09.30.04 - What’s the Word? Thunderbird! What’s the Price?
“Happy Birt” to Jen since yesterday was her half-birthday. My birthday was just peachy the other day. The custom here at the CIRPC is to bring in your own birthday cake and ice cream and then everyone signs happy birthday and eat cake. I brought in a texas chocolate cake that I made with cream cheese icing. Usually, this cake has some yummy rich chocolate icing on top, but I found that cream cheese icing provides a nice complement to the cake. Everyone seemed to like it which made me happy. After work, I had two tutoring appointments at the Thornton Center, one at 5pm and the other at 7pm. At 8, I went and played handyman to change some locks and move some furniture, so I didn’t home until 10:30pm. I didn’t mind one bit because when I got home Jen was waiting for me with an extra birthday gift, so that made me happy.

I have made a switch to Mozilla’s Firefox internet browser and Thunderbird email client. Both have been getting great reviews on their ease and security. So, I thought I would try them out and so far I am pleased. Firefox looks more like IE than netscape and Thunderbird has some differences than OE but it reminds me something closer to Eudora. So far the only problem hat I have had is my Yahoo LauchCAST radio station (talan71) will not play in Firefox. The station thinks that I am Netscape and it says it will only play the stream in IE, hmmm…. monopoly?

I have not ran since Saturday, and now it is Thursday, sheesh. Most of it has been due my schedule this week. Yesterday night when I got home, I started with finishing the laundry and then working on the computer. Although, it is not up yet, I do have the “Best of Boppy” in the works, honestly. I also created back CD of all the Eric pictures that I have downloaded to date. I just checked and I have 3,089 files (that includes movies and picture files) totaling 1.3 Gigabytes of data. Wow! I knew it was allot but I did not think it was that much. I finally got my CD burner to work, so I am busy archiving older files that are no longer needed.

Speaking of Eric, This morning, before I left, he walked a good 10 feet to me. He even caught himself from falling over a few times while standing. He is really making some big transitions right now. we packed up his high chair and got him a booster seat for the table. Now he can participate in daily dinners with us. He is also just about outgrowing his 12 month clothes. The 12-18 month size still fits since they are cut a little wider, but the sizes just for the 12 month old are getting too tight.

Tomorrow, I will be archiving these blogs as it is a new month. I have not decided if I will archive the whole month or just through the 15th. I am leaning toward the latter, as people check this rarely, except for Pete, I think. Now that I am able to update it more often, I am thinking about redoing my “news” pages a bit. Currently, they are set up by Year, but I may break them down a little further but increase the font size, to make reading easier.

Other Birthdaymates:
Ed Sullivan , television host (1901)
Marcello Mastroianni born on September 28, 1924
Seymour Cray , computer engineer (1925)
Brigitte Bardot born on September 28, 1934
Andrea Croonenberghs born on September 28, 1964
Janeane Garofalo born on September 28, 1964
Mira Sorvino born on September 28, 1967
Naomi Watts born on September 28, 1968
Kimiko Date born on September 28, 1970
Gwyneth Paltrow born on September 28, 1972
Lenny Krayzelburg born on September 28, 1975
Marzena Godecki born on September 28, 1978
Brigitta Callens born on September 28, 1980
Hilary Duff born on September 28, 1987
Skye McCole Bartusiak born on September 28, 1992

1066: The Norman conquest of England begins, as an army led by William the Conqueror lands at Pevensey, England. William will be crowned king of England by the year’s end.

My birthday is here. Woo Hoo! (I think). I appreciate all the birthday and ecards that I have gotten, thank you!

If you noticed, there are NEW pictures of Eric online! Finally! YAY! It took me most of the evening, but I got them up. The boppy picture for September will be up this week. I am hoping to have Best of Boppy up within the next few days. I blew off running last night, in lieu of uploading the pictures. Important things first!

09.27.04 - Weekend Update (so long Jimmy Fallon)
In some cases it seemed that the weekend went slowly and other times it seemed like it went fast. Funny how time is relative!

