Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Ouch, wtf was that?

Once again I find myself posting just under my self imposed limit of "at least one post a week". Apparently running a record setting amount of miles doesn't come without a price. Today, my left knee was bothering me a little bit all day. Just a very light soreness, but just enough to notice every now and then.

I ran tonight, and the first mile or so I could feel the soreness. After about mile 3 it completely went away. Great, figured I just didn't stretch enough the night before or maybe slept on it funny. I get home, and no big deal, feels fine.

Then I'm carrying Megan around the house tonight, and all of a sudden I take a step and get a SHOOTING pain in the area right below my left ankle. Okay... I shake it off, only to start walking down the stairs and BANG same damn pain, and it HURTS. Could be a sprain, could be nothing... Of course, by the time I got mid-way through this post, it was gone, and now I can't even duplicate it. I'm a fast healer I guess?

Megan got to spend some time with her Great Grandparents today at the Mega Mall for Toddler Tuesdays. Sounds like they had an awesome time... the funny part was, I got home and asked Andi, "Wow Megan smells really nice, did you give her a bath?" I then realized it wasn't a bath that I smelled, but my Grandma Ruby! 6 hours later and Megan still had that Grandma smell! Too funny!

Had a Dungeons and Dragons session this weekend, and it was great. Pretty much all the players came back and told me the next day or through email that they had an awesome time. It's really nice to get positive feedback, makes me think that all the time I put in is worth it. My brother and I still butt heads sometimes during the sessions, but I think we are going to get better at that. Bad news is that we won't get to play again for another month. I actually posed the idea of doing back-to-back weekends, but that would just be pushing it. On the plus side, I'll have much more time to prepare. This last session was basically a 24 hour cram session right before Saturday night.

Gotta go get Megan ready for bed now, maybe I'll try to get a few pictures up later this week since I haven't been posting much of those in awhile. I'm sure people are getting a bit sick of my ramblings without Megan pics.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Record Month

I'm starting this year out with a big bang. Last month I ran a total of 118 miles. This includes distance traveled on the elliptical, which I usually do about once a week. So maybe it's not 100% pure running miles, but it's still distance. This month is shaping up to be a crazy new record amount, as much as 130 miles.

I'm gearing up for my first 10k of the season, the Get in Gear 10k. Get it? I'm so punny! Anyway, I've set some pretty aggressive goals for this first race of the year. I think for the first time, I actually think of it as a race. Because it is, it's a race against myself. Last year when I did it, I had nothing to measure against. Now I do, and it's very motivating.

According to my weight log, I'm a little more then 15 pounds less then last year when I ran the 10k. From what I've heard, one pound = 2-3 seconds faster per mile. Going with the conservative estimate of 2 seconds per pound per mile faster, we get 2 * 15 * 6.2 miles = 186 seconds faster. In other words, I'm going to try and run the 10k approximately 3 minutes faster.

Whewww... long winded description of how I came to my goal decision. Needless to say, I still don't know if I'll be able to pull it off. But I think its possible, I just have to start doing some speed training, which I plan on getting more into starting late Feb / early March. Should be interesting!

Monday, January 22, 2007

Double Post

I actually meant to post yesterday, but I was just enjoying my Sunday laziness a bit too much. So instead, enjoy two posts for the price of one! Had a great weekend overall. I was able to exercise each day and even shoveled my driveway on Sunday!

Saturday afternoon, Andrea and I got to check out Pan's Labyrinth, an independent movie that didn't make it to wide release. It finally premiered this weekend at one theater in Uptown. I really enjoyed it, there was a great story with excellent makeup and costumes. Only problem was the theater had ZERO heating, and I froze my ass off the entire time. It wasn't just a bit cold, it seriously could not have been much more then 50 degrees in there.

To shift gears, I've been wanting to post more about Dungeons and Dragons, but in a way that would be readable to a wider audience. So I thought I'd start by discussing the basic reasons for why I play D&D.

