It's a good pain

I'm still aching from Aikido on Friday. This shows how out of shape I am. I think it's more from the stretching exercises we did for the first 25 minutes than the actual moves that we learned. We were doing some really intense stretches and I am not flexible.

As part of my company's acquisition, they plan to move all of their merchants onto our gateway system. It's the reason they bought us. However, our system only processes credit card transactions, not debit cards or EBT cards. I've been assigned to lead the design and implementation of adding debit and EBT card functionality to our system so that the merchants can be migrated to our system. The impact of this project is not small, our new company processes US$100 million of transactions each month through just the one processor being affected.

I'm very excited that I get to lead this project, I love building things like this.

I headed up to the Tuesday SFU swing dancing tonight. I wasn't expecting much of a turnout since it was Valentine's Day, but we had an excellent turnout and lots of non-SFU people showed up too. It was a great night, and I ended up staying until 11:30 (it normally starts dying down an hour earlier).

The best part is that I didn't feel any pressure about Valentine's Day. After the amount of emotional effort and money I put into my last relationship, I actually feel relieved that I didn't have to figure out where to take someone and then spend $60 on flowers and at least another red on dinner. I just did what I normally do and enjoyed myself.

President's Choice Chocolate Soy Milk is really tasty.

I feel invigorated

I was having a pretty crappy day today, so I though I'd go to the gym tonight to burn off my aggression. We have a really nice gym in my apartment complex, and it's open late every night until 11pm. That's perfect for me, since I usually stay up until 1am and then roll into work at 10am the next morning. With a 5 minute commute to work, I can sleep until 9:15 and still have time to shower and eat breakfast before leaving my home.

I figured that since I'm paying for the gym through my strata fees, I should start using it. I have to walk past the outdoor pool and hot tub to get to the gym, and even though it's the winter and it was 10:00 at night, it was quite warm at 5 degrees outside and there were a whole bunch of people enjoying the hot tub.

I feel really good now after spending nearly an hour in the gym. Of course, I'm weak and can't lift very much, but that will change. Yes, it will change.

The Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown is also just a few blocks away, and they offer Aikido a few nights a week. They have a new program starting in March. Maybe I'll try it out, depending on what happens with the Thailand trip.

Everything is so convenient to get to. I love living downtown.

Planning for the future

I watched some of the baby films with my family earlier tonight. While watching, my mother told a story about how when I was 3 years old, I disappeared from the house and she couldn't find me. When she did, I had been able to walk away from the house and down the street with a lunchbox. Apparently, I told her I was going to work. I always was a career oriented person.