iWondered what was going on when iSaw the iIn The Sky.

iThen realized that everyone wasn’t lining up to mail an iPackage.

Picture Taken about 5:50 EST June 29th.

This Week’s Theme: Sweet

The story behind this Bouquet of Strawberries is even sweeter. These strawberries were a gift to me for Father’s Day, while I was in the hospital. Now, I wasn’t a patient in the hospital, rather I was in there with My lovely and Talented Wife as she gave birth to our second son in 2005.

And in case you w were wondering, the bouquet tasted AWESOME!

From She Who Shall Not Be Linked :

For those not familiar with Mercury retrograde, it is an astrological aspect that occurs every 12 weeks for a three-and-a-half week period. In effect, when any planet retrogrades, it settles down for a nap. Mercury rules information, communication, commerce, transportation, shipping, and all moving parts in machines, which is why things tend to go bonkers when Mercury is out of phase. People are not thinking clearly, conditions are greatly in flux, and later we have to backtrack to correct errors in judgment we made while Mercury was retrograde.

First let me say that I don’t really subscribe to the astrology or occult phenomenon, but I am open to the idea that there could be something to it or part of it could partially explain event in our physical world. It could be just part of the brain that we don’t know about doing its job, or it could a force of our universe (or one from another universe). Just as Eclipses used to be some apocalyptic event, this too may one day be explained.

Anyway, back to the blog… the one thing that stood out to me was the “moving parts of machines” now the story doesn’t involve the moving parts but rather the people who use them but it does seem to fit with the whole Mercury Retrograde thingie because, well, it all happened at once.

If you have ever been a dishwasher with an industrial washer, the cardinal sin is to put dishwashing liquid into the dishwasher. The result is a scene in a “B” teen comedy movie where the suds takes over the whole restaurant. Now, the mutant bubbles that are created don’t actually take anything over, but they do start POURING out of the machine and there is little that you can do. Like Uncle Eddy said about his dog Snot in Christmas Vacation “If he gets a hold of your leg, it’s better to just let him finish his business. If you know what I mean.”

In a household dishwasher, the result, is not so bad.Your dishes will not get clean and you might have some extra bubbles. It might also take you a few empty cycles to process the soap out.

Wednesday, our dishwasher was in this state, post dishwashing liquid mode. It looked as if the water was okay and so I decided to run the dishwasher since it didn’t look all that bad. Also, I decided to make a batch of Gluten Free bread mix, which the mix deserves a big RAVE post, and I will talk about the bread mix when it comes time. Both pieces of equipment are in the kitchen running like a charm and it’s now tubtime for the kids.

The easiest way to get my kids to do something is to use Jedi mindtricks on them so that you can get them to do your bidding what you ask. Tubtime is generally one of those times where this technique is very effective.

“The Elder, The Younger, tubtime!”

The Elder looks at his father and says, “I don’t want to tubtime, let’s play Clue.” The Younger, who will be the kid in the future to jump off a bridge because his friends jump, says in agreement, “No, No”

And here is where the Jedi training pays off.

“No tubtime? Really? Do you want bubbles or a shower?”

“Bubbles!”

“Bubbles, memetoo, memetoo”

MUHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA. So the kids are in the shower, the water is running and the bubble acting is… uh, bubbleating. When The Elder comes in and says,

“Water and bubbles,” Which is rather odd because he’s not referencing the bathroom.

“Water and Bubbles in the tub, right?” I Ask.

“No.”

“Water and Bubbles in the kitchen?” I Ask.

“Yeah.”

“Oh man!!” I exclaim as I burn around the corner into the hallway towards what I imagine as a pool in the kitchen. Sure enough there were bubbles and water on the floor. The dishwasher was definitely in a ’suds and regurgitate’ mode. The floor was soaked and the carpet had absorbed some of the water. Now while I was running to the flood, the water in the bathtub was running because it was tubtime. My Lovely and Talented Wife came out wondering what all the fuss was about and I went into hysterics about the suds and the tub and The Younger in the bathroom. With a calm and even keeled head, she proceeded to take The Elder and get tubtime started.