Saturday morning I got up around 5:45 and finally made it out to run at 6:15ish. I ran 10.25 miles around Farragut with a pretty fast time of 1:31, averaging an 8:58 pace. This is a whole minute faster per mile than I should have been going, but I wasn’t too upset. If my speed workouts (on Thursdays) aren’t going that great, I am getting some benefits from them. The run on Saturday was very easy, and I was not sore at all on Sunday. This weekend, I have the Big South Fork 17.5 mile Trail Run. We usually go camping this weekend, but because of Mary Kay and Eric logistics, we felt that it was better to forego the camping at this time and maybe try in the spring. I didn’t want my running to interfere too much anyway. This will be my 4th time that I have run the race and my PR for the course is 2hrs 51min. I think that I can do better than that this year and I can make it under 2:50.

I did not have a chance to put any pictures up, nor work on the website at all. If I had a larger USB drive, I could carry our whole jenandterry.com website on it and be able to edit it from - wherever. Currently, the website resides on my computer at home and my side of the website is on my flash drive since it is only 11 MB. I have been playing the eBay game to try to get one cheap, but so far I have been out bided each time.

Saturday, Jen had her customer appreciation day at LyLy Nails in Knoxville and so the boys were able to cause havoc by ourselves. Well, we didn’t cause to much trouble. After getting Jen set up with her table and stuff, we went to the bike store to check out the used bike sale. I am looking for a beater bike that I can take to school with little investment (in case it vanishes). We also went to Blue Ridge Mountain Sports to look at kid carriers for Eric. We found one from Kelty that was really nice. It was the Back Country model and Eric was having a blast in it.

Eric was walking more this weekend. I did get video of it that I can download off the camera, so hopefully, that will be up shortly. Of course, I have been saying that I would update the website for how long now? I know, I know.

UT won their homecoming game against Louisiana Tech. This particular game was pay per view in the area, so we listened to it on the radio. Sounds like we might have a better idea of who the quarterback is going to be now. UVA won again too. They are doing very well this season, winning under the radar. Furman lost this weekend, but just barely. They lost in overtime to Pittsburgh (Div I-A) team, whom they were leading by 14 points in the 4th quarter. Green Bay also lost, again, this weekend.

09.24.04 - The engine is stalling
I thought that I should get something in here before the weekend. I am not sure how much time I will have to update my site Saturday and Sunday. When I am on the computer, I am going to concentrate on updating Eric’s picture albums. It has been way too long since I update his pictures, he is so different.

UT’s homecoming is this weekend, which means the game is par-per-view. So the Higgins’ household will not be watching it, just listening to it on the radio. Maybe the UVA game will be on in the afternoon… just not here. We’ll have a SEC game before an ACC game, go figure.

I picked up another tutor for Tuesdays. The only drawback is that it is at 5pm, which means I have a 1 hour break between sessions. This was the time that I could out and get in some running with enough time to get showered and less stinky before my 7pm session. Technically, I could get out for an hour on the track since I will be adjacent to it, but, I truly won’t have an hour. Oh well, I need the money more than the miles.

I ran 3.1 miles last night on the treadmill and it turn out to be pretty tough. I was covered in sweat and was not able to keep up the pace I wanted or thought that I could handle. On my intervals, my tempo was slow. Not sure what that means, I guess since I don’t race more 5ks, that my speed has gone down. Although I was pleased with my pace of my 5 mile runs on Monday and Tuesday. Tomorrow, I will be having a long early morning run, although tomorrow it will be just 10 miles. It should be really comfortable at 5:30, so that will make it NICE!

I am thinking about getting another digital camera, so that I have one to take to American Samoa in November. I am looking at something in the mid grade range that is compact. So far I have looked at Canon’s digital Elph and Casio’s Exilim. Both are small and compact with reasonable features. I am thinking that I only need somewhere around 2 megapixels, that way it will keep the price down. If I can get 3 great, but I’d rather invest in the memory card and an extra battery than better resolutions. The income I receive for my professional photography prints is still zero.

