Why 2008 will be better

3 weeks since my last post... might not seem like a long time, but it might as well be 3 months. As I said to one of my relatives over the holiday weekend, the best thing about letting my blog die, is that once I finally do revive it, the only ones coming back to read it will probably be the only ones I want reading it in the first place.

You didn't REALLY think I would let my blog die did you? Of course not... but I think some time away was what I needed. Give me time to think about what was important to me about my blog and what wasn't. One change that will be occurring is 2008 is the rating. It's high time my posts were R-rated. Life isn't PG, so why should my blog be censored?

The title of this post implies that 2007 was bad. That's not really an accurate statement. 2007 saw a lot of great things happen, ranging from achieved fitness goals to achieved financial goals and more. What made 2007 so rough was my stress levels. I think overall, 2007 also saw the highest stress levels I've had in a LONG time.

So why will 2008 be better? Less stress. And what changes will occur that should bring about less stress? Here is my short list:

1. The project I've been working on at work for basically all of 2007 will be released to customers in the 2nd week of January. This is going to be a huge stress reduction. I've learned a lot from this project and I think I've gained some insight on how to approach future projects in a way that won't let the stress build.


2. Megan should be talking by the end of 2008. I say should only because I'm such a pessimistic. I strongly believe she will be talking or starting to communicate before summer. Having a higher level of interaction and seeing progress there will really lower my stress levels.


3. My damn roof will be done, with gutters, at some point in 2008. I thought this would be such a simple thing to get a new roof, boy was I wrong. I'll be so happy once this thing is finally done, and that stupid ass company puts my gutters on. I slipped once already this winter, and am so fucking pissed off at that company for not getting them on over winter. It a danger to my entire that I'd rather not worry about.

As I said, that's the short list. I think there are other things that will make 2008 a better year, but it will be awhile before some of those ideas solidify for me. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to a lovely New Years Eve date with my wife, as my Mom has offered to watch Megan over night for New Years for the second time! Will she go for 3?

Are You Serious?

What a weird week. It must be karma or something. To have such a large amount of things happen right after I'm on the cusp of quitting my blog. Where to begin? I'm not even sure. This is gong to be a long post, because if I'm going to do this, I might as well put some real effort into it.

Monday came and I had zero desire to goto work. Andrea reminded me that the speech specialist for Megan was that morning at 10am. That was all the reason I needed to stay home and be part of that process. I'm glad I did, and it's been requested that I'm there for a follow up session later in Dec, which I'm sure I will do. The gist? Yes, Megan is lagging behind in speach. She's not forming two words together, let alone many single words. She speaks mostly in "AHHs", pointing, and in physical ways. She understands what we say and will usually do things we ask. She just doesn't want to talk back. I can't even get into how this all makes me feel, but I'm sure you can guess it's nothing positive.

Tuesday night was the big snow storm. My commute home was a solid hour and 30 minutes. I went in crazy directions to attempt to avoid traffic (I even passed my sister in law at one point). Apparently it paid off, because two other people I work with that commute to Apple Valley were on the road for 3 hours.

After arriving home, I decided to take the bike rack off my car. (which incidentnly, I never did get around to using this year) In the process of doing this through the snow covering my car, my hands got really cold and at one point I shook them to warm them up. The result? My wedding ring went flying in some random direction. I didn't even hear it land. Ya, it's pretty much gone now. Maybe I'll get a metal detector and look for it in the spring.... suuuure.

Tonight I came to yet another shitty realization. My attempts to play World of Warcraft "competitively" were a gigantic waste of time. Despite the raw video game talents I have, there is just no way I can play at the same level as college kids with nothing to do but play video games. I quit a large part of my World of Warcraft gaming tonight. Time will tell if I'm fully done yet again.

There is only one positive thing that has happened this week. Somehow, this one thing is keeping me going, because honestly, I don't even know what to think anymore. Over on the right side of my blog, under my Exersize Log, click the "Year to Date" total. That's right, 1203 miles! I hit my goal of 1200 miles in a single year. It was a good feeling to achieve a "year long" goal. The only hard part? To convince myself that it doesn't mean I get to take the rest of the year off!

Yes, I realize this post is one huge bitch session. Maybe that's what blogs are supposed to me. Life is full of ups and downs, as long as I'm posting about both, well maybe that's the whole damn point.

Blog Death

It's hard to say what killed my blog. It was just a combination of a bunch of little factors, that added up to a slow but eventual death. The main factor is of course time. Blogging takes time that 9 times out of 10, I'd rather be spending doing something else. Granted, usually that is just World of Warcraft, but that's not the only thing...

Megan has become a bigger focus of my evenings lately, from spending time with her when I get home from work right away, to putting her to bed on time every night. (around 10pm) Each night, I spend a good 30 minutes with her putting her to bed. It's worked out well, and in general most nights are much better. Take tonight for example, she went to sleep without the slightest complaint.

The other main thing that killed my blog, is when all my posts became nothing more then a series of complaints. What the hell do I have to complain about? I'm healthy, I have a great job, a wife that loves me and a daughter I just adore. My insistence of focusing on the few negative things here and there started to just bother me. And blogging about it even made things worse.

So what next? Is my blog really dead? It's hard to say. With November already over and the New Year right around the corner, thoughts of new goals and resolutions come right along with it. What do I want to focus on in 2008? Where do I want to spend my time? Where are my priorities? And most important of all, do I want to share my crazy struggle to find the answers to all these questions again and again on my blog? I suppose only time will tell.

Week from hell

Ugh! Week between posts. Maybe it's time to throw in the towel on this silly blog business. I'm so good at quitting! Might as well embrace the things I'm good at...

I honestly don't know what is stressing me out more right now - Megan's bed time issues or work. The problem is that they both compound each other into this really bad cycle. Megan keeps me awake until 1am. This causes me to be tired and negative at work all day. This results in me stress eating and/or being too tired to work out after work. Of course that puts me in an even worse mood followed up by another late night with Megan.

I just want to survive the week. Tomorrow is Friday, and it should go somewhat easier then the rest of the days this week. Then a short 3 day weekend to Thanksgiving break. Just... need... to survive.

Mid week was a nice visit with the family, it was my sister in laws birthday. We went out to Red Robin and Megan was decently behaved. She ate all of her pizza and for the most part stayed in her little area. Made for a pleasant evening. Wish I could see my brother more but with his work and school schedule these days, we don't have a lot of overlapping free time.

This weekend we are going down to New Ulm to get a night off. It's sort of our standard thing now, we go down, drop Megan off with the grandparents, and then enjoy a small break. Going to try and milk it for all it's worth and de-stress as much as possible. I'm sure that will involve a little bit of drinking as well.

Bed Progress

Overall I would say the transition from the crib is going well. Megan has been hit and miss with actually going to bed on her own so far. At least one nap time and one evening night time, she climbed into her bed all on her own for sleep. Other times we've put her in and she has climbed out. One night I fought with her for a good hour until she finally just collapsed in exhaustion and slept.

Although she stayed in the bed over night a few times, the last few nights she has either fallen out or climbed out. I've kept the baby monitor on over night so she isn't crying or anything, just falling out. But once I saw her like this... I realized we should probably do something about it.



So tonight I stopped off at Baby Depot and bought some bed rails. I think this should take care of the problem, although she might be weirded out by them at first.



The other big challenge we are facing is Megan's insistence on taking all her clothes AND diaper off. You take your eye off her for a minute and all of a sudden she will be running around naked. I'll go ahead and admit the worse part - when she then decides to go to the bathroom after getting naked. It's quite annoying. What advice we find online mentions tactics such as duct taping diapers and putting pajamas on backwards. Ohhh the joys of two year olds.

Bed and Bread

Bought a new bed and some bread this weekend! The bread was especially yummy, from the Harvest Bread Co. off 42. Had a coupon from a 2006 run for a free loaf that I never got around to using. Bought Megan a new bed, since she has figured out how to climb out of her crib! Not that we didn't see it coming, she might as well be a monkey with how much climbing she does. I was just surprised at how easily she can climb out without falling or hurting herself at all.



I realized I still haven't got around to posting Halloween pictures, so I'll just end my post with a bunch of pictures. Starting first with Megan and her awesome Snow White costume!



