Weekend in Chicago

We went up to Chicago this weekend. Originally we were going to run in the marathon, but a stress fracture on my part and shin splints on my wife's part forced us from the running. But Oliver and my parents had not seen each other in several months and we still had friends who we had trained with who were running so we went up to Chicago.

We drove up to Chicago on Thursday night. I spent most of the drive trying to find the nearest ESPN radio affiliate as we listened to the Cardinals game. I'm not a big baseball fan, but it's hard not to know what's going on with the Cardinals when you live in St. Louis. Plus, it was an exciting game and more interesting than Central Illinois. Once we arrived, my mother welcomed us and immediately commenced playing with Oliver. They both had a great time. I chuckle about how extraneous I am when my parents get a chance to see the little one, but it is too true.

On Friday I got to work while my wife and mother took care of Oliver. It was perhaps unsuprising how difficult it was to get a lot accomplished. Plus, their DSL connection is very slow which complicated matters further. My mother and my father took Oliver with her to my brother's place so that she could watch my niece and Oliver play together. Later that night Papaswoof and Elistirk and Charlotte arrived. They crashed with us Friday night.

Saturday morning we got up and had breakfast. After breakfast, we watched Charlotte and Oliver play together for a while until it was time to take off. Then I took Papaswoof and my wife off to the airport to pick up Phil. Oliver stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. I remembered the wrong flight arrival time, but it wasn't too much of an inconvenience. After we picked him up, we went to the Marathon Expo. My wife and I picked up our packets and promptly returned our timing chips. We headed back to Papaswoof's hotel in order to pick up some of his stuff and stopped along the way for a late lunch. We ended up at my brother's place for a pre-race carb loading dinner. Oliver got to play with his cousin some more. Then we watched the first game of the World Series and headed to bed.

Sunday morning dawned cold, cloudy, and clear. The threatened rain barely materialized. As my brother and his girlfriend watched Oliver, my wife and I ran about trying to see Phil and Papaswoof as they ran. We managed to see Phil twice. We got his attention once. We didn't see Papaswoof until the end of the run because we were looking in the wrong sections of runners. In the end, they both did really well - beating their time goals. After the marathon, we ran into trouble coordinating various other parties from Phil's parents to Elitsirk and her family. In the end, Phil ended up going home with his parents and I ended up dropping Papaswoof off at his hotel. We went out to dinner with my brother and his girlfriend and then headed by my folks' place to say good bye. We didn't end up getting home until after midnight.

All in all it was a good weekend. I would have preferred to have been running, but other than that I have no complaints.

Marathon recap

Back in April, my wife got a note from her work offering her a free entry into the
Chicago Marathon. She was looking for an overarching fitness goal for the year. I had been interested in running more over the summer. Our desires coincided and the marathon training began. I sent a note to some friends about training for a marathon and got a few volunteers. We started training in May. The group continued to meet every Saturday in various configurations until two weeks ago. We added a runner who knew a friend of ours, but injuries forced her to stop training. Similiarly injuries forced both my wife and I to stop training. But our friends kept on training. And this past weekend, both of them not only completed the Chicago Marathon, but did so while beating their time goals. You guys rock!

And now I'm asking myself, what's next? Next week I should be able to start running again. Over the winter, I'll refocus my energies on shorter races - 5K, 10K, up to a half-marathon. I could run the St. Louis Marathon, but I'm pretty sure that it will be tough to find training partners for that. Instead, I'm more likely to do the Marathon relay event.

Anyone want to go for a run?

Castless

I went to the doctor's office this morning and got the good news that I can take the cast off! I'm still on the sidelines for the next few weeks, but the doctor didn't think that there would be anything wrong with me walking to work or walking around Chicago for this weekend's marathon. I'm psyched about getting the thing off.

Writer's block

This is about the fourth time that I've opened up a window to start a post and had little to nothing to say. I guess it's not that I don't have anything to say, but rather nothing is coming out.

I go to see the doctor tomorrow and should be released from my strap on cast. I'll be very happy to have it off. It's just been really annoying to deal with. Going up and down stairs has been quite a chore. Not being able to drive has been a pain. Having to curtail the amount of walking that I do has been really limiting. With the office having moved to Clayton, I'd like to walk, but I can't. Never mind enjoying the last of the fall weather and going for a run.

