Confirmation hearings

is there anything uglier than supreme court confirmation hearings?  no sooner is a person nominated than the party that didn't nominate them goes digging and throwing out allegations, some true and some not true, to see what sticks and what makes the person look the worst.

i understand the importance of making sure the person is competent to be a supreme court justice, but it just seems that their knowledge of the constitution and how it should be applied is more important than some of the petty things that get brought up.

Listening skills.

"Due to budgetary cutbacks in this tough economy, we have to make the tough decision to spend less and so we have to make the following cutbacks and eliminate the following programs/job positions..." does not equal "We hate the following programs/job positions and the people that benefit from them/are employed in them and are cutting them and keeping the money for ourselves..."

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.

Moving right along

so i swam this morning... nothing funny happened, so not much to say here


i have run into a snag with running tomorrow and swimming friday... i will be out of town from tomorrow morning until friday evening with work and visiting my mom as she rehabs from her knee replacement surgery.  i thought i could swim friday evening but there is a swim meet, so that is out.  if i run saturday morning... that gives me two days of swimming and two days of running this week and for me, 4 days of exercise out of 6 ain't bad.  so i will keep plugging along.

The run...

So... in order to try everything to avoid shin splints... (I feel I use the "..." too much, agreed?) I began the couch to 5k running plan back over at week 1, day 1 today.  This involves running for 1 minute and then walking for 1.5 minutes over the course of 20 minutes.  Now, I am not sure what is the most annoying aspect of this, so I will list some of the annoying aspects here:

1.  Having to check my watch over and over to determine when to walk and when to run.
2.  Being barely able to see the watch as it was dark and the indiglo feature is getting weak.
3.  The cold wind filling my lungs and making it painful to breathe.
4.  Having the cardiovascular conditioning from swimming to do much more but holding back so as not to hurt my legs, which, for some reason, are very sensitive to overwork.

Anyway, I did it and didn't have any problems, other than the pants I bought for cold weather running - the ones that actually heat up when they get wet (like from my sweat) - hit a little snag,  my legs didn't start sweating until after I got back to my place and was out of the cold.  Soooo, that didn't work how I hoped it would.

Observation of the night:

A little boy, probably about 5 or 6, was walking with his dad and I could tell he was coming down from a pretty emotional time as he was gasping for air as kids do after they have been sobbing (I know I did).  As I am running by them (hunched over my watch trying to see the time as I was about to switch from run to walk), I hear him say, "... and he was angry toward me..." and that is all I caught but thought it was funny to hear a very small child talk in that manner.

Triathlon training...

I never knew so many people were up at 5:30 in the morning until I began to train for a triathlon... For a few weeks now (that's right, going back to December), I have been going to the Mecklenburg Aquatic Center (henceforth to be understood as the MAC) to swim on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Recently, while sitting on my couch and eating bacon, I saw highlights of the ironman out in hawaii and saw a guy a little bit smaller than me (but obviously in much better shape) completing the ironman (I don't care what the scrawny little officials say about him being after the final whistle on the marathon and so it not counting, the man covered the entire distance, he completed the ironman) and decided that I can run, swim (I actually enjoy swimming) and I could probably bike if I owned one.  So I will be working towards a sprint triathlon this year. Hoping for sometime in late spring to summer, we'll see.  I did hit a snag (beyond that whole not owning a bike thing) last week as my first run resulted in pain in my shins (not the sharp pain of shin splints I am so acquainted with, but a dull pain that lasted most of the week after the run) and I had to stop and will start back tomorrow.  I intend to return to the "Couch to 5K Running Plan" from this here cool site and will begin afresh with Week 1 tomorrow (after trying to jump to Week 5 last week since my cardiovascular level was up there - but my legs were not ready) and try to run Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

It is my intention to keep you updated on the status of the program here and so, if you are reading this and care... please ask me how it is going if you do not see an update as I could use the accountability to continue to work out.

Also, if you come across a decent road bike for not much money, you can let me know about that, too.