{"id":8760,"date":"2013-03-10T04:01:01","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T09:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=8760"},"modified":"2013-03-10T04:49:41","modified_gmt":"2013-03-10T09:49:41","slug":"blog-soup-march-10-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=8760","title":{"rendered":"Blog Soup March 10, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most of you are probably not happy about losing an hour of sleep last night, which is understandable. But it meant I spent seven hours at work and got paid for eight, so Spring Forward day is usually a good day for me. Perspective!<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s some soup to help you wake up:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Daylight_saving_time\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Daylight Saving Time<\/strong><\/a> (apparently the S that we all add to <em>saving<\/em> is incorrect &#8211; who knew?) seems to be more popular than standard (winter) time. So why don&#8217;t we just stay in DST year-round? Or switch to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Greenwich_Mean_Time\" target=\"_blank\">Greenwich Mean Time (Zulu time)<\/a> so the entire world can use the same clock?<\/li>\n<li>I saw an orthopedist about <strong>my still-sore knee<\/strong>. The good news: he said everything looked fine structurally, so I don&#8217;t need surgery or anything dramatic. The bad news: there&#8217;s no quick fix, either. My knee is sore from overuse, and I need to continue my break from running until it quits hurting and then resume very slowly. It could take a month or two. Yep, I think my half marathon days are over. I might just wait until this fall before I start running again. In the meantime, I&#8217;m cycling and lifting weights.<\/li>\n<li>I need to do some research on the <strong>best way to get stronger with weights<\/strong>, because I&#8217;m not sure whether I&#8217;m doing it right.<\/li>\n<li>I tried a <strong>weight-loss experiment<\/strong> last month, initially to slim down for the half marathon. My goal was to drop five pounds &#8211; five fewer pounds to carry for 13.1 miles. I cut out most sodas, reduced my OJ intake, cut back on dessert, reduced my portion sizes a bit, and rode my bike a lot since I couldn&#8217;t run. It worked. However, the feeling of being on a &#8220;diet&#8221; sucked for a while. Once I realized I wouldn&#8217;t be running Cowtown, I relaxed a bit but not entirely, so now I&#8217;m just maintaining. That&#8217;s five fewer pounds I have to push on my bike. It&#8217;s much easier and cheaper than buying a new bike that would weigh five pounds less, which would probably run at least $3000-4000, maybe more.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/web.ntfb.org\/page.aspx?pid=253\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>North Texas Food Bank<\/strong><\/a> collects and distributes food to hungry people in North Texas via many different organizations. On their website, they say they can provide three meals for $1. If I take my family out for dinner, we usually spend at least $25. So for the cost of a single meal for my family of four, North Texas Food Bank could feed 75 people. Makes you think.<\/li>\n<li>Starting next month, I will get to <strong>work some of our new flights to\/from San Juan, Puerto Rico<\/strong>. These new flights will add a bit of complexity, but it&#8217;s exciting to expand my skillset and experience a bit. Sometime next year, we hope to start our own international flights once our new reservation system is in place. We&#8217;ll gradually absorb all AirTran&#8217;s international operations, which currently include Nassau, Bermuda, Montego Bay, Aruba, Punta Cana, Cancun, Mexico City, and Cabo Los Cabos. Start saving those Rapid Rewards points! <\/li>\n<li><strong>Mario Kart Wii<\/strong> is awesome. Brenden, Jenny, and I like to race each other. It&#8217;s cool to have a four-year-old racing buddy. Jonathan gets frustrated and quits after about twenty seconds, meaning the rest of us are guaranteed not to come in last.<\/li>\n<li>My office has been in an odd predicament for years now. <strong>Hardly anyone wants to be in management<\/strong>, for two reasons. 1) Just working the desk is a great gig and doesn&#8217;t require the headaches of management. 2) For anyone who works much overtime (like me), management generally means taking a pay cut due to some weird compensation rules. So it&#8217;s been difficult to fill management positions. Rumor has it that the compensation problem is finally being fixed. I still don&#8217;t want the job, but I hope that this change will finally entice enough people, and the right people, to step into those roles.<\/li>\n<li>Our <strong>shared fence on either side of the house badly needs to be replaced<\/strong>. One of the involved neighbors approached us a few months ago with a plan to replace it using some of his employees, but it still hasn&#8217;t happened yet. Part of me hopes one of the spring storms will finally destroy these poor fences so the project will finally regain its momentum. I suppose I could help&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Jenny and I have toyed with the idea of <strong>studying Spanish for work via a study-at-home course<\/strong>. It would help her as a nurse in Texas and me as a dispatcher working flights in the Caribbean and Latin America. The best program for our goals seems to be <a href=\"http:\/\/fluenz.com\/languages\/spanish\/learn-spanish\/\" target=\"_blank\">Fluenz<\/a>, but it&#8217;s expensive, so we haven&#8217;t bought it yet. Why did I take Latin in high school again?? <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most of you are probably not happy about losing an hour of sleep last night, which is understandable. But it meant I spent seven hours at work and got paid for eight, so Spring Forward day is usually a good &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=8760\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,45,18,41,40,13,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8760"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8760"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8769,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8760\/revisions\/8769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}