Something Positive

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

I'm just going to get the horrible shit out of the way, in the odd chance that I can come up with anything positive. It's been awhile since I quoted THE song. Oddly enough, for me it was 2pm on Tuesday, not 4pm this week. I got a phone call at work from Andrea, she was in the emergency room with Megan.

While helping make her lunch of Mac & Cheese with Mommy, Megan managed to get her hand on the stove and got some pretty bad burns. She suffered second degree burns on portions of her left palm along with some burns on the fingers. Needless to say, it's been a rough week.

Fast forward to today, 2 doctor visits, codeine spiked Tylenol, and numerous scary bandage replacements... And we've survived. All things considered, Megan has been quite the trooper through this whole ordeal. I haven't seen her cry once, not even the night Daddy climbed into bed with her to read some bed time stories, only to accidentally lean on her hand, resulting in a popping of the largest blister on her hand.

This is actually the first time Megan has been to the emergency room. Statistically speaking, it probably won't be the last either. But it was still a horrible thing to happen and it came at a time when things were starting to pick back up.

So where is this positivity I promised? I don't know... It sure as hell isn't this weather. I swear, snow and rain were the last thing I needed to add to this week. Can I just get a FEW days/weekends of nice weather? PLEASE!?! Work is okay for the most part. We made revenue goals last quarter, so that means some profit sharing this month. Can't complain about that I guess.

Last weekend was something nice at least. I was able to spend some time with my Grandparents and Scott and Val. They came over on a Sunday afternoon and got to see Megan and then we headed out for a nice lunch. Megan was great and I was glad she got to spend some time with her Grandparents. We don't see them enough.

In other news, my grandparents are getting a lap top and internet! I'm sure the traffic to my blog will be shooting up soon. I promise more positivity and lots of pictures of Megan just for you Grandma!!

The decision is Winter

I don't even know where to begin. 5-8 inches of snow? So much for any chances of decent outdoor training this year, I might as well kiss my 10k time goals goodbye. Suppose I'll shoot for the times I want later in the year...

It's been a long time since I've posted any form of deeper thoughts on my blog. Life has been hitting me from all sides lately, hardly giving me time to catch my breath, let alone organize my thoughts into any form of coherent stream of text. Things have just been so negative lately, I've been unable to think of anything to write. I do not want my blog to be just a place where I go to whine about the problems of my life.

There are also the questions of privacy. Some of the problems going on in my life are just too private to share here, no matter what I might think. Add in the fact I can't talk about detailed aspects of my job and what stresses me out there... what I am left with to talk about? Apparently, just the weather.

My week was so rough last week, that prior to Sunday, the only highlights of the entire week were: 1) A Bud Light commercial where a dog says "Sausages!" and 2) A philosophical question posed to me at work. Sad huh?

Things did pick up on the weekend. We had a fun family swim Saturday morning and went out to dinner Saturday night. Sunday we had Grandma B and Papa B over to visit, and they brought Megan a bunch of presents including her own fish tank! She is loving that. She is also vocalizing "M" sounds in all sorts of new ways today, which is all great stuff.

But what about Shawn? How is he doing? Not sure I know the answer to that right now. One of the hardest parts about internalizing everything in life, is that sometimes it just gets to be too much. Those are the times that I get into a funk that won't shake for a long period of time. What's funny, is this funk comes 6 months from my last one(October), which was 6 months after another one (April)... Is there something about October and April that mess with my head!?!?

Winter Spring... Spring Winter...

Make a decision already! I was out for my second outdoor run this week, for a nice long 10 miler. And today there is a friggen snow storm? Seriously? I'm having second thoughts about my love of Minnesota. Between the snow falls lately, and the near car accidents I've had, this week was one of those weeks where I'm just happy to come out the other side alive.

Sometimes you just have to keep moving forward, and that's just what I'm going to do. Let the hardships of the week slip away as I focus on the weekend and the soon-to-arrive real Spring time.

What's on tap for this weekend? First up is Easter egg coloring, which we are going to start right now actually. This year, we will most likely focus on colors with Megan this time. She has been doing very well with all her colors lately... In fact, I can hear Andrea right now asking her to find the "Yellow" one...

Tomorrow morning we are heading bright and early to the Zoo baby animals, at the Minnesota zoo. Megan has also made huge improvements in her identification of animals through signs. She even knows the actual sign for "animals". She loves watching this one web site that goes through animals and doing the signs as she listens.

