Grandpa Tom

Grandma Karen

It took a few days, but Grandpa Tom and Grandma Karen got Simpsonized! The website seems to just get slammed with people, so if it works for you...consider yourself lucky! My pictures all came along with a certain level of cursing! Even Sydney took notice of that, she said "Daddy I didn't know you were a sailor!"

Simpsonize yourself

As seen on TV! If you are a Simpsons fan, you need to Simpsonize yourself into a cartoon. Find a good picture, and use Internet Explorer (no Firefox), and then head to www.simpsonizeme.com and remember to be patient. When you are done send me your picture and I'll post it! Here is our family:

Chris

Bridget

Sydney

Aiden

Okay, I get it!

No more about the Tour de France, I guess nobody shares my passion for the race. I have not had a comment in a long time, guess I'll just move on.

On to my REAL sports obsession, fantasy football. I just got the pictures of the Security League trophy from my friends in Rochester. Take a look:






I can't wait until this season gets underway!

More Cycling Drama

Just to keep you up to date on the Tour de France. So up until Sunday, 1 rider had tested positive for doping. And he had already pulled out of the race because of a bad crash. Then comes Monday when Vino got tossed as well as his whole Astana team (which included Andreas Klodden, who was in 4th place overall). Then today news broke of another rider who tested positive for testosterone. That rider, Cristian Moreni, and his entire team Confidis pulled out of the race today. Then in the biggest move yet, the overall tour leader Michael Rasmussen was pulled out of the race by his team Rabobank. In May and again in June Rasmussen failed to tell the doping testers where he was which is a violation of the rules. The testers must know your whereabouts 365 days a year in case they decide to make you give a random drug test, well he didn't tell them. And this is after he rode a great race on Wednesday when he won the stage in the grueling Pyrenees mountains. I'm telling you this soap opera is better that speculating on which celebrity (Paris, Nicole Ritchie, or Lindsay Lohan) is going to get busted DUI. It is a sad reflection on the sport, that even when testing has taken on so much prominence they continue to cheat. Vino had a blood transfusion with someone else's blood, the odds of passing a test with that circumstance is 1 in 7000. The foreign red blood cells must look like tourists in a foreign country.

Anyway, Alberto Contador who rides for Team Discovery is now in first place. He is only 24 years old and entered this race hoping to win the tours white jersey as the tours best young rider. He may end up winning the yellow jersey as the best overall rider! Currently in third place is Levi Leipheimer, an American who also rides with Team Discovery.

Um, Yeah

So disappointed to hear that the tour de France was smacked with another doping scandal. Kind of ironic that I spoke about Vinokourov yesterday by saying that he would need plutonium to win. Turns out he just tried a blood transfusion first. What a jerk. Of course Vinokourov stated that it was just a natural bodily occurance as a result of the 3 crashes that he has had in this years race. Um, yeah right. That's why they found red blood cells from another human being floating around in your body. Good luck with that argument buddy.

TDF highlight

Despite the doping scandals I still like the Tour de France and I watch the highlights daily. Sunday's race was by far the best of this years tour. Anyway, I stumbled across this youtube clip of a famous accident in this years tour involving a bike and a dog. Amazingly neither the dog nor the rider were hurt....the bike.....well just check out the front wheel on that one! Click here

Best quote on one of the race favorites who is now out of contention: "Prerace favorite Alexandre Vinokourov was dropped on the second climb of Stage 14 and, despite rallying to win Monday's stage, is now so far back he would have to test positive for plutonium to get back into it."

Money Back

We got the refund from the Fuel Freedom Company today, the whole amount was credited to our account this morning. A bit of a relief to say the least. Still doesn't explain the charges in the first place, but with new cards and new account numbers as well hopefully we have fixed that problem. In a few weeks I'll have to pull a credit check to make sure nothing else fishy is going on. But we'll give it a few weeks so that this latest issue has a chance to get put on there....If anything is even going to appear, not sure about that one?

Rough Monday

Well this is one of those days you would like to forget ever happened...and it isn't even noon yet! So it really all started last night when we went to bed, our house was at 87 degrees! It was way too hot for me to sleep, even the cool basement offered little relief. So I tossed and turned all night, I think I got about 5 hours of sleep. Then I had to get up early to take the car over to the place where it is getting the trailer hitch installed. So the kids and I arrive there with the plan of walking 20 minutes home. Well the shop was crowed and the line wasn't moving, seems their printer was jammed and nobody could fix it. Finally they get to us, and take the keys and we are on our way. No sooner did we get home when the phone rang. I saw on the caller id it was U-haul, I thought "Oh great they already decided they can't do it!" Well the guy says that they ordered the hitch, they received the hitch, but now the hitch was no where to be found. So they had to order me a new one and I have to wait a few more days. Having just barely cooled down from the first walk, I venture back with the kids in the stroller. After that we decided to go to the rec center and the library. So I dropped the kids off at day care (Sydney in a pull up after an accident in the car) and went for a swim. I make it 150 yards - 3 laps - and the power shuts off! So they cleared the pool and I waited around for a few minutes when they announced that a back-ho had cut through a power line. So here I am all set for a nice workout, just barely got soaking wet, and now I have to pack up and leave. I was starting to get irked at this point. So I think to myself, well at least the library will be nice.... Well we show up and I haul my arm full of books and kids to the counter where I asked if I could make sure this was all of the stuff I had checked out. The lady checks everything back in and says that we still have one book missing and due today. "Great" I think, so I went to renew that missing book and I go to get my library card out of my wallet. Is it there? Nope! Forgot to put it back in after our last trip! She let me renew that one and check out one more by just using my drivers license.

