Monday, April 30, 2007
What the heck?
We had a pretty good weekend, except what the heck kind of weather was that? I drove to the store yesterday and my car said it was 91 degrees outside. Now, I don't consider the thermostat on my car to be as reliable as the national weather service...but when I drive past banks and places that have the temperature lit up all over a sign they are usually pretty close. We were painting all day and I can attest it felt like it was really that hot. But what the heck, it's not even May yet...and where are my April Showers? I think it only rained twice this month...hardly enough to fight off the brown spots that are already starting to develop in my lawn. And one last what the heck...What the heck is up with the Yankees? I thought they were supposed to be viable competition or something. HA! They stink!! GO SOX!
Friday, April 27, 2007
Random thoughts
So here we are, another weekend on the horizon. Time for another session of Chris's random thoughts!
Random thought #1 - Today I swam 2000 yards straight through no stopping. I learned a few things doing this. It gets so repetitive doing this that I had a difficult time keeping track of laps. So for example I'd be swimming along and think "is this 250 or 300 yards?" I kept myself honest and always went with the lower figure. But it is hard to keep focused on that and keep you mind entertained since there is no music or scenery to look at like when you are running.
Random thought #2 - Bridget traded some of her shifts and did some sort of crazy finagling and now she has from tomorrow through Wednesday completely off! What does this mean? Lots of painting. I've been trying to put it off cause it is really no fun to paint by yourself, so now we have the next several days together to get it done. Will post pics when it is all finished. I still dislike painting though!
Random thought #3 - For the second weekend in a row the Red Sox and Yankees meet, this time in New York. Hopefully this weekend goes as well as last weekend did! Good luck Sox.
Random thought #4 - Saturday is my first long run in my marathon training, at 8 miles. I ran 8 miles about 4 weeks ago and it went very well so I am optimistic that tomorrow will go well too! I am going to hide a water bottle on the path I'm going to take and try eating some GU on the way. Should be fun. Oh yeah, I'm also going to run it at 6:30 AM so that I can start conditioning my body to work out at that hour of the morning since that's what time my marathon starts! Yuck!!!
Random thought #5 - The compost heap is fully constructed and ready to go. Today I am going to add my first few components as I mow the lawn, and deadhead a few tulips. I also have 2 giant bags of last fall's leaves ready to go in there too! going to be fun.
Have a great weekend!
Random thought #1 - Today I swam 2000 yards straight through no stopping. I learned a few things doing this. It gets so repetitive doing this that I had a difficult time keeping track of laps. So for example I'd be swimming along and think "is this 250 or 300 yards?" I kept myself honest and always went with the lower figure. But it is hard to keep focused on that and keep you mind entertained since there is no music or scenery to look at like when you are running.
Random thought #2 - Bridget traded some of her shifts and did some sort of crazy finagling and now she has from tomorrow through Wednesday completely off! What does this mean? Lots of painting. I've been trying to put it off cause it is really no fun to paint by yourself, so now we have the next several days together to get it done. Will post pics when it is all finished. I still dislike painting though!
Random thought #3 - For the second weekend in a row the Red Sox and Yankees meet, this time in New York. Hopefully this weekend goes as well as last weekend did! Good luck Sox.
Random thought #4 - Saturday is my first long run in my marathon training, at 8 miles. I ran 8 miles about 4 weeks ago and it went very well so I am optimistic that tomorrow will go well too! I am going to hide a water bottle on the path I'm going to take and try eating some GU on the way. Should be fun. Oh yeah, I'm also going to run it at 6:30 AM so that I can start conditioning my body to work out at that hour of the morning since that's what time my marathon starts! Yuck!!!
Random thought #5 - The compost heap is fully constructed and ready to go. Today I am going to add my first few components as I mow the lawn, and deadhead a few tulips. I also have 2 giant bags of last fall's leaves ready to go in there too! going to be fun.
Have a great weekend!
Thursday, April 26, 2007
craigslist is cool!
