Trim Tram Donovan

The Kickboard Under the Torso

As the melting and recovering of snow struggles, the hassle of digging your way out of this horrible weather continues. People tell me how ready they are for Spring. I'm ready too. I also feel a sense of not wanting to speed things up.

"Over the past month you've improved immensely." I was told at last night's swim class. I didn't answer him but nodded as I cleared up my goggles that continuously fogs up. We had many more laps of swimming at a high speed left.

After the speed swim, I had yet another couple laps of swimming on top of a kickboard. This drill tests your mental capacity to stay focused on your body keeping the board under you while you move forward. Last week, I was left with my board popping out from under me about three or four times per length. It would stay in my lane sometimes and other times it went into other lanes. My record is two lanes.

I struggled keeping the board under me and I made the personal oath that I would just move forward. I tried to tell myself, just maintain the long neck and straight back (at the instructor's suggestion) to keep it under me. The board wiggled and twitched and found its way out from under me and popped up to the first lane--two lanes away.

In horror, I spotted it and knew I had to grab it before somebody swam into it and became annoyed with my regular incompetence. I looked across the two lanes at the orange board floating. Swimmers drove their bodies up and down lanes disregarding anything around them. Typically, you don't have to worry about people swimming perpendicular in the pool.

Today, though, I had to get across to grab my board. I look both ways and crossed. Ducking under the lines, I made it to the first lane. In the second lane, I waited for the traffic to pass and I swam under the line to grab the board and try to swim under both lines back to my area. It had suddenly turned from a game of position my body into a game of underwater Frogger.

I was a mess and continued to let the board pop out from under me. I spoke the word "Sorry." more times than I think I ever have.

Last night, I was surprised to find myself finishing a lap while keeping the board under my torso the whole length.

But I was so tired from the speedwork. My shoulders and arms are sore today. The work I'm accomplishing in this class is great but I worry about what lies ahead. I look foward to warm weather and I need it but I worry what it brings. I don't think I need more heartache that I got from past triathlon experiences but I have to remain poised to be challenged.

The State of the Swim

Masters Swim Class rages on through the dreaded duldrums of late Winter. Jerry continues to pace by all the pool lanes giving notes while we try to accomplish the goals put on a moist piece of paper that sticks to an orange caution cone that sits on the deep end of the water.

We're given workouts that range from very easy to very hard. We're asked to bob in the water 10 times and exhaling all the CO2 from our lungs. We're allowed to come back up only when it's all gone, "When you think you've hit the end of your breath, pause for a second and come up. That will make sure that you have it all out," Jerry instructs us. We're given a plastic cup and told to fill it up with water a third of the way, do the backstroke and hold the cup on the forehead. Balance, as you might expect, is the key to this exercise.

I'm still having problems in certain spots. I've been suggested to rotate my body more so that my core brings my arm around rather than moving my arm. He's also suggested bringing my head more into the water along with my hands during the 'pull' of the stroke. I need to build endurance still. I get winded in a 50 meter workout and it's hard to stay completely relaxed.

There are times when I want to walk away but I keep telling myself that the more I swim, the easier it gets. Even if it's a bad workout, I have to keep swimming.

Jerry tells me that I'm not alone with my issues. He tells me that even guys in other lanes have the type of issues that I have. I know it's supposed to be a comforting thing to say but it only makes me feel more alone in the water for some reason.

The Legend of the Red 2009 VW Routan

Wednesday. The day before Thanksgiving. People driving fast to get condiments or gravy or last minute items that insures safety for their dinner. Those people driving the streets have no inhibitions about who is front of the car or what could potentially happen. Chances are taken and people are hurt. It's probably, in this writer's mind, the most dangerous day (besides December 23rd) to be on the street.

If I could I would stand out on the curb and yell to my friends, "GET HOME! IT'S TOO DANGEROUS! GO HOME! YOU'LL GET HURT!" But, they too, can be hypnotized by the fear that if they don't have TWO cans of cranberries, they might run out at the dinner table.