There was a ton of bubbles in this dishwasher. Now that I think about, my ever so helpful environmentally friendly dishwashing liquid doesn’t have any harsh waster softener chemicals, so when it suds, it SUDS. Which is probably why this particular time a little bit of liquid when a long long way. The previous time was with a different, less concentrate liquid.

I had to take all the dishes out and started using a plastic tray to scoop the bubble out of the dishwasher. I took a break for Book Reading and putting the kids down. *** Fast Forward to later in the evening when the kids are asleep. I am scooping bubbles and draining water so that I can run the dishwasher, empty, with as little soap as possible.

So I am scooping bubbles, when all of a sudden I see smoke coming streaming out of the bread maker, … something is burning and something is wrong. As I unplug and take the bread machine outside, because I don’t want the smoke detector to turn on, the kids come out of their room, The Younger is crying and The Elder smiling and walking beside him. The Burning Bread is out on the porch while My Lovely and Talented Wife tends to The younger who “fell” and scrape his arm and scratched his face. After the kids had been fixed, I tend to the bread.

This baking of bread was an experiment which proved to be successful. Successful in disproving my theory, but with a veritable observation and conclusion. You can’t bake a 2lb. Loaf in a 1.5lb Bread Machine.

Here’s the hypothesis. The Bread Mix comes in a box that makes a 2lb. loaf. Previous bread making activities have luded splitting by weight the flour and yeast to bake the 1lb. version which is tedious and inaccurate. The resulting 1lb. loaf takes about 1/2 of the bread making vessel leading me to think, if1lb. takes up 1/2 the vessel, then 2lb. should take up all the vessel and everything will be okay and much easy. The error in my thinking is that bread dough has to rise, and I didn’t really take this into account that the bread dough had to go somewhere. The bread dough rose up over the vessel and over the side, landing directly on the heating element. So, I had this big clump of risen bread dough out on my front porch, so what do I do now? Turn on the oven.

Sure enough I grabbed a Pyrex dish, sprayed it with some canola oil. Took as much of the dough that I could salvage and put it in the dish and when the oven was ready baked it for 30 minutes. I was able to make about 1lb. loaf, the other 1lb. of dough… donated to SCIENCE! Well, when out to Nature to be composted.

After two runs of the dishwasher it was ready to be refilled with dishes and to be run with the proper cleaning fluid. I woke this morning to a dry floor and clean dishes. So, these two cases are definitely operator error, I clench my fist hold it to the western sky and say “Curse you, Mercury!”

Here’s a post I’m blatantly ripping off from college classmate and fellow blogger Mike Sussman Roon at Off the Top of My Head. He pointed out the website for The Simpsons Movie is up. It has an option to create your Simpsons character, and he posted a picture he made of what his family might look like.

So I’ve never been one to avoid ripping off a good idea. Here is the closest I could get to me as a resident of Springfield.

I photoshopped the Simpsonized me into a picture of my office. I also had to add the glasses myself, since they didn’t give you an option to have your character wearing glasses.

Hopefully I wasn’t too generous with my body type. Your choices include kid-sized (Bart, Milhouse), average (Lenny, Carl), buff (Ranier Wolfcastle) and portly (Homer, Krusty). I think there is a little more of me than the average setting. But I haven’t quite consumed enough Krispy Kremes to get to Homer-level portliness.

Okay, everybody take your index finger, point it at my website and start laughing AT me. Yup, the joke is on me.

You know how I said that I was upset at my rechargeable batteries because they let me down? Yeah… me too. Apparently, when you get ready to rant about something, you better make sure that what you are talking about is reality.

Rechargeable this, rechargeable that… blah blah… runs out of juice… rechargeable BLAH.

So when I opened up my iRiver, there was a regular alkaline *sigh* battery staring at me. *Slap hand on forehead*

“Everready, my butt,” I muttered. So I put in one of my recently recharged rechargeables and was impressed that it showed full strength… nice! Also, it looked like an hour and a half was recorded and I can bet that it is all silence.