I am going to look at Kelty kid carriers tomorrow as well as used bikes. I’d like to get a beater bike for when I ride the bus and I want to get a carrier to stick Eric in if I want to hike or volunteer at races. Lucky for me, the bike store near my house is having a sale and Blue Ridge Mountain Sports is two doors down! Jen has a customer appreciation day at one of the local nail salons, so Eric and I will be hanging out for most of the day.

I have been on a quest the past few weeks, it seems that about 3 or 4 weeks ago, I could not find my wedding ring. It was no where to be found, not in any of my bags, not in any of it’s “homes” in the house. It’s true home is in a small petrie dish in our telephone desk, but was not there. I looked in places where it might have been, or had fallen, but no such luck. So why, you ask that I did not have it on? well, I do not wear when i exercise, I have helped a few friends look for rings that flew off during soccer matches. I even lost my ring at a statistics department volleyball game back in 1997/1998. I usually take it off when I get home because that way I will put it back into its home and I will know where it is at all times. One of our friends, who is getting married, commented that he shouldn’t have to wear a wedding band, since I didn’t have one. I had to confess that I made a faux pas, that I had “misplaced” it temporarily. Where, I hadn’t a clue. So, just by writing of this blog so far, you have probably guessed that I have found it. My biggest fear was that I had put it in a plastic grocery bag, as I do from time to time to carry workout clothes, and that I inadvertently threw it away because I thought it was empty. But you guessed right, I did find it. I found it in my desk, in a drawer that sometimes drop my cell phone and keys into if I do not want to carry them outside to lunch. In the drawer, I also have a baggie that I am collecting pull tabs from aluminum soda cans for one of the ladies here at work. For some reason, i decided to lift up the bag to size up how many I had collected so far. When I pulled up the bag, there it was, the ring just sitting there. “one of these things, is not like the others, one of these things do not belong”. Excitement and relief set in, I had finally found my ring. Not that I, personally, need some sort of reminder that I am married, but that the ring is precious to me. A little less stress in my life. Oh, have I told you that since I hadn’t worn it for 3-4 weeks, it’s bothering me while I type this…

Eric woke up really early this morning, like 6:15am or something crazy like that. His schedule is to wake up at 7am, right when I am leaving, but not today. Today, we think that he was hungry and that woke him up. Be brought him his milk, which right now is enriched soy milk because its cheap, and he drank that in the dark. We were hoping that it being dark, he would go back to sleep. Nope, he played in the dark for 45 minutes, while daddy had little bits of sleepiness.

In another act of slowness, I have Eric’s pictures organized and almost ready for some web albums, so the wait won’t be too much longer! You can also expect some new changed to the overall website in the near future. I am going to take some things off of it. I’ll try not to mess up the links to bad, just in case you have it bookmarked.

I realized last night that because I tutor on Tuesday Nights, I don’t see Eric from Monday night bed time until wednesday night when I get home. Almost a 48 hour span of time of not seeing the little monster. Allot can happen in 48 hours, so I run the risk of missing some great happening. Of course, being gone all day at work does not increase my odds. Well, someone was a early riser today (6:45am) and I got to see him! YAY! Didn’t get to spend anytime with him, but did get to hold him.

Yesterday, Eric walked in between Jen and Diane, who were about 4 feet apart, about 4 times without falling and apparently screaming with delight. Jen also commented that walking is becoming his preferred mode of transportation, although not extremely proficient at it yet.

I ran 5.75 miles yesterday before my tutor session. Since I was on campus, I decided to go to the Ag campus and follow the Neyland Greenway until a great place to eat called Riverside Tavern. Once I was there, I thought it would be cool to run back through downtown and onto to campus. And yes, it was cool, when I was able to run while in the shadow of a building. Running west in the sunset was killer, I really couldn’t see much because of the sun’s location. I did not have any incidents, so that was fine. When I got back to the car, I realized that I had cruised through the run in 49:04. Today, when I mapped out the mileage, it put me at a 8:32 minutes per mile. That is FAST for me on a training run. I should have ran at a 10:00 minute pace or something around there. If I run too fast, too often then I will cause more damage and ultimately, slow my times down. Thursdays are suppose to be my speed days on the treadmill, where I can regulate my pace.