Currently, in D&D I play the role of DM or "Dungeon Master". I'm responsible for running the sessions and creating the imaginary world the players interact with. From people, places and things, to exciting storybook adventures. The goal of all that? To make the game fun for the players and myself. But that still doesn't answer the basic question of "Why D&D? Why not just get together and play cards, that's a fun game." To answer that, I wanted to post this quote I found in a recent D&D book I've been reading.
Running a game can be an intimidating task that calls on a huge variety of unrelated skills: memory for rules, a head for numbers, imagination, verbal agility, and sensitivity to group moods. Most dauntingly, it requires the confidence to take center stage in front of a group - an act that terrifies many self-assured people. Anyone who does even a half-decent job of DMing should be congratulated just for trying to marshal these skills.
Those skills are not only hard to marshal, they are skills most people don't get to practice on a daily basis. Verbal agility? I can sometimes go through an entire day at work only verbalizing two or three times. Imagination? Not much required as a software engineer who is fed direction by the business. D&D is a place for me to explore and practice these skills.

Could I practice these things in a more productive manner, maybe even find a career that forces me to? Probably, but then it would no longer fall under the definition of "fun" and "entertainment". The fact is, the key ingredient is that I get to practice these skills in a way that is really fun for me: with a group of like minded people talking about one of my favorite forms of entertainment, fantasy fiction.

So sure, I could get together with a group of people and play some cards or some other random board game that doesn't require much in the way of interaction. But I can get that type of entertainment in any number of other sources, from TV, video games, or watching Fight Club for the 84th time. If there is one thing I have enjoyed about my recent run of D&D, is that every session can and probably will present different challenges that I learn from to make the next session that much more fun and entertaining for everyone.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Not so Perfect

Today we had our eye doctor visit for Megan. It went pretty much as I expected it would, but that doesn't make it any easier. I think all along in the back of my mind I knew this obviously wasn't a problem that would just go away overnight (or in 6 weeks of patching). But it's different when the reality of it is thrown into your face by the doctor. The realization that this is most likely going to be a long process, that could end up becoming a major part of Megan's early years. Patches, seeing eye specialists, wearing special glasses, maybe even eye muscle surgery. Yes, even in today's visit the word "surgery" was brought up. Not as something we would do anytime soon, but when looking at the long list of things that could be done, it's on there.

As parents, I know that Andrea and I will do our best. We'll roll up our sleeves and dig in for the long haul doing whatever it is we can to help ensure Megan's vision develops as normally as possible. Could it resolve itself over the course of a few months of patching? You bet, and that's everyone's hope. The hard part is that this particular eye problem doesn't have a solid known reason or cause, so the treatment is simply "best guess". Megan has entered into that grey area of the medical realm where the problem is studied, documented, and examined, but there is no known 100% guaranteed solution.

On my way to work after the doctors, I contemplated and tried to process all this information. I realized that I should count my blessings, and that there could be much worse conditions to have. I then started thinking about my childhood, and I couldn't help but stop and notice the potential for similarities. I grew up seeing specialists, going through unknown number of tests, under a microscope, and ultimately many surgeries for my ear problems. Not only that, but my ear problems were also in that medical grey area, where there was no 100% guaranteed solution. In fact, my doctor ended up doing experimental surgery at one point that he wrote about in medical journals! (the procedure involved grafting skin from my inner ear onto my ear drum)

Seeing those similarities really calmed me down. I thought about how there must have been times when my parents were convinced I was going to go deaf or something worse would happen. Somehow I made it through all the years of ear doctors, surgeries and what have you. Looking at it in that respect made me realize that we too can get through this, no matter what it takes. Whether it's a few months of patching or a few years of various things that help Megan's vision.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Trip Sense

Just when I posted about finding ways to cut corners, I forgot to mention the most recent thing Andrea has done for us. I'm not going to sit here and even pretend that most of our money saving is thanks to me. I try to do my part, but Andrea is the one that really finds the deals for us. From free dinners, to half-price discounts, to unknown number of other cool deals. The latest is with our car insurance.