We did a little bit of Trick-or-Treating with Megan, but it was very cold and so we only did about 10 houses. Not that we didn't get enough candy... Ended up throwing most of it away, can't have that stuff in the house and not eat it!

The rest of these pictures are from my weekend in Boise. I thought I'd start with the best one first. This is "Ash" from the movie, Evil Dead and/or Army of Darkness, take your pick. It was an awesome costume that he built all by hand.



I made this guys night simply because I knew what his costume was. Could it be the 20 something generation is too young to know? Apparently no one realized he was "Brand", the older brother from the movie Goonies. Seemed pretty obvious! I heard they might be making another Goonies in the future?



Saw two Edward Scissor hands, but this one was the better costume in my opinion. The impressive part was holding a drink at the same time...



This was just a fancy costume I thought looked cool. Chesty as well...



I have more, but these were some of the better ones. Overall, there was a ton of good costumes that night. It had been a long time since I had "gone out" for a Halloween, so that just added to my enjoyment of that weekend.

Back to Reality

I wish I could put together a well thought out post about my weekend adventure in Boise, but honestly I just don't think I could do it justice. Instead, I'll just give a quick summary and some pictures. If I have more time later this week, I will try and post up some pictures of the better costumes from the weekend.

Weekend in a nutshell: got to see everyone I wanted to for at least a few hours. Ran 20 miles across two days. Drank some alcohol, had some craziness, had some fun. Did some thinking, did some reminiscing. Saw a couple movies, ate out a bunch, and started missing my family pretty badly by the end of it all.

I stayed at a place also know as the "Myrtle Morgue". Home of a promoter of the Boise death metal scene. This is picture of the back fence...



Friday was pretty relaxed, I started with a run and a lunch date with old co-workers, Rick and Jennifer. Both are doing well, all things considered.



After a 2 hour lunch, I had a few hours to kill, so I caught a movie: Dan in Real Life. I was expecting a comedy, but instead got a drama about a Father with 3 daughters, trying his best to be a good Dad. At one point in the movie, the youngest girl tells him, "You're a good Father, but a bad Dad." It nearly broke my heart, and for a long time after that I thought about what that meant to me.

Friday night was mostly relaxing, very little drinking, and basically just some nice socializing. I spent the time with my old drinking & gaming buddy Winston, and his girlfriend Marta. (hope I got the spelling right)



Saturday was a long half marathon run, followed up with 3 hours of thrift shopping. Crazy, I know. Just go with it... Then we met up with some other old gaming friends for coffee and another movie: 30 Days of Night. It should have been called, 30 Days of Suck. It was the worst vampire movie I had seen in a long time.

Saturday night was a bit of everything. I didn't quite make the connection that this weekend would be the big "Halloween" costume time for young people. Downtown was full of everyone in costume, and I got quite a few pictures. I also let loose and enjoyed a bit to drink, just enough to enjoy myself but not enough to regret anything in the morning.

Sunday was supposed to be the long 12 hour day of sitting in airports and planes. Instead, I asked about possible flight changes. Long story short, I was able to get a direct flight for a charge of $50 bucks. I got home a good 5-6 hours sooner, which was great. Gave me time to see the family sooner, tell Andrea all about the weekend, and unwind.

And now... the long road to reality. And work. Sigh.

Not a moment too soon

Here I sit, the day before my vacation, with a small moment to catch my breath. The week started out on such a good note with two out door runs. First a 10 miler on Saturday in CRAZY good weather, and then another shorter 4 1/2 mile on Monday night. That one was a bit colder, but still nice.

Despite that great start, I'm sitting at the highest stress levels I've been at in a long time. I woke up this morning with a major stress headache, and even two Excedrin didn't make it go away. You'd think the day before a vacation, I'd be de-stressing, but for some reason the exact opposite is happening.

I'm not trying to be vague, I simply can't put my finger on where the stress is coming from. It's just a combination of many things, with the biggest piece being Megan's ever changing abilities to find new ways to get into trouble or things she shouldn't. In other words, the fact that she's 2 now!

Work is no small part either... I confided with a co worker how I've given serious thought to finding a way to get a different manager. Not that I think that's an actual possibility, I still entertain the idea. Something rather funny happened this week at our group meeting. I reminded everyone I would be out for 3 days, and someone chimed in that maybe we should delay some things because I was a "major linchpin". Being the vocabularaly challenged person that I am, I wasn't sure at first what it meant, if it was a joke or a complement? I thought it was some derivative of the word "lynch", i.e. hanging. Turns out, linchpin refers to "a central cohesive element". That was a nice pick me up... maybe all my hard work does get noticed.... Naw! Who am I kidding!?!?!

Hopefully I can come back after this weekend with a fresh perspective on things. Relax, let the worries flow away for just long enough to re-center myself and focus on a few tasks over the next few weeks to lower my stress levels.

Did I mention my roof work hasn't started yet?
Did I mention I'm going to have to get new brakes on my car?
Did I mention I'm going to get my wisdom teeth pulled before the end of the year?

Oh sorry, what was I saying? Oh ya, back to my regularly scheduled worrying! Pictures of the trip when I get back!!

Something Positive

Been feeling pretty negative lately. I'm sure my blog posts have reflected that in some way. I attributed it mostly to the change in weather, and the fact that if I'm lucky, I'll get maybe one or two more outdoor runs in this year. The cold, the waking up in the dark, all the rain this week. Think it's finally starting to add up.

If that wasn't enough, a large percentage of the people I work with are sick or have been sick in the last few days. So sure enough, I've got it also. So far it's just cold symptoms, but it's hitting me hard. Especially with my insistance that I only need 6 hours of sleep a night. I'll try to run it out this weekend and hopefully start to feel better by mid next week.

Reason being... I head out to Boise next Thursday night! One week, and a nice long weekend break for me to visit my old friends and coworkers out there. I've been looking forward to this trip for a long time, for various reasons. I'm going to get some running done each day, with the goal of doing running 13 miler along the Boise Green Belt. In addition to that, just being able to visit the people that had a big impact in my life over the 6 years that I lived out there. It should be great.

So that's my positive thought for the week: Vacation, vacation, vacation!

Feeding Addictions

Oddly enough, blogging is NOT one of my addictions. If it were, I would be posting a lot more then I do now. Alas, once a week is becoming more and more the norm...

Obviously, I have a very addictive personality. I'm pretty sure it runs in my family to some degree. Addictions can be both positive and negative in my mind. It's all about how you spin it. Basically, some of my main addictions are:

1) Worrying. I worry way too much. I worry about everything, my job, my family, and yes, even my addictions. It gets to be a bit much at times. It has to be prematurely aging me somehow.

2) Video games. Always been on the top of the list. World of Warcraft being the current choice. How long can video games be my only form of entertainment?

3) Running. Finally, a positive addiction! The funny thing is, I can even find a slight negative with this one. My insistence to run run run has prevented me from achieving a secondary goal of weight lifting on a regular basis.

4) Alcohol. Ahhh finally the only one on my list that could be considered an official addiction. The positive side of this one is that it's more or less fallen out of the top 3. About once every other month I find myself having a few drinks to de-stress. Okay, maybe more then a few.

I thought about how I feed my various addictions at some length this weekend. Not sure why, but it centered around my choice of video games as my primary form of time wasting / entertainment. The thing is, with an addictive personality, you HAVE to feed something. You can't just quit an addiction. The only thing you can do is replace one addiction for another. If I cut back on video game playing, all that would end up is my other addictions would get more time. And looking at the above list, I'm not seeing more negative then positive alternatives. So video games it is!

In other news, Megan loves her new Dora fort... Great birthday present! (if you are reading this, thanks!)

Birthday Weekend

I'll just let the pictures do most of the talking for today. Megan's 2nd birthday party was a huge success. Lots of family from all over came to celebrate, and Megan had a great time opening gifts. She also got everyone to give her rounds of applause, as she would clap for herself. For some reason she just loves clapping and having other people clap! Or, she just loves being the center of attention...

If one birthday wasn't enough fun, we have even one more this weekend! It's at a place called Just Jump, with tons of inflatable jumpy things. Megan has been there once before, but she was much younger then. I think she will have a great time today climbing in some of the bigger inflatable toys.