I did some work on my website today. I finally uploaded a few pages that I had been working on for a long time now. Thanks to Mom and a scanner, I was able to put up some pictures of my aunts and uncles. Also, I was able to move some pictures from our Iowa trip in 2001, to put up family members living there. I did not put up a picture of Chris, just out respect since all I had available at the time was The Cove pictures and I know how much he loves them. You’ll also see that Pete’s side is pretty barren. Well, I do have a few pictures of Uncle Ray, but that is about it. They are also on a different computer, so they are not ready. Hopefully, when Pete reads this, he’ll fill in some of the blanks for me. I also included some of the books that I have recently finished and some that I would like to read. You can find all of this new stuff by clicking the ‘about me’ link in the black header bar at the top of this page.

My home computer is almost ready. I have fixed the sound and have all of my old files off of the other hard drives. So, I should be ready for some Eric Updates by weekend! I know that you can’t wait! I’ll be doing finances and speedwork tonight, so I doubt that I will get to them tonight, but then again you never know.

We are having beautiful weather here in Knoxville. It in the upper 50’s this morning and is in the low-mid 80’s in the afternoon. Cool and just absolutely beautiful. Of course, it won’t last too long, but I am going to enjoy it while I can.

09/21/04 - The Kitchen is Downtown Tokyo
Let me update you on a few things that Eric has done over the past few days. First of all, he is not totally walking yet, and when he does walk it is in a straight line. This weekend, Jen and I were about 4 feet apart from each other having Eric go back and forth between us. Sometimes, he would take 2 steps and then fall forward, other times he would make all the way and hug us. On one occasion, he did a 180 turn while next to Jen without any help. Perhaps it was the security of knowing that Jen was right there that encouraged him to do that. He is also squatting too. He does this mostly in the tub to pick up toys out of the water. Which scares me every time because I think that he is about to “send a submarine” into the water… which reminds me of the movie Caddyshack with Bill Murray and the pool scene.

All the drawers in the kitchen, except for the very top ones, are fair game to Eric. He can reach into the highest drawer when he is on his tippy-toes and can blindly grab whatever is in there. I can’t tell you the number of times that he has mashed his finger because he closes the drawer on a hand. He doesn’t really cry but gets upset, I have his upset face mastered and hope to catch it on camera, and once you free his hand he goes right back to the drawer. Thank goodness this is not fire. Needless to say when he is done with kitchen, Godzilla would be proud.

This past Sunday was the Twin’s birthday party. Our little monster ate almost an entire piece of cheese pizza! The one thing he did learn to do at the party was drink from a straw. They had juice boxes for the kids and we offered some to Eric. Shortly afterwards, he was drinking like a champ! He also learned that dish soap in not necessarily tasty.

Tuesdays are bummer because I don’t get to see him since I leave before he wakes up and my tutoring doesn’t get out until after he is gone to bed. I just get to peek in on him and hear second hand stories about his crazy adventures that day.

My running is coming along nicely, I ran in my subdivision last night. A 5 mile run that was close to my PR time for that route. 45:32 in a very hilly course with some hills that are not very kind. I am not sore at all from my run Saturday or yesterday. Since I have a chunk of time before my tutoring appointment, I think that I am going to get some easy mileage in today, maybe run across campus or something.

You may have noticed that I have added “titles” to the dates of my posts. I have been surfing through the BLOGOSPHERE on the internet, primarily at the site Blogger, which is supported by Google. I am contemplating moving my blog to having it supported over there. There are a few advantages, one would be that I would not need my JumpDrive to easily update my blog. Two, the blogs would be archived much better than what I have now, the link at the bottom of this page or the ‘news’ link. Third, it would have a larger audience. On the other hand, I would have to remember more passwords, etc and since I am getting old, that might not be a good thing

