Spoke too Soon

I should be in bed. I have a bad cold and haven't been sleeping very well. Actually, last night I got a decent nights sleep because I went to bed with Megan in her bed at like 8pm. Andrea woke me up a little after 9pm and I just went back to bed right away.

I spoke too soon about the weather apparently. Tuesday night it was so sunny and semi-nice out, that despite the fact that I didn't pack for an outside run, I went for it anyway. It was a TAD cold in standard shorts and t-shirt, but after the first few miles it was great running weather. With some sunny days in the upper 40s yet to come... Who knows. After doing a full 2 hours on the treadmill last Sunday, I'm dying for more outside running.

Work is getting interesting. Interesting meaning, I can't hardly talk about it anymore, because it's gotten that bad. Thankfully, at this point, it's mostly just bitching and moaning, and not anything real. As far as the bottom line is concerned, the company as a whole seems to still be making money despite some serious attempts to fail at that. Not like what my Mom is going through, who just found out her entire COMPANY is being "sold off". And what is even worse, is my sister-in-law got a job there too, so that's two people in the "who knows if we will have a job tomorrow" camp. I'm gonna take a wild guess that is more stressful than what I'm dealing with.

It's times like these, where I start to think again about how nice it would be not to have to be a part of a system that puts no value in the individual. In other words, finding a way to work for myself and not for some abstract "company" that puts zero value in me. Sure, my manager might shower me in praise, and my co-workers might depend on me day to day. But when push comes to shove, none of that matters. Anyone I work with would stab me in the back to keep their jobs. Restructuring, lay-offs, down-sizing, whatever form it might come in. It's all just a stupid game, with everyone jocking for position to appear the most important so when that day comes, they aren't the one that's out of a job.

Maybe... just maybe, I need to start giving some serious long term thought to what it might take to become self-employed. After all, studies show that business owners have the highest overall Well-Being Index.

Quiet Evening

Due to a series of events, I find myself with more free time this weekend than I have had in quite some time. My Mom earlier in the week volunteered to have Megan over night tonight, which worked for us. Tomorrow morning, Andrea is taking the girls down to New Ulm and I'll have the day to myself.

What will I do with all this new found free time! Not much really... relax in what little ways I can. Exercise, clean, and if there is a little time left over, play some video games.

Speaking of video games, I'm sorta not happy about my Dell purchase. The damn thing keeps locking up on me, 5 minutes into any game. And it's a hard lock, meaning I have to force reboot my computer. After the reboot, I can then play for whatever length of time and it seems to be fine. I've done some research and found that this particular product line of Dell (XPS 630i) is particularly plagued with hardware problems. Question is: do I feel like figuring it out myself, or do I deal with the Dell red tape and send it back under warranty, with the generic "It locks up on me occasionally, fix it and send it back."

As the continuing rain threatens to turn to snow any day now, I'm wondering if I might not get any more outdoor runs this year. Can you believe November is right around the corner? And Casey is already 5 months old tomorrow! Zang.

Right On Time

We had marked down Valerie's due date as October 21st on our calendar. It was the day I originally remembered being told. And lo and behold, what do we find? Baby Elizabeth born on October 21st, in the early morning hours right before 4am. We stopped by the hospital tonight to get a peek at the newest Anderson on the block.

I'm so excited for my brother, and so nervous right along with him. I know what he is going through in some ways, and not at all in others. Our lives are on such different tracks, that it isn't always easy to relate. I do know he is going to be a great Dad even if he doesn't know it yet. It took me time to figure that out as well. And Scott, if you are reading this, I recommend going back to the start of our Adventure and reading up. Maybe you can find some words of wisdom in my ramblings from those first few weeks Megan entered our lives.







Congrats, I love you bro!

When things go as planned

As I pulled into my standard break stop to down my first gu-gel and some water, the sign on the bank said 58 degrees. Perfect running weather! I'm still hoping for one more outdoor run, even if it ends up being in colder weather. But today was perfect and exactly what the doctor ordered. 17 miles where the last mile felt good instead of wishing I was done. There is absolutely no way I could run 17 miles on a treadmill. In fact, I don't even think it would be good for my legs / feet if I could.



The rest of this weekend was pretty low key. With my Mom out of town, and just coming off Megan's birthday last weekend, we didn't have much to do or in the way of visitors. Andrea and I took the opportunity to have a little "YMCA" date, where we dropped the kids off at Kid's Stuff and just spent some time in the pool/whirlpool/sauna. After that, we grabbed 2 Disney movies from Redbox and watched them over at my Mom's place.

This morning, before my run, I took Megan to the Zoo. It's our default activity when nothing else is going on and we just need to get out of the house. It turned out to be a great time and the weather was nice enough that Megan was able to enjoy the outside stuff (new playground and the bears). We also got to see something we had never seen before, they were training the new dolphins! It was pretty cool to see a dolphin know the difference between a blue triangle and a red star shape. And then we had a nice Zoo employee sitting next to us as we watched (there was only a handfull of people there). She was very engaging with Megan, telling her about what they were doing with the dolphins. And Megan kept asking various "Why?" questions and she just kept on answering them.

Megan got up close and personal before I realized we weren't supposed to.



Dolphin learning to pick out a specific shape/color.



