see that photo up there?

For a while I have thought that there was too much wasted space above the dinner. The books and all are nice, but it detracted from the subjects. I dropped it into MSPaint, and cropped it down to the above image.
Well.....for me, that just changed it ALL around. Why? No worries, I'll explain.
The Patriarch is my Mom's Dad, who we called Pop-pop, or just Pop. In my mind's eye he looked like Picasso. The kids above are (l to r) my cousin Sandy (my sr. by 3 months), my sister, Weeb...umm..errr...Lynette (younger than me in terms of the calendar, but much wiser), me (with my fly-away collars), and my cousin Shannon (Sandy's sister, younger than me by 3 years, i think...).
so what? well, it has been two days since i started this post. so? well, when the original picture was there, I paid more attention to the books and such, and less to the people.
Now, however, my attention is drawn to the word "accountability", Pop's facial expression, and my cousin Sandy's face and hand. The whole thing looks to me like Pop is trying to hold her accountable for something, and she is trying to deny culpability. well, if you knew the things that are going on in her life right now, you would understand that this is really funny, and if Pop were here, he WOULD be trying to hold her accountable, and she would be trying to deny culpability. Her sister, Shannon, down in the corner there, seems to be saying to the camera...are you flippin' KIDDING ME????? (which i think she says more often than not as things relate to Sandy. I know I do....)

so i give you this example to point out that often when we think we have seen all that there is to be seen, a simple change in perspective may open up that you hadn't noticed before. apply this to life, work, love, family, running, training plans, all that stuff........

Fun photo Friday

this actually happened on Thursday (yesterday), but I think that the photo was fun enough to wait for today to post it. It is, i think, my new favourite photo.

Hi, MOM!

We had been planning to run in a local turkey trot to support Zack's Place. We had participated in a World Record breaking event 2 years ago (longest continuous moving line of wheelchairs), and we really think that they do great work for our area.

Well, race day started off COLD. It was 18 when i woke up at 6. by the time we got out the door at 830 ish, it was only 22. Our initial plan was for Bryce and I to start running together, me pushing an empty stroller. After he got tired, he would hop in, we'd run until the last 100 meters, then he'd hop out and cross the line with me. We'd practiced our fists-pumping-in-the-air poses for the finish, and we were psyched!

yes, i know the bib is off center.

While we were hanging out in the gym before the race, B kept saying that he was cold. His eyes looked like death, and he was fairly quiet, which is not the norm for this 4 year old. Tracey suggested a new plan for the race: B and I would start together, then meet her a little way down the road. She'd take B and get in the truck to stay warm. They'd seek out a spot near the finish (ptp race, not a complete loop) and wait for me. When I got to them, B would jump back on the course, and we'd finish together. (I swear she's a genius!) So that's what we did. B and I hung back with the walkers so that we could be sure to be seen by T. That's when she snapped the picture above. 

As for the race itself, it was pretty good! The start was a complete MESS, and we were waiting around in sub-freezing temps for it to start. We started 15 minutes late, which translates into 25 minutes of standing there......

Since i started back with the walkers, i had to weave in and out of traffic for about a quarter mile after i dropped off B with T. no worries, it was kinda fun trying to spot open spaces up ahead. Once the road opened up, i just trotted along. I hadn't thought of this as a race, and wasn't planning on a PR. It was fun to look around and see other hats and get-ups. Next year I'd consider running it in a turkey costume. why not?

Here are the winners coming past T and B while they waited for Dad:

  

The first female was cruising! Me? Not so much. This was the first time that I had run on the road without music. I have no idea how people do this on a regular basis. The footfalls of other runners, their harsh breathing....all distracted me from my running. Good thing I am not headed for elite status anytime soon.

I'll leave you with some final pictures. We had a great time, B is still a bit under the weather, but the run definitely helped me get through the rest of Thanksgiving!

headed for the final stretch!

enjoying the endorphins!

Man the bilge pumps!

And BAM! just like that, the winter Holidays are upon us. Soon we'll be headed over the river and through the woods, sitting down at tables full of wonderful food, surrounded by friends and family who we may not have seen since last year's Holiday gatherings. Joy of Joys, the World comes together and like Bob Marley said, "Everything's gonna be alright."
Or will it?
If you don't want to read about a Derrick Downer, then leave this post now and run. Fast. Get in a good HIIT workout, then come back later in the week. Maybe i'll have posted something interesting by then.
This is the time of year when i sink into a dark place and struggle to come out. I don't like it there, I don't want to be there, but....there it is, and here I go. What is difficult for me to grasp is the WHY. I have a great family. we have a nice house. we have food, jobs, pets. wait. mebbe it's the pets. nah, just kidding. they're cool.
this year i have managed to stay 'afloat' longer than ususal. in the past, i have started sinking in the middle of october. this year, the leaks started just last week. so...WIN, i guess.
Here are some things that I have decided to try to incorporate this year in an effort to plug the leak, or better yet, find myself a better boat...

