Wow, we’re just blowing through nap time, aren’t we? So here’s the three-quarter-January update.

Work continues. Our contract was extended through December 31, 2009 (not unexpected) so I guess that means I can bank on a steady paycheck here for at least one more year. After that it’s a little more up in the air for ’10 and beyond. Neither Mary or I seem to be making any effort to accelerate another potential move though, so I suspect that we’ll probably ride out Yakima until the issue presses a little more insistently. After a lengthy compensation discussion (initiated by me way back in May last year) I snagged a nineteen percent raise for the new year, something I can’t complain about while unemployment rates skyrocket elsewhere, even though it probably just means that I was grossly underpaid for my first year and a half of work. No fortunes being made by any measure, but it’s enough to keep me prostituting my soul to office life for the moment.

Other than that, most of my extra time has been spent at wrestling practice or working out at the gym. One and/or the other every single day so far this year. Not a New Year’s resolution, just a sanity requisite until the weather warms up in another month or so. It’s good to be coaching again and I’ve been enjoying revisiting the halcyon days of daily mat burns and facial bruising. I completely forgot the beatdown that a couple months of wrestling dishes out. After a couple weeks of live wrestling, the stamina came back, but every day something else aches. Usually shoulders, sometimes elbows, always mat burns and scratches. The shoulder I hurt back in November is definitely still wonky, but I trust it enough to hit switches and snapdowns again.

It definitely took me a few weeks to get back into the rhythm of coaching. All the muscle memory is still there, but I had to walk through moves a couple time on my own before being able to communicate the steps. And of course you have to get used to a different wrestling culture. Practices are a little more laid back than what I’m accustomed to, a few moves have different names or the same name for different moves, and emphasized techniques are different (a little more free-wheeling out here as opposed to really hammering home fundamentals). The team is wrestling well though. Last night they wrapped up their first conference championship since 1989. Must be the extra good coaching…

This month we also finally got around to unpacking and hanging up most of our wall decorations. No more painting, laying tile, or just general wall-banging activity for a while.