I Live in Iowa: Week 48

Kind of an interesting week. I worked 45 hours because I have a number of projects going and several reports to finish. I even meant to go in on the weekend to work more, but my bicycle and my couch seemed to call harder than the 15 minute drive to work and inevitable 15 minute drive back. It is interesting how we treat work. How does our work define us? How much do we define ourselves by our work? A couple of questions that deserve more than a few lines in my weekly update.

I ran a fair amount, I haven't totaled it up yet but I think it is in the 72 mile range. But that is not the significant part, I had five workouts with a total of more than 14 miles at faster than 6 minute per mile pace. In eight days I did six workouts. I am pretty sure I have never done that before. Of course some were as short as 10x50meter short hills or three miles at 5:50 pace. Still, it takes effort to do quality day after day.

The University of Dubuque was on spring break so there was no coaching, although I think I have picked up another individual client to coach.

After months and really years of looking I finally bought a motorcycle! Well, I agreed to buy it, I still have to pick it up and pay for it. I'm just going to leave you in suspense about it for now, there will obviously be pictures and stories shortly.

On the social side I ended both my Friday and Saturday evenings at a friend and coworkers house. I am not going to give away any sort of details which might detract from the relationships being developed. In short, I had a really good time. It is a slightly different social circle than I am used to and I liked it.

On the investing side, I had a great week. I had two stocks that went up over 20% and I "made" $10 less through investing than I did working this week. It's absurd. I've been engineering in a corporate setting about 60 weeks and I have managed to save enough and invest well enough that in a week I can "make" more through investing than engineering. Of course some weeks I have "lost" hundreds of dollars. DHT closed at $1.25, one of my stocks up more than 20%. Last week I forgot to mention it but it closed at $1.03. It's hard to take that much in losses but I am confident enough about it that I actually bought more last week. DHT is actually now my largest portfolio position. Still, the fact that my portfolio was up over $800 in one day is not fair. Oh, I also bought apple last week at $534 during the iPad release. I'm already up like 7%. It's absurd. It's also worth another article because iTV, iPhone 5, iPad HD, iPad Mini, Ivy Bridge (an Intel thing), and the decline of standard programming will probably help Apple surpass $1 trillion in market cap in the next decade.