So I'm really getting into this craigslist thing. Yesterday I bought some landscaping bricks for a couple of my flowerbeds. I paid $25 for 55 bricks that sell for $1.75 each at Home Depot. It was a great deal! The VW looked a little overwhelmed with all of that weight and I bottomed out pulling into the driveway, but it was worth it! As soon as my flowers take off I'll send some pictures! I was excited because I;ve been frying to get some cheap bricks on craigslist and they usually go so fast. By the time I call they were always gone. One guy even told me his bricks would be there for me to pick up, and by the time I drove 40 minutes to get them...he gave them to somebody else!
I also posted 2 ads on craigslist! One for our baby tub and toddler swing (kind that hangs from a doorway inside the house) and another ad for an activity mat for newborns. I'm trying to sell the tub and swing for $15 and the mat for $15. We even got the mat for free from some neighbors in Rochester, so that would be all profit. If these two sales work I may "thin out" the toy heard in or playroom. As I just cleaned it all today and it took me forever to get all of those toys back on the shelves!
I also posted 2 ads on craigslist! One for our baby tub and toddler swing (kind that hangs from a doorway inside the house) and another ad for an activity mat for newborns. I'm trying to sell the tub and swing for $15 and the mat for $15. We even got the mat for free from some neighbors in Rochester, so that would be all profit. If these two sales work I may "thin out" the toy heard in or playroom. As I just cleaned it all today and it took me forever to get all of those toys back on the shelves!
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Wednesday's news and notes
I really don't have anything exciting to report so I'm just going to ramble for a bit. I have been working and painting the house...that's about it. Boring I know. The good news is that the first coat of primer is almost totally done on the entire house. It is the slowest cause I have to scrape the old peeling paint off, then sand it with a wire brush, then paint. Very time consuming, but the next coat of primer should go much faster. Then we will be ready for color!
I have started my marathon training. Yesterday I ran 3 miles at 9:16/mile pace. It felt good, but the downside is I had to push the kids in the stroller....it's been a while since I have tried that with a serious run and it really sucked the energy right out of me. Could be a good training method for me, sort of like running with a 60 pound backpack on. If I did that for the next 17 weeks I'd run like a gazelle!
Rest easy, we recycle now. My goal for earth day was to establish some sort of recycling plan for our house. If that meant sorting our own recycle stuff and taking it to a facility somewhere or signing up through the trash company. We chose the latter after having checked out the closest 2 recycling centers which were nothing more than dumpsters filled with a ton of other trash (not recyclables). The downside is that it costs $48 a year to use the trash company's recycling service. Something tells me that a large majority of people are not willing to pay that price, it seems hard enough to get people to just put recyclable stuff in a separate bin...let alone pay $4 a month to do it! They need to find some lower cost alternative!
My other hair brained idea for earth day was to create a compost pile. A typical family disposes of over 500 pounds of scrap food each year (I just made that up to make this post look official) of which most of that can be turned into compost. So this morning I raided a trash heap outside someone's house in the neighborhood for 1 and a half wooden pallets. Those are going to be the walls of my compost heap, the 1/2 one will be the door and then I need to acquire 2 more pallets for the other walls. I hope to find those pallets by the middle of next week so I can start my own compost recipe!
I have started my marathon training. Yesterday I ran 3 miles at 9:16/mile pace. It felt good, but the downside is I had to push the kids in the stroller....it's been a while since I have tried that with a serious run and it really sucked the energy right out of me. Could be a good training method for me, sort of like running with a 60 pound backpack on. If I did that for the next 17 weeks I'd run like a gazelle!
Rest easy, we recycle now. My goal for earth day was to establish some sort of recycling plan for our house. If that meant sorting our own recycle stuff and taking it to a facility somewhere or signing up through the trash company. We chose the latter after having checked out the closest 2 recycling centers which were nothing more than dumpsters filled with a ton of other trash (not recyclables). The downside is that it costs $48 a year to use the trash company's recycling service. Something tells me that a large majority of people are not willing to pay that price, it seems hard enough to get people to just put recyclable stuff in a separate bin...let alone pay $4 a month to do it! They need to find some lower cost alternative!