She got an email about a new program from Progressive called TripSense. It was completely free and voluntary to sign up, but participating in the program gets us free money back and anywhere from 5% to 25% off our car insurance!



We haven't quite figured out what all we have to do yet, but I'm pretty sure I know where the computer port is inside the car that they hook up to. This little device will then track information about our driving habits. Then, we upload this information to progressive and bam, free money. We already got a $33 dollar check today just for signing up, on top of any discounts on our insurance. Pretty neat huh?

In other news, I just found out about a new movie coming out in 2007 that should have made my original 2007 movie list. They are making an animated movie based on one of the first ever Fantasy Fiction novels I ever read, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I honestly can't remember when I found this series of books, but I'm pretty sure it was basically the second one after the Deverry series. The idea they are making this book into a movie is VERY exciting. I can only hope it actually happens, because many times in the past this type of movie rumor ends up being nothing more then a rumor.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Desire

I wanted to post yesterday, really I did. I just got caught up in some video game playing and general laziness. Plus, my whole post would have been about Dungeons & Dragons, and honestly I think only one person that reads my blog even gets those posts.

Well we finally did it. We cancelled cable! Okay, so we didn't cancel it 100%. I experimented with the HD antenna, and that didn't work at all. I think the only way it would work is with an outdoor antenna, and I'm not going to go through the hassle of all that, nor install one myself. Instead, we got rid of our cable box and kept the most basic cable available. (about 20 channels?) This will save us roughly $50 dollars a month on our cable bill.

I think we have officially finished the streamlining of or major expenses. I can't think of a single thing that we have left that we can really cut out or reduce. Anything more is just going to have to be in watching the small day-to-day things. We've done that in the past (tracked every penny very closely), and Andrea started it up again at the beginning of the year. Making financial goals is sorta just like making fitness goals. You need some way to monitor your progress or you won't know if your making the right choices. We have some pretty aggressive financial goals this year, so we are starting some things early this year to make sure we can hit them all.

Well, gonna cut this post short. Megan is crying and I can't really concentrate on posting while listening to her. She has been crying a lot more at night lately after we put her to bed. No clue what's going on / changing, hopefully it's just a phase or something.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

15 Months Old

Title says it all, today is the 15 month mark for Meganator. She has a wellness appointment on Thursday, which I'm sure will be no big deal. I actually think there are no shots for once. I still worry about her eye situation, it's so hard to tell if it's getting any better. Bright light still causes her weak eye to go way off to the side. Her follow-up eye appointment is next week, so I'll report more then.


We recently ordered some new patches, they are a tad smaller and might fit a little better.


I didn't realize I caught this photo until recently. Megan is in the middle of a head-banging session, you can see her hair flailing around.


There was no warning on the bag that said kids couldn't play with it... so I figured what the heck!


You looking at me? (Megan did this herself btw)


Just a picture Andrea took on accident, but it turned out cute.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Weekend half over or half begun

Ahhh the classic Pessimist vs. Optimist. Sunday's can either be just crappy if all I can think about is how I have to go back to the start of a 5-day work week tomorrow, or they can be fun if I think about how much time I have to enjoy today. Normally I'm quite the pessimist but I think today, I'll try to focus on the positive.

For starters, Megan JUST woke up at 8:45am, thus giving me time to sleep in (and blog!). Her sleep habits of late have been very strange, along with her eating habits. She must be going through a growth spurt of some kind, because she is hungry ALL the time. As far as sleeping, she has been staying up much later (10pm or later) and sleeping in later.

Yesterday was pretty good. I started out the day with my first winter outdoor run with a friend of mine. It was around the Lakes area (my buddies favorite running area), I think we went around both Lake Calhoun and Harriet for a total of just under 10 miles. It was a little cold at points, but for the most part very enjoyable. Definitely got my weekend off to a good start.

Andrea's parents came to visit us yesterday afternoon (and by "us", I mean "Megan"). Luckily they got here before Megan's nap and were able to get a few good hours of play time in with her. Papa B got Megan laughing so hard at one point, I thought she would pee her pants. Oh wait, she probably did. After they left, Megan napped and we got ready for my company Holiday party.

