Run, Forest! Run!

I ran in my first 5k yesterday. Official finish time 25:10.5. 41st overall, 2nd in my age bracket. Fastest time of the day was somewhere in the 17 minute range. People are fast! I always thought that the hard part about running outside would be pacing, but having a whole bunch of other people around you to pace off of makes it a lot easier. If I were 1 minute faster, I would have won a chocolate bunny! C'est la vie.

To be honest, I only ran this race because I won a free entry from ColoradoSpringsGiveaways.com. But, based on my experience, I'm certainly going to keep an open mind for future events! I had a great time!

In response to Elisabeth Rohm's blog post on people.com.

She posted the link on fb, and I felt compelled to comment. So, to share:



As a dad, I probably fall into the categorization that you laid out in that I'm not getting into a panic over the child care place at the gym that only fed our 10 month old half his bottle, because he's easily distracted by the noise of the other kids. My worries tend to gravitate towards the 'Is some inattentive driver going to run a red light or drift out of their lane and completely annihilate us?'

"Look, as far as I’m concerned, terrible things happen to children all the time." In the context of your unvoiced concerns, this is the line that I tie to your self-confessed paranoia. This goes beyond a healthy dose. This is the slippery slope that makes airlines have a policy re-seat unaccompanied minors that are seated next to men, and make Gayle King proclaim, with my interpretation, that men are generally useless at helping children at best, and out to kidnap them on other atrocities, at worst, and the worst is more likely than the best.

This is not to downplay the terrible things that do happen to children. This is to paraphrase from Lenore Skenazy, in that we as a first world society are safer now than we've ever been, the difference is that we instantly hear of every single incident, with full detail.

I've come to the conclusion that the best I'm going to be able to do is to teach Emmett to make the best decisions he can with the information he has available, and for his mother and I to trust that those we put in charge of him are being diligent. If we find that they're not as diligent as we'd like, we do what we can in our control. We don't put them in charge of him any more. We'd Yelp/Angie's list about it, too.

All that aside, you're doing just fine. You know it, but it's nice to hear it from someone else now and then, eh?

No response yet.

One thing I do like about twitter and fb and the like is having more or less direct lines of communication with people, where a comment like this might actually draw a comment from the author.

My Review of Joseph Marc 4007

Originally submitted at CoastalContacts.com

Superior structure and design give this sleek model its bold look with black exterior and orange interior.

Joseph Marc 4007

Not quite yellow, but happy nonetheless

By Charlie from Colorado on 8/16/2011

 

4out of 5

Sizing: Feels true to size

Pros: Lightweight, Comfortable

Describe Yourself: Trendy/Stylish Dresser

The yellow as depicted in the photos is more of a honey color. I was expecting something a little more vivid than that.

Color aside, I'm fairly happy with the frames overall. Not having nose pads, they sit very close to my eyes, and my eyelashes brush against the lenses, but this is fairly common for me with glasses, so I'm not counting that against the rating.

(legalese)

Bucket Lists

I randomly decided today to start my so-called bucket list.

The one item that I have on my list is to travel the blue ridge parkway and skyline drive by bicycle.
570 some miles. Not necessarily in one day. maybe over the course of a week or 10 days.

For a non-biker, am I nuts?

What's the term for the pipe-dream objectives like a bucket list, but there's no realistic way of achieving them?

Like driving to Prudhoe Bay, AK? Starting from the contiguous 48?
That, even to me, is a little crazy.

Resurrection

April 13th, huh? That makes 84 days since the last post.

Microrevolt - my keyword as of late. How to change something that you feel like requires a monumental effort to change. Change something tiny. Shake it up just enough. So far, it's working. I mean, look! A post!

What has happened in the last 84 days?

A trip to New Jersey for a cousin's wedding. That incurred a pair of 4 hour plane rides. The outbound flight was less then spectacular. Emmett had a 20 minute meltdown, which felt like hours. Our fellow travellers were beyond compassionate, with some newly appointed grandmothers even volunteering to hold him and walk with him. Some humanity remains in the world, it seems. The return trip was even better, with no meltdowns at all.

In between was a whirlwind of activity, including leaving him with a previously unknown sitter for the first time ever. Faith was the daughter of a coworker of a cousin of mine, not the one getting married. (My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother knows this guy who knows this kid...) Between family visits and rehearsals and rehearsal dinners and a wedding and a reception, we managed to squeeze in 4 trips to Manhattan. Having not used it much when I lived there, I was pleasantly surprised at just how efficient public transport in the area is.

Note to those considering travelling with an infant. If at all possible, staying in a hotel that has a suite arrangement (Embassy Suites, e.g.) would be ideal, as having a separate room that you can close the door to makes life a lot easier.