So now I am good to go with my iRiver for tomorrow. I am actually using it right now to record some audio from a cassette for My Lovely and Talented Wife.

So I as I reference in the closing of my podcast… This was just one of goofy things that I get myself into!

I try to be Green as much as possible. I really do. Just this morning I was belaboring whether I should throw the styro-esque egg cartons away or save them. Our local recycling place doesn’t take them and my curbside recycling doesn’t take them, so what is a earth friend activist to do? I saved them and will “attempt” to use them as a starter tray for seeds next spring.

However, being green was not very helpful today, at lunchtime. I have written most of the script for my next episode of Gravity@1053′ and this episode is going to be more of a studio feel to it, less of me talking while running. I think when I describe the training programs, that sitting calmly will translate better than trying to remember what I wrote while running. But I did want to add a running segment and I thought that I would talk about what I am doing for my WorldWideHalf training.

Yeah, I thought…

In my effort to “save the world”, I try to use Rechargeable batteries for most uses. I have a number of AA and AAA batteries as well as a few 9V as well. And they truly are cost effective, being that a $10 set of 4 AA will last much much longer than a $3 set of 4 AA of regular Alkaline. However, the trade off is reliability and time. A rechargeable set won’t last (based on my observations) as long as a regular battery. And this is both in the device or outside of the device. So there is some timing that you have to have to make sure that you have batteries that are charged for when you want to use your device. But, you also have to be aware that the rechargeables will lose their charge all by themselves as well. So, if you have some rechargeables that were charged a while ago, chances are they are not at 100%.

Today, I brought my studio (iRiver) with me on my run so that I could go ahead and recorded the part about my specific training. All was dandy until I tried to turn the IRiver on, only for the blank screen to look back at me like a teenager when you asked “What where you thinking?” Nothing, no electrons. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Had I had the foresight to check the iRiver before I left my office, things would have been different. But all during my run I was thinking on what I would say about rechargeable batteries and saving the world. After a good run, I toned it down.

Last year (May 5th 2006, to be exact) I wrote asking for emergency prayers for one of Jen’s sister directors with Mary Kay whose sister was murdered. My Post is here.

Jen sent me a forwarded email with information on sentencing for the punk motherfucker killer. Here’s the video of the news story covering the sentence of the killer.  Here’s the text of the news story.

I am glad that this chapter of the family’s ordeal is now over and that they can move forward. I am saddened that this youth’s abilities and talents were pretty much a waste… may God has mercy on his soul as his body pays the price in this world.

“I wish I could tell you that Andy
fought the good fight, and the
Sisters let him be. I wish I could
tell you that, but prison is no
fairy-tale world.” - Red, Shawshank Redemption

I was over at podcast alley voting for some of my favorite running podcasts and I had a comment for June, it was from Drusy asking me if I was going to talk about the WWH training on my podcast.

Man… I am I thick or what… I need some more street smarts! What a great idea to talk about the Small, Medium, Large training programs for the Phedippidations WorldWide Half marathon for which I had the priviledge to create. These programs are coupled with the Advanced Program which was created by John Ellis who is much more knowledgeable than myself when it comes to Elite Runners. He works at the Bill Rodgers Running Center in Boston.

I’m slated to submit my Race Director blurb for Phedippidations about our charity effort that we are including in this year’s event. I hadn’t even thought about talking about the training programs yet… but I should AND I should layout my training program.

So, I am going to start on a script for episode 13 to go out (hopefully) this week. I might have some good time on Thursday to get it done!

Thanks Drusy!

Friday’s Workout
It was a brick workout of swimming and running and I think that every Friday is going to be a brick workout. The workout consisted of a 411 meter swim followed by a 2.13 mile run and despite all the blood donating stuff, it went really well.

