Vacation Ups and Downs

I like to split my long vacation posts into two posts to cover everything. After getting everyone loaded up Thursday afternoon, we headed over to my friends place in Woodbury to drop off the kids. Upon arriving, my car promptly died. We were bringing both cars over there, so they would have an additional vehicle to transport 5 kids throughout the weekend. So worst case, we had a backup car. I decided that maybe it was just a dead battery, so I quickly bought a new one and threw it in. Car started fine. Okay, problem solved. Nope. We made it as far as Anoka only to have everything electronic die again. Luckily, I quickly exited onto "main street" Anoka, and found a car dealership with a repair shop. They diagnosed my dead alternator. 3 hours and $425 dollars later, we were back on our way up north for our vacation. Not exactly how I wanted to start things out.

The blow was softened slightly when we ate a late dinner around 8pm, and realized we could pick anything off an awesome menu. I went with blackened chicken and lobster and Andrea went with lobster manicotti. We ordered dessert too because why not? It's included!

When we booked our reservation, all they had left were 2 queen beds. On the plus side, there was also 2 bathrooms! The view from our room was nice, but I think I spent a combined 5 minutes sitting out there enjoying it.

Friday was our "free" day to do whatever we felt like. We both got a little exercise in, and I did 14 miles on Paul Bunyan trail. After her run, Andrea got an hour long massage. Then we had a light lunch and just goofed off around the resort for a little while, killing time before catching an afternoon movie. Sadly, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was no longer showing and we were forced to see The Other Guys instead.

Friday night, our dinner was a cookout on the beach. There was live music, lots of free wine tasting, and the food was okay. In hind sight, we would have rather just gone back to the nice restaurant inside, all things considered. I had a few drinks and enough wine tasting to get a nice buzz going.



After dinner, we hit up a chocolate fondue and free beer tasting. A new local brewery, Brainerd Lakes Beer, had just recently become available to the public. They had two beers available, both seemed good to me although I liked the One-Eyed Pike better. Even Andrea liked it, and normally she doesn't like ales.

After a few beers and dessert, there was supposed to be "Wine Bingo" at the resort bar. Andrea headed off to bed and I headed to the bar, ordered a drink and listened to the live music. One of the band members I swear looked just like Napoleon Dynamite. It was too funny... Finally at 10pm, the waitresses started handing out bingo cards. The prize was a ginormous 3 liter bottle of wine. If you've never seen one, trust me, it's huge. I didn't win, but they were going to have games again at 11pm and midnight. I stuck around long enough to rack up a $33 dollar tab and play one more round of bingo, but by then I was wiped and had to hit the sack.

Coming later this week... my reports on running slightly hung over, home beer brewing, wine tasting, and an incredible amount of insanely awesome food.

Vacation Imminent

And it couldn't be here too soon! The last mini-vacation that we had was back in May of 2007. My Mom watched Megan for a full 3 days, while we enjoyed time up north. It was also the first time I ever ran a distance 14 miles. Oh, those were the days. This weekend I'll be running a combined total of 34 miles. Knowing me, I'll probably extend it a few miles because the Paul Bunyan Trail is some of the best running conditions ever.

For this weekend, we are going to send the girls over to a good friends. They also have 3 other kids, age range 7-11. This is great for Megan, and we know she is going to have a blast the entire time. Casey will be different story. We are confident she will manage, based on some recent interactions. It might be rough for the first hour or so but our friends kids loved playing with her, and I think they will do a great job of making her forget all about Mom & Dad leaving.

Our actual vacation is at Maddens Resort on Gull lake. I know, you might be thinking, why go there again when we've been there 3 times already? Well, because we've enjoyed it every time and why not do something you know you will enjoy? On top of that, the theme is "Food & Wine Weekend" which sounds awesome. I'll probably just barely break even on calories in/out with my 34 miles running. There is chocolate and wine tasting all weekend, meals by top chefs from around MN, and who knows what else! I'm looking forward to a Home Beer Brewing demonstration! Maybe I'll come back home with a desire to explore a new hobby.

