08/31/04
IT has been rather eventful for us at the Higgins household. Last Thursday, we had arrival of two guests, Devaney and Chris. Each were staying with us this weekend. It was so good to see Devaney after so long. He had not seen Eric and we had not seen him in about 20 months or so. Eric was a little shy to him, but we think that is because he’s now at preschool and there is a lot more people there. He is finally getting his stranger anxiety.

Sunday, we decided to rearrange Jen’s office downstairs and sure enough I fried the motherboard. When I was taking out the modem cable, the card became unseated and caused a short. The motherboard has pass on from this world. However, this has put us in a state of flux with the computers. I had to take my computer and piggy-back jen’s hard drive to access her information. THe only nice thing is that the memory was compatible, so that is helping. I now have to go shopping for computers now. I was hoping to upgrade our computer and then use the leftover pieces to upgrade my Mom’s computer, but now she might have to wait. Due to this situation, there is a hold on all changes to our websites, except this one. I have my website on my USB flash drive, so it is portable no matter what!

I haven’t run since Thursday, one of the reasons is the stepped on the edge of a hammer and put a gash in my foot. So, it is sore to walk. I think if I ran, I would get used to the pain and it would be tolerable. I think that I will try that tonight, since I need to run something.

08/26/04
Howdy folks, how is everyone doing today. Can’t believe that I have 3 posts in a row. WOW! It is easier now that I have dreamweaver on my work computer, I can type and upload very easy. I had my first real tasks at work today. Data Entry! WOO-HOO. I enter in some of the survey data that one of the other guys John will run some standard analysis on. I need to install my NCSS on this computer, that way I will have that plus SAS. Dr. Seaver would be proud!

I got to chat with someone special yesterday. One of my fraternity brother from Longwood is stationed in Mosul. He is my little brother’s (in the fraternity TKE) little brother (i.e. his twin) Captain John Monihan has been stationed over there for a while now since winter. Anyway, I got to chat with him briefly on AIM. It is good to hear that he is doing fine, even though not in the States. Here is a picture of him he had posted on his website, I did a little editing so you would know which one was him.

CPT Bentley, CPT Monihan, and SFC Grimsley

Amid the threat of rain all day, the evening was dry for me to kick off a record for my 5 mile course in my subdivision. For those of you who have been through it, you know that there are a few hills in there, some of which can be real doozies. I was really upset that my time for the scholar’s run wasn’t faster. I love the fact that I can sort out my thoughts and analyze what is happening in my life because came to a realization about that race. The Wednesday before my race, I donated blood at my church. I had never have done a full-blown race a few days after donating and I think this contributed to my performance.

How about the Men’s 1500 final yesterday night? WOW! El Gerrouj is the man! What a great race and I wasn’t even wanting to watch it since I was more interested in the 5000m race. UT’s Pappas dropped out, DeeDee Trotter came in respectable 5th place in the women’s 400m Final.

Today’s is Eric’s first day of preschool at our church. He is going twice a week (Wednesday & Thursday) from 9-2. He is one of eight kids, one of seven boys, the only one who chooses not to walk. we will see how he fares with this group of kids over The Children Center.

I have been trying to catch as much of the Olympics as I can. I totally missed the women’s marathon on sunday and was pretty bummed about that. I did catch some of the track heats last night as well as watching the US men’s take 1-2-3 in the 400m Final, that was pretty cool. One thing that I have noticed is that there appears to be more interest in the Olympics this week than last. One of the local radio stations morning DJs was saying how bored they were with the Olympics during the first week. Come this Monday and he was saying how he could not stop watching some of the events. Pretty funny if you ask me, more like a little hypocracy in action. The thing is that he has probably watched more than I have and I WANT to watch it all.

I finished the Scholar’s Run on Saturday with a respectable time. 24:57, 5th in my age group. My full results are here, if you are interested. I started off way too fast and then just crashed after the first mile. This at least tells me that I am not up to 5k racing shape yet and that I need some more work.

I have been in the process of over hauling the main side of the website, so there will probably be changes in the next week with some of the layout. I am thinking about making the background something different for my website as well, perhaps a different color or design.

08/19/04
You may or not have been able to tell from my website that I have been making some minor adjustments here and there. One big adjustment that I am making is the Update list on the bottom of this page will have active links to some of the pages that I have edited for easy surfing. I am also trying to uniform the style of all my HTML links through out my site. That is the links have the same color/style/font etc. This will take me a while for me to get it all worked out, but not unfathomable.

I am enjoying watching he Olympics on TV and am getting excited about the Track and Field events. I am especially excited about the Marathon and Triathlon. The track events are exciting, I prefer the 5k and lower, for some reason the 10k just isn’t as fun for me. My running is coming along nicely; I have the Scholar’s run scheduled for this weekend. My current PR for this race is 22:07 which was my 5k PR for sometime. However, they changed the course back in 2000 to something much more difficult. I prefer this course, but it is a good training course for speed and hill work. There is a killer hill near the end, which just not only is steep, but winds upward as well. The finish is slightly downhill, that makes it nice. I ran on the 18th at 5:15 in the morning around my neighborhood. This was the first time that I successfully made it out of bed at that hour to run. I managed 1.75 miles at a speed that I though was fast, but turned out to be slower pace than I thought (9 minute 1 second).

