Travel!

First off, let me say 'thank you' for all of the kind words yesterday about my big news.
We went and got our first '4D' sonograms yesterday.. that was pretty cool stuff.

So, as I previously promised, one of my upcoming topics is travel. I'm traveling. I'll be away for a week. No internet during that time, either, so I will be vanished from the ol' interwebs. It's a family visit, so it should be pretty low-key and such. I should be able to get out and do some short runs.

I won't be home to watch the Kentucky Derby, though. I guess I'll need to make my mint juleps another day. Hey, there's a blog post right there.. how to make a kickass mint julep..

How about that Celtics-Bulls game last night? Triple overtime.. holy cow. That was a fun game to watch. Too bad the C's didn't pull it out. Guess we'll see how game #7 goes. What a series, though. Wow.

This weekend, good luck to all of you racing. I know I'll forget somebody, and if you're that person (more likely 'people', as I can't forget just one), I'm sorry! Good luck to Cindy, XC2 (or should I say 'Sarah'?), Aron, joyRuN, Melanie, and ShoeRunning!

Alright everyone, keep on rockin'. See you in a week or so.

Big news..

So, I've been sitting on this for a bit. Even a few months ago, this was in my mind.

Yeah.. Big news. Life as I know it is turning upside down, inside out, and going every which-way. Consider it a glimpse into my personal life. :)

Ladies and gentlemen, here it is..


I'm having a baby. Well, not me, really. I offered to my wife, but yeah, no. She's having the baby.

There will be a mini-Raul on the Earth in a couple of months. Brace yourselves. :P

This will be my first child, and yes, I really have no idea what I'm in for.
(I verified with my wife that we checked off the box for 'already potty trained' and such, so I'm sure we'll be good to go.) I have a sneaky suspicion that my days of lounging in bed on the weekends until 9:30 or 10:00 are coming to an end.

So, we've been doing all of the various 'new parent' things- building a nursery, taking some classes, etc. We've got most of the stuff we need (or think we need, at least).

We're fortunate to have a lot of family in the area, and there's a lot of wisdom and experience to lean on there.

And, with that, I'm off to an ultrasound. :)

Pi and Pi+1

Greetings!

Partial weekend recap is this..

Went for a run Saturday morning.. (9:30ish). It was already hot. Hot. It's April. WTF? I went and ran a nice casual pace.. When I stopped my watch after my run, it read: 3.14. I said "oo! It's never stopped on that before! Pi!" Yes, I am a geek.

I also got to see an old bud from high school (and earlier) on Saturday.. it was good to see him. Been a couple of years, so it's always good to catch up.

Sunday, it was slightly cooler. I wound up doing 4.14 (on purpose). That was too far. ITB cranked up and I wasn't doing well the rest of the day until I slugged down some Advil that night. Oh well.

I took Monday off, even though I wanted to run, just to heal up. Gotta figure this thing out.

Oh, so here's a question for all y'all: Do you have Facebook pages? I've never gotten on this bandwagon. Just curious.. an informal poll, if you will

To swipe a page from Shannon, I've got some posts coming up about:
- Shoes
- Beers
- Scotch
- Travel
- Big news

In the meantime, I'll get back to work listening to some mashups and doing my real (but certainly not as fun as blogging) job. Keep on rockin'!


PS, check out a guy down a pitcher of beer in 5 seconds: video.

New Balance 992s

A while back, I was fortunate enough to be chosen to be sponsored by New Balance of Harrisburg. The deal was, a free pair of shoes, provided I post a review of the shoes (and a link to them, of course).

Today's that day!



I wound up picking out the 992 shoes.

So, what do I think?

The first thing that hit me was the styling. The first thing that came to mind was the early to mid 80s and the Kangaroo sneaks I used to have. You know, the shoes with pockets? (I think mine were even velcro. Oh yeah!)

It's the whole suede thing, really. But, I'm not the go-to guy on being up to date on fashion matters, anyway. Plus, I knew they had suede on them when I ordered them.

(One last side note.. Did you know that KangaROOS are still going strong? I had absolutely no idea.)


So, the shoe. I picked this shoe because I believe I have a pronation issue, and I'm looking to find something to help out with that. In general, the outside of my heel and the inside of the toebox are worn out first. I have a moderate to high arch, and wide ass ugly feet. Anything that can help my running, I'm willing to give it a shot.

I haven't been able to take these on a run longer than 3 or 4 miles, due to my ITBS issues, so I can't really go into detail on how these perform on a long run.

The first thing I noticed after putting the shoes on is that they have a lot of cushion. I'm all about the cushion. Even while running, you can feel cushioned.

The shoes are sturdy. They look like they'll hold up longer than some. No 300 miles and they're done. They really look solid and well built (and feel it too).

So, after doing runs in them, what do I think? The cushioning is still there. Lovin' that. I think they've helped somewhat with my pronation. The heel area is worn down, but definitely not as much as with other shoes. To that end, when I run in these shoes, the insides of my ankles feel somewhat strained. I'm guessing that has to do with my pronation being slightly different, and I'm just not used to it. That's purely a guess though.

Practically speaking, these shoes have ultra wide laces, and, as a result, don't seem to become untied magically mid-run. I like that. (I always double knot, but still..)