Anyway, I'm being told that my real life is slipping away while I blog. Maybe there is some truth to that. I had better end this for now!

Picture Day

More pictures today! We had a great time at the Children's Museum yesterday. Although it was fun, at the same time it was difficult for us. The place was packed and so noisy, it wasn't exactly conducive to the one-on-one speech time we want to focus on with Megan. That isn't to say we shouldn't do these kinds of events, but at least we acknowledge they are more about fun for Megan, and less a real opportunity for work on language. But FUN is important too!!

You can see Megan doing the sign for slide in this picture. Grandma Gayle is learning signs from Megan every time she sees her.



Name this movie: "I wish I liked anything as much as my kids love bubbles."



Megan learning her colors with Grandma:



Megan and Mom rocking out to music where they could see themselves on TV... Wait a sec... TV is the debil!! RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!



Here is a random picture from a few days ago. Megan and Andrea are modelling their new hair cuts.

One is all you need

The mood around the Anderson house has improved over the last week. We did our best to share the nitty gritty of our situation with our family, to get them to see what it is Andrea and I are going through. Of course, they continued to try and downplay things and give us words of support and encouragement. I wouldn't expect anything less, they are my family after all! More importantly, they listened and really took the time to understand what we are feeling.

That fact alone has helped us this week, the whole divide your sorrows thing going into effect. On top of that, Megan has developed a lot of new babbling talk. She is constantly vocalizing now, something she was doing a smaller percentage of the time before. All day with the noises, and pointing at things, her way of asking questions.

Today I took a half day off today to get Megan in to see the doc. After her cold came right back, I wanted to make sure her ear infection didn't come back as well. Turns out she was just fine, and after that we stopped at Burger King for some fun time in the indoor playground and a strawberry shake.

This week also marked my first outdoor run of the year. Headed out Thursday night with a buddy from work, around the usual lake paths. It was a little wet, but otherwise pretty good. Hopefully the weather holds out and I can start more serious training for the Get in Gear 10k. I have some big goals this year and I haven't started much on them.

Tomorrow we have some more fun things going on, as we are hitting up the Children's Museum in the morning. Grandma Gayle is joining us as well, it should be a great time. I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow or Sunday of our adventures in learning!

Not Enough Hours

Just when I'm at a time when it feels like I never have enough time, we have to go and lose an hour.

Since my blogs have become somewhat of week in review, I might as well go with it. This week started off on an early note as I took some family to the airport to goto Las Vegas. I was up at 4:30am to get them there on time... Ugh. From that point, it felt like I just never caught up on sleep all week long. I suppose the staying up until midnight every night didn't help matters.

Tuesday sucked with that surprise morning snow storm. Okay, maybe not a snow storm but it made my commute take an extra 20 minutes. Not to mention, I got so frustrated that I almost hit the ditch (or much worse). Didn't even tell Andrea about that one... hmmm guess I'm screwed now!

The rest of the week was blah for the most part. The cold weather is still here, I'm still struggling with running indoors, and I was damn glad to see Friday roll around.

Today was a bit more fun, as I started off the day with a solid 7 mile run. After that, the fam headed to Edinborough Park in Edina. It was JAM packed for a Saturday morning, but we still managed to squeeze an hour of fun out of it. Megan and I ran all around inside the tree house together, she loved it. After that we hit a nice big lunch at Red Lobster, where Megan was very well behaved. All in all, a very pleasant Saturday afternoon.

Here are 2 shots from today at Edinborough:

Project Club House Complete!

This was a multi phase project... It broke down like this:

Phase 1: Move the TV (8:00am)



After moving the TV, I went for a 7 mile run, and didn't get restarted on the project until 11am.

Phase 2: Clean (11:00am)



Phase 3: Break overhead light fixture while unloading



Phase 4: Finish unloading (11:30am)



Phase 5: Mid way point, take a lunch break (1:00pm)



Phase 6: Finish! (2:30pm)



Phase 7: See the look of surprise and enjoyment on Megan's face as she got home tonight!!

Bye Bye Birdie

This week between posts crap has got to stop. Problem is, I just don't spend time down stairs near the computer like I used to. Makes it hard to get any time for blogging.

What do I want to bitch about tonight? Let's see... I'm not getting enough sleep, not getting enough exersize, not eating as good as I should be. Works slowed down, but still finding ways to stress me out. A domain expert, and somewhat of a mentor to me just left the company this week. Good times.

