Category: Chris’s Blog

Day 013 of 2026

Much as I hate to post it, rough day today. It was a workday but I feel I got nothing accomplished. I did not sleep well last night for some reason. I had a little shoulder pain from the PT appointment yesterday, and I took a Tylenol PM which really knocks me out, but the side affect of that is that I am groggy and not myself for most of the morning.

Spent most of my day on cause of loss determinations and pricing. We joke about “Trash Tuesday” at work sometimes and today was a classic example. Seemed to be the catch-all day of claims that needed a lot of investigation before making determinations. These Tuesdays happen about once a month and I don’t understand why, but always takes twice as long to do come to conclusions and/or pricing. A lot of background training also happens on these Tuesdays. And, one of my colleagues was in the field today on a large inspection and some of his work comes my direction as well. Teamwork is all part of the job. I don’t really mind as he handles a slightly different line of business than I normally do and it keeps me fresh on that line as well.

I finally got out for my swim today, which went about as well as everything else has today. For some reason my watch missed a few lengths of the pool, left me with some odd numbers. I think I know why, I did not hit the wall hard enough on two turns. But, I did manage to get in my 1800 yards, probably more like 1850 had everything counted. Of course because I wasn’t feeling all that great I just didn’t have the energy to do more, or move faster.

As you can see, not the best, I am not happy with it. But, I did finish a few of the Garmin Connect challenges today, which was sort of cool.

The next one I am doing is an actual event with US Masters Swimming, the 1 hour challenge. How far can I swim in one hour? Need to find an hour to get in the pool.

Anyways, had dinner, did the normal afternoon stuff, logged back on to make sure nothing “appeared” in my in-box for work. Tomorrow is another day. In the photo at the top of this post Res (left) and Climber (right) have the right idea….. nap time. See you tomorrow.

2026-01-13
Day 012 of 2026

Started off the day with a physical therapy appointment at UC Health. Yes, that’s right, I did go for a PT appointment. I have been having pain in my left shoulder for years. It’s an old swimming injury from the days of “no pain – no gain” that has given me issues for years. The doctors in Florida were like, “if it hurts don’t do it and we can give you some medications to mask the pain.” I am not a fan of meds so I went back to the doctors here in Colorado a few months ago. They did a few x-rays and found the source of the issue, calcification on one of the tendons in my shoulder. My biggest fear was a torn rotator cuff, and I was very happy not to have this problem, so the current plan is to do some stretching and strength building exercises and do a monthly session with the PT. We talked about my swimming and I was encouraged to continue but I do have to cut back on the breaststroke as it could be putting extra stress on that tendon. I guess I will continue to work on that change.

I missed my workout today. The PT appointment took up my free time for the day and my lunch break. I will make up for it tomorrow.

Spent the rest of the day working. Had a lot of pricing to do, some very interesting claims showed up on my desk and I had to dig in deep to find some solutions. Sent a couple back for an additional inspection to gather some additional information. It happens occasionally at no fault of anyone’s. I am also spending some time on tech development and training. Most of this involves sending email reminders at this point, and also resetting passwords for people that can’t seem to remember their own. I do need to write a few additional courses but that may wait until after an upcoming trip.

Took the dogs out for their regular afternoon walk, it was a nice 54 degree day. They got to sniff and smell all over the park. Something is going on up the street from us, we think someone hit a natural gas line or power line since the utility company has emergency trucks all over the area. We have power and we have gas, so it can’t be too big of an issue.

Over the weekend I moved my Ham Radio station over to receiving SSTV images, this is slow screen TV on the Amateur Radio bands. I have received some really awesome images over the last day or so.

I know! Everyone says, “so what you can do this with the internet and email!”, but there is some magic in sending and receiving over radio.

Anyways, that’s it for tonight. See you tomorrow.

2026-01-12
Day 011 of 2026

And once again our snow has abandoned us here in Aurora, CO. Snow does not seem to like 50+ Degree F weather, it also does not like sun. And we are much closer the the sun here in Colorado then we have ever been anyplace else we have lived.

Took the kids out for their normal morning walk. Again each on their own but we did a 1.67 mile walk on each time, good for my “fitness hours’” for my logging (more on that later) and really good for Res and Climber as they need the exercise. Climber continues to radiate energy in ways only a young greyhound can do so. She doesn’t turn 3 until May. The interesting part is that Climber and Res have started to play with each other leaving the humans in the house with some “heart attack” moments. Especially when the chase involves three sets of stairs, the loop with the kitchen and living room, and then ends up with Climber on Res’s back with an ear in her mouth. I just don’t understand what it is with Greyhounds and wanting to catch the ears of their playmates.

On the positive side, Res has told her off a few times when she has gotten too rough, or when he is trying to sleep and she nails him with a flying toy. She just hasn’t figured out yet that him growling and woofing at her means, “Knock it off and leave me alone!” She thinks it means, “let’s rumble!” Oh, well, I hope she learns without a vet visit.