1) I will focus more on the children and less on the adult BS.
2) I will allow myself to make time for myself.
3) I will run more and enjoy it more (see #2).
4) I will reconnect with family members who i have lost touch with.
5) I will take up a new hobby that won't take me away from home.

I think 5 is a good start. Reminder, these are NOT resolutions, but rather changes in attitude, which should bring on changes in latitude, if only metaphorically.

Thank you for enduring this post. Tomorrow we will be back to our regularly scheduled shenanigans.

The Great White North

when i was in high school, Bob and Doug McKenzie were the biggest thing to hit our area since the Redcoats decided to tax us without allowing us to represent ourselves. (Hello? Taxation without Representation? Beuller? Anyone?)

I dunno how many times i was kicked out of the library (just kidding, Mom!) (no, i'm not) for singing their crazy song (no beer bottles involved, Mom) (at least not in the library). At anyrate, I've been to Canada a few times, and have yet to run into either Bob or Doug.

Although i may have 'met' their cousin.

Enter Neil. aka Barefoot Neil Zee. He and i have so much in common that we have called each other "Brothahs from an International Mothah" (no disrespect intended, no animals were harmed in the typing of this post).

ANYWAY, all that family stuff aside, last week I had the idea of  posting some alternate uses for your Garmin. Remember? It got cast aside in favor of some pictures of me and Steve with our CHIMO staches. (thanks, Rachael, for that new vocabulary word. Like how i used it in a sentence already? Boo-ya!)  Well....imagine my surprise when I looked at Neil's blog this morning. Yep. Pretty UNBELIEVABLE!!! I mean, I HAVE THAT SAME HAT!! (not really). I won't spoil the whole surprise. Just go to his site and check out an alternate use for your Garmin. Mine is totally lame compared to his.

Take off, to the Great White North.
Take off, it's the Beauty way to go.
Take off.......

Cooo-loo-coo-coo
coo-coo-coo-coooooo.....
-g-

it is Friday again...

and you know what that means, boys and girls...oh wait. i mean LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. NOT boys and girls.
at
all.
so i have a MO going. about a week or so ago, Rachael over at http://www.snarktart.com/ said on Twitter that I looked like a p e d o phi le because of it. rats, i can't find the tweet. anyway, i told T about it, and she cracked up and then AGREEEEED with her. then she told one of her friends, and SHE agreed, too. now her kids can't come to the house. just kidding abou that part. but her friend DOES agree...
what? hmmmmmm....not really showing the MO love.
then today i read Steve's blog where he shaved off his beard. here is one of the pictures and the caption (i kid you not. go check it out for realz. I'll wait......):

"Then I trimmed it down to "pedophile" length:"

 Whaaaaat? HEY!!! that looks like MINE!!!! this is SO not fair. Now, just because i took this picture (below) while i was sitting in my truck while it was parked behind a hotel yesterday, DON'T JUDGE ME. See??? there are WINDOWS in the truck. It isn't some broken down chevy van parked down by the river....and oh, never mind the rain coat hanging off the back of my seat.....move along now.....


like my darth vader tie? i knew you would.....

 so there, i hope you had a good laugh at me. BUT to let you know that I am not really nuts, here is another picture, or at least a screen shot, of some work that Teri (my Garmin) did for me this late summer. I wore her OUT! while i mowed the lawn:
no, actually you won't see it here. at least not NOW. why????

BECAUSE APPARENTLY BLOGGER HAS IT IN FOR ME THESE DAYS, AND WON'T LET ME LOAD ANY MORE FLIPPING PICTURES!!!!!!!

I paid my bill and everything. I swear. what the heck? anyway, tune in again some other time, after i feed blogger some chocolate, and i'll have some suggestions for alternate uses for your garmin. Yes, you can thank me now, if you'd like.

Bio-feedback trial

who says HRM's are just for sports? not me! for those of you following along, today was the day that I had to give a presentation for the Vermont Council on Quality's Healthcare Reform Summit. My topic was EMR, or Electronic Medical Record. Blah blah blah, bits, bytes, ones, zeros, and a whole buncha security and privacy built in. In short, it is the wave of the future, and the company that I work for is waaaaaay ahead on this one. whew.
but that isn't the real reason for this post. blah blah healthcare. what you all came to my blog for today was to see if i actually survived. well, yes, i did. someday i might go into detail about why i was so on edge about the whole thing. suffice to say it had nothing to do with my speech, or her speech.
i wore my chest strap for my garmin, but didn't wear the wristband part. I just carried it and then placed it on the table near me. so? i dunno why i told you all that. really doesn't matter.
so she (let's just call her "steph" for now, ok?) spoke two people before me. I had arrived at the venue VERY early, because i really didn't know what the heck i was doing, and ended up killing some time going for a walk and then warming up in a Barnes and Noble. yay, books! i went back to the hotel around 10 since the agenda said that there was a break scheduled at 1015, and steph was to start at 1030. they of course were running behind, so i sat in a chair in the hall and waited. Here i am, waiting....look closely at the tie.....yep, that's Darth.