I've even convinced Andrea that we should take some time to see a movie too. Guess what we will be seeing? That's right!! Scott Pilgrim vs. the World! Don't think the weekend could get much better. I'll give the full report when we get back.

Scott Anderson vs. the World

Okay so before I get into my advertisement for my brother and his youtube videos, I have to stress again about how awesome of a movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was. And I also need to get my 2 cents out there to let other people know they should go see it. And when I say "other people", I'm talking about any of my geek friends (I'm looking at you Steve).

I wouldn't argue that the movie has a niche audience, and so I guess I can understand why it did so bad at the box office. I just didn't think it would do THAT bad. So what separates this movie audience from your standard comic book movie? I suppose there is a certain amount of universal appeal to the whole superhero/save the world/fight the bad guys movie, that is lacking from Scott Pilgrim.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is about a slacker 22 year old kid struggling between dating a 17 year old catholic high school girl and the girl of his dreams. And then all of a sudden people start fighting video game style, and there are tons of laughs in between. I haven't laughed that hard in the theater since the famous scene from Bruce Almighty. Anyway, go see this movie if you even have the slightest thought you might like it, because it IS an epic of epic epicness.

Anyway, enough about Scott Pilgrim and more about Scott Anderson. My brother wanted to share with my visitors (aka family members) the fact that he is now posting on youtube.

Scott's YouTube Channel
Anderson Family Photos

Most of his videos are clips of 10 month old Elizabeth learning the new tricks that almost-toddlers begins to learn. But some of his videos are more.... creative? For example:

Plantars Acting Up

This week was my peak running mileage of the summer training. The extra mileage combined with the hottest and most humid week of the summer just didn't mix well. My plantars started hurting on Thursday, so I took a few anti-inflammatory this weekend. With some extra icing time, the foot is okay. Thankfully today the weather was perfect. I had almost forgot what it's like to run in good weather.

Aside from my foot hurting, this weekend was a boat load of fun. Saturday morning we took the girls to the Children's Museum. This was Casey's first trip unless you count the one time she went while Andrea was still pregnant! Everyone had a great time, and the only reason we had to leave was due to tired kids. Casey literally fell asleep the minute we left the parking ramp.

Right after that, I caught Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. This movie was down right awesome. From the intro Zelda song, to the one-liners, to the fighting, and all the video game references in between. Sadly, the box office has spoken, and this movie is a flop. That's too bad, because I enjoyed this movie more than a lot this year. I honestly would have thought this movie appealed to the video game masses out there, but apparently they were all too busy playing Starcraft 2 this weekend?

Saturday evening Casey went to church daycare where Andrea was helping out, and she had a good time with the other toddlers. Meanwhile, Megan and I hit Nicollet Commons Splash Park. The weather turned cooler around 5:30pm, but it was still awesome and Megan didn't want to leave.

Today was the only bummer part of the whole weekend. We packed up everyone to go to swimming at the YMCA, while Megan had her last swimming lesson of the summer. Sadly, when we got there someone had thrown up in the pool so it was closed. On top of that, Megan didn't want to do her lessons so we just left. But we made the best of it, and went out for ice cream and then visited a park.

Now I just have to make it through 8 more days of work before I can enjoy a very much needed vacation...

My Journey

A few weeks ago I happened to check the Do Groove web site, and was surprised to see my picture come up on the front page (I'm the second dot!!). I shared it with a few family members and Andrea threw it up on Facebook. So what took me so long to share it here? I'm not sure I guess. I think it has a lot to do with my mixed feelings about it.

One the one hand, I am proud of the changes I've made in my life. If my story motivates even one person to make similar changes, then it's all worth it. But on the other hand, I have a hard time accepting praise for essentially screwing up my life first. I wouldn't be in this video and I wouldn't be sharing this story if I had just lived my life the way I should have all along.

There are lots of people who do exactly that. People who make health, fitness, and nutrition a part of their daily life from the get go. Those are the people who should be praised. Those are the people we should look up to. The parents who give their children the SKILLS to live healthy and TEACH nutrition. The families that know the dangers of fast food. The people that know the importance of daily physical activity. They are the ones we should do videos of and learn from.