I have my sights eyeing the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville on December 20th. Now, we are going to be in Orlando early in January, which coincides with the Disney Marathon. I am wondering if that is something that I can do as well. Jen P told me that if I sold Mary Kay products for her the profits would go toward paying for entry fee. The fee is close to $100, which is expensive for marathons! Rocket City is only $30 if I pre-register. So if you want to help me, shop online at Jen’s Mary Kay website (24/7) and put in the comment: Terry’s Disney Marathon. You’ll get some great products to make you look and feel great and I’ll be able to run Disney. WIN-WIN for both of us.

You probably notices the weather picture to the right of the screen. This is the current weather in American Samoa. That way, when I am there, you can see the weather that I am up against. It stays in the lower 80s almost all year round. We should be out of there before the rainy season (Dec-Mar). I am hoping to get to the National Park that is there. I will, at some point do some running while I am there to keep my training up to date

08/13/04
My first week at UT is over and was very quiet. I guess the best thing was that I ate out for lunch everyday without much of a worry. Of course, next week, it will a bagged lunch and all that jazz, but this week was a reward. Next week, I will really dig into some of the American Samoa information. Maybe then I will find out when we are going.

I did some speed work last night on the treadmill. While Jen was at her Mary Kay meeting and Eric had gone to sleep, I put in the movie Without Limits and put in about 2 miles. I can tell that I am out of race shape. I was planning on trying to race for the Scholars Run. I think now I will only run it as training and not go full board. I think that I have to run some distance that day. I should put my training schedule online. Tomorrow, I am going to be running around 10-12 miles, whatever feel comfortable. The weather is so nice this week, I should run in the afternoon when it is warmer, but I’m planning on being out the door at 6:30am for the little jaunt.

The Olympics start today, the Google logo, which changes infrequently is very cool!

So I am finished my second full day of work at the CIRPC and it has been the first-day-getting-acquainted funstuff. Since I will be working on the project on the island of American Samoa, I have been reading the 2003 report that the CIRPC did for the Dept of Labor. It is not a bad read, and is fairly interesting with its information about the island and the tuna industry. Tuna accounts for 1/3 of the workforce on the island, the government is a third and everything else completes the other 3rd.

I love the two big windows at my desk. I am going to have to bring in some plants to enjoy the sunlight. I just noticed that there is a bird feeder attached to the tree outside. So maybe I will be able to se some wildlife other than the college students roaming around. Speaking of wildlife, I had a bum ask me to buy a heater for $5 that was very similar to the heater that I saw in the trash when we went to lunch. Hmmmmm? Coincidence?

I am getting ready for the Olympics. I have printed out my TV schedule and am going to go through and highlight the stuff that I want to see. I’ll pretty much watch the gold medal event for all the sports, but there are a few sports that I want to see all the heats and other medal contests. The big ones for me will be the men’s and women’s marathon, plus triathlon. I enjoy all the track and field events and swimming. I don’t mind the gymnastics that much or obscure sports such as the walking or handball.

I have a feeling that my trip to America Samoa is going to fall at the same time of the Richmond Marathon. But, I do not know the exact dates as of yet, so perhaps, I can still make it. If I can?t make it there a few marathons that I have slated as replacements:

12/11Huntsville Times Rocket City Marathon Hunstville, AL
1/9 Disney World Marathon Orlando, FL
or maybe even
12/ 4 St. Jude Memphis Marathon Memphis, TN

Today was my first day of work. Well, I didn’t do anything yet. I went through new employee orientation at the University for most of the day, then it was off to get my ID made and my parking. I’ll be starting at the center tomorrow, so I should have some more information then. There were going to have me in a parking lot way far away, but the nice lady set me up with some prime time parking. YAY! I did stop by the SCC and see some of my old colleagues from my time as a Graduate Assistant.

08/08/04
Eric is now 13 months! Wow, where has the time gone? We will be posting a boppy picture with him soon over on his site, plus I’ll have some new albums up. I need to reorganize the links a little.

As for the job prospect. I no longer need to worry because I am EMPLOYED! Yay, I start tomorrow, but let me tell you what has gone on this week. My last Blog took me from the interview in Oak Ridge. I had an interview at UT on Monday, which went well. I had a good feeling that they would offer me the job. On Tuesday, I received an offer from UT that was even more money than I had expected, but considerably less than what I imagined Oak Ridge would offer me. On Tuesday, Oak Ridge wanted me to come in on Friday, but I told them that I needed to make a decision by Thursday, so they scheduled me to come in on Thursday morning. This left Wednesday an empty day, with nothing else to do but THINK about which job to take. I really appreciate all those who heard me go on and on about the two jobs. There truely was no clear cut favorite, the Oak Ridge money was nice, but the statistics at UT was also attractive. It eventually came down to “which job would have the most pontential regret, if I didn’t take it.” I ended up choosing UT, because I thought that even though I would be very happy at Oak Ridge, I would regret not taking a job with Statistics since I already had been in the nuclear field. So, I now work at the Construction Industry Research and Policy Center. I’ll up date more later, when I get more information. I do know there might be a trip to the South Pacific…

Marathon training has been going well. Although I am not running my schedule to the letter, I am getting the mileage in. On Friday, there was a 7 mile trail run at Haw Ridge, I was only supposed to do 2 miles that day and 10 on Saturday, but I ran the race with Marty and Solange Velas and took Saturday as a recovery day. I actually needed that day because the course was a little brutal in some places. Although I am going to go out there again, especially before the Big South Fork 17.5 mile race in October.