Megan and the bears.



The leopard was out - very rare for early morning. This is only the second time Megan and I have seen this elusive guy. The last time we saw him was at 5pm right before zoo closing time.

Crazy Tongue Action

Figured I might as well do a few days in a row with some pictures. Having lots of fun with the new camera. With an 8gig memory stick, I can take all sorts of pictures and video for a long time. I think at maximum quality, I can take over a full hour of video footage. That's awesome!

I'm hoping that I can get outside this weekend for a decent long run on Sunday. They are promising 60 and sunny. I would kill for that, hell I'd be happy with 50 and sunny. The whole treadmill thing is getting old fast and I've only done it for 2 weeks now. I've even tried hill programs and random settings to try and keep it interesting. That helps, but it is still just not the same. Honestly, I'm also starting to think that subtle differences in muscle usage occurs when on the mill. Enough such that I am sore in weird places that I've never felt when running outdoors.

I honestly can't believe October is already half over. Where does the time go? Within a week or two, my brother is gonna be a Dad for the first time. I can't believe that is happening already! Next thing you know, our kids will be crawling around and playing together. Expect lots of footage of that coming up here by the end of the month.

For Sarah, the picture that Megan took:


Megan's first snowman of this winter:


Casey doing funny faces:


This one is priceless:


Megan holding Casey:


And finally, more fun video footage:

Return of the Pic

If you haven't noticed by now, it's been a huge dry spell in the picture / movie department on the ol' blog. Last time I posted a picture was back on August 9th, and those images were just horrible in quality. A combination of age and letting Megan play with my camera whenever she wanted lead to it finally breaking enough to warrant a new one.

So after much prodding, I had my brother give me a recommendation for a new one. Something reasonably priced, but still good quality. Since my brother has spent more on camera based products than I probably ever will in my life time, and has done way more research than me, I figured he would have good advice. It was basically an upgrade to my current Canon, the A1100 IS. Definitely more compact, just as easy to use, and very decent button press to picture taken response time. It's also kind of weird upgrading a camera from 512meg capacity to 8gb capacity. About the only thing I regret is that I wanted the new camera so bad, I just went and bought it from a physical store. Damn immediate gratification just cost me $20 bucks. Grrrrr...

The Sun Rules

After all this rain, and 4 treadmill runs, today was an awesome change of pace. A breezy but comfortable temp for an outdoor run. Probably won't be too many left this year, sometime in October always spells the end for me. I just won't run in the snow, period. I can handle 40 degrees, but not snow.

I decided I will NOT be doing a $65 dollar half marathon race at the end of this month. The price tag is just too high for the quality of that run. Too much potential for it to be way too cold or wet or both. Last year, the only reason I did the run was because it was free (paid for by work). So technically speaking, I did not run any half marathon races this year. Only two 10k's, the 25k, and that silly 1 miler. The highlight for this year was my second 10k, which was a HUGE PR of 6:50 pace. I never dreamed I could run 6.2 miles straight at under 7 minute miles. Even saying it now sounds crazy.

So the end of the year running will just wind down with whatever outdoor runs I can manage and then it's the long harsh treadmill winter. I'll survive, but I think it's going to be the hardest winter yet, based on the level and types of running I got to this year. I have really come to look forward to my long weekend runs (13-16 miles, with a few 18-20). It's a solid 2+ hour block where it's just me and the road. A lot of tough things have sorted themselves out in those chunks of time, and trust me, you just can't run on a treadmill for 13+ miles. It's damn near impossible.

Translation? It would be great if I had no big stressors over the winter. Given a few of the big things that went on this year, that I have not, and cannot share on the blog, let's hope there aren't many more

Ground Zero

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
- Tyler Durden

Confession time. Work effects my mood. No matter how hard I try not to let it, or how many times I try to tell myself it doesn't matter, it does. Why? That's the more important question. I had to think long and hard about that, and I finally figured it out: My ego.

I remember well getting ready to leave my first job. I was convinced they'd be screwed without me. And when I told my close co-workers of my impending exit, they were down right frightenened because they depended on me so much. I had created an artifical sense of importance in order to feed my own ego. After I left, no earth shattering things occured. The machine kept on chugging as long as it could, with or without my help. Eventually all those people I worked with and that entire division was moved off-shore and they all lost there jobs.

So here we are today, and I've come to recognize the same thing. I have a self inflated sense of my own worth at "work". That things would just fall apart if I wasn't there. But they wouldn't. The machine will roll on, with or without my help. I might make minor contributions here and there, but by and large, the success of a company is way beyond what I do. If the current company I works for starts losing money, my contributions count for exactly dick. I'm just another line item in a budget. I've lived through lay-offs before, and to hell if I'm going to lose sleep over it.

The real lesson I should take away from my first job is this: I'm smart enough to see the end of the tracks. I knew Micron wasn't doing so well, and I could see the division I worked in was not doing so well. And although I survived a first round of lay-offs there, I was smart enough to see that sticking around longer was a gigantic waste of time, since no amount of contribution from ANYTHING would have changed the fact that the entire division was cut and everyone was out of a job.

So instead of letting work effect my mood, I'm simply going to do my best, ignore the rest, and remain unstressed. Nice little rhyme, eh? I'm so clever.