I'm headed to Chicago this weekend to watch the marathon that I should be running. Phil and Papaswoof are running and we are going to do our best to cheer them on. I'm looking forward to the trip as it has been quite a while since I saw my parents. They are looking forward to seeing me or more accurately they are looking forward to seeing Oliver.

My brother is coming down for a visit next week. I know that he is looking forward to spend time with his little buddy. I'm looking forward to spending time with him. I tend not to get to spend any time with my brother one-on-one as I only get up to Chicago a few times a year and so it usually turns into a Family Circus.

Not doing anything this weekend

My wife and I were trying to figure out if we had any plans this weekend. And for the first time in a long time, we don't. We don't have any nagging home improvement projects that need to get done. We don't have any runs scheduled (or would we be able to do any). We're not going any where. We don't have plans with any friends (yet).

I really don't know what to do with myself.

Bathtub experimentation

Oliver had a great time while taking a bath tonight. First, he filled a large cup with bath water very carefully. I couldn't tell if he was trying to get all of the bubbles or none of them, but whatever he was doing, he was doing it precisely. Once the water was in the cup, he stirred it vigorously with his scoop. Rinse. Repeat. Great fun.

Later I started trying to comb his hair. Eventually he got the comb away from me and dropped it in the water. The comb floated up to the surface. He pushed it down. it floated up. He pushed it down harder. It floated up. He held it down for a while. It floated up. He kept trying different tactics to sink the comb. It was fun to see his mind at work trying to solve the problem.

Ever get the feeling...

... like what is supposed to be helping you is in fact hurting you? It may be because I'm not all that bright and decided to walk to work on Monday, but my leg has been hurting me more than it did before I put on the strap-on cast that is supposed to be helping my leg heal. It may also be because I spent much of Saturday and Sunday with it off so that I could stain the deck. It may also be that I'm just frustrated because since the cast is on my right foot, I can't drive and am dependent on the kindness of others for my transportation. It may also be that I'm just more sensitive to how my leg feels since I know that there is something wrong with it. Whatever it is, I just have that feeling. And I have to wait another two weeks to see if my hypothesis is correct. Waiting sucks.

Hockey draft

This past Sunday I held a draft for the people who are doing my fantasy league this year. Because we had remote people, we opted to do the draft on line to mixed results. On the plus side, the usually interminal draft only took about two hours. Having an inflexible time clock set at 1:30 helped people who might otherwise spend 5:00 hemming and hawing over a pick make up their mind. The program took care of removing previously drafted players from the list, so there wasn't the usual problem someone asking in the 15th round if Joe Thornton had already been drafted. All good.

But we had a couple of people who had problems with the interface and ended up making some of the wrong picks. There was also a bit less of the intrapersonal interaction between managers that characterizes the usual draft. A lot of the stuff that happened in the room didn't make it on to the chat board. In the end, I think that I would do another online draft next year and maybe add a few more roster spots if it is going to go that quickly.

Night screaming deserves a quiet night

Oliver has been waking up in the middle of the night screaming. It wouldn't necessarily be so bad, but it also wakes my wife and I up too. And if we could divine what it was that was waking him up, we could fix it. But he wakes up calling for water and refuses his water cup. He wakes up for blankets and refuses the blanket we give him. And those are the times when we can decipher his requests. I keep hoping that this is a phase that will end in about a day and a half. But so far no luck.

Killing time

I've recently been turned on to Pandora, an off-shoot of the Music Genome project. You enter a band or a song, and it starts playing songs that sound like the band or song you started with. It works well, but only as long as you stay within the narrow confines of what you like about the particular band or song. I may like 80's Madonna and Ragtime, but the musical intersection is too varied to help Pandora effectively pick music that you'd like. I have found some bands that I like using Pandora. Massive Attack puts out music that fits within the realm of what I like in electronica. But I've learned that I don't like a lot of music that fits within the realm of electronica. This is also a massive time sink, FYI.