While we didn't get to have dinner at our favorite restaurant in the city, we did have a lovely sampling of places new and old. Empanada Mama and Gray's Papaya made return appearances, and Bombay Talkie made an debut. We saw the Harry Potter prop exhibit, which I thought was a little over priced for what it was, but that's just my opinion.

We toured the Highline Park, had a fabulous lunch from the gourmet trucks at the lot at 30th under the highline, buzzed through Chelsea Market, and, of course, whisked our way through central park, seeing the carousel, the zoo, part of the lake (not the meer, not the pond, not the pool, not the reservoir, the lake.) the Conservatory Garden. There was a brief stop in the lobby of the natural history museum, and a longer traipse through the Met. There was a wander through Zabar's, and a dash through Times Square. We saw the backside of Lady Liberty, albeit from a distance. And we STILL didn't do everything we wanted to do. We did get a brief glimpse of 41 central park west, where I've imagined we could see ourselves..  once we win that powerball thingy.

Emmett actually handled our marathon touring quite well, and got a good amount of tan on his legs. (Shame on us forgetting the sunscreen!) Our backs did not fare as well.

Speaking of Emmett, he's 8 months old as of Sunday. He sits up so well now, taking a good long while before he topples over, unless he's reaching for something. He still hasn't quite mastered the art of crawling, instead preferring to slide along on his head while his legs do the pushing. When he's not scooting along thusly, he holds his head up quite nicely on his arms, though. Just needs to coordinate the two.

June 30th was our 10th wedding anniversary. It's kind of hard to fathom that, but here we are, and quite pleased with ourselves, to boot. Sadly, there were no blue boxes with white ribbon involved. I did, however, abide by the traditional wedding gift material of aluminum, surprising Laura with a Dell XPS 15z. despite being the same screen size as her old Studio 15, it's a wee bit wider. The resolution on the screen is higher, which is taking her some getting used to, but the processor is both faster and cooler, resulting in quieter use that doesn't shut down randomly due to overheating. It says it's 5 pounds, but it certainly feels heavier. While there have been some complaints on the net about finish quality, so far, it's held up nicely. Then again, it's only been a week.

That's been the two major events recently. Minor events include finally getting some mulch on the gardens (thank you to the black forest slash and mulch program), filing a claim for hail damage on the roof (no estimate yet though), discovering a leak in our plumbing causing a drip in our garage (haven't fully explored the extent of the leak at this point), and attending the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, which is much nicer than some of the other street 'art' festivals we've attended in the past, in that there's actually ART there, and a good amount of it.

Festival Anecdote: we attended a cooking demo where the guest chef was demonstrating making sausage. After hearing her say 'intestines' for the ump-teenth time, we established that it would make for an interesting, albeit liver-unfriendly, drinking game, taking a shot for every utterance of 'intestines'. There would have been no survivors.

Finally, my brush with blogdom. Helping some friends pack up their condo to move back to Ohio (I know, I don't understand it either.), a long time friend of theirs, Ashley, popped in to shoot some pictures. I just had to be a blog nerd.

 <-aforementioned blog nerd.

We are at 0 consecutive days of blog posts! Let's keep the streak going!

Reminds me of a witty response to 'how are you doing?' "I've beat my previous record for consecutive days alive!"

Fits and starts

I'd like to say that I've been writing bits and pieces here and there over the last month and just not posting them because they don't seem worthwhile.

But then I'd be lying.

The cupcakes turned out well. Attempting to rig a pastry decorating bag out of sandwich baggies and a $1 grocery store tip doesn't work all that well. Especially when you're trying to do a triple color frosting.

for whatever reason, I could only ever get two of the colors to come out at the same time, unless you count a slight hint of green that came out on the primarily orange/white ones.

By all accounts, my own included, they were quite tasty, and I think we might make them again next year, if only as an excuse to buy some Guinness.

On to other topics, Emmett's 5 months old this month. He survived another airplane trip to California, had a lovely meltdown during the baptism ceremony, and dipped his toes in the ocean again. We had a lovely day at the beach (It was in the 90s that day, so it was appropriate beach weather), and his parents got to stuff their faces on foods not available in Colorado.

He'll be enduring yet ANOTHER plane trip in June, this time to Newark, for one of my cousin's weddings. A 4 hour plane trip with a 7 month old ought be interesting. I know I'm racking up negative karma points for doing so, but I tried the trick of reserving the window and the aisle and leaving the middle seat empty, in hopes that whoever opts for that seat also opts for a relocation upon seeing the baby.

On to a different slant. Emmett met his first celebrity, and it wasn't even while we were in California! He met Tim Gunn, of Project Runway. He was doing a tour of the Lucky Jeans stores and signing books and taking pictures. He even commented positively on Emmett's attire, which is a bonus, coming from Tim.

I'll try to be better about posting more than monthly, but that might just be wishful thinking.

Peach out.

Getting ambitious

Attempting these, in combination with this. Will let you know how it goes.