The company Holiday party was... a company Holiday party. It was much more formal then I had originally expected, considering the invite said "semi-formal". Perhaps I don't know the definition of semi-formal. Apparently part of that definition means absolutely NO children, so thankfully we made the right decision to have my Mom baby sit. There was actually a small chance we would have brought Megan... and basically if we had, we would have had to turn around and leave as soon as we got there. I have to admit that I've never been to a company event that was specifically NOT family friendly. The food was good, but having been there only 6 months I still am not part of a "crowd" that I felt I could join. Needless to say... the majority of these factors will most likely contribute to me never attending one of these again.

But from that negative note to a positive one, today should be quite fun. I'll be heading out with Megan to do some shopping, picking up ordered items at Best Buy, and then maybe getting a quick cross-training work out in this afternoon. Any other spare time I have this week will be spent preparing for AD&D, the first session of 2007 is this Saturday and I have a lot of work to do to get ready for that!

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

First Hump Day

Nothing much of consequence to share since New Years, so tonights post will be mostly random babble along with some bitching. Next week is going to be a shock to my system, as it will be my first 5 day work week in 5 weeks. I'll survive, but all the time off has been really nice lately. Now begins the long haul of no time off until May... ugh!

Once again I find myself being pissed off at all those stupid New Years Resolution people filling up my gym time. I had to wait 10 full minutes for an open treadmill! Guess you get what you pay for... I just have this feeling that a gym like this sells as many memberships as it can without any regard to the total numbers or how busy peak times will get.

Why do we call them resolutions anyway? By one definition, a resolution means to find a solution to a problem. So how does "resolving to lose weight" help solve the problem? It doesn't... The only way to solve the problem is figure out why it exists in the first place, and determine what changes you need to make in your life to fix it.

I need to stay off my soap box and focus on my goals for the year. I don't even want to call them resolutions, because a resolution isn't S.M.A.R.T. Damn right, I'm talking about:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Tangible

Hahaha, how cheesy is that? I remember hearing about SMART goals at my first job. We all had to come up with SMART goals to present to management as part of our review process. Strangely enough, I've actually come to believe that is how you should make goals.

So what are my goals for 07? Not sure yet... and I feel good about that. Because goals shouldn't be something you can just come up with in a day or two. They need to develop over time and form into an idea of not just what you want to achieve but how you will do it. Okay I need to stop this post before I dig myself any deeper into cheeseball land. I think the last week having so many people tell me over and over that what I did was "amazing" started to get to my head. Because what I "did", and what I will continue to do isn't amazing. It's just what I had to do to get my life back on track and heading in a direction that will lead to more good things.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Not exactly as planned

Happy New Year everyone! I'm in a slightly better mood now, but last night was not a very good time. Thanks to the wonderful weather that decided to wait until Dec 31st to kick in, things did not go exactly as we had wanted them to. We headed out to visit some friends and quickly realized how bad it was. We were forced to turn back home... I realize now it was the right decision, but it still doesn't make it any easier. While on the way home I realized we'd be driving within a mile of my brothers apartment, and so I thought well let's make something out of this New Year and stop in and visit for awhile. That also did not happen due to me getting mixed up on directions and the driving getting even worse as we went. All in all, our New Years Eve plans ended up being almost 2 hours in the car before getting home safely.

I spent the remainder of the evening finishing Zelda: Twilight Princess (about 40 hours total play time to complete) and then watching A Scanner Darkly with Andrea (which turned out to be a very good movie btw). Not exactly what I had planned for my New Years Eve, but sometimes you just have to roll with the punches.


Megan helping me save Hyrule, moments before finishing Zelda: Twilight Princess.


Just some cute Megan pics in her new KG jersey.


Future basketball player!

P.S. Quick addition to this post - If you are someone I know visiting my blog and you have your own going but I don't know about it, make sure to let me know! I want to add more blog links, especially of people that are posting regularly. Thank you, that is all!