This year, most notably, I was rushing to close a deal on the car that was about to be mine. The opportunities were too great. Car dealers were knocking off thousands off the sticker price and offering 0% financing to any Joe, even if these were the types of the deals sent this country into a financial tailspin. 

I had to grasp onto this last straw of corporate 'aw shucks' financial givings, especially now that my car was in $1500 of disarray. It was over a decade old with 127,000 miles on it. The CV joints were torn so that I couldn't use the 4 wheel drive and, most notably, could let the tires fall off the axles (or that's the story that I was told). My exhaust system had become so torn off that every right turn had a thump-thump-thump that followed.

After many trips to Zimbrick VW and many conversations with my wife, I finally found a deal and got the paperwork drawn up on the last possible day of zero percent financing.

I came home to tell Jeni, "We just have to show up at 4:00PM and sign the papers. I'll be home before then." I left for a meeting at the local Starbucks.

My appointment, self admittedly, had issues communicating. He spoke in circles at times and I had a hard time figuring out what he needed from me and the race that I help coordinate every year. He carried a pad of paper and a laptop in a black laptop bag. We sat in the back and tried to figure out what were doing there.

At the conversation seemed to wind down, a man who was masqueraded with all black aviator sunglasses runs into the Starbucks to sound the alarm, "WHO HERE OWNS A RED NISSAN PATHFINDER!?"

Everyone's eyes darted to him and I slowly rose from my chair. The people seated in Starbucks innocently drinking their Carmel Macchiato's looked like they had been shocked by my words, "I own a Red Nissan Pathfinder."

"THIS WOMAN HIT YOUR CAR. I'M A WITNESS." A woman slowly comes out from behind him and I approach them, trying to escort out them outside to assess the damage. My meeting partner scooped up his tablet of paper, laptop, laptop bag and jacket. He followed us outside as the girl explained to me, "I guess I mis-read how close I was to your car. Then I scraped it."

I look at the damage and the rear passenger side quarter panel was dented. "I'm not sure if that's a scrape," I tried to soften the blow a little while she wrote down her information and insurance, "I think if there's one car you wanted to hit in this lot, mine was probably the best one to hit since I'm trading it in for another car in about two hours."

During that time, I make some calls. I talk to my insurance guy who gives me his home number in case there are questions later on. I tell Jeni the story. We get to Zimbrick at 4:00 and I tell the sales guy the story. 

He drives the car in the garage to find out how much this fender bender will hurt my trade-in. He comes back and tells me, "They're telling me $500-$800." He gives me a long look like I'm supposed to answer.

OK. I'm calling Bob Wink, Insurance Agent. Home line.

He was a little upset, "Jeez, these guys! Just tell him that you'll knock off $400 and use the phrase 'Appearance Allowance'. They're just wholesaling the thing anyways!" Wink went on for a while.

I simply told the sales guy, "I'll tell you what Wink told me. He told me to find out if you can meet me at $400 for an Appearance Allowance."

"No shame in asking." the sales guy tells me as he walks to my car and drives it back to the garage.

Jeni and I are now dealing with two extremely bored children. We're too sold on this car to give it up now. We've been in the dealership for an hour and we haven't gotten any closer to getting this car. It's after 5:00 the night before Thanksgiving. It's dark and we're hungry. 

In about three minutes, the sales guy is back, "We talked to three wholesalers and it's about $500-$600 of damage but we'd be willing to go to $400."

I almost interrupted him, "Awesome. Let's make it happen. Let's buy a car."

Beer never tasted so good as it did that night. Buying a car should not be like this.

I called the girl who hit my car. It was a few days later and figured that it wouldn't hurt. I told her the story and how it seemed to work out. I asked her if she would be interested in splitting the $400 instead of reporting it to the insurance company. She jumped at the chance and told me that it she wanted to pay the whole $400 and how she appreciated being given this opportunity to settle it away from insurance companies.