What's going on with Megan you ask? She is doing okay, still picking up new signs on a regular basis and attempting new words every once and awhile. She can now do signs for various daily objects on her own, just by hearing the word (as opposed to also seeing the accompaning sign). She still has a ways to go, and I try to keep us positive, but it's hard when logic dictates that either she will get caught up, or it will just be the way things are.

Tomorrow is the big day. Time to say goodbye to the TV and hello to a basement playzone of fun. I was able to solicit for help early Saturday morning to get it over to my Mom's house. At that point, Andrea will be taking Megan down to New Ulm for the day to spend some time with Papa and Grandma B. In the meantime, I'll be spending the day setting up the play house. Check back tomorrow for the exciting results!

Pretty Standard Stuff

Long but short week. For a long time I was dodging the sickness bullet. Everyone I worked with was out sick. The two guys in both cubes next to me were out sick days last week, another guy I work and eat lunch with was out sick before that. Megan was sick... FINALLY, it hit me this week. I decided to go ahead and take Friday off.

Turns out Megan also had an ear infection. Not that big of a surprise. She had been pulling at her ear for a while, so we got her in and sure enough. Got some antibiotics, hopefully it should clear up soon.

Speaking of Megan, things are still progressing well. Our attempts at sign language are going well. Megan picks up new signs almost every day. She isn't 100% using them on her own (meaning self initiated), but she can do almost all her signs in response to the name of the object they represent. From a word perspective, there have been a couple of developments. Apple was a big one, we were excited to hear that.

The rest of the week was just dealing with this stupid cold. I got two runs in tues/wed... I'm undecided if I'm going to try and run tomorrow morning. Speaking of running, I also caught a movie about Marathons Thursday night. I think the most interesting part was the myth of the marathon being based on someone who ran the distance and then collapsed over dead. Irony? Did it make me want to run a marathon any more? Maybe a little... but not a whole lot more then my current thoughts about it. (i.e. maybe SOME day...)

The worst part of the week was the drive to the movie. On the way over to my Mom's, a cop was camped out nabbing people for "not fully stopping" at a very common stop sign. Apparently the residents of the area had complained of people not stopping there... He gave me a ticket for it, which is lame. But I suppose it could have been worse. My drivers license wasn't up to date, and that's another $100 fine. He didn't hit me with that one.

Anyway, off to bed. Need to be rested for tomorrow’s day of fun!

Sneak Attack

I survived the week! It was an interesting one to say the least... Started out pretty rough, and I managed about 5 hours of overtime. Yes, I know - nothing in comparison to some people, but for me it was a big deal.

I had two strange meetings this week. First, there was a special "incentive" meeting put on by the CEO. Basically the newest project I'm working on is very important to the business, and so they sit about 30-40 of us working on it in a room and say look - if you can get this thing done early, we'll give you a 4 day paid trip to a resort up north. Interesting tactic.

Then, we had another larger company meeting. You know, the ones where the CEO says everything is great, we are making lots of money, keep up the good work, yadda yadda yadda. The unexpected part of this meeting, was when one of the presenters started talking about the project that I had been working on for the past year as a "major accomplishment of 2007." Now, not to get anyone thinking I'm all that - this project was the result of huge amount of man-hours from a TON of people. I was just a small piece of it. I liked to think of it as the tip of the iceberg. Because the part I worked on, is what the customer interacted with. It was what the business saw, and what was looked at as the result of this project. So I was then surprised to see actual screen shots of the part of the software that I created, thrown up for the entire audience to see. Pretty cool feeling...

Anyway, if that wasn't enough, I also had my yearly review today and subsequent yearly salary increase. Icing on the cake I guess... I've already spent a big chunk of it to purchase the indoor play set for Megan. I ordered it direct from the company, since they offered free shipping. Not sure when it will arrive, hopefully by the end of this month.

As for a Megan update, things are going well. It feels like we are making steady progress now. Some milestones this week:

• Consistently using the sign for "more"
• Identifying many items on flash cards, from animals to objects
• Responding to questions like "Megan, can you find the fish?" and "Bring Daddy the fish." (picking out the fish from a large grouping of flash cards)
• Responding to words or signs used once for the first time.

For example, knowing where her "pop" was when asked. Or just tonight, using the sign for "open" after seeing it only once. All great strides... we hope that all this will lead to that spark where her communication goes both ways.