As I sat, i noticed movement to my right. what could it be? mouse? caterer asking me to sample some truffles? nope. it was steph, headed to the powder room. i looked her way but tried not to look like i was sizing her up, because i wasn't. she half-assed waved at me and said, "hi, Gene." I said, "hey, steph, how are you?" she said that she was good, and then disappeared. when she came out, she didn't even glance in my direction. win.
when the break finally happened, i took a spot in the back row and waited for her to speak. her presentation was average, nothing really to write home about, but no complaints, either. she did well crunching all of her info into the compressed time slot. she made good eye contact with almost everyone in the room, but never really looked in my specific corner of the room. win.
the next presenter(s) were ones that i really wanted to hear. their topic was about creating the 'gold standard' with an employee wellness program. we have one at our facility, but honestly it is on life support and in need of some intervention. their show was good, but i didn't really learn much. oh well. after they were done, steph and her 2 coworkers booked it out of there as if their car was being towed. just as well.
i introduced myself to the Dr. who was following me. nice guy, young, fit-looking. he noticed Teri. i said that it was my Garmin, and that i was wearing an HRM as part of a biofeedback experiment that i was doing. he loved the idea. i didn't explain to him WHY i was doing it. he asked what my rate was at the time, and i said that it was 86. He said, "that's pretty good for someone about to give a speech to a room full of strangers."
win.
so here is the data.....what do you think? i think that i might wear it to sleep some night(s) to get a better sense of my perception of sleep time versus what my body actually does. i mean, otherwise, Teri just sits there on my cedar chest (not my hairy chest, my cedar chest. but i digress. often. here are the numbers:

not nearly as dramatic as i thought that it would be. this was a fun experiment!

DM Intervals

Yesterday i wanted to run. badly. the weather wasn't cooperating, so of course it was the dreadmill. i am learning to embrace, to LOVE the dreadmill. to OWN it, to rock it, to be ONE with the Dreadmill.... sure.

I wanted to do intervals. I have an interval program from AudioFuel, specifically this one. I have done it on pavement, but never on my new BFF, the treadmill. Not to be discouraged, I hopped on the bad boy and cranked up the volume.
Aside: Do people try to talk to you when you are wearing headphones? WHY???
I must say that I was not disappointed. Not long into the workout i was sweating almost as much as a long-tailed cat at a rocking chair convention!
People around me were giving me strange looks. Might have been because I would be cruising along at 150bpm and then suddenly (to them, but to me I had a count down!) shoot up to 170 or 180bpm. Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa~ It might have had something to do with the discharge of CH4 coming from my a.. somewhere right behind me. I dunno.
Aside: WTF, BLOGGER??? I had a paragraph, then a picture, and then a plea for advice....AND YOU LOST MY WORK~~! Just another item to add to the growing list of reasons why i feel that i should either a)move to wordpress or b) get my own domain. How hard could either one be, right? Thing is, my top two domain name choices have been taken. Huh? really? yep.....

Ok, so when i got on the TM, I wore Teri. Remember Teri? We've run around a bit together over the past year or so. When I took her out of my gym bag (don't judge me!) she copped an attitude right away, "Ummm...this doesn't seem right to me. What are we doing here?" "What are you talking about?", I asked. She sat there silently, her little bar desperately trying to fill, until finally she just said, "Are you indoors?" I clicked on the "yes" option and wedged her red little body between the console and a washcloth so she wouldn't rattle and bother the other people present. She's been good to me so far, so i guess i can't complain.
Shhh....she has NO IDEA what is in store for next year. I wanted to know how my HR did during the sprints and recovery periods. See below, and you'll know, too:
Aside: Save now. Click it. Click it!

See that? My heart rate just kept going up and up. Never really gave myself time to fully 'recover' in between efforts. I ask you: Is that bad? Should I be getting closer to 130 (or lower??) before I ramp the speed back up? Seriously. I need some advice. I felt really good during the run, and at no time did i feel like i couldn't go on. I think I had the machine up to 8mph for the last sprint, which is where you see my HR maxed out.

In other news, Thursday (today?) is the big day. I have to give that presentation that I mentioned a few posts back. Yep. So i am certain that I'll have some stuff to write on Friday......

Thanks for stopping by. If you live where there is usually snow but there ISN'T snow yet, and you are jonesing for some....check out Neil's recent blog posts. Good humor, great photos (not ALL of snow).