It's tough business buying a car these days.

Threat of Rain

I went swimming with mi amigos Ivens & Lehmann. There were quite a few people out on the water at Fireman's Park in Verona. All the major lakes in Madison are closed due to high bacteria count. This is a nice way of saying "it got hot pretty fast and we haven't clean the feces as quickly as we should." Now Verona has the only local open water swimming.

I actually had a pretty fun time. We talked quite a bit at the beginning then swam out towards the end of the quarry. As we returned, we sited the blue slide to swim back in. I may have taken swimming a little too lightly because I started hyper-ventilating a little bit at the end. I allowed myself to calm down and get back to it.

We worried because the clouds looked pretty ominous the whole time were there. Rain was very possible but it held off. Nice luck we had!

My car was at 'empty'. I needed gas in a big way. I made it to the urban BP located next to a Mobil. I put my debit card in BP's self-serve fuel station. It immediately read an error 'PAY THE CASHIER' though I hadn't even put any gas in my car.

When I walked in, there were three people in line waiting. The man at the cash register was talking on his Jabra headset, looking worried. The men in line were pretty obviously immigrants who were on their way to work, purchasing food and drink for the day. One of them was shaking his head laughing at what a ridiculous site this cashier had produced. People were waiting while he looked like he was talking to himself.

The man in front of me said something to the effect, "Ce gars gaspille mon temps! He he!"

I nodded. I was behind schedule as it was, so I began to leave. The man laughed even more and said something else in Spanish.

I smiled back and answered, "Adios, Amigo."

"Adios!" he laughed.

I got into the car and flipped down the mirror in the sunblind. Was there something in my teeth or something?

I drove to Mobil next door and got gas.

Awwww, Man!

I was turning right onto Williamson Street. A bright yellow car with a woman driving it (alone, mind you!) was behind me while I sat at the right turn red light where a sign reads, "No Turn on Red Light". I sat there and observed the woman behind me stretching her neck to see something out of her sight line.

I believe she was looking to see why I was just sitting there while traffic was clear. She was surely preparing herself for a small honk but the light changed just in time.

That was one close call.

To My Department: A Letter I Wrote My Friends on the Way Out

In one episode of "The Office", Michael Scott's dysfunctional philosophy suddenly reveals one opinion that may have some truth to it. As one employee double crosses him he informs Michael, "Sorry, Michael it's not personal, it's just business."

Michael replies back, "Business is personal."

It would be easy to tell yourself that work doesn't mean anything. To go home at night and leave everything behind has an appeal to it. I thought I could do that. At my first job out of college, I made the mistake of making a fake sick day (I was a lot more ballsey those days). When I took one of my "sick days" to take part in a play (that's another story), he showed up. I thought I was going to be fired right there. I got that pit in my stomach that you only get when big things are on the line.

The next day, I showed up to work and the production manager Lou asked me to go outside and have a cigarette with him. As we smoked, Lou told me that he was ready to kill me. He couldn't believe that I deceived him. He said, "If I didn't like you, I would fire you. You've helped me out in binds and you work hard. Christ, you're like my third son. And not in a good way." That was my first clue that work (at least to what we do) is hard to pull apart into neat compartments that places events and decision-making into two easy, neat piles of "Work" and "Business".

Is it something unique to our business? Maybe. We work on these projects that come from our imagination. A very personal place that creates something we can see and enjoy. When the artist Christo had put up "The Gates" in New York City's Central Park, he said that he didn't care what people thought. His wife (and collaborator) Jean-Claude said, "It's like a child. Something we created, something we love." Maybe the work we do is something like that. And we sit together like a support group for what we do as professionals.

It's at this point that we find ourselves emotionally attached to our work. We create and admire/bemoan what we've done. We enjoy the process and we get frustrated. It's this thing that's not even real. It's zeroes and ones etched onto a magnetic tape. It's not a table made from hardwood. It's not a skyscraper. It's just air. You can't hold onto it. Then, we find ourselves understanding that it's not just about work. Maybe people are the inspiration for life and living. The true connections that surprise us and reveal the true beauty of what friendship and comraderie can mean.

