Grim indeed.

Wow, this has been a tough week.  The food isn’t changing much in it’s weights and my creativity is waning.  I did well with a turkey breast a few weeks ago, but this time it got dry, so I’m having to muscle through that.  I re-tried the ground turkey breast “sausage” but that was dry without baking it, so that has also not been too pleasant.

The past few weekends have been busy which puts a strain on the food prep for the week.  I’ve had to cobble a meal or two together based on little bits of stuff hanging around the house.  Needless to say, eating has been a pain in the butt.

The exercise has been okay, and having things change up has been helpful to keeping me interested.  I did Saturdays routine at my sister’s house despite a number of people there for a hockey viewing party.  My sister / brother-in-law are used to it, so they didn’t blink… the others didn’t say anything either.

Work hasn’t exactly provided a respite from the busy times – I finally made a role change that I had announced 3 months ago, but only now had the opportunity to make the transition.  (We had to find my replacement)  It’s a welcome change to my professional life, as I’ll be moving out of management and back into an individual contributor role.  Finally I’ll once again be responsible for only myself. :)

That said, my first assignment has come as a bit of a shock.

I’ll be going to Japan, Tokyo specifically.

It seems they could use some help on the ground there with the type of work I’ve been doing as a manager for the past year.  As such, I’ll be (supposedly) travelling there as early as Monday the 1st and staying for 2 (I suspect 3) weeks.  It’s a pretty big deal to be selected for this gig, as it’s not a trip we take very often.  We’ll be going in to help out a somewhat ‘rough’ IT situation, so there is plenty of visibility involved.  And here I thought my new job would get me out of the spotlight…

So now Susan and I are racking our brains over how to work out our lives with a sense of normalcy despite my not being around.  We’ve had a great routine going to make sure our exercises get done, so now we’ll have to adapt – Susan more so than I probably.  She does have the distinct advantage of small, low-prep dinners whereas I need to sort out how to find 5 pounds of food in a foreign country everyday.  Granted, Tokyo shouldn’t be too tough to find food and protein in the form of fish should be simple, a nice change from my birds.

Well… sorry for my absence from the scene lately – I’ll try to do better.  I need to get some reading done, too, as a reminder that we’ll all (likely) struggling at this point in the program.  Oh – and pictures too…