9:09 Pace?

In order to finish the mini-marathon in 2 hrs, I have to run at least a 9:09 mile. Earlier in the year, I was running 8:30 pretty easily. Eventually, I was having too much pain and had to back off. With the Tylenol I got for free, I should be able to endure a little faster pace after I get warmed up. There's plenty of recovery time later when I am sitting in the theater watching Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I don't go to see many movies these days, but since I saw the PBS version, I need to see what they have done with the story now. Hopefully, I won't be in too much discomfort to understand the reality that "42" is the answer.

Check out AlabamaJenks' post on Buzzard's Root today about the impact that failing to raise children properly is having in the school system. The young boys of the children he describes have fallen way off the pace toward becoming biblical men as rendered by Dr. Albert Mohler.

What's in the Bag?

Today's the big day for picking up runner's packets at the Runner's Expo for the Kentucky Derby Festival Mini-marathon. This year they threw in some energy gel with caffeine and carbs galore. There is also one dose of 8-hour Tylenol and some pain relieving cream. I have no excuse for hurting this year. The forecast looks dry for Saturday morning, with substantial winds. I'm going to give myself about 3 miles to get loose and then I hope to pick up the pace over last year's 10:12 mark. I want more like 9:30 this time.

Narnia to Hit the Screens in December

Just yesterday, I saw that there will be a new movie coming out in December. Big deal, right!? There are always new movies coming out in December to get the Christmas dollars. This movie, if they do it right, may end up being my favorite movie ever. C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is being made into a new movie. It's been out before in cartoon and PBS versions. This time, we'll get the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings quality movie.

While I am very interested to the see the movie, there a couple of reservations I have. My first fear is that they are going to dumb down or eradicate the Christian imagery. Lewis was retelling the story of Christ's redemptive work through Aslan. Maybe Aslan will not turn out to be just some magical, mystical, animal guru.

The other fear is nothing that anyone else can prevent. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is my second favorite book for all time. It runs a very close second to The Voyage of The Dawn Treader - another book in the series. I know what things look like in these books and there is no way that the movie will look like my images. In watching the movie, I will lose touch with my "Aslan" and my "Lucy." My "Cair Paravel" will be gone. The only real solution I have to this problem is to read the series one more time before the movie. I can say goodbye to the old version of those characters and places then. It'll be tough - I've known them better than 20 years.

Running in the Rain?

This coming Saturday will feature my second mini-Marathon. I've been training off and on since December for it this time so as to avoid increasing my mileage too quickly and having an overuse injury. Last year, the running resulted in a stress reaction in my knee. There wasn't any of that this time around, but I have had some real problems with my calf in the left leg and lower shin in my right. Just last week I finally put it all together that I had been running too many hills. The mini that I am running is part of the Kentucky Derby Festival. It does have some significant hills, but I have made them too much a part of the training routine. While doing a 95% flat track for last week, my legs have fared much better. Now I know. The only hindrance to a great run on Saturday appears to be a good chance of rain, but it's still several days off. Maybe the meteorologists have it wrong. After the Thunder Over Louisville disappointment, I hope they are. For the record, I will not be going to Cincinnati the next day to run a marathon like Gary Van Kuiken.

Fun Day at Home

As I suggested earlier, we decided it would not be a good idea to go the river for Thunder of Louisville. Despite what started out to be a busy day given the effects Friday night's weather had on my network at work, we ended up having a good time today playing at home. I got out the tent my wife and I bought five or six years with the intentions of camping out a couple of times a year. In reality, it has really only been used twice. The tent cleared the ceiling by about 6 inches and barely left any other floor space in the basement, but we got put together. We put about a hundred and fifty plastic ball pit balls in there and a used toddler mattress. After I wrapped one of the basement support posts with a thick blanket, there was nothing keeping the kids from going wild. They really had a good time and I am surprised we didn't spend part of the evening at Kosair's Children Hospital with a broken bone, but everyone survived unscathed.

No Thunder for Me, Thank You

The weather forecast is getting worse. High in the 40's, windy and rainy for Saturday. I don't think the family will be going to Thunder Over Louisville this year and we're not the only one. That's a real shame - my kids love jets and airplanes.

Thunder and Snow Flurries?

The latest forecast for weather in Louisville on Saturday is calling for a windy day with a high in the mid 50's. I don't know about taking the kids out there. It's not easy carrying 20 and 30 pound ice chunks back to your car a mile away. Someone in front of me in the lunch line today mentioned the possibility of flurries. We may be sitting at home with me firmly ensconced in the recliner watching the air show and fireworks. I guess we'll have to make a decision tomorrow - there's some childcare for our 6 month old at stake here as well.

Here Comes the Thunder

One of the things my wife and I have enjoyed since moving to Louisville a decade ago is the Kentucky Derby Festival. Now we get the delight of taking our kids down to the Ohio River to watch an incredible air show as part of "Thunder Over Louisville." It's rough on the feet and the seat, but you can't beat this free show. Our boys talked for quite a while about the airplanes last year and after this year's show, I don't know if I will be able to contain them. Saturday, we'll pile up the car with blankets, food and drinks and a double stoller. Since we will have to park a mile away probably to get a spot, the double stroller is not just a nicety, it is a requirement.

