Remember that Carpenter Bee that I told you about? And how it Drove my DOG InSAnE!!!!!!

Here is the scene that I found Friday afternoon:

Two dead bees… large wooden chunks on the ground… a wooden swing bomb? Nope, not judging by the bite marks…

Corpse #01… one dead bee.

Corpse 02, oh wait… it wasn’t quite dead. There was some movement…

Look at how precise our ex-bees worked… That rounded corner is pretty smooth.

A little too bright (too late to photoshop) but the chew marks are pretty obvious… I think the canine is going to plead insanity…

This Week’s Theme: Water

Before I had a chance to look through my archives, I could only think of a one or two pictures that would be “water”, but after looking through them, I found quite a few “water” pictures. Go figure…

So I chose this one, an action shot I took last year in Dallas, TX with my trusty-rusty Canon AV-1 35mm camera.

[Ed. For the people wanting to know where it is in Dallas. It is downtown across from Union Station, also near the Dallas Co. Courthouse]

So, I had asked Mike with the Bike a movie question since he is the Movie Man… Check out his movie review site here.

Well, he sends me a few movies to consider… then he sends me another movie that I might like because of some of the “running” scenes in it. He then sends me a link to a You Tube video highlighting some of the stuff in the movie.. and I am like “How Freakin’ Cool” “What the… oh my…No Way!” and I showed the video to my wife and she said “What the… oh my… No Way!”

All I can say is that if Jackie Chan had a 5k, this would be the course…

Thursday (The Different Strokes reference) I went swimming at lunchtime. Apart from it being a little cold at first and that my triceps are a little sore Friday. It was nice… a good half mile… I think that I am going to start doing some brick workouts (run & swim) in the near future. I have on my list do two sprint triathlons (less than Olympic Distance) this late spring and summer and so the training would be good preparation. One of my goals is to complete a half-ironman, but first I need to see what the Olympic Distance would do to me… and so, I practice with the sprint distances.

Friday with the kids was fun. We ended up doing quite a bit! Running around like mad men. We even made it to a park and I took some pictures, silly me, I had it set on total manual and didn’t take into account that the camera’s setting and took them with little aperture setting… great effects, but sooo…. amateurish:

oh well…

For those of you who use dayplanners and that kind of stuff, you will (hopefully) sympathize with me when I tell you that yesterday I had left it home. I was flying by the seat of my pants on what I needed to do and who I needed to call… I was feeling anxious and a little overwhelmed. But I knew that one of my tasks was to print new book pages.

See, I make my own Date Planner… From cover to cover. It’s all 100% Planet3rry! I use Excel, Publisher and Word to make my book and I print out 4 weeks at a time every month.

Excel is my calendar, I have used the same Excel format for almost 7 years now. I can track a number of things, such as my daily mileage which, through the help of lots of formulas, tracks my monthly and yearly totals. I track my time at work and use color coding for different event (e.g. blue is running, maroon is family, etc.). I have it set up to Duplex on each other so that it can fit the 8.5×5.5 format.

Publisher holds the “meat” of the planner. It’s my daily page format, the cover, note pages, etc. I have Publisher print to Acrobat because it puts it in the 8.5×5.5 format and in booklet form as well.

I use Word to take my exported contacts (from my email client) in .csv format and use a mail merge into a Word document. I want to see if Publisher can do this because in Word, there is some data manipulation to get it to print correctly. I only print this off like every 6 months or so…

So after everything is printed, it’s cut, then I have one of those Comb binding machines that I use to bind everything together and Walla, a Planet3rry Plann3r that is out of this world! “The Geek is Strong with this one”

So, when I got home and found my planner, I had inadvertantly done almost 6 things on my list! SAH-WEET-TAH! I was happy… Of course not all the important stuff was done, but most of it!

So today is my Wife’s Rolling Rock birthday. If you don’t know what a Rolling Rock birthday is just go here. It’s really only practiced by me since Rolling Rock is my favorite Mass Marketed beer. There are a lot of close seconds, but if I had to chose one… it’s this one!