What a crummy day, I think today is a sure fire nap day....maybe when I get up from that things will be better??

Credit Card ripoff

Well the inevitable has finally happened, somebody got a hold of our credit card number and tried to purchase $450 worth of chemicals. I did a Blackle search on the company, Fuel Freedom International, and they make an additive that you put in your gas tank that is suppose to improve MPG. When I talked to the company they said that the information given to them was similar to my info, just off by a few numbers. The credit card company has started a fraud investigation, and I canceled the card and they are sending me new ones with new numbers. It is pretty scary stuff, and I was freaked out for a few days while we were sorting things out. To make matters worst the purchase of the camper took our bank account down to $9.36, so to cancel our credit card really put us in a bind! We had a few nervous days of finger crossing hoping that no charges would post to our account until Bridget's paycheck posted on yesterday. The credit card company, Chase, really didn't seem very interested in the fraud case...just sort of ho hum, but I guess they deal with it every day. I wanted them to say they were going to go catch the bad guy and send them to jail. They also didn't give me a good feeling that the money would be returned to me, I guess they will investigate....but as of right now we are out the $450!

High Tech Hippie

I know that there are readers of my blog that have more knowledge than I on this subject, but I thought what I found was interesting so I thought I'd share. Apparently white colors on your computer take more energy to produce than darker colors or black. So there is this website called Blackle.com which is nothing more than Google.com with a black background and gray text. Here is an explanation lifted from Blackle's site :

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

From the 750 Megawatt-hours link above:

Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year.

If you wanted to take it one step further, here is a website that allows you to darken any website just by opening up a page and then selecting a bookmark and poof the colors are inverted. Just drag the Darken Link into your bookmarks folder and it works from there. Pretty cool.

Busy summer update

Just when I said the swimming lessons were a bit tame for Sydney....last night they worked on bubbles and back floats! See the teacher must read my blog! If she does I wish she would comment once and a while, I wish somebody would!!!!

Busy summer

We have been a busy crew out here! You've seen the pictures of Sydney in her dance get up, and she has already had 1 swim lesson. We go for our second swim lesson tonight. She is very excited! In her first Jellyfish class they didn't really do too much that she hasn't already done. They sat on the edge of the pool and kicked, they played with pool toys, and they did a couple of jumps into the water. As Bridget says it is better that she is already comfortable doing more than that, this way she won't be overwhelmed for her first lessons. I hope they will let her go to the next level, Starfish, they were doing things like back floats and blowing bubbles under the water. That is where we have Sydney right now on our own when we go to the pool to play.

During the first lesson Aiden and I got to play in the pool too. We splashed around and had a good time, 30 minutes or so was pushing it in terms of his warmth....his lips were blue by the end!

Lots of fun!

New Camper

We just bought a pop up tent camper. We are super excited as we think this will allow us to do more camping and worry less about the kids being eaten by bears. It is a one sided pop up with 2 beds. It has a sink, a 2 burner stove, and some storage cabinets. It has a light or 2, and a dining area. That's about it, we were looking to stay relatively primitive...I think we succeeded. Another issue was that we needed to stay light. The VW can pull 2000 pounds and this trailer is in the 1200 to 1500 range. Anyway, will write more if I think of anything I forgot. Check out the pictures:

Tiny Dancer pt. 2

Click on the link and sing with me now:

"Hold me closer Tony Danza"............

That's funny.

Tiny Dancer

As promised a pic of Sydney in her dance get up. Pretty Cute huh?

Fun Friday

Sydney has her first dance class today! I don't know who is more excited Bridget and I or Sydney. Bridget is excited cause Sydney is going to wear her dance leotard complete with tutu. I am excited cause I get to watch my little princess dance and have fun (in her tutu) and I get a small break from watching after her. Sydney seems excited, but is also sort of fixed on cartoons at the moment.

Yesterday we busted out her new birthday roller skates and went all the way to the end of the block and back. I let her do it on her own for the most part and she even fell twice. She really liked her pads! Then towards the end of the night we went down the street on her bike. She is getting close to mastering pedaling, but needs work with steering.

Then the power went of for 2 hours last night. It was after the kids went to bed and there wasn't much to do, so we did what any good couple would do.......and yada yada we went to bed.

Have a good weekend!