After breakfast Jesse started in on meal prep for the week which included making the puppy snacks (chicken treats and mackerel treats). I decided to go for my Sunday swim. It was a recovery day so I didn’t push too hard. I am probably going to miss a few days of workouts near the end of this coming week as I will be traveling to an area sort of “devoid” of public pools, so I am trying to get some distance in before I leave. I have a few “challenges” that I am trying to achieve.

Still not my best workouts, but it could be worse. I did manage to make 550 yards without stopping which is a good thing, I need to continue to increase that if I want to do my open water swims this Summer.

My Toy! Not hers, mine!

And with that I wish everyone good night and we will talk again tomorrow.

2026-01-11
Day 010 of 2026

As you can see I am making an effort to post a little something each day. Today is Saturday so I did sleep in a little until Climber decided to wake me up. An hour extra is all I am allowed to have.

I always get an hour or so of reading time until Jesse gets up. Then it’s out to walk the dogs. On weekends they both get solo walks. Res goes first and then Climber.

Temps were around 20 degrees F by the time I got them up and out. So jackets for all.

Res’s main objective on his walk is to stick his nose into and pee on as many clumps of grass as he can.

For Climber I really dont know what her goal is. But she enjoys her walks and has gotten so much better about her jacket since the first time we put her in it.

Got them both walked and then had a nice breakfast burrito, homemade of course.

Then off to the pool for a long swim. Remind me in the future to never go on Saturday morning. Saturday mornings at the pool suck. Swim lessons and way too many kids. But, once I got a lane I finally broke the 2000 yards I have been trying to break. It was awesome! My times suck, my stamina sucks, but I made my first goal. Now since I broke that I have to see about increasing the distance on my sets, and…..much as I do not like it…. I have to increase the use of freestyle rather than breaststroke.

I really want to be able to do the Mountain Lake Swim Series this Summer and I don’t think I can do it with Breaststroke being 50% of my swimming. Also, I need to try and get a 1 hour swim in for the US Masters Swimming 1 Hour swim competition, though I will never place it is a good activity.

I finally decided to sync my swimming with swim.com as I am serious about doing a few events this year, and of course that led me down the rabbit hole of the different events in US Masters Swimming. Yeh me. But that’s OK, it will help.

Dinner was Pork Loin and veggies. Really good.

Anyways time to wrap up today. See you tomorrow!

2026-01-10
Day 009 of 2026

Started the day with it being a cold and snowy morning. Well, colder than it has been for a while. I took the dogs for their walk this morning and they had a nice time smelling everything around in the snow. Yes, Mr. Res decided that doing zoomies at the end of the leash on ice was a good thing. He almost took me out.

Then we got down to the bottom of the park and it was like we had to sniff every plop of snow around a clump of grass. But, we finally made it home.

Spent the rest of the morning working on our January 2026 newsletter for our technicians. After some back and forth with my manager I got approval to post and send it out. I wish I could share it here but it does contain some confidential information so I can’t. Let’s just say if people follow directions a lot of problems will be resolved.

Got out for a lunch time swim. Made 1700 yards, the longest I have done since I got back in the pool. I actually could have done a few more laps but someone else was waiting for a lane so I decided to be nice and finish my workout. The pool actually felt warm today with the cold outside.

Finished off our day with the dogs evening walk and their dinner. We had Chinese food tonight, my regular of Beef and Broccoli with egg rolls.

Rest and relax for the rest of the evening. Goodnight and see you tomorrow.

2026-01-09
Day 008 of 2026

My office assistant joined me in the basement yard (my office) today for most of the morning and some of the afternoon. He is sort of a useless assistant, good thing he is cute! Seriously he comes downstairs as it is pretty much quiet and no one bugs him. Very little sound in my office.

Started off the day with a few technician phone calls and some training tasks I needed to get done. Found, retested, and document a problem with our app. The afternoon was all about pricing requests and Cause of Loss Determinations (COLDs). This is where I need to review the photographs, readings, and notes that our field technicians submit and then determine a cause of loss and a resolution that will be sent to the insurance company (our clients) as a part of their final reports. There are two of us that do the more complex of these requests. I primarily work with the electrical side of things and one of my colleagues works with the mechanical side of things. Keeps us busy.

I did get out for an early lunch as was able to hit up the pool for some swim time. It’s sort of embarrassing that I am struggling with distances right now. I am the guy that used to swim 5K and 10K open water events. Now I am having trouble increasing my distances beyond 1.5K. I know I will get there eventually, but I am so out of shape. Today was slightly better and I was able to add a little distance, even though I was not feeling that great for some reason. May have been what I ate for breakfast.

Then this afternoon we took the dogs on their evening walk, it was a little bit cooler with some light snow so no one lingered.