Here is Megan in a very cute birthday dress:



You have to stay cool on your birthday:



Megan enjoyed reading some of her cards more then the gifts. Especially the Shrek card from Grandma G!



Cuddling with Uncle Scotty:



Enjoying her Gelato cake. The cake was a huge hit with everyone! We might be doing this again...



Finally, the day after, with her new clothes and new toys.

Slacker

Blogging has taken 2nd fiddle to a lot of my time lately. Weekly posts are just not going to get the job done, I know that much. Still, I find myself struggling to find the time to blog. Why? Dunno....

I've gone on and on in the past about my thoughts on anger as the most useless of human emotions. Tonight I might have finally found a potential use. I'm not sure why I was so angry today. I think it all started with my morning. It didn't help that today was Monday either.

First, I slept in due to staying up to late and the fact that my alarm clock sucks. After that, traffic was horrible because of an accident. I got so frustrated that I actually ended up going SOUTH just so I could turn around and go back north.

Then... work. Not much more to say about that, other then things are getting to the point where I either have to do something about it or just give up. I tried to get Andrea's opinion, and her only response was, "Why does everything have to be so black and white with you?" I don't know, it just does.

So what did I do with all this anger? You guessed it, I RAN! I ended up doing an all out 5k of about 23:30, although the last 2/3rd was at a 7 min/mile pace. After that I did a cool down run of another few miles. It helped, a little bit. But it's just like anything else, it's only a temporary fix.

The long term fix? See below:

Ninja Runner

Tried something new this morning, that sounded (and went) well in theory, but in practice, it turned out to be not so good. Recently I've been unable to get to some of my evening runs, so in an attempt to get at least one in today I tried a "before work and shower at work" run.

I should preface this with the fact that Megan decided to have a melt down last night between 2:30am and 3am. After 30 minutes of letting her try to go back to sleep on her own, I finally broke and went down stairs. We slept on the couch together for 30 minutes, and I put her back to bed. So I'm already coming off a broken night of sleep.

I got up shortly after 5am, parked at work by 5:55 and running shortly after that. It was still completely back out, and of course, my only long sleeve running apparel is all black. Very safe... I was in stealth mode! No one even knew I was running, even me. Anyway, the run went very well all things considered. I felt great, the cold air was nice, and the shower after was really not that bad. By the time I was sitting at my desk, I had cooled off and didn't have any "shower didn't take" issues.

The bad part was around 10am when my body said "Hey dumb ass, I'm tired, what were you thinking?" I fought it as best I could, but it was pretty rough. I really don't think I will attempt that again unless absolutely neccessary.

In other news, and I'm sure this contributed to my tiredness, I'm kicking coffee for awhile (again). Might be kind of hard the first couple days, but I'm going to stick it out. At least 10 full days with no coffee, and I will reevaulate after. I'm sure your wondering why no coffee, and I honestly don't know. Sometimes I just have to mix it up.

Up Note

Ended the weekend with some fun stuff. As I had mentioned previously, there was a good chance I would make it to the Renaissance Festival this weekend. I went with my brother, sister in law, and one other friend on Sunday morning. It was a great time due to a couple of new experiences this year.

I started the day out with a bike ride over to my brothers apartment. The idea was so that I could actually enjoy a few beers at the Ren fest this year. (little did I know how hot the day was going to get). After arriving to the fair, when I went to snap my first picture of the day, I was greeted with a "Replace Batteries" message. No photographic evidence of my fair visit this year. After that we headed straight to food, as my brother was coming of a 10 hour work shift and really needed to eat. We all had bread soup bowl to start the morning.

Then we did some shop browsing, making me wish I just had money to blow on fancy artistic items. We also hit up a weapon shop, where I lifted up a huge 2-handed sword (or "Claymore"). This thing was huge, I estimated it at around 15-20 lbs worth of steel. Turns out I was really close, as it was 14 pounds.

Caught a show after that, that my brother ended up being part of. He got pulled up to the stage and had to act out various funny acts as directed by the puppeteer, Ded Bob. He did a great job, and gave it his all. At one point the puppeteer guy just started laughing at him and said "You're awesome". I wish I had got pictures! I then enjoyed my first beer, since you know, they can't start selling it before 10am.

We then played a little King of the Log competition, which my brother just smoked everyone. You stand on a log and smack each other with heavy burlap sacks filled with hay. He was a brick house! No one could even knock him off the log once, although I came close one time... maybe. Then more food (potato skins and cheese curds), more beer, more shows (Puke and Snot). More beer, more food (chicken croissant sandwich), and finally JOUSTING!

The last "new" thing that happened this year, was when the King actually talked to us! As we were walking around, the King & Queen and their procession came by. I was standing next to Scott and said we should bow to the King. As he walked by we were bowing to him, and he said something along the lines of "Very good my loyal subjects." Things like that always make me want to go all out some year and be all involved with what makes the Ren Fest fun.

In other news... I was caught for my cheating I posted about earlier. My account was suspended for 3 hours. Granted it wasn't much of a punishment, considering it was suspended from 4am to 7am, and I didn't even notice. But on the flip side, I'm glad I was caught. And the best part is, they are fixing some of these issues this this week. Hopefully it will make every ones gaming experience (my own included) more fun.

New Low

Today's post is all about World of Warcraft, so if your not interested, move along!

I've never really used my blog as a confessional, but I feel I need to come clean on something. Cleanse my conscience... or at least admit my guilt. Last night, I did something I previously considered a horrible thing to do: I became an AFK BOT. It worked better then I thought it would... and the possibly the worst part? I enjoyed it.

AFK BOT? What is that you ask? Allow me to explain. AFK BOT (short for, Away from keyboard, robot) is the process where by, my character in World of Warcraft gains points or "improves" while I'm not even there. Through the wonders of computer automation, I get to gain certain benefits while not even playing (in this case, while I'm sleeping).

So now you must be thinking, "Shawn, you must be really smart to somehow make your computer play video games for you while you aren't even there!" Well, not exactly. A couple Google searches and 7 lines of "coding" is all it took to get it setup. A properly motivated 12 year old could figure out how to do it.

So why then, is this such a bad thing? For starters, it's cheating. Trying to argue any else would be simply semantics. No matter how you try to justify it, it's still wrong. In the same way a hacker tries to say that it's okay if he breaks into someones bank account just to "see if he can do it." Just because he might not actually take the money, it's still wrong. It's a way to improve your character at an artificially faster rate. Through this means, I could technically have my character "playing" 24 hours a day if I wanted to.

More importantly, through this process, I am directly taking away from other peoples enjoyment of the game. The way it works is, my character gains points due to the work of other people actually playing. So in effect, I ruin there game just to benefit my character while they are doing all the work to gain the points. My character just sits there not helping.

Needless to say, they are going to be addressing this problem soon. And I'm actually glad they will be. What it came down to for me, is that, I want to enjoy the game but I can't if no one else is playing either. This thing that I'm doing isn't new, and in fact, a higher percentage of people use this method over anything else in order to get free points. Until then... I'm hooked on being able to get points while I sleep. It will allow me to enjoy the game faster and not have to spend so much time playing WoW on the weekends.

Heavy Rain, Hot Temps

Only one of those things actually refer to the weather... Some pretty scary driving home conditions tonight. Flash flood warnings in a couple places around the Twin Cities. The rain might stick around for a few days, which could suck for this weekend. There is a chance I might get out to the Ren Fest on Sunday and it will probably be DAMN muddy. Oh well, I'm willing to risk it!

In other news, we had a minor Megan scare yesterday. Sunday night she fell asleep cuddling with Andrea on the couch way earlier then normal. (like 8pm?) She woke up the next morning and was very warm. Andrea eventually was able to get a temp from her of 103. It seemed to get better as the day progressed, so it might have been nothing big. Today she seems totally fine, with no visible temperature. Hopefully it's not another ear infection.

So we had our annual security debriefing at work this week. Basically an hour boring presentation about how we shouldn't write our passwords on post-it notes in our cube or let random people into the building if they ask nicely. Every year they try to spruce up these meetings by having a "theme"... This year was a pirates theme. Now, in general pirates are a good thing, but they went with the "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme. This included life size cardboard cut outs of Keira Knightley... Let's just say, she got around. I think she ended up in like 3 or 4 different cubes.

