The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams. ~ Oprah Winfrey

A Happy Week

So it’s week twelve since my open heart surgery, Thursday will officially be a month and next Monday I return to hell, I mean work. I am not looking forward at all to returning to work, to the drama, the incompetence and just plain managing folks who don’t do their job or care about students. The good news, they’re a small part of the overall faculty and staff, the bad news, is their noise and the stress and work they cause far outsizes their small numbers. More on this below.

So I’m really enjoying my last days before I go back to work. This past week I attended the Pirates and Giants game with a couple of friends. Partially as a thank you to one who really was there for me during my time off, also to check off a tiny bucket list item, sitting on the first row at a major league game. The picture above is from my seat at the game. Even more exciting, as a Pirate fan I’ve probably seen ten live games in the last fifteen years and they’ve never won, but they won this one in extra innings. One of my friends treated us all to a great dinner after the game, so a great day, great weather, good company and good food.

My baby sister was in town this week with her husband and my nephew who is about to go to college. So I had dinner with them in the city Friday night. Really wonderful to have the chance to catch up and check-in with my nephew before he takes his next big step in life, and the dude has gotten tall!

I’ve also been doing a lot of cooking. I made homemade tomato sauce, homemade pesto, my first ever beef wellington and a something like a strombolli with the left over pastry dough from the wellington. It was all good but I was especially excited about the wellington, something I love, rarely get to eat and was always a bit intimidated to try and make at home, it came out really well.

Today I had my cardiac rehab physical therapy appointment and it went really well. I’ve been cleared for everything, wearing a backpack, working out, fully stretching and pushing my level of exercise. So I’m really excited, this really clears the path for me to start working out again and fully get my strength back.

Finally, I’m moving on to my next steps. I’ve fully engaged the job search, posted out about it on LinkedIn and even have a couple of conversations about positions coming up this week as well as having a few applications out. So hopefully, I’ll soon be moving on and finally get to leave a job that I have not been happy in for some time.

Finally, my head this week has been thoroughly on the folks who were here for me during this time. Both in person and in spirit, I have greatly appreciated the support and have learned a lot about the people in my orbit, some bad, but mostly good.

So today, eating my Italian pastry creation, munching on homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, getting good news and doing my first resistance workout has made this for a happy day, at the end of a very happy week. Hope you had a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane