With everything happening last week, I didn't get to raid the Easter Candy Clearance aisle but the final totals for the Easter Candy have been calculated:

Calories Consumed 9800
Number Purchased	42	3	5
Number Consumed	42	3	5
Cals per serv	170 egg	570 box	190 egg

What is not included in the total caloric intake is a Classic sized Bag of Mini Eggs (12oz?), a 22oz Bag of Mini Eggs, a 42oz Bag of Mini Eggs and another 42oz Mini Eggs which I am currently transforming from delicious chocolate to not so pretty… errr, yeah. There was little sharing of the Mini Eggs, so I could with some accuracy, estimate the number of calories that the Mini Eggs contributed to my not-so-nutritious diet

For those of you around here who have been following my blog for a while, you know that I like to workout naked. Okay… not really. What I do have the propensity to do is to forget critical clothing for the workout. That is what I did today… I wanted to run but I did not have any shorts and would have to run in my skivvies if I wanted to run. Luckily, I had my bathing suit with me and with such a nice day, I decided that it would be in everyone's best interest that I chose to swim over running shortless.

The water was actually cold, or rather chilly. It was cool to start but once you got going you didn't notice the water. It was rather refreshing to say the least. I ended up swimming 1/2 mile before heading to the showers. It was a good swim to say the least. I am hoping that tomorrow, I can actually get some mileage in since Pete (my father, errr Step-dad, not to be confused with my recently deceased father) is visiting and he can perform some grandfatherly duties. There is a 5k race and a rather big race, but I am not shelling out the $20 for day of race registration.

Speaking of other races, I am not sure what is going on with my racing schedule. There is a race on May the 6th, that I don't mind paying day of race fees as ALL the profits go to the Tennessee School for the Deaf that is located on Island Home in South Knoxville. But my most immediate race will be the Expo 10k, more on that later.

1472, remembered what happened in that year? Yeah, I don't either!

1472 is actually the mileage that we put on our van last weekend on our trip to Iowa. My mom put about the same amount of mileage on her car that Thursday/Friday. So, the gas company received quite a bit of cashola from us during our travel.

Very little happened during the trip, thank goodness. Actually, on Thursday the 19th on the initial trip to Iowa, the sunset in the state of Illinois was absolutely beautiful. I really wish that we could have stopped to capture some sunset pictures, but our longest stop in Champaign (at Panera for dinner) was the most we could afford. Luckily, I would have more time to take other pictures of other subjects at another time.

I am going to blog more about my trip in a next few days, I don't want to forget anything and I think it will take more time than I have at work to type it out. I will actually catch up with what has been going on since I have been home.

I had a second funeral today, at the Sprint store as my Sanyo SCP-200 could not be revived. My new phone is another Sanyo SCP-200 and is silver, replacing it's blue counterpart. I only have 70 contacts to enter into the new phone as the technicians could not retrieve my peeps and their numbers. Thank goodness the compu-nerd in me has most of them around here somewhere. I need to hire a 15 year old to enter them into for me, they can probably do that in about 5 minutes… right.

I have not run since Monday, April 17th and have not exercised since Tuesday the 18th when I rode the stationary bike in preparation for the Trideltathon (which I did not do). I have been sitting around quite a bit and yearned to run on the river walk in Illinois and Iowa that parallel the Mighty Mississippi on both sides. I will go back in the next few years and run the Quad City Marathon! Tomorrow should be a good day to run and although the weekend has a good race, my step-dad (great… another father to bury one day - joke only humor) is here in Knoxville on business and has extended his stay to see us (and when I say us, you can erase that and put grandkids!).

I would like to thank everyone who gave a kind word and prayer for meand my family. Although I am on the road to healing of the loss (today was the first time I didn't get choked up recounting the funeral) but other family members still need lots of thoughts and prayers.

I want to thank everyone's comment for the post on the 20th. I responded to each one that was there as of the night of the 21st. I plan on elaborating more on the past few days, but I want to share what is going on now…

Saturday Afternoon, we are leaving to make part of the trip from Knoxville to the Quad Cities. Now that the kids will be part of the plan, the trip will take more time. Thank goodness for DVDs, this will help. We will be arriving in the Quad Cities Sunday afternoon sometime. There is a private visitation, which I will attend, then the visitation from 4-8pm. The funeral will be at 11:30am on Monday and he will be buried at Rock Island Arsenal. He will receive a military funeral from his time in the Air Force. We will either head back to Knoxville that afternoon or early Tuesday morning.

Bob's obituary will be in the local newspaper on Saturday (you should be able to find it online at http://www.qctimes.net/).

I plan on blogging more about everything as part of my healing process from the loss. While in Iowa, it was easy to be strong for my brother Chris, but since I have been back home I have been breaking down a couple of times (like right now when I type this). I am trying to gather music for his visitation that he requested… it should be a treat for everyone… he has requested Holy God, We Praise Thy Name and Unchained Melody and The Eagles and ZZ Top plus some others…

So we'll go from Praising God's Name to Sharp Dressed Man to The Joker… no doubt that I am related to him

Robert William Tripp June 7 1947 - April 20 2006

Here at the hospice. Had some alone time with him. He's awake for 20 seconds at a time else he's 'asleep'

We are in illinois about 3 hours left to go. Travel has been uneventful so far. Will see everyone tomorrow.

We are driving. Leaving about 11:00 or so… I'll post more when I can.

The diagnosis was what was to be expected. Basically, the aeorta valve is not functioning and thus the lack of blood to the rest of body isn't helping. He has breathing problems as well as problems with being lucid. The doctor said that he's a ticking timebomb - he could go today or tomorrow or a month from now. The doctor's statistics are 90% in a year, 50% in 30 days. Surgery is an option but there are many obstacles if going that route.

So, the plan is to travel to the Quad Cities today, either car or plane and stay until Thursday or Friday to see him, basically at his best. Jen is going to stay home with the kids, since there is no need to bring them on a whirlwind excursion only to remember their Grandpa Bob in this condition. If my mom can go, we will drive… if she can't go, then I am getting a plane ticket and will be leaving this afternoon.

tick… tick… tick…

So, today was awesome and if I had been smurt, I would have swam today because the weather was just about perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. PLus the closet extrovert in me would rather be out with all the people and not inside. But I knew that I needed to get on the bike before Sunday's race. So, I decided to go inside and use the stationary bike.

It wasn't all that bad. I road one of the StairMaster brand stationary bike using a Aerobic preprogramed workout for 30 minutes. I ended up going 9.75 miles and the legs felt fresh. I chose to do the Level 10, which is the mid level range for workout intensity. I might have been able to do 12 or 13 with a little more effort. I was watching two shows (there were 6 TV screens) and listening to the latest installment of Runcast Weekly Podcast.

To help simulate the effect of transition during the marathon, after my bike ride, I went over to the treadmill and ran almost 0.3 of a mile. I was in a time crunch as it was, but I wanted to experience the effects of my legs being like big lead weights before the triathlon. I am sorry to say that I had no problem transitioning between the two. I just hope that it's like that on Sunday.

Tomorrow, I have a tutoring appointment at lunch so that means that I will take tomorrow as my rest day, giving me Thursday as my last workout day before my traditional 2 day taper period before a race day, although I may swim gently on Friday since that is low-impact…