Fourth Week in August 2011

Another slow starting week with a big finish. Monday was my 'Wernerversary', nine years at Werner, and still enjoying working here. There was no big celebration ... but my PTO was full again. After work I went to the grocery store and then came home and cleaned up.

Tuesday morning I woke up with a migraine around 0715 or so, I took my medicine and stayed home in the morning. I woke back up around 1045 and felt fine. I ran some errands and went into work. After work I went over to VK's and traded cutting her lawn for dinner. Nearly the entire time I was cutting the lawn, thunder was rolling, but nothing was getting closer than two miles nor was any rain falling. When I got to the last stripe though, there was a loud boom behind me, and as I put the mower in to the garage a downpour began. Talk about your good timing!

Wednesday after work I ran, my goal was to run 2.6k (13 laps around the track). It went by fairly quickly, so I just kept going ... and going ... and going, and I made it all the way to 5k (25 laps)!!! The last 300 meters was pretty difficult, but I did it. I ran too fast, I hope to slow it down a bit as I run more. I thought when I started running that if I had pain, it would be in the following order; back, knees, lungs, feet, hamstrings, ankles, booty, or quads ... what I am getting is pain in my calves. I wouldn't think that would give me problems, but by the time I got home I could hardly move them. The best part of this story is that I now feel that I am prepared for the Midnight Run on September 9.

On Thursday I enjoyed a nice quiet day at home.

I needed to get home immediately after work on Friday to help Troy, which means of course that I got a call right at 1800 and had to work late. Fortunately, I was still able to help Troy move the speakers from our home to the Eagles Lodge. Once the hard work was done, Troy and I went over to the nearby Smoke Pit and ate. During dinner I got a couple of 'where are you texts', so I finished up and headed over to the Eagles lodge. I arrived early enough to participate in the lesson, meet some newbies, dance the night away, and then stayed late enough to clean up. Then for a semi-traditional trip to the Donut Stop, I like that place much better since smoking is no longer allowed. There were several people playing Scrabble and The Game of Things. I sat at the table where they were playing The Game of Things, and it was quite entertaining.

Q: Things you should never say to a teacher.
A: ...but you gave that paper an A last semester.

Nice ... and hilarious. Not all of it was family friendly, but if you're bringing your kids to the Donut Stop at 0130, probably you aren't concerned about that sort of thing.

The plan for Saturday was to go with Troy to Worlds of Fun. When that fell through, it meant that I could go to Matt's birthday celebration events. First up, meeting Matt at Stella's Diner in Bellevue to see him try to eat The Stellanator.

Here he is at the beginning, The Stellanator is six 6.5 oz burger patties, six fried eggs, twelve pieces of bacon, six pieces of cheese, grilled onions,
lettuce, tomatoes, jalapeños, and peanut butter all on a bun served with
a basket of fries, and you have 45 minutes to eat it all.

Now Matt is no eating slouch, he's won the Cowtown Jamborama Corn Eating contest more than once and I thought if anyone I knew could do it, it would be him. I gave him about a 40% chance of doing it. Unfortunately, it was fairly obvious about fifteen minutes in that he wasn't going to make it, he already looked uncomfortable and was slowing down. He finally waved the white flag as time ran out. He immediately said that there would be no rematch, but I don't think he gives up so easily.

Later we reconvened (I've used that word two weeks in a row) at his house for drinks and ice cream ... in no particular order.

Happy birthday Matt!

My pictures from the events of the day can be found here, Matt has quite a bit more, including the Friday dance here. I left Matt and Viv's after one round of Telestrations (which is a fun game to play with Dan and Matt, they are both such wonderful artists) and headed over to Kaleb's game night, where ....

...I played a game of Telestrations ... hmmm. I also played a game or several of Crokinole. We quickly ended up in the basement playing many very competitive games of 'Round the World Ping Pong' (where I got bruises and cuts) and Rock Band until 0330. The most challenging part of 'Round the World Ping Pong' comes from who you are lined up against, you have to pay attention because if I get lined up against CJ, I can hit the ball to him with any amount of spin or trickeration, then run around the table and next time I hit the ball I get Maggie and I'd better not hit a mean shot to her. It keeps you on your toes ... and the floor.

Sunday morning I got up and went to church with Teri at St. Columbkille at noon. Father Kevin was the priest, and I saw several people I knew there, including the second week in a row I ran into someone I used to work with at Cox cable. Later in the afternoon I went up to Benson to a meeting of Cowtown Jamborama volunteers. It was the usual meeting stuff, except that Christy and Ryan brought Mirabel and she drew a picture of me.

I think the resemblance is amazing!

After the meeting, I drove over to VK's, delivered some kitchenwear that got left at our house during the annual party the week before, visited for a while, and then came home and walked a little bit before heading off to bed.