shape or form. *Deep breaths* Anyway, I usually try to post my inane ramblings here 4 times a week, furthermore I’d like to get back into the habit of regularly posting the Weekend Splits and I think things will return to normal next week, or maybe the following week since I’m running a marathon next week. (Side note: AHHHHHHHH!)

So I don’t have much time to post anything of substance today but in the meantime you can read the following e-mail that I sent out to everyone who hasn’t submitted a Smooth Time for the SY5K Challenge. It may even apply to you. If you didn’t get this email, then I got your results or my e-mail went straight to your junk mail folder, I hear they have a tendency to do that when you repeatedly use the word ‘ass.’

Subject: Hey, Remember the Shave Your 5K Challenge?

Hello all,

You are receiving this e-mail because at some point in the last year you thought it would be a good idea to enter the Shave Your 5K Challenge at that oh-so-awesome blog Half-Fast and you have not sent me your Smooth Time. Maybe you posted the result on your blog assuming that I’d see it, but you know what they say about assuming. (It makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘ming,’ and ‘ming’ doesn’t care too much for your insolence.)

I originally set some parameters around when the Smooth Time had to occur but I’ve made so many exceptions that I’m no longer holding people to running their faster 5K in the Nov/Dec window. If you ran a 5K last year at some time after your original Stubble 5K then please feel free to send me that time and I’ll include you in the results which will be posted on Monday January 12th.

Perhaps your attempts at Shaving Your 5K all fell dreadfully short of your original time and so you have not submitted it to me, but I encourage you to reconsider. I already have several people who posted slower times in their later races and the sting of my mocking will be greatly reduced if there are more of you to mock. I’m
kidding of course... it will still sting just as bad.

Since the results will be announced on Monday, I will include any results that I receive before noon on Sunday, January 11th. That’s Mountain Time.

Some of you have already asked whether I’ll be doing this again next year and the answer is: Yes. I plan on making the 2009 SY5K Challenge a little simpler while throwing in a few new wrinkles. “But Vanilla,” you ask, “how can it be simpler and have more wrinkles?” Well I’ll save that for a later post when I’m not busy missing deadlines and ignoring clients.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Vanilla Exposed!

This is going to have to be short, because the overlords here at work are actually making me work. I’m convinced that they tried to kill me yesterday by making me sit through 8 hours of compliance training, death by boredom. Fortunately, I figured out how to get my Google Reader on my Blackberry. That really saved my life yesterday because I desperately needed something to take my mind off the stiff with the 4 inch comb-over bombinating at the front of the room. They tried to get us excited for the training by providing a free box-lunch (read: dry sandwich and a fruit cup) and free coffee in the morning. I’m always down with free coffee, but providing 4 oz paper cups to drink it out of was just plain cruel. The man is trying to keep me down, but I managed to get in a good 6 mile run this morning before work so I’m a little less cranky today.

I’ll try to get a Weekend Splits post up on Saturday, but in the meantime, head on over to the Runner’s Lounge to see who the handsome devil is that got interviewed for Open Mic Friday. (Hint: It’s me!) Not only can you read my witty responses and discover what type of blog I almost started writing instead of Half-Fast, but you can also see all-new, never-before-seen pictures of me and my family. It’s a big Vanilla exposé, but fortunately with out any of that kind of exposing - get your minds out of the gutter! While you’re over there, if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up to be a member of the Runner’s Lounge and we can be totally awesome online friends. Runner’s Lounge; it’s where all the cool kids are hanging out these days.

48 Steps to your Worst Run

Actually, this post would be more accurately titled 48 Stories to your Worst Run. Yesterday we had our semiannual emergency evacuation which meant that I had to descend 48 stories under my own power. At 22 steps per story (yes, I counted them) that means that I traversed 1,056 steps. Let me tell you, being a runner doesn’t exercise your stair-descending-muscles (that’s the technical term for them) in the same way that running does. It also probably doesn’t help that I live in a ranch style home and never have to use stairs.

Of course, I am nothing if not vain so you wouldn’t have known it by watching me yesterday. I gracefully floated down the fire escape stairs, barely touching each step before moving on to the next one. I was passing my panting coworkers in droves and yelling annoyingly “left... left” each time I came up behind one of them. I actually felt pretty good when I got to the bottom and was mildly amused at the patchwork of gravy sweat-stains that my colleagues were now sporting. I think that my mistake came in sitting at my desk for the remainder of my day and failing to stretch.

My legs felt tired when I got home, and I could already tell that there was going to be some soreness the next day but I wasn’t about to let that knock me off my training schedule. I went out and ran 5 miles in the blowing snow, quite proud of myself that I wasn’t like my unhealthy coworkers who I’d overheard saying things like “well, I guess I got my workout done for the week.” The run was scheduled as a 3 mile tempo run (with a warm up and cool down mile added to make 5 total miles) and as soon as I started my first tempo mile I knew that I was in trouble. By the end of the run my legs had turned into lead weights, dead sexy lead weights, but lead weights nonetheless.

Despite a little residual soreness today, I’m doing great. The talk around the coffee maker this morning was about how sore everyone was from yesterday’s fire drill. When they looked at me for comment I didn’t really lie about being sore, but I did shrug dismissively and say “Eh, I ran 5 miles when I got home last night.” That’s right, I’m that guy.

Leap Day

Tomorrow is February 29th, and just like the Olympics and trips to the dentist it only happens once every 4 years. In my opinion that makes it a free day, almost like it doesn’t exist. In fact, I heard that if you race on leap day and you PR it doesn’t even count, you can’t legally claim it as a PR.

How you treat your free day says a lot about you. Are you the kind of person who says that it’s an extra day to get a run in, that your mileage should be higher this year than last year because you’ve got 366 days instead of 365? Or do you think that you can take February 29th off and still have 365 days left in the year to accomplish your running goals.

If you are in the middle of a running streak can you take the 29th off and still continue the streak on March 1st? This is probably a question for Just Your Average Joggler as I believe that he is in the middle of a running/joggling streak.

I am of the mindset that if they are going to throw in an extra day every four years it should at the very least be a holiday or a weekend. I propose that every four years we add our leap day as an additional Saturday after the last Saturday in February. In other words, this past weekend we would have had 2 consecutive Saturdays and 1 Sunday. It doesn’t seem fair to have an extra work day thrown into the year just because the earth can’t quite make it all the way around the sun in 365 days. Can’t science do something about this?

Needless to say I am of the mindset that I only need 365 days to get all my running done for the year, so I will probably not be running tomorrow. If I do run tomorrow however, I will not run some other day that I’m scheduled to, just to make up for it. Also, I will not be working tomorrow. I will be at work, but I will not do any work because I’m protesting this extra day that was somehow thrust upon me without my consent. Now, if I could just figure out an excuse as to why I don’t do any work the remaining days of the year I’d be all set.

How will you spend your extra day this year?

Running Mad

If you’re like me (and you probably are since you’re wasting your time reading my blog) then nothing feels quite as good after a bad day at the office as an angry run. Pushing yourself to the limit because of the additional duties you’re taking on. Boss belittled you in front of your peers? Get Bent. I’m picking up the pace. Got skipped over for that promotion? Shove it. I’m kicking it up a notch. I’m not running on the trail, I’m running on my backstabbing coworker, I’m running on that entitled client, I’m running on my troubles. Pounding them into the ground with each step, leaving them in my wake, pushing them behind me.

Rough day at the office today? You betcha!