My uncle Arthur McNulty was an Episcopal rector for dozens of years. He died suddenly after my mother. His car was pulled over on a highway while he suffered a massive stroke. His wife could only sit there and try to comfort him. Before there were cell phones, an occurance like this left my Uncle Skip helpless. I, along with many others, found comfort in sermons that he still had on casette tape. His wife (my Aunt Kitsy) and his two kids (my cousins) compiled those sermons and published them. They also made a compilation of them onto a professionally engineered tape. I took those recordings and recorded them into my computer. I hope that I can keep them forever. His work was very personal, very spontaneous and humorous. The work he did was very personal.

I turned to these recordings time and time again during Ironman training. Faith is something I needed. Maybe I relied too much on them. Maybe I should have been in the water during that time.

One of his sermons is based on a poem. It's called "People Whisper God to Me". It talks about beautiful scenery and majestic granite walls but, in the end, it doesn't measure up to what we mean to each other.

I will always hold each of you special in my heart because I thought I belonged here. I thought that I could see myself here for a dozen years.

When things started falling apart at home, I knew I had to make a difficult decision. I'm not even sure if this is going to fix it. I guess that's the scary part.

I promise to run my 50-miler. I promise to dedicate more time to making sure Franny gets genuine homework time. I promise to try to finish Ironman someday. I promise to work on my second book. I might work on a short film.

I have only a few bits of advice: Help yourself to the 15 month old red Rolo. Don't talk shit about me to the new guy. Talk shit about me to the new guy. Don't warn him about Covance. Don't tell him that Stark is coming back. When you see Kevin Fulk, simply say "Fulk!" Use Firstcom.com--it's a great resource. Spend $15 on lunch. Eat a burrito. Play Wii until your arms hurts. If someone needs your help, see what you can do. If you see a challenge, take it. Some chances are worth taking.

Your Pal,

Steve Donovan

Making a List

During interviews, there's always that question, "What do you do when you're overwhelmed with work?" If I told them the truth, I would answer something like, "First I loaf. I don't like to think about a ton of work just waiting for me to get through. Then, one of the responsiblities become a little close to deadline and then I realize how much work I have and start vocalizing how much stuff I have to do. You know, 'God I have so much stuff to do!' That type of complaining. Then I finally get so overwhelmed that I have to make a checklist."

Instead, I give the short version: "I make a list." In fact, it is true. Eventually, I make a list. I may put off pending work by reading "The Onion" online or reading concert reviews or writing in my blog (ahem), but eventually I make a list when I am overwhelmed.

When I'm putting off work, I'm not technically overwhelmed. 'Overwhelmed' is subjective. For me, It takes almost a crisis mode to make me overwhelmed. Many people start getting a pile of work then get that feeling. It takes a bit more for me.

I'm starting to feel it though. I'm getting ready to change jobs and the race that I organize is set for next weekend. Lots of details. Very little time left.

Time to make a list. And I'll put on my list that I need to make a list. Maybe that's my mental list. I mean making the list is part of my mental list.

Job 2.0

I just resigned from my job.

This is unfortunate because I love what I do and who I work for.

The notice goes out and I got many well wishes. Some teasing (ie "Short timer!"). Most of all, I get the question, "What made you decide to leave?" That is the burning question. As co-workers, I'm sure there is curiousity. What makes a person leave this job? Do I have to fear something? Was he unhappy about something?

The truth of the matter is simple. I'm upgrading.

A lot like computer updates, jobs get updates where it makes the system work better. My job will be fewer hours, more money. Plain and simple.

It's tough to leave a good place but when the system needs to be upgraded, you have to make the decision. Is the operating system working exactly as I hope or do I need to upgrade?