Anyway the company I work for, Alpine Intel, has rolled out a new wellness app that is replacing the Coolleaf and Waliba that we used to use. Starting this week we are on Wellright. It’s going to be an interesting change. They are now basing everything on fitness activity time rather than steps. I am really glad to see the move away from steps as this whole idea of 10,000 steps per day was never scientific and the idea of 40 minutes per day of moderate to strenuous physical activity makes a lot more sense. We will see how this works out.

2026-01-08
Day 007 of 2026

Another day another dollar ….. sort of. Anyways, work today as normal. I am finally starting to catch up on all my desk work. I do have a trip coming up late next week, but more about that later.

Went to try to go swim at lunch today, got to the pool area and the water in the lap lane was smooth, I mean like untouched. This is not usual. So, before I got changed I decided to walk into the pool area and ask the very bored looking lifeguard, yup, he was guarding the empty lap pool, what was up. Turns out someone dumped too much chlorine into the pool and they had to add some other chemicals to decrease the levels. No lap swimming for me today.

Since I try to do something physical every day I decided to go around the corner to Great Plains Park and walk in circles for an hour to at least get some activity in.

Rest of day was pretty boring, nothing exciting. See you tomorrow.

2026-01-07
Day 006 of 2026

Busy day today. Unfortunately I cannot share all of the details because of privacy laws, but my morning was spent on an appraisal Zoom meeting. An appraisal is sort of like a courtroom proceeding where attorneys call witnesses and present evidence, but instead of a judge there is a referee and instead of a jury there are appraisal team members. The sicko I am, I enjoy most of these, but this mornings’ was rough, I got beat up pretty badly.

My favorite line of any insurance claim is, “because of ….. [fill in your loss event] it is going to fail in the future.” Well, I can’t disagree with that it is going to fail in the future. Let me be clear, everything is going to fail in the future. Here is an awesome example: You carry your laptop on a plane. You try to sue the airline because the cabin pressure may cause your laptop to fail in the future. Make sense? Yeh, neither do most of these statements. Everything has an expiration date.

Anyways, I spent most of the day dealing with this and a ton of work related pricing requests, as well as reviewing some additional reports. Normal average day to day stuff.

By the time I was done with work, and making sure the appraisal team did not need me further, it was too late for me to go get my swim in. The afternoons at the rec center are too busy for me to get into the pool reliably without a long wait, so I decided just to go for a walk. Did just about 3 miles in a reverse loop than my normal park/power line trail loop. I was not in a rush, it was really to to get out and do something.

Saw my little prairie dogs in their tunnel entrances and they were yelling at me. The are really cute and it makes my day to see them in their city.

And this evening’s scene here at home is this:

Can you just picture this:
Res: DAD!!!! She won’t leave me alone
Me: Chill dude, she just wants to be close to you
Res: I want her to go back to her own corner.
Me: Nope, not happening! I am just happy she is laying down and not jumping on you.
Res: I didn’t sign up for this.
Me: Remember the angel girls? Lady, Leona, Raven? Yeh…. that was the same thing they told me about you.
Res: I was never that bad.
Me: Eh…. yes you were.
Climber: SEEEEE MEEEE GOOOOD!!!!!
Res: Shut it Climber!
Me: Back to your corners.

They both got their afternoon walks, this is the average one:

Have a great evening! See you in the AM.

2026-01-06
Day 005 of 2026

Well, I had hoped for something new, interesting and exciting to share with you all today…. but alas it’s just another boring day at the office. Work today, spend most of my day handling pricing requests and invoice reviews. I need to do some training material but I have to hear from my manager before I go too far down that rabbit hole.

I did get out for a lunch time swim and slightly increased my distance. I will probably miss tomorrows swim because I will be on a meeting most of the morning and may not have time to go get wet.

My times are getting a little better, but not where I want them to be. Also, I need to spend time doing some more 200 yard sets instead of just my warm-up and 100’s.

I guess that’s all for this evening. See you tomorrow. See…. I live a pretty boring life.

2026-01-05
Day 004 of 2026

Sunday!

Started the day off with a few cups of coffee and then taking Climber and Res on solo walks. Res went on his normal uphill walk around the park

For Climber I decided on a different walk, I wanted to take her on a longer option so we went around the block the other direction and then around the park. I think I will probably stick with the Power Line trail with her in the future. I think it is more interesting for her to watch the little Prairie Dogs then the traffic out on Tower Blvd.

After we got back and had breakfast I went for my swim. I added a little distance today, not much, just 100yards more. I really need to get up to 2000 yards in the near future if I want to get rid of this extra weight I am carrying. I have just about decided that I want to do the Mountain Lake Swim series this Summer and that means I really have to increase my distance without hurting myself. A very tight balance.

The rest of the day was a normal sort of day. Played with Climber in the back yard, she likes playing with a tennis ball, and then read some Kindly books I have been working on. Got distracted and went down the Facebook Reels rabbit hole. I also spent some time trying to figure out what and IF I really want to do anymore YouTube training videos. I am not really sure what I want to do yet.

Have a great evening. See you tomorrow.

2026-01-04