End result, I like the shoes. I'll probably hold off picking up another pair, until I've tried a bunch of other types of shoes. (This is my "playing the field" time with my shoes.) But, if someone was thinking about the shoes, I certainly would give them positive press.

Thanks to NB of Harrisburg for this opportunity!

Nice weather is here

I woke up today, it was 34 degrees. It's been dorking around the 30s and 40s most of the week.


The forecast for today: 73
Tomorrow: 84
Sunday: 79

Etc. I'm stoked.

Should be a surprise to the body while running, though. lol.


And, the nice weather brings out the shorts.. aw yea! I'm fortunate enough to be able to push the envelope a bit here at work. For the next 6-7 months, I'll pretty much always be sporting a pair of shorts at work.
Not running shorts or the basketball shorts I'm lounging around in at the homestead, mind you, but they're still shorts. Cargo shorts and the like.

You know what I like about cargo shorts? Lots of pockets. I've been informed by people in the fashion-know (read: my wife), that you really aren't supposed to use all of the pockets. As she pointed out, though, they really shouldn't put all those pockets on clothing for men if they don't want them to be used.

(And yes, in the case of cargo pants, with like 20 pockets, I've "lost" things, not knowing which pocket something is in.)

So yeah, it's relatively relaxed here at work, dress-wise. I can't do sandals, though. That is strictly verboten. If I deal with a customer or an executive or something like that, I need to shape up for the day. Otherwise.. I'm good to go.


I've been lax on working out this week. This weekend, game is back on. At least one of the days.

I'm going to get back to work, in an effort to slide on out a bit early and enjoy the weather and some sort of tasty beverage.

Keep on rockin'! Have a great weekend, everyone

Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

So, just random miscellany today..

Went out for a run yesterday. My calves were pretty achy, my shins were pretty achy. The weather was great, though. I wound up stopping to stretch a couple of times, but managed 3.5 miles. I'm taking today off, or just doing the elliptical or something.

The weather. Holy cow. It was downright cold on Monday, in the high 30s. Looking at the weekend, they're predicting 83 the last I looked. What the hell?

I'm getting old. Unlike some people, it appears I no longer need ID to buy stuff in a liquor store. I went in the other day and made a decent purchase and was thoroughly disappointed that I wasn't carded. While I do go to liquor stores a lot, I'm not really monogamous in my store- I tend to hit different ones for different things. So, the hope that "oh, they know you" doesn't really apply.

I'll throw my first entry in for Literary Wednesday (wow, two tfh link loves in today's post).

This book isn't one that moved me or anything like that, it's just the book I just finished reading the other day. It is:



The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells. This book has been on my 'to read' list for quite a long time. Actually, a sort of funny story about that. When I was younger, I went to the library and grabbed 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison. That book is certainly an excellent book, being deep and thought provoking. So, yeah, I was kind of caught off guard, and "The Invisible Man" remained unread for many years after.

So, I busted it out recently (along with a whole slew of H.G. Wells entries for LW for weeks to come), and finished it. Nice easy read, fun little book.

That's all I've got for today.. keep on rockin'!

Long weekend!

Well, I did make it back from my trip. Thoughts from the road are as follows:

I got an EZ pass for the trip. Not that I really needed it, but I thought it would be fun and cool. It was.

I know my wife doesn't want to hear this, but I really had a blast. I fought the trip tooth and nail before I went. Once I got there, I really didn't want to leave. I could go out and do my own thing at night, and that was that. No real schedule after work, so I could just go work out at the hotel, and then go out and about.

Plus, I wound up sleeping diagonally in the bed, so that was pretty cool too. And no one stole the sheets. :)

And that's the end of my trip report..


So, Saturday was a 4 miler in absolutely beautiful weather. Sunday was a 3.5 hill run, with weather that was slightly not as good, but it was still pretty awesome. My ITB felt pretty good, which is really nice. I'm going to try to keep upping the quantity of runs I do for a while, and then work on lengthening one of them.

I've got to say, having nicer weather to run in is just so awesome. I love it.


Monday was a self-prescribed day off. A couple of us from work went up to Cooperstown for the day. Here's a photo montage..

This is outside of the baseball hall of fame, our main destination for the day:


This is a shot of some of the plaques in the hall of fame:


My wife views this room with the plaques (the actual hall) as her own personal hell. It is analogous to me being confined in 'Jo-Ann Fabrics'. She was absolutely thrilled that I found people to go with, so she never has to step foot in here again. (Now, I think that's a bit extreme, but what can you do?)

This is where we went for lunch, a place called 'The Pit':



After the hall of fame, we went to Brewery Ommegang. This is their building:


After an informative tour, we sampled all of their beers, plus a couple of special ones. The 'Hennepin' was my favorite, until they got to this 'cave-aged Abbey Ale', which is a bottle of their 'Abbey Ale', which had been stuck in a cave for 11 months. I'm thinking of telling my wife I need to dig a cave. That beer was phenomenal.

The ending note of the beer sampling was this:



It was a special beer, not ever bottled, made for the inauguration. They dubbed it 'Obamagang'. I thought that was pretty funny.


Today, I'm back to the grind. Keep on rockin', everyone!