I don't think I've mentioned before, but she is also very sick so we are dealing with that this week as well. Bad cold, lots of congestion, and being so stuffed up that her body throws up during naps because her airways get blocked. Andrea has had a rough week, but I think Megan is showing signs of getting better.

4pm on some idle Tuesday

What's in the works you ask? Well, Andrea and I got on the same page regarding the TV. It's as good as gone, it's just a matter of how soon. Basically it comes down to how soon I think I can get it out the back of my house through the snow. Once the TV is out, I'm replacing it with an indoor jungle gym for Megan to play on.

Is getting rid of the TV going to cure our problems? No, of course not. In fact, it probably won't have any positive effect what so ever. What it WILL do is stop making every night a battle over the fact that we don't watch movies anymore. And the replacement will be something fun and interactive we can do together.

Call it extreme. Call it removing a problem instead of dealing with a problem. I honestly don't care how other people judge me at this point. I'm good enough at doing that on my own.

Aside from that, Andrea and I are both pulling in on our extraneous activities. We are going to focus all our free time and efforts on getting Megan caught up to where we think she can be. We can tell she wants to interact and wants to learn, we just have to figure out what that spark will be to get through to her. A friend tonight told me that someone he knew had a 4 year old who still wasn't talking. The spark? The boy band, In-Sync. Apparently he liked the music so much he sang along, and those were his first words.

I'd like to think we can help Megan before she turns 4. Tonight, we worked really hard on "ball" and she repeated it twice. Overall, we think she tried 4 words tonight, and she picked up on the use of "Pop", in response to "Megan, where is your pop?". All positive signs.

This past weekend, we got out to the Apple Valley Winter Festival. It's our second year, and once again it was fun even if a bit cold. We went early Saturday before it got too cold, so that helped a lot. Megan had fun on the inflatable slides, but got stuck at one point when she went up with lots of big kids going. Thankfully, a young girl, maybe 10 or 11, offered to go up and help Megan slide down so we didn't have to squeeze up there and rescue her.

The Battle Continues

No, not the battle for middle earth. The never ending fight to remain positive in the face of all that Andrea and I are dealing with. For us, every day is a struggle. We are feeling very isolated and without any reassurances that anything we are doing is making one damn difference.

I'd post more but no reason to go into a downward spiral right now. I'll try to get another post up tomorrow on some things in the works and some of the more fun things that we did this last weekend.

Also, I've just been told that there is a very high probability that I will be working more then a few weekends from now until mid-May. Isn't life great?

And Then?

Next thing you know it's a week later and I haven't got a damn post up! Sheesh, I'm such a lazy bastard. I honestly have no excuse... I mean, I think the most exciting thing I did this weekend was getting a haircut on Sunday. Oh, and I watched the last 5 minutes of the super bowl. Can't forget that!

It's just a slow month I guess, but things are going to start to pick up in Feb. Starting right off the bat with this weekend... I will be attempting to resurrect my Dungeons and Dragons group!! That's right, I'm going to give it another shot this year and see how it goes. I want to run a 13 session campaign that will take place over 8 months... Ambitious? Maybe.

Yesterday, Andrea and I went to a sign language class. Not sure what to think about it. I've already memorized the alphabet and a bunch of words... will they help? Will it add anything to Megan's language development? Probably not. All I know is that the other couple there had a child with down syndrome, which to be quite honest, put our situation into perspective a little bit.

In other news, the whole bedtime thing is going swimmingly. Megan has zero issues with bedtime around 8pm after our "routine". She almost seems to look forward to it now, and enjoys giving big hugs and kisses good night. We tried a night light for a while, but she just took it apart and got the bulb out. No more of that, and she ended up not needing it anyway. The only down side are the nights I get home at 6pm from a run, and with dinner right after, I only get to see Megan for an hour or two during her bed time routine.

Don't know much else... Later this month we are doing an overnight at Mystic Casino for free, courtesy of my Mom and all the gambling she does (free hotel coupons). It will be our mini Valentines get away. Mom will be watching Megan overnight for us, which should be a breeze now!

Suppose I should get to sleep now... For some reason I've been depriving myself of sleep for the last 2 weeks. I can't really say why, but constant 5 hours of sleep every night does weird things to your brain.

All Better

I got a 45 min run in on Monday and there was no blood or pain, so the toe is all healed. It's still all scabbed over, so as long as I don't pick at it...