Anyway, back to the story… My wife had asked me to make a cake for her meeting today, so that she could share and so I was certainly most willing to make a cake for her. I get to be a Knave in the kitchen and whip up some delightful treat for her, to remind her that she’s a year older and on the right side of the turf. Well, I wasn’t going to be shortchanged, after all… it’s like near my half-birthday, my un-birthday if you will, so I’m going to make one for the house.

So that’s what I did, I made 2 cakes… Yay for me! Now, I am don’t have the skillz that John has on making some bad-ass cakes. Nor do I have “The Gift” on making “untouchable” cakes...

So this picture is not some astronomical picture of the surface of one of the minor moons of Jupiter, no, this is the spongy surface of delectable goodness

I knew that the frosting recipe that I have makes more than enough for one cake and so I took the rest of the frosting and frosted half of the second (home) cake. And this morning I picked out some appropriate pink frosting to “try” to do some writing. The most stressful part will be making sure that I don’t misspell something like “Happy”!

And since I had Stella out, I became a little inspired and so I broke open a bottle of wine and took a couple of pictures, the best of which I will put here…

I do have a few more things, perhaps I should put them on a sticky note so I won’t forget… topics include: The Jackie Chan 5k and Different Strokes hopefully

I’m looking at the upcoming weekend and thinking that I am going to have a busy 3 days. My wife is going to be in Louisville Kentucky for a conference Friday and Saturday, which leaves me with the kids. This is not a problem as that means that I get to take off work and hang with the Boys.

I have already started to plan stuff out so that we can cram everything that I want to do it those two days. Including, getting the Calhoun’s podcast finished (I can dream can’t I?). Saturday I have to go to the Marathon Expo so that I can get my Volunteer Tshirt and whatever else that I might fancy. I will have to check my running budget and see what kind of cool stuff I can get at Expo prices.

I mentioned that we bought a new double stroller… I am entertaining the notion of taking the kids for a run on Saturday. I won’t have to worry about time, so I could take them out right after the Expo and before lunch. So we will see. Plus, I am going to try to get a couple of miles in on Sunday, either before or after the marathon…

I have added two 365Days pictures (Monday and Tuesday), both of which had some non-standard technique to the picture. You can click on the Flikr Badge and read the comments about the pictures.

and what is up with Flikr? I have tried to add a couple of you peoples in my contact list, and it says that I have but my Contacts doesn’t show you… so if you get 100 messages that I have added you as a contact, it’s not that I am psycho (there are other ways to tell that) but that I really really want to have you in my contacts. If you use Flikr, I am going to try to use Flikr more… of course as I type this I realize that my Shutterchance photoblog has been inactive for 6 days now… *sigh*

Carpenter Bee
Hi-ho-Hi-ho… oh wait, those were dwarfs who mined precious gems. I am refering to the Carpenter Bees… the same ones that drive my Jack Russell insane! Aparently it is time for them to make their nest inside the juicy tastiest wood they can find. Well, they are all around right now. When I went running today, I could not help but dodge 4 or 5 swarms of them.

One group looked like it was the fighting division. 2 dead bees were on the ground and two were hitting in mid air. They could have been courting for all I know, I don’t have a bee degree or a bee license. Well, I sent one to the big bee hive in the sky. one flew in my path and as a defense I swatted down… hit, score… could it bee any more dead?

74
It was hot outside today. Had I realized how warm it was, I would not have gone so far. Uh, let me rephrase that… if I knew how much the heat was going to affect me in the last two miles of my 5 mile run, I would have gone for just 4 miles. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite “get it” since we’ve had such lovely weather that the 74 on the thermometer board was going to give me cramps.

I made this workout a “Tempo On The Ends and one Big easy/Recovery run In The Middle”. My first mile was 7:51 (pretty speedy) and the Fifth mile was 8:21 and what makes the 5th mile speedy is that thee last 1/4 mile was run in 1:47 (7:08 pace). So even though the heat was killing me in the middle, I still had enough at the end.

Switch Checker
It’s Race WEEK! The marathon is on Sunday, but I am not running… I am volunteering. I will be out on the course and will have a unique job. I will be the Switch Checker… yeah, that is what I said, “what in the world is a Switch Checker?”

We are kind of close to a railroad, so it might be that… but not for a race, silly

Well, the position that I have is tied to the accuracy of results. My position is to catch and record people who were running the Full Marathon, but during the course of the first 12 miles have decided to bail and do the half. Thus I “check” the people who have “switched”. It’s all crystal clear…

So, I am positioned on 13th and Clinch. I know that for 99% of you that means nothing. So I have tried to include pretty pictures, for you to OOOO and AHHH over, scratch your head, grab your chin and say, “I see. ”

So the first picture is a snapshot of the official course map:

But that’s not really helpful… is it…

The Yellow is the course for BOTH half and full marathoners, the Red is for the Full and the Orange is for the Half. So where I am located, I get to see ALL of the runners at mile 0.5, then I see the half marathoners at ~12.5 (of 13.1) and the I get to see the Full Marathoners at ~25.5 (of 26.2). Better yet, is that where I will be is on a hill, so that I can take sniper photo shots of the runners from a good vantage point.

And if the the pretty colors don’t do it for you, let me give you a spy satellite google picture of where I will be…

HUT HUT
My wife graduated with Peyton Manning, Superbowl winning quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts. And when I say “graduated” they were both in a big big auditorium to pick up their piece of paper. And for all that she graduated with Chamique Holdsclaw too…

Well, Peyton Manning was on Saturday Night Live this past weekend and I missed it… but what is cool is that the three clips that I saw didn’t suck! I thought that Peyton did a good job in his (one million) commercials, the best where he was the overzealous fan of the people who worked where he at and shopped… (De-CAF, De-CAF!) good stuff… Well, looks like he had fun… if you want to see the clips they were on the SNL website.

Au Pair Update
Crisis Family here… we are stilling waiting to hear when our Au Pair gets her second interview. Meanwhile we are still trying to interview new people as they come in, I think we are emailing 5 different people right now…

This Week’s Theme: Empty

I was having a hard time thinking of a good subject matter and I didn’t have time to go through my archive of photos to get one for “empty”. Then there was the parking lot behind my work. It was full, but then it was empty. Now, they are digging out old houses that they previously had buried underneath the parking lot… so what could be emptier than a hole?

Well, when I went to workout on Friday, this rang out as fitting the “empty” theme:

When you skip blogging for a day or two and there’s alot of stuff that happened, I get caught in Catch 22, do I write about everything and have deep meaningful blog entries (*cough cough*) or do I give you the Reader’s Digest version and you just the basics (with some humor added)? Today, it’s the latter, so here is my Olsen’s Standard Book of British Birds, expedited version (if you get the reference congratulations!) of the past couple of days.

Au Pair
When we last saw our mild-manner superhero, he had just found out that the Au Pair candidate was told “No, Visa FOR YOU!” and so that left us in a quandary of what the “H” to do. We have written a letter to the Consulate General, to hopefully strengthen her case that we are going to send her back. I guess that we could extend her for a year if we like her…

Being Overwhelmed
My Lovely and Talented wife and I spent  yesterday  trying to build a system on how to get stuff done efficiently in our household. It consisted of a Master Project book that we could use to create our 6 most important things for the next day. When I started my list, it went from a trickle to the dam bursting and the page just flooded with stuff that I need and want to do. Holy Schmoly! It was a lot… I didn’t realize that I was holding onto a bunch of different projects in a bunch of different categories. We had 8 categories (Financial, Family, Household, Websites, Running, Mary Kay, Personal and Interst3llar) and I had at least 2 projects in each. So, hopefully now, I can work on these projects and get them off the books, I have enough routine stuff to worry about much less 1000 projects.

Knoxville Marathon
One of my running projects, is volunteering for the Knoxville marathon. Tomorrow, I am supposed to help with goody bag stuffing. Not sure when I am going to do it… better find out huh?