The swim part of it was one of my faster 400 meter (actually 411 meters) with a 8:18 time. I hopped out of the pool, put on my shoes and socks and headed for a new (less hilly) course around campus. Since I was hearing DPeach’s sermon about my recurring sin of doing speedwork so soon after donating, I opted for the flattest possible course I could find in the hills of Knoxville. I averaged a 9:44 for the 2.13 miles and really tried to not go out too fast.

I was pretty tired after the workout and I think that my heart was working a little harder than it should, but then again, there is less blood in there to work with right now.

After the workout, I decided that Brick Fridays would be good for a number of reasons. 1) it would be a great deal to do speed or interval work for my running since I would be forced to keep it a short distance based on time that I have. 2) The swim to start would be a great cardio warmup, so that when I was ready to do my speedwork, my lungs would be ready and my legs would be essentially fresh. 3) I won’t have guess what I am doing. So we’ll see how it works out for me.

Saturday
It took me most of the morning to get out of some sluggish funk that I was having. Must have been related to that whole Mercury Retrograde that everyone is talking about.

I tried to save our little pool that we have for the kids, but it looked like the amount of neglect of chemicals was not enough to ward off Mother Nature. The pool was a nice light green color… well, we are thinking about upgrading from our $15 pool to a $60 pool with a fancy pump. This will require a little more maintenance and stuff, but it’s for the children… isn’t anyone thinking about the children!

Sunday
The kids had some allergy action thing going between them. It was almost like dueling boogers. When one would have a dry spell, the other’s nose was like a nasal faucet. So, we opted to keep them away from Sunday School, we didn’t need them to get something else.

Sunday was pretty quiet for me. I am in the process of cleaning out our workshop which has become a monster of its own. The end of this month is the close of the business year for my wife and so I had some time to find a bunch of mixed paper to recycle as well some other crap that just needed to be thrown. It’s not that there is a lack of space, it’s just that some of the stuff I am holding onto because of sentimental value of it. I’ll take a picture and dump it.

Monday
Today’s workout was a little depressing, but I am not going to let any thing get my planetary alignment out of whack. As part of my new approach to my fall marathon, I am in the process of data collecting to hopefully find the correct pace that I need and the correct effort I need to exert on any type of workout. I am one of those that wants to do an Easy run and it ends up being a Tempo (semi-hard) workout. Or I want to do speed work and it ends up being Tempo again. So, with the help of a heartrate monitor, I hope to have the little thing beep at me when I am going to fast or slow to help regulate my pace. It’s a little like using the average Fruit price to determine the price of Apples. The apple price is part of the calculation and it might be close, but there are other variables out there you have to consider.

My run today was slated to be an Easy day. Therefore my mile pace should be around 9:40 minutes and my heart rate should be somewhere between 149 and 162 beats per minute (bpm). The first mile wasn’t all that off, I was able to keep it around 155 or so and my time was 9:45, but then I had some creep set it. No, not some weird stranger, but the fact that as I workout out my heartrate was increase. So, I have higher highs and higher lows, much like a graph of stock price that is increasing everyday. My last mile was 10:27 and I had to walk in some spots just to keep it under 166-167 and the thing was that I was not tired at all. My knees hurt from the slower pace, but cardiowise I felt great. Must still be residuals from donating blood. Geez! See if I ever donate again… bleh!*

I’d really love to get a HRM that downloads the data to a computer, just so that I can get a feel for what is going on. Perhaps I am not running the right course, or something like that I can’t see while I am running, but if I could analyze the data would be apparent. So, if anyone recommends a good fancy heart rate monitor, I’m listening. I don’t think that I want to invest in a Garmin HRM/GPS gadget quite yet. Although knowing my pace during a run would be awesome, alot of the places that I run here have big buildings and trees and I think I would be a little more frustrated from a loss of signal. So, I will go with cheaper right now.

*I will donate again.

This is my barcode, which tells you about my gender, location, height and weight. I found while using StumpleUpon to waste time procrastinate take a break.

You can get your own barcode at Scott Blake’s website and there are even some other barcode based accessories. You can get a barcode clock and few other things that look cool.

Might even make this an Avatar for when I feel like all I am to people is a number…