23 December 2021 Last night over a nice dinner out with my wife, daughters and parents, my second daughter asked the table, "If money were not a factor and you could do anything you want as a career, what would you do?" I didn't hesitate, "Travel writer!" The Lonely Planet served me well in my youthful travels, while guys like Paul Theroux and Rick Steves were role models for a path I never took. But, as reflected on my family's alternate life paths, ranging from archaeologi

6 December 2021 Long before I had any thoughts of actually getting a chance to compete again, my wife and I booked a Sunday Funday in Toronto yesterday: TIFF's Secret Movie Club Brunch with our second daughter (who lives ~2 hours from us, but less than one hour from Toronto) Christmas shopping at the Eaton Centre Pre-game drinks, again with our second daughter Our first ever Toronto Raptors game live Other than the fact that the movie Red Rocket should never have been made ex

4 December 2021 I first did a version of this quality workout back in 2009, about a week ahead of a very good meet I had at the first ever Rowdy Gaines Masters Classic meet. I repeated it again ahead of 2012 and 2016 US Masters Nationals and it seemed to serve me well as a 'test event' kind of workout to allow me to assess if I was on track with my taper, if I needed to rest more, less, etc. Back in 2012 and 2016, I was fortunate to have my own 25 meter lap pool complete wi

3 December 2021 One of the things I've never liked about the working world is wearing suits; they're damn uncomfortable (even the expensive ones) and I think men look boring in them. I know some guys get all into them, into matching ties, cufflinks, fancy-pants big-ass watches, and what not, but it's just never "done" anything for me. Thanks to the combination of more work places being more casual and the work from home trend, I'm proud to say that I'm down to owning only o

1 December 2021 I began tracking my pools after my 40th birthday in 2007, but was principally using a (now defunct) blogging feature on the old US Masters Swimming website. At some point a number of years later, I transferred the list to a Google Sheet, which is what is linked to my Pool List page here. I wasn't always super diligent in the early years about taking photos of every pool I swam in, but I've been slowing searching through old desktops, external hard drives, On