Today’s Running
The weather today was awesome with capital “Kick Ass”. I hadn’t run since Tuesday and thought that the weather was so awesome that I would swim instead. But the pool was crowded. They had to empty the indoor pool due to emergency maintenance and so all the practices are outside leaving the lap swimming to just a few lanes. Now, I am all for sunning myself, but I didn’t have a book nor my sunscreen. So, instead of working on my skin cancer, I decided to run.

I wanted to do something a little fast but not too furious. It was too windy to go out on the track, so I tried a new course out in the Fort Sanders area. My first mile was good at 7:50, but then I took a break in the middle part of the course (1.54 miles at 14:24 or 9:18avg pace) as a recovery but then turned the speed back on for the final mile and was very happy to have a 7:47 on the way back.

So that will make running, if I get a chance, easier to handle this weekend. Now that our Au Pair is not coming, I think my mid April will be very different. We were thinking about going to Myrtle Beach for a MK event, but now I will probably stay at the house with the kids if my wife decides to go.

Podcast
Episode 009 is online, but as I write this entry, the RSS feed for the podcast has not been updated, nor has the page. I need to get those up before I leave work today. Also, I have a bunch of show notes (read: excuses) about the episode. So, that I need to create…

365Days
I need to add  Tuesday, Thursday and today to my Flickr pool. I didn’t get one on Wednesday… poo

Okay, everything was fine and dandy until Monday with getting our Au Pair here. When she went to the U.S. Embassy for her VISA and was denied. What this means is that she is down but not out. She can go for a second interview, but the success rate of getting your Visa in a second interview is not that great. Also, if she doesn’t get the Visa in the second interview she has no chance of being an Au Pair in the U.S.

So now labeled a “crisis” family, we have a few options. One is to send a letter on her behalf to the Brazil Embassy and hope for the best, the other is to search for another Au Pair Candidate, either one already in the US or one coming to the US.

Our intention is help our Au Pair with a letter, but have starting looking to get a feel for what is out there. At best, we’d get our Au Pair, April 19th as opposed to April 5th or May 10th, if we have to match with someone out of country. Now, if we matched with an in-country Au Pair, we could have one as early as tomorrow, but would not get her for the full year.

So any prayers or positive thoughts you can send our way would be appreciated. We are specifically looking for a quick interview date and an interviewer at the embassy that will have compassion and grant the Visa during the second interview! 

Okay, solved that one.

Today’s absolutely beautiful (until 10 minutes ago) weather was the setting for a 5 mile run through Knoxville’s downtown area. My Back to The Tracks (and I know that) 5 mile course, is merely an extension of the ever popular Market Square Fab Four (miler) course, which is going to be featured in an upcoming podcast episode. Yes, I said “upcoming” in reference to my podcast. I will wait for you to pick yourself off the floor…

better?

Either tomorrow or Thursday, Episode 009, MSQ Fab4 will be on your podcatcher shelves for your listening pleasure. Here me hack and wheeze as I try to describe the scene around me. But be warned, I am no Adam Tinkoff (Burning 20) when it comes to describing the Sights, Sounds, and overall enthusiasm of the environment around me.

But back to the run… It was a great run, despite the temperature being 15 degrees warmer than yesterday, I nailed the pace the first three miles.  I averaged an 8:10 pace for them, but paid for it the 4th mile, when I had to walk in a few spots to regain composure. The last mile I was able to dig and get some energy to bring the 5th mile back in 8:31, a whole minute faster than mile 4.

I’ll definitely need to take Wednesday as a rest day, although I already know that Thursday will hold no (lunchtime) workout for me. Perhaps, I can get something done in the evening.

I worked on the taxes a little bit last night. We use a CPA to do them for us, but we need to prepare the information for them. Jen’s parents have a partnership for all the family members, so we have to wait for the K-1 form to arrive and so, we just send all the paperwork to them. Some things are better left to the professionals and I don’t mind spending a little bit of cash to take the stress off of me.

My P&S Camera failed me today at lunchtime when I was going to take my 365Days pictures… cursed batteries!