At the actual meeting, I won a contest by yelling out "Ahoy, Captain!" at the appropriate moment. Got a free gift card to Applebees, so I guess I can't complain. My brother asked if we wanted to go out tonight, so hey, sometimes things just work out.

Something New

Woke up to a 62 degree house this morning. Just a bit more cold then I can handle. I actually had to turn the heat on for a few minutes to warm things up. I suppose that means it is officially fall. It's supposed to warm up later in the afternoon, so my plan is to get a run in around noon. It will probably still be pretty cold, but it beats running indoors.

I have almost zero other plans this weekend. Maybe I should like, I dunno, work on my social life or something. Or instead, I could just get a hair cut this morning. That sounds like a good plan. Tomorrow, if the temp is good enough, maybe that last bike ride of the year.

Megan is on my lap now, watching me blog (and playing with remote controls). She is getting cuter every day. Her affection levels are through the roof sometimes. She gives such big hugs and kisses when I get home from work these days. There are honestly some days I skip my work out just to be home sooner and get those from her.



Andrea had a conversation with someone recently who had a child with the same eye problems as Megan. They waiting until their kid was 4 and finally got the surgery. After that, they had perfect vision, all wandering eye problems gone. The person said they wished they had just did the surgery right away instead of dealing with years of difficult patch. It made Andrea rethink about it some more...

Anyway, the whole point of this post was to share something new the Megan just learned how to do LAST NIGHT! Yes, for the first time in awhile, Megan learned a totally new skill last night, pretty much all by herself. She learned how to pedal! Enjoy this video clip of her mad skills.

Abrupt End

Hopefully summer isn't quite over, but that's the thing about Minnesota. Sometimes you don't get much of a Fall, it just gets really cold really fast. Not that I'm complaining (yet). Today was awesome running conditions, and it looks like it will hold out the rest of this week at least. I even bought a long sleeve running shirt yesterday, the first ever!

I'm still a little disappointed about the lack of a bike trip these last two months of summer. I opted out of the St. Paul Bike Classic that I've done with Steve the last two years. Although I've been saying this for probably the last 3 weekends, I think this weekend might finally be the one.

In other news, Megan had her eye check up yesterday. The results were... inconclusive at best. I'm not sure how I feel about it all, other then I simply want to make sure we do the best possible things for Megan. The basic results were this: her near sight viewing has gotten better, and she has little to no problems focusing on close objects anymore. However, her far sightedness still has some eye wandering. The actual medical term for this is "intermittent exotropia" viewing distant objects. The main point being, for Megan it doesn't happen all the time (or even the majority) and that she is able to do some focusing on far away objects.

For this visit, Andrea actually saw the eye Doctor as opposed to the eye nurse specialist in all our previous visits. Again, the topic of surgery was brought up. The doctor indicated that for children with only intermittent problems, surgery has a much higher success rate (opposed to more serious cases of exotropia). Overall, she seemed to express that Megan was a prime candidate for eye surgery.

I really don't know how I feel about that or what to think... I guess it's not something I have to worry about for now, because even if we started entertaining the possibility of surgery it would be until she was at least 4-5 years old. It's something you want to do earlier, but at the same time, you really want to exhaust other treatment (patching) and give the brain as much time as possible to correct itself. Most things you read about exotropia will tell you that time is on your side.

So anyway, that's been occupying my thoughts as of late. I love Megan so much, I would never want her to have to struggle with vision as she goes through life. Just thinking about that now gets me pretty teared up. Hopefully time will be on our side, and we won't have to go the surgery route.

Useless emotion

This mornings run was COLD, but a great solid 9 miles. I wasn't really warmed up until after mile 5, but after that I was running with the wind and the sun was barely showing through the clouds. I definitely needed it, although I'm sad that the outdoor running is clearly coming to an end soon. Maybe this year, I'll actually try my hand at some seriously cold running. We shall see!

I've always considered anger to be the most useless of all human emotions. In no personal experience, have I ever felt like anger lead to any form of positive outcome. It seems like every other emotion can be clearly mapped to some biological or instinctual concept of human survival. So where does anger fall?

I don't deny that I'm an anger bottler. In fact, I could probably sell it in 6 packs at the grocery store. Andrea often laments at why I never seem to get mad at her. At work, it's important to me to try and keep an even keel in the face of horrible mismanagement. I just see nothing positive about expressing anger, when whatever it is you might be angry about, would be much better dealt with logically and constructively.

The only difference now, is that I have ONE outlet for anger: Running. A lot of my runs are spent deep in thought about all the things I might be pissed off about. Those thoughts are great fuel when you want to run harder, faster, longer. And by the time your run is over, you've used up all that fuel and it's like a big cloud gets pushed aside.

Anyway, yesterday Andrea, Megan and I attended the Target Children's Book Festival at the Hyland Lake Park reserve in Bloomington. A free event with all sorts of fun things for kids. In theory, it was a great time. And in fact, Megan did have a great time. It was however, a tad crowded. I guess free implies tons of people. But Megan didn't mind, and honestly didn't really care that we couldn't wait in line for stuff. She just ran around, saw a few things, and got to play in a large slide park. She was worn out by the time we came home and enjoyed a nice long nap.

Since I haven't posted any in a while, here are some recent cute pictures of Megan. The first is her obviously getting into trouble attempting to climb over the couch. She is constantly testing us, trying to get to places she knows she's not supposed to. The second one was just the cutest thing ever last night, we came down stairs and she wanted to bundle up with her blanket. Enjoy!

Quarter past Midnight

It's techincally Thursday, which means it's actually been a week between posts. My big thing was trying to get at least something up once a week, so here I find myself up way to late once again, blogging for no reason in particular. I'll blame Megan!

She has been staying up VERY late the last two nights. First, yesterday she didn't get a good nap in during the day and ended up really crabby when I got home, and obviously just exhausted. After dinner she practically fell asleep in her highchair. So after dinner, her and I laid down on our bed and napped for an hour. I got up, and let her sleep for another 30 minutes.... That was until 7:30pm. Needless to say, she was up late that night. Today, she ended up getting exhausted from various activities and fun stuff, so she slept from 2pm until 6pm!! Again this lead to another late night

We probably should be putting her down at an earlier time, at least by 10pm each night. This midnight stuff has to go... It's just bad news.

So tomorrow night, I am going to be doing my first work running club event. Should be fun, although if it is as hot out tomorrow night as it was tonight.... wheww, it's going to be rough. I finally updated my MP3 play list again. Threw out most of the current playlist, brought back some of the old playlist, and sprinkled a few new songs on top for good measure. It's funny, but it felt like the only reason I actually got a run in tonight was the fact that I was looking forward to listening to the new play list. Crazy what little changes like that can do to help your motivation.

Okay... off to bed I go.

SPOYLD1

Saw someone with that license plate tonight. Why would you put something on your car that is basically saying something negative about you? I mean, I guess one could argue that "spoiled" isn't a negative thing...

Anyway, thought I'd get a post up tonight before the weekend hits, because there is a good chance I won't find any time. Why? Because we have big memorial weekend plans? Naw, nothing like that. It's Alterac Valley weekend in World of Warcraft! Bonus honor points, so I'll be doing that all weekend. I need about 25,000 honor points. If your lucky, you can get around 1,200 points per hour in Alterac Valley. That translates to about 20 hours I have to get in...

How was that for a paragraph you probably a) have no clue what I'm talking about and b) could absolutely care less?

In other news, someone at my work place has started an official company sponsored Running Club. I signed up mainly for the free wicking T-shirt. On top of that, they will be sponsoring up to 3 races a year! Considering some of those races can be as much as $40 dollars a pop, I saw that as a great way to get something I would have done anyway for free. We will probably have one sponsored event this year, so I might actually have one last competitive race to train for.

Now... to see if Megan will let me watch the Vikings game. So far, it doesn't look good. She's crying and yelling at me wondering why she can't watch her cartoon movies. It's football season Megan, there might be more of this!!

8 years

Where does the time go? I know I'm not the only person that feels like the older you get, the faster time seems to go by. Why is that? One person explained it to me this way: The older you get, every year is a smaller percentage of your life. I thought that was an interesting way of looking at it.

Today is mine and Andrea's 8 year anniversary! I felt kind of bad when I came home tonight to wish her happy anniversary, only to use the words "8 long years". I didn't mean to imply they have been long, but more to my own amazement that it has been 8 years already.

