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.

The Roof is on Fire

A rainbow that was visible from my driveway recently.

Unlike previous years, I specifically decide NOT to make a blog post on the actual day of my birthday. Instead, my birthday has come and gone, I am now 31 years old. Tonight, I had the family over for some order out food and ice cream cake. Little did I know, the visit would have much more going on then just my birthday...

If you've been watching the news at all tonight, odds are good that you've seen the story about an apartment complex in Burnsville that is currently on fire. Click here to view the story on KSTP. What you might not know, is that this is the apartment complex that my brother Scott, wife Val and their roommates live at!



Thankfully everyone is safe, and the actual apartment they live in is pretty far from the heart of the fire. Odds are the apartment they are in is fine, perhaps with smoke damage depending on how bad its traveling through the building. Right now I'm mostly worried about their two cats, who are stuck in the apartment. I really hope they are okay!!

We tried to enjoy dinner here as best we could, and Scott and Val were in good spirits all things considering. To think that they are moving out of those apartments in just one month!! And to have this happen, what are the odds? In my brothers words, "Hey, it was my day off, something bad had to happen." They might stay with my Mom tonight, I don't know if they will let people back in tonight. Even if they do, there still might be smoke in the building that would make it very hard to stay there.

I'll post tomorrow with updates on the situation, I told them to call me tonight with any updates. They just left about 20 minutes ago and were planning on stopping by to check out the situation. I guess putting out the fire was hampered very much by the 90 degree weather today, making it hard for the fire fighters to do their job. More updates tomorrow!

Busy, full, fun, not over yet!

Title sums up my weekend! Took today off as my "birthday" day off. I'd imagine most people tend to take a day off for their birthday, I know it's become more or less standard for me. I think companies should just institute a policy where everyone gets to take there birthday off as a bonus holiday.

Friday night we dropped Megan off at Grandma Gayle's to go see Oceans 13. For the most part, another crappy sequel. I'm starting to think this year of sequels is going to just end up being the year of flops. Saturday was mostly relaxing for me. Andrea attended a "Growth Track" class at River Valley Church. I really don't know much about it. Overall she said she was glad she went, so she must have enjoyed it. Then we visited my sister in law at a fund raiser she was working at, outside Sam's Club in Apple Valley. For the 2nd time, she is doing the Breast Cancer 3-day 60 mile walk. They were able to raise an amazing $2,000 dollars!

Sunday was jammed packed as some old college friends were in the area to go to the MN Zoo. They stopped by with the newest addition to their family, 6 week old Mackenzie. We enjoyed a nice grill out for lunch and caught up. Their older daughter and Megan warmed up after a little bit and had a great time together. After that, we attended a birthday party for a boy in the Mom's club. Very full day, especially for Megan who ended up sleeping through the birthday party! She woke up at the end to get some ice cream.

Here are some pictures from the weekend, and a very cute picture of Megan in her "new" chair. Apparently this chair belonged to Andrea when she was growing up.



Megan definitely likes new babies... No I'm not hinting at anything, and don't ask us!



The girls playing together after a little bit of getting to know each other.



Enjoying some goldfish crackers together.



Megan in her new rocking chair.

Off again on again

Made it through this week relatively unscathed. Had some late night meetings at work on the first half of the week, but I was able to weasel my way out of having to attend them today/tomorrow. Worst part of the week was having to go 3 days without a run, and in hind sight, I guess that's not that big a deal.

Once again I find myself struggling with blogging... It feels like all my posts lately have been filled with fluff. A little bit of "I did this, I did that, Megan's growing up" yadda, yadda, yadda. Not really posting about what thoughts are occupying my brain on any given week.

Obviously work occupies my thoughts a lot, and I of course have those fears about posting too much about work. Especially posting my "real" thoughts about work... Last thing I'd want to happen is to get fired because of my blog. I worry about getting fired for enough other reasons, last thing I need is one more.

Then of course are my thoughts about my health and exersize, which I feel like I've just beat to death. Who wants to read about the fact that I'm constantly struggling with my stupid 180 lbs weight goal, or how I go up and down 5-7 lbs every week. I could post for hours about how frustrated I get sometimes with healthy living, how I get so pissed off when I make bad decisions. But who wants to read about me complain about all that crap?

Finally of course are all my thoughts about my family, my friends, life, happiness, and the rest of it all. If you can't tell, I basically stopped posting about that stuff. I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm afraid of sharing my honest thoughts. I know that I've become a very different person over the last year. I've become more judgemental, I seem to have less patience, and sometimes I worry that I've become a bitter person.

I'm 30 years old, turning 31 shortly. What the hell do I have to be bitter about? I don't know... But still, some days it just seems like I just don't really see any good in the world.

There and back again

So much for weather predictions! All that doom and gloom rain, and Saturday morning turned out to be perfect. The run was awesome, felt great the whole time. Even better, Megan and Andrea were waiting for me at the finish line!



Turns out the numbers were in alphabetical order, so I was number 8. Normally the lowest numbers are reserved for the competitive runners, so it was funny to see such a low number. What was REALLY funny, was somewhere around mile 10, we ran by a couple of young kids, probably 7 or 8 years old. The one boy looks over to his friend and says, "Look, there's number 8!" like I was some kind of special runner. We got a good laugh out of that.



This was also my first awarded "medal" event. Kind of fun to get something like that... Normally all I have is the race bib which I usually throw away at some point. Maybe I'll keep the number 8 around for awhile. This race was dedicated to Megan, so I got a picture of her wearing the medal. The rest of the weekend I pretty much wasted away, playing World of Warcraft. Maybe even a tad too much... But hey, sometimes excess can be fun too.

Sunday morning I talked with my Mom who had some bad news to share. My uncle Jeff has been fighting liver cancer for awhile, and the initial treatment was not effective. Today he is starting chemotherapy. I don't have a good sense of how serious it is right now, probably because no one wants to think about some of the possible outcomes. All we can do is think positive, and hope the chemo does it's job. My thoughts go out to Jeff, and the rest of my family during this tough time.

What was that?

Oh yes, blogging. Something like that... I just never really got motivated to blog this week. Mainly because I've been playing more World of Warcraft, but also because I haven't had anything interesting going on.

Truth is, I've not been in a very good mood this week. Is it possible for someone to get the summer blues? I don't know... I'm just trying to stay focused on my goals for now and try not to worry about it.

Right now, I'm just worried about rain in the morning for the half marathon. I don't want to run in the rain, but I'll do it if I have to. Anyway, maybe I'll report about it on Sunday. In the meantime, enjoy this cute pictures of Megan.

Megan got some new summer PJs recently.





Megan doing head stands!