Some new things have developed with Megan that are making evening life much less stressful around here. No, Megan isn't talking yet. This is regarding her bed time. Awhile back, Megan started giving up her daily nap - but it wasn't 100%. Some days she would still end up getting SOO crabby or just fall asleep at random on the couch or floor. Now it seems she might have given it up for good.

So what else changed? Well, we tried to capitalize on this change of no naps. Basically it means she is very tired at a normal hour of around 8pm. We started a nightly routine of 1 or 2 movies and dinner. Then a bath and PJs. Finally story book time in her bedroom on her bed at 8pm. After reading a few books, we say good night and let her fall asleep.

First night, it was rough. Andrea got this whole ball rolling that first night, with a solid half hour of crying and Megan climbing out of bed. By the second night, it was maybe 10 minutes. By the time Saturday night rolled around (and I was home alone with Megan), she didn't even cry for 2 minutes or come out of bed. Last night was ZERO crying. I said good night, and she gave me a HUGE hug and kiss goodnight, and off she went. Tonight was just a minute or two, but in general it seems to be going very well. Perhaps another corner has been turned...

Just thought I'd end with some cute pictures of Megan and Andrea baking cookies from the other day. The second shoot is very cute, because Megan choose to arrange the cookies like that.

Day of Injuries

Today was a bit rough on the Anderson house hold. Megan was first this morning with an injury on the way home from the YMCA. She slipped and fell face first before getting into the car, cutting her upper lip badly and causing a small scratch under her chin. The worst part was the blood. In Andrea's words, "there was blood everywhere."

Speaking of blood... I was next in line. Earlier this week I had pulled out a part of my big toe nail, and thought nothing of it. It didn't hurt too much, and just bled a little bit. No big deal right? So this afternoon I head out for a run, and like 30 minutes into my run I feel this wetness in my sock. I look down, and what do I see?



And even worse....



I decide to cut my run short, and will probably take a small break from running for a few days to give my toe some time to heal. The weird part was that it didn't hurt at all while I was running. The upper part of my toe is a little tender, but that's about it.

Tomorrow Andrea is heading down to visit and spend some time with her Mom to do a project involving lots of pictures. They will also be doing lunch and Andrea is spending the night there, so it will just be me and Megan holding down the fort. I plan on getting some grocery shopping in and visiting with my Mom as well. Other then that, it should be a very mellow weekend.

Slight Slacking

Couple times last week I thought about getting something posted but just never got around to it. Main reason I think is that nothing too exciting is going on really. This cold weather just kind of grinds everything to a halt. I managed to get one run in this morning, but other then that I haven't left the house all weekend. A high temp of negative 7 yesterday!!

Not a lot of news on the Megan language front. We are starting with some sign language things, which she is picking up rather quickly. Although we tried to teach her "more" and "please" at the same time, she seems to use "please" for both now. She has also become SLIGHTLY less demanding of movie time, only wanting to watch them at night which I think might be a decent compromise. That isn't to say I've abandoned the idea of TV removal YET... Time will tell.

The gym traffic is slowing down already - maybe it's just the cold weather. But the last few nights I've been able to get in fine and right away. I think I'm going to get outside earlier this year then previous, simply because I miss it so much already.

In other news, I'm going to attempt to get some Dungeons and Dragons going again this year. I decided I needed at least one other hobby besides World of Warcraft. My guess? It might last long enough to keep me occupied through June, but I could see it falling apart through the summer. Once again, time will tell.

Stupid Resolutioners

I hate to start out with a rant, but what the hell. Once again, the people are flocking to (and filling up) the gym so that a) parking is damn near impossible and b) there are wait lines for treadmills. I didn't even feel like dealing with it tonight, and completely skipped my work out. Instead, I came home and ate 2 chocolate covered pretzels weighing in at 140 calories a piece. SUCK ON THAT, New Years Resolutioners!

I'm ready for spring, that's all I have to say. It is too damn cold and I need some out door type activities. I'd hate to admit that my mood would be so effected by weather, but who knows. I'm honestly going to give biking a bigger shot this year, with planned adventures and maybe even some crazy stuff like biking all the way to work. Hey... dream big I say.

In other news, I'm contemplating moving my ginourmous TV out of the house. This is an alternative idea to selling or getting rid of it entirely. The reactions I've gotten have been anything from "that seems extreme" to "I grew up with no TV". So why on earth would I want to get rid of one my most joyous of purchases from 2006?

There are a variety of factors... that have been building over time. Everything connected to the TV has already been moved for Megans safety. I never bought any of the new next gen gaming systems, and don't even own a high def DVD player. Not to mention, all my DVDs are in the garage anyway.

