Cord Monster

I've really been laying low recently. I've been home from Hawaii for almost 2 weeks and not too much has happened. I came home to late fall/winter like conditions here in Denver. In fact we had a nice big snow in the middle of last week. This week was my first bigger one back into training. I am racing Ironman Cozumel at the end of November. After booking all of our airplane tickets and renting a cute little two bedroom bungalow for the trip I'm getting fairly excited. I still have some solid weeks of training ahead of me, but I'm jazzed that we get to visit warm weather yet again this year.

After Cozumel it's a nice long December full of rest for me.

I turned 32 yesterday. It's a rather uneventful number...not prime or anything, divisible by tons of other numbers....16, 2, 4, 8...but none the less marks the fact that I have kept myself alive for yet another year...no small feat I guarantee you. Facebook's one redeeming quality is illustrated on your birthday and I smiled all day as my phone continued to beep and buzz at me with people saying Happy Birthday. Thank you!

Troy totally stole the husband of the year award this year. Troy has a really hard time not giving me my presents once he has purchased them. So he usually waits until the day before, and then he insists that I stay up until midnight so he can give them to me. This year was the same, and I admit....I love this! This year he spoiled me with a down mattress topper, and a new down comforter. This girl was in heaven! Thank  you Troy for making my bed like a fancy hotel!

Yesterday I cleaned out my closets and did some organizing. Remember that crazy electronic corner I had going on? I posted a picture of it in one of my past blogs, it looked like this:

I knew there had to be a better solution for this. Troy and I went around to various organization stores (by the way, we are not the shopping kind of people) and we found some products that tried to hint at a solution for this mess, but they were weak. Finally I just decided to do it myself.

So, cord organization for the triathlete. Here we go. Grab yourself a bin, get a kinda big one, because if you are like me, you have Garmin, camera, video camera, underwater video camera, iPod, iPhone, Kindle, and back up Garmin (Timex global). Maybe more?? If you want to store these things under your bed (which is a good place I think) then make sure to measure the height before you procure your bin (I did not and wish I had).

Find yourself a power strip, you should have several extras of these somewhere....go check the garage...you'll find them. Also you are going to need some little containers (some Tupperware that has lost it's lid would work pretty darn well here). Oh and also, some duct tape (duh...what project doesn't require that) and I got some cord clips (but they are optional and not necessary in retrospect).

Okay, cut a hole in your bin in the side and fish the power strip cord through it. Duct tape the power strip to the bottom of the bin. Then duct tape your small containers to the bottom of the bin and fill with your electronics. I stashed those cord clips on the edges to direct the cords and make sure things stayed organized, but you can see they aren't totally necessary.

Wha-Lah! Now all the electronics are in a bin, I can move the bin to wherever it needs to go and all it requires is one outlet. It's on the floor in my closet right now. I'm so impressed with myself right now.

So, I hope you might be able to get a little use out of my idea, surely some of you all will come up with much better ideas, but hopefully this gets you thinking.

Thanks again for all the well wishes, cards, and goodies on my birthday yesterday. You all made my day great.