Groundhog Day

Yesterday was Groundhog Day.  In case you happened to not know, this is the day when the tradition holds that if the groundhog comes out of his burrow on February 2 and sees his shadow, he returns to his burrow and there will be 6 more weeks of winter.  If he doesn't see his shadow, there will be an early spring.  The official groundhog is supposed to be Punxsutawny Phil up in Pensylvania.  However, there are many groundhogs all over the country.  This year, Phil saw his shadow, so there should be 6 more weeks of winter.  Well, the groundhog in Lilburn, GA, General Beauregard Lee didn't see his shadow forecasting an early spring.  Now, putting aside the fact that a groundhog seeing his shadow as a predictor of weather makes about as much sense as a watery tart distributing cutlery to the masses does as a basis for a system of government, I'll go with the groundhog from Atlanta as I live a whole lot closer to Atlanta than I do Pennsylvania.

Had a cow poop on my truck today... as I went to pass a cow trailer, I saw a cow rear end sticking out ahead of me.  It pooped and I thought I missed it, but it apparently splattered off the road onto the truck.  I had to wash it off when I stopped to get gas.  What a way to start the day.  But, that was the worst thing that happened to me today and really, it is more funny than bad.  Just think about it... A COW POOPED ON MY TRUCK ON THE INTERSTATE!!!  That is funny.

I did run tonight.  Tried to run Monday, as well, but after slipping on the ice (maybe more than once, ahem), I went back inside and did burpees.

Keep on truckin'

Exercise is continuing on... on week 3 of the running program.  Still swimming 3 days a week in the mornings.

Not much else going on right now, work, exercise, church, that's about it.

Well, see you later.

Training...

Just got back from running.  Normally I try to run on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but with the rain yesterday and a bunch of other things going on, I didn't.  So, I swam this morning and ran this afternoon.  Now I will run on Sunday and be back on my regular schedule for running and swimming next week.

Run today went better than last time as I felt a twinge of cramping in my legs which are normally the precursor to shin splints for me.  Today - nothing, and I felt I could have gone farther but not going to push it.

I did see a girl of about 10 or 11 walking a great dane, or I should say I saw a great dane walking a girl of about 10 or 11.  The mom was about 20 feet behind them and laughing.  It made me smile.

The valleys...

Yesterday was a rough day.  In no particular order, neither in terms of chronology nor magnitude:

A lot of things came together at work to make it a long, hectic day.  I won't go into detail, because frankly, even I'm bored by the details of it.  But it involved a lot of tedious work and uncomfortable confrontation (which is necessary, but still not fun).

When I got home, I got a phone call from a person whom I love dearly and will always love dearly... they were trying to encourage me not to go into youth ministry.  I am not going into detail, but it was a very discouraging call that was not in line with another conversation we had recently.  I trust they were trying to look out for what was best for me, but the way they did it wasn't encouraging at all.  I believe they think I am jumping into this on a whim and seeking to just go have fun and not work.  I have tried to convince them this decision was a long time in the making and not an easy one and not one I believe I could have made any other way. 

And I went to the going away party for dear friends, the Hunts, who are leaving to go to Prague as missionaries. The Hunts are incredible. Not because of anything about them, not because of their oldest son Sam and his cool hair, not because of their youngest son Foard and his awesome name but because God poured out blessings through them and onto those around them. God has used them to make me a better person.

And I learned that a girl I knew at church (I didn't know her extremely well, but everybody that I knew that did loved her and she seemed a wonderful personand what I did know of her confirmed that) had been involved in a car wreck and died last night.  It is a time of mourning to lose a sister in Christ and a time of rejoicing that she is in Heaven now and experiencing complete joy and peace with the Father.  All I have heard about the wreck is another vehicle crossed the center line and hit her car head on.  I do not know what caused the vehicle to cross the center line, but I lift the driver up in prayer now with Aimee's family and friends.  I was in a car wreck in 2001 where I had a seizure and left the interstate.  I spent 2 weeks in the hospital and the greatest comfort to my soul in that whole time and even now is that nobody else was involved.  I pray that God would comfort this driver and, if they do not know Him, that He would use this to draw them to himself.  And then what an incredible display of His providence if He uses the death of this daughter of a missionary family to draw another soul to Him.

"Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places." - Hab. 3:17-19

Week 2

Once again, I went and ran this evening after work.  I bought a new watch the other day (yesterday being that other day) and it made a ton of difference in seeing it at night.  It has been a while since I bought a watch so maybe this is old news but it is new to me so deal with it.  The cool feature was that on the old watch (Timex Ironman), the face would light up and the numbers would stay black when you mashed the Indiglo button but this one, the face goes black and the numbers turn green.  I thought that was pretty cool, well, interesting at least.

I found a website - The Art of Manliness - that looks pretty interesting.  And by found, I mean somebody told me about it.  There are different articles on what it means to be a man or articles of advice for men.  I haven't looked at it all, so I am sure there are things I'll disagree with, but one thing I like is that they don't present one ideal man and every man should be like that.  One of the articles, which of course I can't find now, broke it down into five categories - warrior, adventurer, lone wolf, gentleman and family man - and listed strengths and weaknesses of each and talked about none of these was the perfect man and gave examples of each type.  I like this website right now because today's culture loves to portray men as bumbling fools that wouldn't survive without their wives or as immature sex fiends that care about nothing but their own pleasure.  It is difficult to find a good role model in media that exhibits what it means to be a man in the Biblical calling of men.  Difficult, not impossible.  This website does not talk about the primary role of the man as spiritual leader, but it does point to some important characteristics and calls men to be leaders and not to abdicate responsibility in life and in their families due to laziness or fear. And it has some funny stuff and good grooming and fashion tips.

Monday, Monday...

I've often been told that when you do something enough times, it becomes a habit... maybe so as this morning, after two weeks of getting up at 5:09 to go swim and fighting it each morning and trying to find an excuse to get out of it, I woke up this morning and was in the truck on the way to the pool before even thinking of an excuse to not go.  Interesting.

I did stop by a bike store on the way home from work.  Ummm, I hope a crazy person broke into their store and put the prices on the bikes.  Yikes.  I will not be able to afford a bike from there as the lowest priced road bike was still way more than I intended to spend.  I'll keep looking.

I really don't have any funny stories from the pool this morning.  I'm either too sleepy to notice my surroundings in the morning or everybody is too sleepy to do something funny or some combination of both.  Anyway, I got there, put in my half mile, went home and made breakfast and went to work.

"Balmy" weather

Never ceases to humor me how people, myself included, react differently to weather changes in different seasons.  For instance, today was overcast and 50 after a run of weather where it didn't get above 40 for a few weeks.  And people were out and about walking and exercising, while the same type of day in September would send most indoors and possibly for a blanket.

Just something I noticed as I was out "running" today.  Once again, according to the training schedule, I ran 1 minute and walked 90 seconds for 20 minutes.  Because I didn't have anything to do this afternoon, I decided to walk farther afterward.  So, I ended up on a walk of about 50 minutes after my 20 minute period of running/walking.  Everything went well and no pain in my legs, so next week begins week 2 of the 9 week training period to work up to a 5k run.

I did get back in time to swim yesterday, so that is good.  3 swims and 2 runs this week, I can live with that.

I also looked at some bikes on amazon.com... but i have no idea what I need or want.  It might be a little while before I buy a bike as I have to spend a good bit of money this month on getting my bathtub relined (previous owner at some point lined the tub and it is chipping so I have no choice but to have it redone as I prepare to get this place on the market).

One bonus of taking the extra walk after the run today... got to see the Dyers and Hunts at the park as they finished up a picnic. Had I been sooner I could have seen them with the ducks they brought for the bread (yes, I meant to say it that way as that is how it was explained to me and it makes perfect sense).  And unrelated to that... I did get to see a couple rescue their lab puppy after it fell into the Freedom Park pond after it leaned over to far to smell the debris at the edge of the pond.  It looked so cute as they got it out and it tried to calm down from the shock.