09/20/04 - Clear skies for a Monday
First let me comment on the UT/ Florida game from Saturday night. What a game! The entire game was played decently by both teams and I think that had we lost it would have not been the end of the world. However, since we won and in such dramatic fashion, people are excited around here. The kicker missed an extra point to tie the game in the late fourth quarter. With an eminent loss, the UT defense stepped up to give the offense one last chance to score. The offense moved the ball up the field to give the kicker one last chance to win the game, a modest 50 yard field goal attempt. It could have been a 55 yard attempt, because when he split the uprights, the ball still had plenty of height. I believe, had we made the extra point, the coach would have played for overtime and we who know how it would have ended up. We were having a hard time keeping up with their receivers, so I don’t think that overtime would have been good at this junction. In related football news, Virginia and Furman both won their respected games. I can not say the same for the Packers, they lost to ‘Da Bears’.

Saturday morning, I did get out of the house at 5:45 and ran 16.5 miles around the community. I left my neighborhood and went out around Farragut, through some subdivisions, around the high school and then back to my home. THe problem with my subdivision is that there are hills! Big ones, so when i am coming home, the hills really slow me down and I end up walking up parts of them. I was pretty pleased with my overall performance. My legs did not get heavy until mile 13 and they were not sore after the run. With that said, tonight is slated for my 5 mile course in the subdivision, hills and everything!

I picked up another tutor on Tuesdays. I currently have one of the women swimmers whom I tutor physics, and now I am getting a pre-calculus student. Not sure what sport she is but we will see.

For those of you who know that in a few days, I am getting older, I have no problems with it. It will be my “Rolling Rock” birthday, brought to you by the number 33.

09/17/04 - Gator Madness
As the game that is played on Saturday night comes closer, the people in Knoxville become more and more crazy. With the weather that we are having, it might be related, but I think that the rivalry between Tennessee and Florida might have something to do with it. If we win, the scruffy little city will be abuzz and a National Championship will be the talk of the town. If not, people will be depressed for a week until the next game. Such is the life of a Tennessee Fan. I was there the last time we won at home (1998) and we are favored by 3 points, so we will see.

Eric is making leaps and bounds, almost literally. More on that later. My computer is almost together, I have to install some software, which I hope to do this weekend. Yesterday, he mimicked me with nodding my head up and down and today he shook his head no. Not sure if he knows what that means, but it can’t be long.

Since the weather is crazy, I am not sure if I will be doing 16 miles tomorrow morning. I hope so, though. If I can get out of the house at 5:30am (yes, that’s early) I can get most of the mileage in the dark. I don’t particularly like running in the dark, but it will make it more comfortable for me plus I’ll have little to no traffic. I swam at the the Athletic Center today at lunch. I think I swam for about 20 minutes and went a little more than half a mile. Pretty slow, but since I have not swam since the Trideltahon, I thought that I would take it easy.

09/16/04 - Ivan Ivan Everywhere
The monster (read: Eric) is now up and running! Well, he can get up and he can WALK a few feet. He is still much faster crawling, so until he realizes that walking doesn’t hurt the knees, I think he will do walk/crawl think. Also, he is starting to “build” things with his MegaBlocks. He and Jen were playing with them and he started to put the blocks together. Up to this point, he had only been in the “Destructo” mode. The computer woes are not over yet, so there are new pictures or video. We will see.

Hurricane Ivan is on its way. We are expected to get 4-8 inches of rain with some steady winds. As of 10:45am, we are just getting a few sprinkles and there is a slight breeze in the air. By this afternoon, this should all be changed! [edit] I’m making a few edits here at 3:05pm and it is rainy put nothing horrendous and the wind has picked up a bit. The wet weather should be through until Sunday which means the UT game on Saturday against Florida might be a little dicey.

Looks like I am going to bag the Farragut Fall 5k run on the 25th. I just don’t think the logistics are going to work out. I am hoping that I can still make the Big South Fork 17.5m run even if we do not camp.

I am in the process of initializing a Guest Book for people to leave comments, etc. Look for it on the right hand side. It may already be up by the time you read this… [edit] and it is. Just click on the Chimp!