If I had to break down my life up into discrete parts, I would consider this the 5th act. Each act being separated by the major changes in my life. I'm pretty sure I can see act 6 coming. Maybe not soon, but it's definitely on the horizon. It's like your life has these decision points that are the major factor in what path the rest of your life will take.

When your younger, you don't quite realize you are at those major decision points. You just make them because you have to. As you get older, it seems like you finally start to realize the major choices and how much impact they really will have. There is no doubt in my mind that I wasn't fully aware of the impact Megan would have on my life, but I made the decision anyway. It was the best decision I ever made, and now I know with much more certainty what having another child would mean to me, my family, and really, the rest of my life.

At the same time, it kinda sucks when you realize that no matter how many experiences you have to draw from, hind sight will always be 20-20. And even when you think you are making the perfect decision, there is always a chance that when looking back, there will be something you wish you had done a little differently.

Budget for Happiness

It's been a long week, and at the same time, a short week. The memorial services for my Uncle Jeff on Tuesday were very well done. The only way to sum up the entire day is "All of the Above". It was sad, it was happy, it was strange, it was emotional. I saw some people who, in my mind have always been part of my "Family" but for various reasons, I hadn't seen in many many years. The saddest part for me was obviously seeing my Mother in so much pain. On top of that, just being sad that a funeral is the only thing that would bring us all together again.

The rest of the week was work work work. Couple of long nights, but I still managed to get 3 runs in. It takes a little more effort, but I can do it! One more run tomorrow morning and then a day of rest.

Andrea sent me a very interesting article at work this week. I really recommend reading it:

Here's how to budget for happiness

It basically says what I've been thinking for a long time. Happiness = Experiences. It's also a big part of why it is so easy for me to save money. I've never really got much "joy" out of material purchases. Sure, I have my big TV and my fancy computer, but that's really all I need. Here is the best line from the article:

So write down your values and goals, and ways to achieve them. The list will not only give you a road map for spending your money, but also spending your time.

How to spend your time... What have I been posting about again and again on my blog? How to spend your time... There in, lies the rub. If Happiness = Expierences, you need to know what experiences will make you happy. The article captures that:

When planning a vacation, for example, use the goals as a guide but choose specific experiences you enjoy. A trip to Europe to view famous building architecture is a fine vacation, but might be a mismatch for an avid hiker and nature lover.

So what am I a lover of? What specific experiences do I enjoy? If I can't even answer that, than how can I hope to plan a vacation that will be an worthwhile experience? It seems like the answer is you have to take a risk to try something new, and see if you enjoy it.

Our cruise trip is a perfect example of this. On paper, it sounded like a great time. The reality was that it wasn't exactly the experience I was looking for. I wouldn't ever do a cruise again, unless it was a cruise built around some other experience I might enjoy. (maybe some kind of phyiscally active exursions?)

I'm not quite sure, but I think I have a starting point. Now to just find those experiences I know I'll enjoy, maybe mixed in with a few risk at something new I might enjoy.

Grey Monday

I'd rather have the rain then the blazing heat. Still not the perfect weather, but a step in the right direction. Despite the fact that I got a bike ride in this weekend, I still didn't get use out of the bike rack on my car, which was sorta the whole point. Suppose I'll put that off yet again...

Megan seems to be getting taller by the minute. She still hasn't figured out how to climb over the DVD barracade, but it's coming. The latest is that she knows how to reach around to the back side of the downstairs gate and lift the release lever. Luckily it is pretty loud when she does this, so we can rush over.

I'm going to try and use the next 24 hours to forget about work and once again, focus on the important things in life. I'm remembering my attitude about my first job at Micron, and how it ultimately burned me out. The belief that *I* had to fix everything, and that EVERYTHING was my responsibility because there was no one else competent enough to get it done or do it right. I need to turn that off. I need to just go in, put my time in, and go home. It's very hard for me to turn it off, but if it doesn't happen, I can see myself getting burned out all over again.

In the meantime, enjoy some pictures of Megan.



Megan's future is so bright, she has to wear shades. (again!)


Just lounging around Sunday afternoon.

Runner Pretends to be Biker

I need to start my blog off on a more serious and sad note. You may remember that I mentioned my uncle, Jeff McMorrow, was going through cancer treatment. He passed away on Friday morning. I don't think I can even use the typical "lost his battle" with cancer, because honestly, it wasn't even a fair fight. It hit him very hard and fast. At least my family can find solace in the fact that he did not suffer long. Jeff, you will be greatly missed. And to my family, my deepest sympathies. Memorial Service information: 2 p.m. Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at Cremation Society of Minnesota, 4100 Grand Ave, Duluth with Rev. Bridget Strudwick officiating. Visitation 1 hr. prior to services.

This morning I had planned on going on a long bike ride. The weather made me rethink my plans, but at the last minute, I was invited to join a group of bikers. Our neighbors had invited us over for dinner, and the husband mentioned they were going out for a ride in the morning. I figured, sure sounds like fun. This way, if it did start raining, I would still be close to home.

Little did I know what I was getting myself into! We biked down to a meeting spot across from Walmart in Apple Valley. Everyone was on very decked out road bikes with the full gear, clothes, pedal clips everything. I got slightly worried... but figured, hey, I can run 12 miles for an hour and a half, I can handle this right?

WRONG.

The pace they were going was way above my abilities. Even drafting the back of the pack the entire time, I couldn't manage it. I was able to keep up for an hour, and then all of a sudden, I just looked up and I could hardly see the group. I tucked my tail in between my legs, turned around and headed home. Nothing like a little spanking to put you in your place.

On the plus side, it does go to show that if I do in fact want to do some kind of long bike ride event in my life (60 miles? 100 miles?) I obviously actually need to train for it. Just because I can run long distances doesn't mean I can bike long distances. Lesson learned, the hard way!

Terrible Tuesdays

The most annoying thing lately is how work is getting in the way of my exersize. Even getting stuck at work by 30 minutes puts me in a mood where I just can't bring myself to goto the gym, because it just means I'll end up delaying dinner and not have as much time at home. It's been happening a lot more recently, tonight I was at work until a whopping 5:20pm.

Now, I know a lot of people that work a lot longer hours then me. But I pride myself on maintaining the 40 hour work week, and not an hour more or less. I get paid for 40 hours a week, so I'm going to work 40 hours a week. Don't ask me to wear more pieces of flair.

The result of all this? Aside from my increased stress levels and growing desire for a screwdriver? A weight of 189 lbs. What's the big deal about that? I don't know, other then it bothers the crap out of me, and I'm not doing anything about it. The funny part is, it's not like there is any REAL difference between 189 and what I want to maintain, 180. Physically speaking, they are the same. Health wise, I'm sure it makes no difference. Yet I'm still so pissed off that I can't maintain the 180 weight.

So what to do? Do I completely give up calories due to my decreased exersize? Do I give up family and "me" time in order to get more exersize in? Do I try and change things around and exersize in the morning instead of at night? (historically, that has NEVER worked for me, so I'm not even sure I can consider that as an option) All I know is I need to change SOMETHING and everytime I resolve to do that, something happens to break down my resolve.

Too Hot Weekend

Let me start off by saying thank you to the people offering vacation spots. It's nice to know that if push came to shove and I needed to get away for awhile or risk going mental, I have a few options!

I'm sitting here with a massive headache, that's my own fault for not planning ahead. I went for a long run this morning and didn't take any Excedrin afterwards. We then proceeded on a road trip and an afternoon outside in the sun. It all compounded to give me quite the headache. Luckily, we are safe back home and the Excedrin is already kicking in. Man do I love that stuff.

Mostly stayed inside this weekend to escape the heat. I ended up not even leaving the house on Saturday! Some thunderstorms blew through on Friday night around 3am. It was the worst storms we've had in quite awhile. I don't think it was the sirens that woke me up, but the overall sounds of the storm kept me up for awhile. Very annoying, and caused me to be very tired the next morning. At least it was a bit cooler today, hopefully it will stay that way.

Today we made a quick trip down to Lafayette to goto a Church Picnic. It was nice, but I didn't realize Megan's grandparents would be working so hard. They got to see Megan a little bit, and when the heat started to get to us, we had to head home. I also got to see the new Bieraugel house being built... Maybe more on that later this week! Here are a pair of pictures from today:

Megan looking cool as we head out on our trip today.