My little girl turns 3

Three years ago, on this very day I was so overwhelmed by the birth of my daughter I made one of the funniest statements of my life. Bridget had a very long labor after being induced at 8 AM in the morning of July 10th. I guess I sort of thought the baby would come rather quickly after that...no such luck. Sydney was born very early in the morning on the 11th by C-section. So after that long period of time and the stressful pacing by myself alone in our room, they finally took me to the OR I was able to witness the birth. I was peeking over the curtain they had around Bridget's legs (I wouldn't recommend that) and seeing her innards in a way I hope to never see again, I became a bit queezy. So the doctor pulled the baby out and said "now daddy, announce to the world what it is!" And all I could see was this goopey, messy, screaming, alien looking thing and I said "I....I.....I don't know." The doctor looked at me kind of oddly and said "it's one of these" and pointed to Bridget. I said "it's a girl?" It was a HUGE shock cause both Bridget and I were convinced that it was going to be a boy. Anyway, I usually catch a lot of flack for not knowing the difference between a boy and a girl at that moment....but rest assured I nailed that question the second time around when Aiden was born!

swim

Well I found a way to beat the heat and get some exercise. I swam 2000 yards yesterday, and today tried to get back in the pool for another workout. Only downside was that my shoulders, tricepts, and lats were all sore. Thankfully Bridget was swimming with me, and she seems willing to goof around more than swim lap after lap. So we goofed around for about 700 yards, then went down the water slide once and then hit the hot tub. Sounds like a good workout doesn't it? I am going to run my 5 miles tonight when it cools off, it is already a cooler day...you know 97 degrees. I think that is about it for now.

Good Weekend

We had a good weekend with Grandma Tom, Grandma Karen, and Aunt Melissa. We had a great Birthday party for Sydney on Friday. Sydney was so excited and she got tons of cool stuff. From roller skates to swim lessons she is set for the rest of the summer. Grandma Karen made an awesome "pink princess" cake, which was Sydney's main request for the day. As for the grown ups we played lots of games of Yatzee at night down in the cool basement. On Saturday I ran 18 miles, it was rough....and I returned to the house swearing I was never going to run again. But now a few days later I am ready to go out for a run. The downside of the weekend was the attempted hike on Sunday. Sometimes a 3 year old wants to do something and sometimes they don't. Unfortunately this was one of those not gonna do it days. But all was not lost we found a pretty good place to eat in Heber City called The Hub. Great pie if you are ever passing through on an empty stomach.

Figures!

There was a really cool billboard on the highway near my house. It had an animated teenage boy holding a large soda and huge thing of fries. And across the top it said "you are also supersizing your gut!" The billboard was created by Intermountain Health (one of Bridgets employers) and their ad campaign for a healthier Utah. I tried to take a picture with my camera phone, but I was driving past and that didn't work out so well. Anyway, on my way by it today I saw that the billboard had been redone....WITH A McDONALDS AD! Yep, that sounds about right.

Ummm, it's hot

And I'm not talking about Paris Hilton's catch phrase. It's HOT HOT HOT. That's all I can really think of. We went to the Natural History Museum today just to try to beat it. But it was so hot walking from the car, it took our whole walk through the museum just to cool off. Then we had to walk back to the car. And the trip was made all that more great when I saw my first iPhone. Some lady was taking pictures with it, which I thought was a great use of a telephone! But I guess the iPhone does it all, but for $600 shouldn't it open a can or fly like a boomerang or something? At 99 degrees, today was the cool day of the week. Thursday and Friday are supposed to be 103! My lawn is burning, and I don't know if I can afford to water it more. So I am going to try watering it twice every other day for 1/2 the time that I was watering it. Maybe the lawn will respond to shorter, more frequent waterings. If it gets much worse I may go with this route!

Where have I been?

Well we just got back yesterday from a week long trip to Washington state and back. We had a great time, we spend Saturday driving the 15 or so hours to Port Angeles, WA where my parents live. And we stayed there until Friday when we made the ferry boat trip into Seattle to visit with Jenifer and Max. From there we drove 4 and a half hours to Pendelton, OR (site of our roll over accident a few years ago) and stayed at a nice motel across from the hospital where we stayed. Then yesterday we made the rest of the journey home. We drove the final 400 miles without stopping once!

It is always nice to see my parents and we had a great time hanging out with them. We gorged ourselves on yummy seafood, and the kids had their share of corn dogs. I spent hours trying to figure out how to get my parents Panama cruise video footage on to their computer and in a file that Windows Movie Maker could use. It was a pain but I got it figured out on about the last day so I didn't get much of their video done.

And what would a Chris post be without mentioning running! I went on 3 runs while in Port Angeles, 4 miles, 8 miles, and 9 miles. The 4 mile and 9 mile runs were really good, the 8 mile wasn't so bad but I hit a few BIG hills that really wore me down and I walked up some of them. The 9 mile run was really supposed to be a 17 miler, but at 9 I got lost and it started pouring rain, so I decided to call it good considering the miles were really good ones.

Well I should have more later, and I should be back in the blogging groove now!