StarCrafty and the flu

Playing a lot of StarCraft beta…  got the flu pretty bad last Wednesday night along with Katie.  Both of us having the flu at the same time makes it pretty miserable to take care of Thalia, fortunately, she’s a good girl and let us nap off and on all day.

3am

Thalia sleeps in her “bed” now (the crib with a side removed), but now she’s less secure than she used to be.  She can fall sleep without us in there, but when she wakes up, she wants us near by.  We had been just bringing her up to our bed, but we don’t want that to continue for a year or so.  So here it is, 3am and I’m waiting for her to fall asleep so I can go back to bed.

Tanner

Since we’ve been in Florida, we’ve gotten outside a lot and already I’ve gotten a bit burned and eventually tanned.  I never noticed much of a change when running at high altitude, but whether due to being in better shape, or the change in atmospheric oxygen, I seem to be running faster and longer here.

Thalia’s definitely the most fun she’s ever been.  “Bollocks,” I say to all those people who said the newborn stage was the best and the one you miss and goes by the fastest and blah, blah, blah.  She’s interactive, fun and imaginative now.  After catching minnows at the river, when we got home, she’d leave the room and pretend to have caught a minnow and bring it to show us…  then when we told her to let it go into the water she’d set it (or smear it) on an end table and then run off to catch another one.  And I’m only expecting it to keep getting better for another decade or so.

…for the sake of updates.

Everything’s pretty much the same, I’m not witty enough to keep up with this crazy “blog heavy” world we live in.

Too scary to bear

Last night as we were getting ready for bed I went to let the dogs out.  I grabbed Bombadil and carried him to the door, opened it and Java went out, then I shoved Bombadil out (he always needs a little motivation).  Right away, Bombadil screams and runs back inside.  I look up and there’s a bear hanging on the corner of the deck.  Not a cute little baby one.  I instinctively scream (confirming my natural scream is deep and manly) and then start trying to get Java back inside.

Fortunately the scream was enough and he climbed down and then took off before Katie even managed to get down to look out the door at him.  Quite an adrenaline rush right at bedtime, though!

April Fools

One of my favorite holidays, but I mostly let it slide.  My intention for the day was to dramatically over-react whenever anyone did anything April Fools related around me, but nobody did anything April Fools related.  So I took a springy key chain thing and put it on my wrist and claimed that I was showing my support of scabies awareness month.  Maybe I’m growing up?  But I don’t think so.

The good news is that National High Five day is less than two weeks away now.

L8D Gaga

I’ll put myself on the pyre. Lady Gaga is awesome. As someone with good taste in music that’s stayed current on pop music developments for the past decade and a half, I’ll say that. Girl-pop, dance… not my styles. But she’s good.

It’s an interesting coincidence that Michael Jackson just died because she exhibits the same sort of pop-changing style and musical advancement that he did twenty plus years ago. Not only is she a great performer who writes her own music, she puts it all into her persona and image.


I realize that it would have been more clairvoyant if I’d posted this a year ago, but with her recent Telephone release (which, to be honest, I’m not too keen on the song…. YET) her artistry is completely apparent.

Bottom line, if you dismissed her as a Britney/Christina clone, you should give her a chance.

5k<30

Well, I was already pretty close to my first goal when I even made goals, but today I managed a 5k (on a treadmill) in 29:54, breaking the 30 minute mark. Not particularly awesome, but improvement. Now if I can do that consistently without killing myself the next goal should be easy.

Exercism

Not horribly long ago we joined a gym.  Gold’s Gym to be precise.  It was one of the more expensive ones
(at least, within the still reasonable range).  After my work discount and reimbursement, I think it comes out to be roughly $50 a month for all three of us (Thalia’s daycare, she’s not working out).

So with just trying to go as often as possible, I set a few goals.  Probably won’t achieve all, or even half, of them, but at least they’re there.  So when someone asks if I have goals, I can say “Hell yeah!”  In order:

  • 5k time below 30 minutes (started at ~37 minutes, down to 31.5 so far)
  • 10k time below 70 minutes
  • 5k time below 25 minutes
  • 10k time below 55 minutes
  • Half Marathon (at all, that’s 21.1k)
  • Half Marathon below 2 hours
  • 5k below 20 minutes (~6.5 minute miles)
  • 10k below 45 minutes
  • Half marathon below 1:45
  • Full Marathon

That’s it, no real time frame, hoping to be able to run a full marathon by the end of next summer (2011) but other than that, no limits.  I know, I tend to give up on this sort of thing…  but this time, I’ll probably give up at some point.  Maybe I can knock off a couple bullets first though.

Tradeable Armbands

Yup, “Adam Albert Brandes” anagrams out to be “Tradeable Armband”.  What anagrams does your name make?