Megan enjoying her first ever root beer float. Might have set the bar a little high having your first ever root beet float with 1919 Root Beer, straight from the keg.

Blogging from a distance

Tonight is a new first for the ol' blog. After over two years of blogging from the same place, I'm changing it up! I'm actually over at my brothers pad right now enjoying the movie Hot Fuzz on HD DVD, blogging from his lap top. Nothing like a new location to make things interesting.

Last night we went out for dinner for my Mom's birthday. I won't share her age on my blog, but it was pretty funny when her Mother told her she was offically old enough to move into some assisted living. I don't think she took it very well.

So works got me freaking out, I hit a breaking point today. Luckily I was so focused on a task at hand I was able to get through the day without causing myself or others around me any bodily harm. I really need a vacation... Just don't know when it's going to happen. 3 weeks vacation, sitting around doing nothing. Think it's time to plan something.

Speaking of that, I'm thinking it's time to go on that long bike trip I've been wanting to do since I put the bike rack on my car. It probably won't happen this weekend, but maybe the next one.

Time to go! Thanks for the monkey.

Halloween in August

Feels like I'm always saying this, but time always seems to be going by faster these days. Being August already is just another example. Not that I haven't enjoyed the summer, in fact, it's been quite enjoyable over all. Our mini Duluth vacation, the decent summer movie line up, winning $$$ at Valleyfair, all very fun. I think the plan would be to end on some kind of high note and do something at the end of this month for our 8 year anniversary. We've already had one potential offer to babysit Megan for a weekend, so we'll see what happens.

I got in an excellent run this weekend. A new distance record for me, 15 miles! It was a bit rough, and I still had a slight headache this morning. I think that was more my fault for not hydrating enough. I'm hitting the water today to try and make up for it.

In other news... a World of Warcraft expansion has been announced. I should have figured that as soon as I got back into the game and reached max level, this would happen. I'm getting to that point where I've invested enough time to want to keep going... Shucks!

Anyway, I haven't posted any pictures of Megan in awhile, so I'll end with those. Including some previews of Megan's Halloween costume for this year. She has to grow into it just a little bit, but she has 2 months.

Just chilling like the monkey she is. Climbing on everything...


"No Daddy, I'm not trying to get at your DVDs... Really!" *bats her eyes*


Her new costume... Can you tell who she is?


Maybe we should actually buy her this movie before Halloween so she knows.

Nuts & Bolts

Where's the beef! I actually had something going on Wed night and last night I was just so stressed out, I wanted nothing more then a few hours of World of Warcraft and an early bed time. Wed night, Andrea and I went over to my brothers’ new apartment to watch 300 on High Def DVD. Strangely, no one had seen it yet but me. My brother must have just been really busy around the time it came out and never got around to seeing it in the theaters. Everyone enjoyed it, and Andrea said it was "the best movie she had seen in a long time." I was a bit surprised at that reaction, but then I realized that the movie is 90% hot half naked guys walking around... Maybe not so hard to understand. :-)

Yesterday was just very stressful at work. We have so much work that needs to be done and not enough time to do it. Or not enough time to test it properly. Instead of giving us more time or scaling back the work, they just keep pouring more on. Everyone has a breaking point, where you just have to stand up and say SOMETHING. As if that wasn't enough, we also had a company meeting. You see, our CEO is leaving the company. He is taking an even higher position in the parent company.

Before I go on my rant, I need to clarify my true feelings about CEOs. I love CEOs. I admire CEOs. Without CEOs, I wouldn't have a dime to my name. I thank every CEO I've ever had for giving me the opportunity to put money in his pocket. Because without someone willing to spend their entire life building and running a company, I wouldn't have a job. Having said that, the life of the grunt is starting to make me wonder.

After his goodbye speech, I was reminded how much of a cog in a machine I really am. Hell, not even a cog. More like... a washer. No matter how good I can do my job, it's hard to convince myself that it has any real effect. The machine will keep rolling along, ideally making lots of money, and keeping me employed for a long time. But even if I'm the best damn programmer, things can change in a heart beat. That's the part that keeps me up at night.

Consider my experiences, driving my thoughts: (or as I like to call it, "The Facts")

My first company did layoffs in 2001 and again in 2007. I found out the department I worked for at my first job was completely off-shored, so even though I survived the 2001 layoffs, I most likely would have been gone on the second round.

My second company off-shored the department I worked in shortly after I left. (and some even say, as a direct result of me leaving)

How long until my current job is off-shored? Some programmer in India who can work twice the hours for half the pay? How long until I'm obsolete?

Change is Good

Here I sit, yet another week between posts. I've been struggling with the direction to go with my blog. In my mind, I see my blog as a windowed view into my life. The question is, does the window have blinders? For a long time, I feel like I've put filters on my posts based on "who might read this?", "what will they think if they do?", "will their opinion of me change?". I've come to the conclusion that this line of thinking has just killed my motivation to write anything at all.

You know what I've decided? Who the fuck cares. It's my blog, my thoughts, if someone reading it can't handle it, tough. It's who I am and that's all I know, and all I have to offer! So expect to see more posts 'round here. I might even change up the look and feel or... heaven forbid, even change my entire blog name!

In truth, the change to the blog isn't the only thing I'm needing to make. I've been struggling with motivation in other areas as well, particularly my running. The status quo worked for the weight loss, but it's becoming painfully obvious that staying motivated during "maintaining weight" is a much bigger mental challenge.

Finally, I need to make changes in other areas as well. From working on getting Megan to bed at a normal time (i.e. not 11pm), to getting to bed at a normal time myself. I've been staying up until midnight a LOT lately, which I know is not healthy. Just because I CAN handle staying up until midnight, doesn't mean I SHOULD be. I know that it effects my mood, which then effects my decisions, usually resulting in bad decisions. (i.e. not exercising, over eating, or spending too much time on World of Warcraft).

In the spirit of change, I even did something different at work today. Someone I work with has, in my opinion, put in a lot of effort recently. Practically doing the work of 2-3 people. I decided to make sure this effort was noticed and wrote up an "employee recognition" email to my boss. My little attempt to do something without my own interests in mind.

Have to cut this short, dinner is ready!!!

Staying Positive

Or trying to anyway. Aside from work, things are great. I just haven't been motiviated to post, as mentioned previously. I suppose the best news is about our roof, insurance company, and neighbor. Basically all three are positive!

Our neighbor is on board with getting the roof replaced, and he actually owns a large scale construction company and has contacts that will be able to do the job at a very good price. On top of that, our Insurance adjuster came to the house on Tuesday and agreed that there was significant hail damage and that everything will be covered. Things have worked out with the best possible outcome!

I got out to see Harry Potter this past weekend. It was okay, but I can totally see why my brother gave me the report that he did. It really was just a bridge movie, and it didn't seem to have much plot of it's own. I also got two good runs in this weekend before this crazy heat wave.

If all that wasn't enough, I also finally reached the maximum level in World of Warcraft! Yes, a huge goal, I know. I got a little crazy over the weekend and just got it done so now I can relax a little and start to enjoy the new things I get to do at the maximum level. Basically there is a small group of people I'm playing with, that my co-worker introduced me too. So now I get to join them in some of the things they do within the game. Should be lots of fun!!

But work... oh work... why must you ruin it all?

Where does the time go

Despite the many strikes against me - going on 5 hours of sleep, stressed out about work, a complete lack of motivation... I somehow managed to push out an 8 mile run tonight. I seriously wanted to quit after 3, but managed to keep going. Might be my last out door run for awhile, it looks like a heat wave is headed our way.

I'm back to that "I don't feel like blogging" attitude. Most nights I feel like I'd rather be spending my time either exersizing, spending a few hours with Andrea & Megan, and unwinding with World of Warcraft. (level 66 if your curious, still 4 more levels to go) On top of all that is of course the fact that I have nothing to post about.

How about some more good news? I just found out I didn't get selected for the Twin Cities 10 miler. That sure put a damper into my spirits regarding running and training. It can be really hard to put the miles in, when you don't have something your working towards. I'm still going to try and shoot for my yearly goal of 1200 miles, but I'm not really doing the math yet on how close/far off I am to that goal. I know I'm in the right ball park still...

