A Month and a Half of Happenings

OK, once again I have fallen pray to the "I'll get to it tomorrow" bug so often afflicting my blogging. Of course, it has been quite the month for me in terms of life changes... So, here it is, a recap of the last month and a half highlights.

First of all, I have started my new job. I am working for Imerys. It is a French performance minerals mining company. I am working in north Georgia for their marble mining facilities. So far, so good. That is all the direct details I will give on the company as I have promised myself not to discuss work matters on this blog. I haven't had to travel since early April (at my old job) and I am really enjoying that aspect of this change. The 50min to 1hr drive each way is tiresome but not the end of the world. Sure glad I'm driving a 4 cylinder rice burner but even with that I am averaging about $40-50/week for gas.

Next, I won, I mean Caleb won, the cub scout rocket race. Hey he chose the design and colors... OK, I'm a bad father having to do it myself so he won't "mess it up" but if you know my competitive side, hopefully you understand. The directions said that 3 rubber bands is ideal, so that is what I used. I was shocked that every other contestant was competing with two and sometimes only 1 rubber band. I'm sure this had a major roll in CALEB's victory. The other element of the directions that I followed and others didn't was to lubricate the rubber bands. Many of the other dads, I mean kids, didn't put anything on their rubber bands and most of them ended up dropping out of the competition due to running out of rubber bands. At least one father tried to lubricate his with WD-40 which is actually a solvent, not a lubricant, so it ended up eating through his rubber bands before the first turn of the propeller. Now for the G rated nature of this blog I will not list the exact lubricant I used on my rubber bands but suffice it to say my ASTRO rocket GLIDEed beautifully! Hey, it worked didn't it? I am SO DEAD when Jamie reads this!!!

And the third event of the last month worth discussing is of course, my running. I ran another 5k road race on Memorial Day. It was my first official event since the race I ran last September that I blogged about. My goal was 25 minutes but unfortunatlly I didn't make it. My official time was 25:33. I guess I can't complain as I did cut about 4:20 off of my time last September. I think I would have came close if the urge to use the restroom hadn't hit me at about the 2 mile mark but I will not use that as an excuse. My first mile was ~7:30, the second ~8:00, that meant that my last 1.1 miles was around 10:00 which is way slow for me even with pinched buns. I do think it is the hardest I have run to date. My earlier blog about a sub 25 minute 5k was, I'm sure, treadmill assisted.

As for my weight, slow and steady progress. My lowest weigh-in to date was 209.8 but I'm sure that was dehydration assissted as it was right after a morning run. My weigh in this morning was I think a little more representative, 213. With any luck I will reach that 210 mark by the time I come out west in July to see many of you who read this blog. That is my goal.

I look forward to seeing everyone in July. Hopefully my blog about that trip won't be my next post...