Not quite over yet but, as predicted, this week is a sprint to the end [of the week, at least!].
Quite a lot going on at work: planning a FoodTents GrowZone build for this coming Saturday, and the formal launch of Hub Cape Town is next Thursday. I am not doing the bulk of the work for either of these events, but just generally paying attention to what is going on and stepping in where necessary (for example, I just finished drafting a contract and sent it off to the lawyers, and forwarded the Hub invite to a couple of people I really think should attend). A lot of really cool people coming through the Hub on a day-to-day basis now: it’s pretty hard to go down there and not meet someone cool (like Jeremy Loops today), or see friends new and old. It’s so cool to see the space come together and as we start to build membership this thing is going to get very exciting!
Also this week interviewed three people for a key position we have open. Really, really hard choice: none of them is perfect, and all are quite good in their own way. We also continued driving hard into digging deep into the budget for 2011 for Purple Heart. What a fantastic team I have on that project, really, it’s just a pleasure to work with them.
I also opened a bank account this week, and I’m pretty sure I signed away my first-born child in the process!
We had monthly status reports for our four main portfolio projects, the results of initial market research into a new venture we are investigating (this was super cool, although it led to some head-scratching because we are now realising this is going to be more difficult than we thought at first!), and also some fantastic market research results around corporate interest in Purple Heart gift hampers. Nerd that I am, this got me super excited: a trimodal distribution around price points! Exactly what I expected, actually, except I didn’t know at what price points the data would cluster, but really this is where primary market research really gets me excited: when it helps us answer key questions like how many items should we have in the product range, at what price points, and what else do customers want to see included in the hamper? Fantastic job also by that research team!
I managed to keep myself somewhat distracted from work in the evenings. OK, actually, that’s not at all true. Monday night I went out for coffee that turned into dinner (and thanks to self-restraint, not drinks!) with an ex-heart employee who now works for our Swiss bankers, later joined by a current co-worker. Well, obviously we didn’t talk about the sushi and the view the entire time! Tuesday night I went to yoga because I was stressed out, then went home and continued working. Wednesday night was similar; I was stuck at work late and got home literally 10 seconds before my dinner guests arrived (!!) but they were very understanding and we had a nice relaxed dinner talking about work, snakes, other creepy crawlies, and, yep, CrossFit. Then after they left I went back to work, finally going to bed a little after midnight. At this point I had been up about 21 hours, so my brain wasn’t allowing me to do the work that I wanted which was quite disappointing. Then Thursday I stayed at work until 8pm, went home, cooked up the remaining food, and packed. Well, I always say I have a bit of an intensity problem… and, in my defense it started pouring around 6:30pm and my outfit was not cut out for becoming soaked so I had to stay at work until the weather cleared. Or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Nothing too terribly exciting at CrossFit this week … new 5 rep max on press (36kgs), and on deadlift (93kgs). Then, I learned that I can do approximately 40 situps in a minute! Actually I think I somehow made some progress on the overhead squat, during part of our workout Wednesday we had to do quite a lot of these at a low weight and somewhere along the line it somehow got a lot easier. Practice makes perfect I guess… today’s workout involved handstand pushups, which are always fun [at least for me].
There is quite a lot to be done in the last day before I leave, and I am of course taking things with me to keep me busy on the plane and during downtime next week. I am looking forward to seeing family, friends, drinking some good beer (!), checking some of the Boston CrossFit gyms, and watching football. Yes, football makes my top 5 list. I am not looking forward to the plane ride, cold, dark, and missing a very exciting set of events going down in Cape Town over the next 10 days. Oh, or not eating half the tasty foods at Thanksgiving -1 or the pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. Or driving on the right, for that matter. That is going to be seriously weird….
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