As long as we can get past the protestors without incident, we are really looking forward to a good time with the kids. Just help me remember the sunscreen.

Stay tuned here because I might try to do an audblog from the show on Saturday.

Five Babies for a Surrogate Mother

On the news yesterday was a story about an Arizona lady who is giving up the $15000 contracted fee for being a surrogate mother for a couple childless for nine years. She seems like a hero at first glance. Teresa Anderson says she realized how much it was going to cost the childless couple to raise the FIVE BABIES SHE IS CARRYING. Quints are definitely rare, but not so unusual these days because of the fertility drugs. There are some real problems with her situation as pointed out in an Arizona newspaper's recent article.

I am not so much concerned about the number of children she is carrying. What bothers me is how disconnected from the lives of these babies she portrays herself to be. She says that when the doctors discovered how many there were, the doctors asked her about "selective reduction" - (a.k.a. selective fetal homicide). She was willing to do whatever the Gonzalezes wanted to do. They were obviously reluctant to tell her that she had to keep all five, but thankfully, that is the conclusion to which they all came. Teresa now admits that this pregnancy is keeping her from being able to focus on her own two children. Obviously, the biology belongs to the Gonzalez couple, but the hormones, pain, and stress mostly belong to Teresa.

It is big of her to forego the money and give up her livelihood for several months - no doubt. However, the nice parts of this story are covering up another confusing tragedy in which these children will just change hands without their mother seeming to have any emotional attachment.

First Mowing of the Year

The yard was telling me it was time. The neighbors had not openly complained about the dandelions, but I would not be surprised to hear that they were secretly planning to spray my yard with a weed killer. The mower started just fine, I had my cheap plastic bags out, and I was able to get the majority of the yard cut in about a half-hour. Here's the thing I hate about what the mower revealed. The neighbors all either spend a lot of hours fertilizing with weed-and-feed type fertilizers or they pay Company X to come spray their yards. Inevitably, they have nice, verdant green grass. I have what can more closely be described as hay, except that any horse with half a brain would never eat it because of the high weed content. That is, there's hay where I didn't pile up the stacks of leaves that I raked off my driveway at the end of last fall. There is no grass there. I am not sure how I feel about that. Where there was grass, there was at least the vibrant yellow of dandelions and the royal purple of wild violets. The way it looks now, it's cleary not going to win any awards from the local beautification council. At least before, it might have been able to garner some admiration from the environmental types.

My reward: I finished as it was getting dark so I could not see the quality of my work nor look for the bolt that fell out of the handle. The bolt screws into a large wingnut so as to hold the top part of the handle to the lower part. Maybe it will show up tomorrow - I hate looking for stuff like that at Home Depot.

Finding Other Blogs to Read

It seems like a fairly net-savy person could find a place to start reading other blogs for inspiration, ideas, and good examples of blogging. However, I have spent a couple hours over the last twenty-four looking for some sort of directory or search function for blogs at blogger.com. I realize that there is the list of the 10 most recently updated and that there are many blogs mentioned in articles here and there, but where is “the guide.” It’s hard to keep up with 10 billion (or whatever) blogs, but there should be something – and there probably is. However, my “Dashboard” doesn’t have any reference to such a thing.

I am just starting to realize the potential of this thing. I knew blogging was out there, but I had no idea about the different forms and uses it takes.

This post is coming by email. If I get this right and it works, I’m hardly going to be able to contain my excitement.

Sadly, it hasn't yet. I am doing it manually. We'll see what happens as the day goes by.

Initial salvo

So I've played around with this blogging thing in the past, but I just decided to get serious about it. I have no idea what kinds of topics are going to come up here - I'll just play it by ear.

There is no way that I am going to spend hours researching topics to write articles here that truly contribute to the intellectual storehouse. Neither do I know anybody who can provide me scoops on anything interesting so that when some big story breaks - like the Rather-gate mess - don't come looking here for some news; I don't know anything.

A couple of things you can be assured of when you come here - any grammatical errors will be due either to lack of sleep, lack of time for proofing, or some unexplainable digital mix-up in the electronic cosmos. There will be NO split infinitives NOR sentences ending with prepositions unless I feel like the preposition is unavoidably tied to the verb. You can rest easy that subjects and verbs will agree in number, the pronouns will agree with their antecedents in gender and number, and that I will use the proper case of those pronouns. It kills me to hear people say, "Johnny went to the store with Alex and I." I will use the proper past participle of most any verb. You will never read something like "What he should have did . . ." in this blog. And so on. If you see any errors, I want to know about it so that I can fix it, although I may use obviously poor grammar sometimes just to make a point as I did here earlier.

Please enjoy reading. I don't gripe nearly as much as the previous paragraph would indicate.