My other hair brained idea for earth day was to create a compost pile. A typical family disposes of over 500 pounds of scrap food each year (I just made that up to make this post look official) of which most of that can be turned into compost. So this morning I raided a trash heap outside someone's house in the neighborhood for 1 and a half wooden pallets. Those are going to be the walls of my compost heap, the 1/2 one will be the door and then I need to acquire 2 more pallets for the other walls. I hope to find those pallets by the middle of next week so I can start my own compost recipe!
Monday, April 23, 2007
What a weekend!
It was a good weekend for us out here in SLC. On Saturday we went to the Children's Museum and bought out 1 year membership, now we can go anytime we want and it's free! We had fun playing in the farm area and feeding the fake horse carrots. I saw a cool construction play area with cranes and bulldozers and stuff, but Sydney didn't want to go play. I was bummed cause it looked fun! Then we went to the Salt Lake Running Company and bought new running shoes for me. It was an involved process that involved me running on the treadmill while they video taped my stride and analyzed it in super slow motion. They decided that my right foot over pronates a little bit so they found several shoes that had added support to help with that. My new shoes feel great, it was surprising how much of a difference they made when I wore them on our run Saturday night! Bridget wanted to spend less money on her shoes, so we went to Dick's and she found a pair that she liked...they are white with HOT PINK accents. Very not Bridget, but she says they are really comfortable so she bought 'em. Then we used our Red Lobster gift card and had a nice dinner for free!
Sunday was Earth Day of course. We spent the morning researching better recycling programs. We currently don't have a good recycling program in place at our house. And as Bridget put it the other day "you are willing to pay $8 a month for wind power, but not pay for recycling!" So we had to fix that issue. So we scouted out 2 recycle drop off areas, and were sadly disappointed. The large dumpsters were filled with regular trash and not labeled at all. So my mission today is to call the garbage company and pay the extra fee to use their recycling program. We also went to an earth day festival in the city. It was kind of goofy, a LOT of hippies and a lot of booths selling "glass sculptures" or "tobacco smoking pipes" or bongs to the rest of the world. Then there were the religious people handing out fliers about how God was going to strike me down or something, I don't know I didn't read it. The actual number of environmental tents and booths were probably only in the 50% neighborhood, not to good for an EARTH DAY celebration! Then we went and had dinner with some friends at their house, which was very nice.
And who could forget the Red Sox SWEEP of the Yankees! Awesome weekend for them, especially Sunday nights game when the Sox hit back to back to back to back home runs...4 in a row on 10 pitches! That helped ease the pain of the Colorado Mammoth's playoff loss in overtime on Saturday night. The Mammoth were the #1 seed in the west and lost in the first round to the #4 seed and blew a 5 goal lead in the process. I guess there is always next year!
Sunday was Earth Day of course. We spent the morning researching better recycling programs. We currently don't have a good recycling program in place at our house. And as Bridget put it the other day "you are willing to pay $8 a month for wind power, but not pay for recycling!" So we had to fix that issue. So we scouted out 2 recycle drop off areas, and were sadly disappointed. The large dumpsters were filled with regular trash and not labeled at all. So my mission today is to call the garbage company and pay the extra fee to use their recycling program. We also went to an earth day festival in the city. It was kind of goofy, a LOT of hippies and a lot of booths selling "glass sculptures" or "tobacco smoking pipes" or bongs to the rest of the world. Then there were the religious people handing out fliers about how God was going to strike me down or something, I don't know I didn't read it. The actual number of environmental tents and booths were probably only in the 50% neighborhood, not to good for an EARTH DAY celebration! Then we went and had dinner with some friends at their house, which was very nice.
And who could forget the Red Sox SWEEP of the Yankees! Awesome weekend for them, especially Sunday nights game when the Sox hit back to back to back to back home runs...4 in a row on 10 pitches! That helped ease the pain of the Colorado Mammoth's playoff loss in overtime on Saturday night. The Mammoth were the #1 seed in the west and lost in the first round to the #4 seed and blew a 5 goal lead in the process. I guess there is always next year!
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