Our gate is on our back fence, giving us a complete fence. I just need to put in the latch so that you can use the gate. Details, details. It's been somewhat satisfying to know that we did it ourselves even though I know that whoever comes in after us will wonder what inebriates put it up.

Tonight there was a hash that started not too far from my house. so I stopped by beforehand and at the on-after to put in an appearance. It was literally too close not to go. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be limited to just appearances for a while. As it is, I'm just killing time until my leg heals.

Hey - it's only been a month...

September was an interesting month. That's why I haven't written anything in a while. And for once I'm only being a little bit facetious.

We've been busy around the house. Oliver is proving to be quite a handful. I can't imagine what a difficult child would be like. He has been very excited about the new Metrolink stop and has ridden the choo-choo a number of times. Each time is just as exceiting though. Plus, in the morning, there is always the game of spot to choo-choo as we head to the highway. He's got a pretty good vocabulary that I'm getting better at deciphering.

The other night he even got a joke. I was trying to put him to bed and he kept calling for a ball. "Ba! Ba! BA! BAAA!" Finally, I said, "Oliver, are you my little sheep?" He paused. He thought about it. Then, he said with a smile, "Baaaa! Ba! Baaaa! Ba!" over and over for a good ten minutes. It didn't get him down any earlier, but at least I know that he shares my sense of humor - what there is, anyway.

Domestic chores are also eating up a lot of time. Beyond the usual day to day tasks, we have started a number of other projects. We have most of the fence up in the back of the house. We just need to put on the door in order to complete it. But Oliver has run out of patience with the whole exercise which has really put a cramp into our time to work on it. This past weekend I restained our deck. My wife has been working on fixing up ouor first floor bathroom and the addition.

Work kept me busy. The beginning of the month was devoted to preparing for an important demo. The later part of the month was spent doing code development. Perhaps the three most important/interesting things that happened were the road map, the Chili day, and the move. The road map that I'm talking about is the high level overview of our Go To Market Strategy. Up until the day when it was presented, I had an inkling of how much work it was going to take in order to get our system to production. After that I have a more specific idea of the functionality that we are going to have in January as well as some of the big pieces coming down the pipe. On the one hand it comforts me to know that that is all we have to do. On the other hand, we have to do it all.

The last Wednesday of the month we had a Chili day at work for both our company and our parent company. I had been debating as to which prize I wanted to win - hottest or best. As it happened, I forgot to start cooking my chili until the morning of the contest and threw it together in about 25 minutes. While competing against other chefs who had spent up to a week strategizing their dishes, I ended up winning the prizes for Most Interesting Use of Ingredients and Worst Dressed Chef. Those who know me know that I deserved both titles.

The following Friday our company moved into its new digs in Clayton. We're now on our own in a new space. It's kind of liberating to have some space to spread out. Plus, the office is only a mile or so away from my house. Ka-ching! I've been looking forward to this ever since I first talked to the project manager back in March. Today I walked to work. Tomorrow my wife will drop me off on her way to work.

I'm not actually being a weenie in having my wife drop me off at work. I have a stress fracture in my right leg and have a strap on cast. It seems that I put too much stress on my legs by training for a marathon while not dieting and gaining 20 lbs. Yes, folks, you too can train for a marathon and gain weight if you follow my example. So no marathon for me. No marathon for my wife either - nasty case of shin splints. There's not a lot of sympathy floating around at our house.

Before I was enfeebled, I did manage to hare a hash again. It started near downtown Clayton and I had the group do a Where's Waldo as I wandered around the Clayton Art Fair. Then the trail led them over the new MetroLink tracks and through Wash U's campus during a sorority softball tournament. The dirty old men of the group were quite impressed. One of the hashers got lost on campus and ended up in Forest Park. She managed to convince a bus driver to give her a ride to Clayton though...

In other recreational news, I went to a prerelease for Time Spiral, the newest Magic expansion. Over 20 hours of playing, I had a great time. I didn't win anything significant - only two packs - but I was in contention to win half of a box and could have split it with my opponent. However, I thought my deck was better than it was and I got run over but quickly. Instead of 18 packs, I got 0. Ah well, live and learn. But it was a great time and i really like the set. I'd like to buy a couple of boxes if I can.