The final straw was that recently my receiver died. It had been flaking out for awhile. But why buy a new receiver, for speakers that aren't hooked up, and movies I don't watch anymore? Why keep a TV in the house that is just an empty shell?

This is of course all just secondary to the real reason I want to get rid of it. A firm belief that the TV and/or movies have played a part in Megan's delayed language development.

My Mom tells me I'm crazy to think that, and that we just need to teach Megan limits. Maybe she's right. Maybe I'm just using the TV as a scape goat for my own failings. I'm told not to be so hard on myself, but how can I not?

The small part of me that still has access to logic, dictates that Megan will grow up. She will eventually communicate with the outside world. And one day I'll look back at this time and laugh at how worried I was. But that part is so small these days, and just seems overshadowed by self doubt.

The TV as it was in it's heyday:



The empty shell of today:

Arch Support FTW

Ran a solid 6 miles tonight on the new shoes. I ended up getting the next ASICS in the line I like, the GT-2130. This pair seems to fit my foot better then the 2120s, a tad wider and not so tight over the top. They were great right off the bat, hardly feels like I have to break them in. Over the last 2 months I was having a lot of soreness in the arch of my foot, and tonight there was none. Lesson learned? When the arch starts to get sore, get new shoes!

I'm not quite sure why I thought things would "slow down" at work. It just feels like they want to suck the marrow from me until I'm dry. It's hard to stay motivated, but at least I enjoy what I'm doing and like the people I work with. Review time is right around the corner, so that is the only thing I'm kinda stressing about. Not so much that I'm worried about my review, but more so that for the first time in awhile, I feel like I deserve a specific review. And if it doesn't happen, I'm going to be very disappointed and most likely be very vocal about it.

Tonight was a pretty mild night, with Megan and I enjoying some time together while Andrea went to her volleyball game. I was able to capture a fun little video of Megan's basketball skills. This is something I had been wanting to buy for her for a long time, but she ended up getting it for Christmas instead. It's definitely one of her favs.

Better Update

Taking Monday off was exactly the right decision. The funny part was, the day itself was very stressful. Megan was very unhappy and not cool with napping when she should, and ended up having a melt down. This of course caused me to have a melt down. Thankfully, Andrea remained the rock solid parent she is and calmed us all down.

On the positive side, I've gotten two runs in the last two days and that has made me feel better. My cold is still full blown, but hopefully it will start to wane towards the end of this week. I'm going to try and get two more runs in before the weekend and see how it goes.

Work started good today with "no new problems" to deal with, so that was nice. The end is in sight and I can look forward to getting this project out. I'll probably never get much credit or fanfare for my work on this project, but it will be a big personal victory to see this one succeed. Whether or not the customers think it's a "great" thing is yet to be determined.

On another up note, my bro has offered to watch Megan tomorrow night. I think we will take the opportunity to hit a dinner and just relax. I'll probably stop off at the Running Store and get some new shoes. I think some recent foot pains I've been having can be attributed to worn out shoes. Plus, I need to break in a new pair to start working on my 2008 running goals. (more on that later)

Anyway, today was yet another "No nap for Megan" day, so I have to go do my best to help keep her awake as long as possible. If she falls asleep too early, it just causes her to wake up crying around midnight, or even the possibility of her coming out of her room.

Bad Start

2008 isn't starting off exactly as I had hoped, but pretty much exactly as I expected. Over stressed, under exercised, sick and lazy!

The long New Years break was great, because although Christmas break was 4 days, it didn't even feel like an actual break. New Years weekend was much more relaxing. My Mom even offered (for the 2nd time) to watch Megan over night on New Years Eve. We totally took her up on it, and managed to get in a dinner/movie date.

The bad started with going back to work. Not that work itself was that bad, but we are STILL at the end of this project cycle causing me undue stress and getting me into situations where I have to work until 5:30pm. This of course cuts into my running time. Now combine that with a really nasty cold I started getting this week, and you have a recipe for disaster. I haven't run this year at all!

Could I run through this cold? Ya, probably. I've done it before. Do I feel like it? Not really. I feel like being lazy and getting better. Sleeping in, resting, and taking lots of drugs. I'll probably call in sick tomorrow and if I'm feeling up to it, get a run in then.

In the meantime, I thought I'd get a picture up of Megan. This one is for you Mom!

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.