The latest stress is our home owners insurance. If you remember, I mentioned before how our insurance company just decided to drop us at random. The problem is, we need to get our roof replaced. It's 14 years old and had the hail damage from last summer. Why did we delay? Why did we sit on this? I don't know, so please don't ask. What we do know is that our neighbor already put in a claim and got his insurance check. But at the time, he told us he didn't want to replace the roof, and so we were like "Okay thats fine..."

Thus the problem. Now that our insurance is dropping us, we have to get a claim in to get an insurance check AND get the roof replaced within 6 months. That means I'll have to goto the neighbor and get him on board with a roof replacement. What if he doesn't want to? What if he blew the insurance money he already got? Or even worst case, what if our insurance company refuses to play nice and not accept our claim?

Blarg... I don't know what to think. I do know one thing - Andrea and I have learned we don't want to live in a twin home. Moving is on the agenda, and I can see it happening within the next 2-3 years. And when we do move, it will definitly be a single family unit. Anyway, going to stop thinking about it now and go space out with World of Warcraft!

Not so lazy Sunday

Because I ended up doing a somewhat intensive run Friday night, I delayed a long run until this morning. Got a solid 12 miles in at a decent pace. Actually, I didn't monitor my pace the entire run. This goes back to when I first started using the heart rate monitor. Instead of constantly checking my pace or distance, I was only checking my heart rate. The goal being to keep my heart rate below a certain level. It seemed to work out much better, as I never felt like I was running too hard.

Although I mentioned seeing Harry Potter this weekend, my brother reported that it was only mediocre. Good, but nothing special... So I compromised and went to see Die Hard 4, because everyone seemed to enjoy it, and Andrea wanted to see that more then Harry Potter. It was a fun movie, a bit over the top a times, but still fun. The jet scene at the end was really the last straw for me where I went, "Okay... come on, that is just TOO much." It was like Bruce Willis just wanted to make the most macho, big explosions, huge stunts movie that he could. And in that regard, he succeeded.

Speaking of my brother... I haven't heard how the rest of his move went. I only helped for about 3 hours on Thursday night, I didn't stick around for the unpacking. For the most part, they planned to just unload the back of the truck into the garage/living room and then slowly bring stuff in over time. I did get to see the place they are moving into, and it is very nice. I think the change will do him good, and the extra space will help. Hopefully they will have us over once they've got everything settled.

Rest of today I'm going to rest and play some World of Warcraft... My character is level 64, so just 6 more levels to go. (70 is the maximum) Should take somewhere around 6-8 hours per level, so only about 40 hours to go! A simple work week, no problem!

Sun and Rain

It's always tough going back to work after a long break. This week is no exception, as work continued to stress me out. The blow has been somewhat lessoned by the fact the company is doing well enough to give everyone bonus checks. I suppose I shouldn't be complaining.

It finally cooled down enough to do an outside run and what happens? It rains on me! It wasn't too bad, it must have only rained for about 5 minuted at most. Directly after the rain, it was pure sun shine, no clouds, very nice. I would have liked to go longer but needed to get home in time for dinner.

Tonight Andrea is having a Mom's club business meeting at our house, so Megan and I have to stay down stairs while the women folk do thier thing up stairs. Not like that's very different from our typical evenings, other then the fact that I'll get to sneak up stairs for fruit & cake.

I completely forgot that the newest Harry Potter comes out today. Not sure why they picked a midweek release, needless to say, I won't be getting around to seeing it until this weekend. My brother is going tonight, so I'm sure he will give me the low down tomorrow. I am helping him move for what must be the third time. (third times the charm?) They are moving into some very quality town homes in Burnsville with another couple and one other person. There will be a lot more space and 2 floors seperating the guys loud TV's / late night video game playing from the bed rooms. Should be nice for anyone living there trying to maintain a semi-normal sleeping schedule.

Not much else going on this week or weekend, so don't expect much in the way of blog posts. Don't see much point to wasting good blog space with me rambling on about nothing much at all. Wait... that's just what I did. Okay, enough of this, time for video games!!

The End

Of the weekend! Due to unforeseen circumstances, we weren't able to get out to see Live Free or Die Hard, but that's okay. I'll probably hit it up on DVD when it comes out. The end of the weekend unfolded as one long relaxation event. I got one minor run in, and that's really about it. Tonight Andrea and I capped off the weekend with some beer and pizza, something we haven't done for quite awhile.

Thursday night we headed out to the YMCA for some family swimming. The bad news is that the family pool was closed! There was one lane of the lap pool available for open swim, so we made the best of it. Megan had a great time, I think we will plan another swimming event soon.

Friday we had made plans for Megan to be babysat between 10am-noon. We ended up using the time to watch the movie Shooter, which we had from Netflix. It was a pretty good movie, nothing too spectacular.

On Saturday, Andrea's parents came up for a visit. It was good to see them both, they brought up some sandwich fixings for lunch and stayed until Megan's nap time. Today, I had planned on getting a nice long run in, but decided on skipping in favor of... sleeping in.

In other news, I've finally taken the next step in some goals I set for myself earlier this year. You might remember how I mentioned about biking trails I wanted to check out. Obviously, the key to that is having the ability to transport my bike to said trails. I finally got around to being able to do that, thanks to my friend and old college roommate giving me a car bike rack he wasn't using.



Now that I have it hooked up, I think I will actually start to plan some trips and get some long bike rides in. I'll probably wait until this heat wave ends and it gets a little cooler outside.

Vacations Rock

Maybe I should take more of them? A few days ago, something very strange occurred to me. I was reviewing my available vacation time at work, and it dawned on me that I had achieved something never previously done before. I had reached the MAXIMUM allowed saved up vacation time. That seemed crazy to me, as I'm the first one to take time off when I have it. I feel like this must mean something... but what it means, I'm just not sure. I think for now, I'll just assume it means I need to TAKE MORE VACATION!

That's just what I'm doing this week, and so far it is great! So much fun, I can't even cram it all into one post I think. Tuesday was my brothers 26th birthday. Due to some miscommunication we almost weren't able to join him for dinner, but our other engagement was called on account of rain. That made our choice for us, and we headed to Olive Garden.

After that, the rain stopped and we went ahead with our other plans, which was to visit the Family Fun Night at Hayes Park, part of the July 4th festivities in Apple Valley. It was a lot of fun, Megan got to dance, jump in a bouncer, and most fun of all, check out a petting zoo! (pictures below)

Yesterday we enjoyed the movie Transformers. I can't say enough good things about this movie, it was by far the best movie in 2007. I'm going to see it again, no doubt. After the movie, I got a good (and very hot!) run in over to my Mom's, where we had a wonderful 4th of July BBQ. No fireworks this year, besides, they are a tad overrated anyway.

If all this wasn't enough, somewhere within the next half hour, my brother is coming over to babysit for us! Andrea and I are going to get yet ANOTHER movie in, Live Free or Die Hard. Talk about fun filled vacation, and it's only Thursday!!

Check back later this week for even more reports, and some news on some of my year goals that I'm working on.

Megan & Grandma with some clowns. She didn't seem afraid of them at all.


Megan enjoying the jumper.


Megan introduces herself to the baby calf.


And then gives him a nice pat down.


Megan really liked the little goats running around, she got so excited when they ran up to her.


It's hard to tell, but that big llama swung his head around... I swear he was either gonna give Megan a big kiss or try to take a bite out of her! She didn't even notice it...

Mom's Club Picnic

At the last minute, I remembered to bring my camera along. Actually, we were already out of the driveway and Andrea remembered. The crappy part is, I didn't charge the batteries, so I was only able to get a couple of pictures. Thankfully, they were all pretty good ones.

Megan playing with one of the lawn games we brought, Ladder Golf.


Megan showing the older boy the obviously easier way to throw the bean bags into the holes.


We had two tables full of food, and one person making hot dogs on the grill. There was more then enough food for everyone.


Megan and I enjoying the swing.


Posing with the party viewable in the background.


It was a great event, Andrea did a lot to organize and bring it all together. No kids were injured and everyone had a fun time. We were exhausted after we got home, and so enjoyed the rest of the day just relaxing.