The video itself is well edited, and I'm glad it didn't paint video games in a huge negative light. Video games were simply my primary form of inactivity, but they were not to blame. There are many types of inactivity, and which ever one is your favorite, is not the bad guy. It was my CHOICE to spend time exclusively with video games, at the expense of everything else. Choice is always the key.

I also didn't talk about alcohol and my personal struggles with alcohol. Alcohol contributed greatly to my poor health, because alcohol is 100% useless calories that your body can do nothing with. Quite frankly, I was afraid to bring up the subject during the interview. I've been sober 2 out of the last 5 years and for the most part, not done much drinking this year (but I have had some). If wine is included at our "Food & Wine" vacation weekend, you can bet I'll be enjoying some! I can freely admit that at this point in my life, I'm not ready to say I'll never drink again. But who knows, after time anything can change, and maybe some day a decision like that would not be that big of a deal.

Another thing I did not mention in the video is my loathing of fast food. Obviously I'm sure I could never have gotten away with saying how horrible McDonald's food is, or how I think fast food contributes a lot to why people are obese in this country. It would have been edited out for legal reasons. And yes, I eat fast food every now and then, but when I do, I remind myself what a poison it is. The difference is now I might eat a chicken nugget or two. I can remember how 10 years ago, I would roll out of bed hung over every Sunday morning around 11am, and then head over to McDonald's to purchase 5 or 6 0.39 cent cheeseburgers. Nothing better than starting your day out with 1,800 calories.

But that was then, and this is now. I don't think anyone realizes how much change I've really made. The visible change is only the tip of the iceberg. So if you've read this far, you've gotten a small glimpse.

The whole story, my two year journey

Generally Tired

Survived another week, and honestly, I should be more stressed out, but I'm not. Probably because I'm simply too tired to be stressed. Some of the things I've been working towards at work are coming to fruition. I've cut through the major red tape barriers and will be finally getting my ideas out to some of the real decision makers. I'm excited about that, but in some ways will just be glad to have it reach that point. Simply because I'll finally be able to say to myself that I pushed my ideas as absolutely far as they could go.

In other news, Megan has been asking me every single day this week, "Are you going to stay home tomorrow?". Constantly answering no has been pretty tough, but at least tonight I got to say yes. We don't have too much planned this weekend, so hopefully something will come to me tomorrow. It's my Mom's birthday today, and I tried calling her at least 4 times with no luck. I ended up taking the cheap way out and just texted her a happy birthday. Sunday we'll get together and have a birthday dinner of Famous Dave's.

Not much else new going on this week. The fact that it is August already is still mind boggling. It feels like I bought my "new" computer a few months ago, but it was back in October of 09!! On the plus side, it also means we are only 3 weeks away from a long needed vacation. I probably haven't mentioned that yet, so maybe I'll wait to post more details on that in the next few days.

Surprise

As I was preparing for my run yesterday morning, Megan told me she had a surprise for me when I got back. As soon as I returned, she immediately jumped up and told me she could tell me the surprise now. She had me lean in close, and whispered to me, "We can go to the Zoo today!" I looked at Andrea with a 'Did you set this up?' look on my face, and she said not at all. Well, I wasn't about to disappoint, so we got ready and headed out to the Zoo!

It started out okay, with some cloud cover and decent temps. But the sun came out and it quickly got much to hot for my taste. We enjoyed a lot of time at the new playground area, which was brand new for Casey. And then we went inside and checked out the new baby dolphin who is only 2 weeks old.

Megan is quite the climber these days. She loves those indoor climbing walls whenever we come across one. Another year or two and I think I might introduce her to belaying.

Casey enjoyed the bouncy fishes and climbing inside the turtles. She went on a few slides and found some friends to walk around with. She got a little scared when we went into the dark cave that has a big bear inside, but she was okay.

After the Zoo, we hit up a lunch at Chili's, which was okay but a little greasy. I just pigged out on the bottomless chips and then cancelled my actual order. I was still stuffed just from the chips and eating the left overs from the two kids meals we ordered. I was so full I couldn't even eat dinner later that night.

Now the trick is to get through today with out over eating at any paticular meal in order to "make up" for missing a meal yesterday.