Today will be much of the same, although I got a short bike ride in this morning and hopefully we will visit a park this evening for something fun to do. This last picture was taken a few days ago by Andrea. She came into Megan's room to find her having done this all by herself.

Come get some

Ya, I know I haven't posted since Sunday. Thought maybe I would try to sum up my week in as few words as possible.

Monday: Work, no exercise, world of warcraft
Tuesday: Work, bike ride with Steve, world of warcraft
Wed: Work, 5.75 mile run, Red Lobster!, world of warcraft
Thur: Work, 8.1 mile run, blog, world of warcraft

See a trend there? Slightly... Maybe I'm playing too much world of warcraft, I can't really tell. Andrea says I need my personal fun time, but I just feel like I'm neglecting my fatherly duties, spending time with Andrea and Megan. Granted it's been a little too hot lately to do much, but maybe I should make more effort to plan family events during the week. Ah well...

Tonight's run was excellent. Perfect run weather. As I said, I did 8.1 miles - the cool part was my last mile. According to my monitor, I ran it in 7:13. Not a bad pace for an 8th mile. To put that in perspective, imagine running the length of a football field in 25 seconds, 17.5 times. (after already running 7 miles!). The real question would be, could I keep that pace up from start to finish of a 10k?

I know I haven't posted much in the way of pictures lately, so I'll make up for it this weekend. We have a very fun Mom's club picnic event planned for Saturday morning, and I will FORCE myself to remember my camera and take some pictures of the event to share with everyone. Andrea has put in a ton of effort to organize this event, and it's looking like there will be a great turn out. Weather forecast is also looking good. I hope it all comes together wonderfully!

Ups and Downs

Clever title eh? Yesterday was full of them both. The day started out on such a high note. Megan slept in until 8:45, and I timed it JUST right to be in her room, standing over her crib as she opened her eyes to greet the day. It put her in such a great mood to see me first thing, I couldn't help but get in a good mood as well.

We headed over to Grandma Gayle's to drop her off for the afternoon, so we could enjoy our day at Valleyfair. I think we ended up making it to Valleyfair around 11:30, maybe just a little bit after that. Went on a few rides and I did the Power Tower a few times. Then we headed over to lunch at 2:30pm.

Lunch was okay, nothing special. Dried out chicken sandwiches... but hey, it's free right? Turns out the free food wasn't the highlight of lunch though, as my company had a drawing for prizes and I ended up winning!! I got a $150 dollar gift certificate to Target! It was like getting your cake, eating it, and getting another whole piece to boot.

After lunch we headed back into the park, but Andrea and I had different ideas of what we wanted to do. Maybe the heat was getting to us a little bit too, but we ended up splitting up to do our own things. I wanted to hit the last 2 roller coasters, Wild Thing and the new one, Renegade. Andrea wanted to watch a comedian magician inside this theater thing that I've never actually been in.

Turns out the line for the Renegade was unbearably hot, long (30+ minutes) and the ride itself wasn't all that. Sure it was fast and twisty, but I really like the free fall feeling much more (I did the Power Tower 5 times). The Renegade was all about being the only coaster with a turn on the initial down slope. To me that was just more of a distraction then anything else.

On top of that, the magician Andrea saw turned out to be not that enjoyable either. Cheesy jokes and not that entertaining. Add that to the heat, me being late to our meeting place due to the long line on the Renegade, and you have a recipe for disaster. We had a nice good argument on our way home, only to realize we were both just kinda of pissed off that what we did ended up not being that enjoyable.

Oh well, gotta look at the positive side. At least I got in for free, free lunch, and $150 dollars to boot! Can't complain with that.

Rocky Start

This weekend is off to an interesting start. Earlier this week, Andrea's mother was in town for some surgery. She is at home now recovering, and Andrea headed down to help out and visit. She dropped Megan off at the back up child care center on her way.

I got a phone call around 10:45am that Megan had thrown up. She didn't seem sick and wasn't showing any other signs of sickness, but they have a policy that if a kid throws up twice, you have to come get them. So this phone call was the "warning" call. Then at 12:15pm, they called again, Megan had thrown up again.

I emailed my boss to say I had to leave work early and headed out to pick her up. Honestly, I didn't really mind. Now that I have access to work from home, it really was no big deal. I didn't even actually take sick time / time off. Megan seemed just fine when I got there, and she feel asleep on the way home.

Shortly before getting home, I ended up getting hit by a very severe thunder storm. You couldn't even see more then 15 feet out in front of you. Traffic slowed to a crawl, but luckily I was just about to exit. After getting home, I got Megan settled in for a nice 2 hour nap and started working from home.

Now she is just fine, so I have no clue what happened at the day care. She is eating fine, just had a ton of gold fish crackers and pineapple. My guess is she just drank too much milk and started bouncing around or something and it came back up. Oh well...

We just got done with an early evening bath, and she is happy as a clam. Hopefully the rest of the weekend will go more smoothly, mainly I'm worried about weather conditions for Valleyfair tomorrow!

Insurance is a scam

Today ended up being nice for an outside run. A little windy, but cool and no humidity. I was glad to get outside, as work has me all out of whack. For the first time, I'm getting past some of the red tape / middle management in order to get my job done. Sometimes I feel like I'm making more enemies then friends, but at the end of the day at least I can feel proud of what I am working on and feel like I am really putting my best effort into it. I can't control how other people approach their job, I can only control my own approach. Reminding myself of that can sometimes be exactly what I need to stay positive about it all.

I came home to some unfortunate news. Andrea was on the phone with someone as I walked in the door, and the look and tone of her voice indicated it was not a pleasant phone call. Turns out it was our home owners insurance company informing us that they were dropping us. Since I didn't field the call, I don't know exactly how they defined the reasons for dropping us, but Andrea specifically asked if it was because of our recent claim, and they said no. It makes me wonder if that is just a standard lie that the insurance companies tell people when they drop them for making a claim.

To be honest? I'm glad they dropped us, they have sucked from the very beginning. Not sure if I ever blogged about the time they sent us a letter telling us they were dropping us, only to follow up with a letter saying it was a mistake. In between those two letters Andrea spent all this time and effort to find us new home owners insurance. Hopefully that will end up being time well spent, as we will probably go with the company that Andrea originally did all the setup with.

Anyway, long story short - stress sucks, but I think we'll be okay. We have Valleyfair coming up this weekend, and that should be fun. I'm looking forward to the new roller coaster and hitting up the Power Tower a bunch. I just love that ride.

Weekend of birthdays

And not mine! I almost forgot that we had a busy weekend of multiple birthday parties to attend. Last night was a surprise party for Steve who was turning the big Three-Oh. In a strange set of connections, Steve's good friend Brenden's brother's wife is in the Mom's club with Andrea. One of those "wow it's a small world" moments. The dinner was catered by Olive Garden, and was absolutely yummy! Chicken parmesan, pasta alfredo, salad & bread sticks! I did my best to try and help eat it, there was just so much! Needless to say, I ate more then a few servings... Megan was dripping sweat after two hours of running around, so we opted for an early exit, before cake was served. Probably a good choice, all things considered. Came home and gave Megan a cool bath.

This morning I tried to work it all off with nice long run. I ended up doing a solid 11.8 miles before it got too warm this morning. I was 180 on the scale after my run, so I guess I was able to run off my over indulgent choices from last night. I think I'll be able to keep it down this week, although those are always my famous last words.

Tonight is birthday party number two, Lily, the daughter of our friends Jim and Jenny is turning 2. It should be fun, they have some type of water events planned. I'm sure Megan is going to have a great time, I'll have to come back with some pictures later tonight.

Forgot my camera, but luckily everyone uses digital cameras these days. Some pictures taken not by me:

All Safe

Got the news from my Mom around noon today, Scott & Val were able to get into thier apartment about 11:30pm last night. Everything was safe and the cats were just fine. Just a minor bad smoke smell throughout all the buildings I'm sure.

Tonight I went to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I thought it was an awesome movie, the second best comic book movie / sequal of the year in my opinion. (first place still going to T.M.N.T). My only issue with the movie was that it was to short! I liked it enough to go buy the first one on DVD for $9.99.

Also bought the expansion to World of Warcraft finally... Just means I'll be playing even more WoW in the coming weeks. Speaking of which, think I will go get started now.