When my dad passed away in April of 2006, I wanted to do something special in his honor. In September, I decided that I would donate to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society an amount corresponding to his age. Seeing that he was one who supplied half of my DNA, I thought it be fitting to make this In Memoriam donation on my birthday.

So earlier today, I donated $60 to the NMSS in his honor.

Here is with his boys: Terry, Chris and Jeff. This picture was taken in 2001 when My Lovely and Talented Wife and I took a trip to Iowa for his Birthday (June 7th).

I’ve been wanting to post this picture of Bob’s grave site for some time. Us boys had Grandma put some flowers on his gravesite this past Memorial Day and she sent us the picture.

OKay, so I did a little more dumpster diving yesterday and it was for coke reward points. During Terry Day (Thursdays), I typically have a bunch of errands that I want and need to do. Recycling Mixed Paper and Cardboard (which isn’t picked up curbside) is one of them, because it can pile up quite a bit.

So, while I was at the mixed paper bin, I was checking out what people were recycling. Nothing of real interest. What I think is funny and laugh at myself is when I throw stuff in there and go back for more stuff… I think to myself “Hey, we have had that at our house.” Then I realize, “Duh, that was stuff I just threw in there.” *crickets*

Anyway, I saw that someone had thrown away some soda boxes but most had the tabs (that have the point codes) ripped off. But there was one, in the middle that had the code tab still securely fastened. I thought to myself that if I could reach it, that I would get the code, but I would not go out of my way to get the code (that would be a little wierd, ehhhh, not really).

I was able to get the box and ripped off the code tab. One text message later and I had 10 more points. BOO-YAH!

Please join me in wishing my fellow birthdate-bornian Gwyneth Paltrow a Happy Birthday!

Some other people of noteworthiness:

• 1992 Skye Bartusiak (actress)
• 1987 Hilary Duff (actress) (I highlighted her last year)
• 1972 Gwenyth Paltrow (actress)
• 1971 Planet3rry (runner)
• 1967 Mira Sorvino (actress)
• 1967 Moon Zappa (actress)
• 1964 Janeane Garofalo (actress, comedian)
• 1957 Alannah Currie (singer, percussionist)
• 1952 Sylvia Kristel (actress)
• 1934 Brigitte Bardot (Camille Javal) (actress)
• 1930 Tommy Collins (Leonard Sipes) (singer, songwriter)
• 1926 Jerry Clower (entertainer)
• 1925 Arnold Stang (comedian, actor)
• 1924 Marcello Mastroianni (actor)
• 1923 William Windom (actor)
• 1916 Peter Finch (Ingle-Finch) (actor)
• 1915 Ethel Rosenberg (alleged spy)
• 1909 Al Capp (Caplin) (cartoonist)
• 1902 Ed Sullivan (TV host)
• 1892 Elmer Rice (writer)
• 1856 Kate Smith-Wiggin (writer)
• 1841 Georges Clemenceau (French government leader)

Here’s a LINK to more people who came out of their mothers (or via stork, depending on your ideology) on today’s date. There’s also a What Happened on this Date (such as 1904 Woman arrested for smoking a cigarette in a car on 5th Avenue, New York City ) and those who died on this date (like: 1895 Louis Pasteur, French bacteriologist (Pasteurization), dies at 72)

I wanted to talk about this Twilight Zone event before I forgot about it.

Wednesdays are Grocery Night. It’s also Cherub Choir practice for The Elder. The Younger gets the shaft because there’s nothing for him to do because of his age. So, he has to be carted around like a baby marsupial during errands. Last week, I took him to Earthfare to pick up a couple Gluten Free items and I noticed that this Peanut Butter we like was on close-out! It’s called White Chocolate Wonderful. If Elvis was alive he would eat White Chocolate Wonderful Peanut Butter and Naner Sandwiches.

It was a NATIONAL OUTRAGE, that they were discontinuing this from their shelves. I would rather EAT SCHARDS OF GLASS or POKE SHARP STICKS IN MY EYE than eat “regular” peanut butter. Seriously. The White Chocolate flavor (you either love white chocolate or you hate it) is very subtle (so haters would probably like it), so the peanut butter flavor is enhance. I can best describe it with the word, uh, wonderful.

So The Younger and I meet up with My Lovely and Talented Wife and The Elder at Kroger later in the evening. I now have to break the bad news that there will be no more Wonderful. At best, we could make our own version at home, White Chocolate Likable.

“Honey, I have bad news.”

“What?”

“At Earthfare,” scrunching my face to help soften the blow, “White Chocolate Wonderful is on close-out.”

“AHHhh,” She gasps, “Did you get all they had?”

“I bought 2 jars and they still had some left,” I said as I turn down the aisle, looking back at her and seeing the defeated look on her face.

“You’ll go back and get more right?”

“Of course, I’ll go back and buy them all!” And as I turned the corner, I realized that I was on the Peanut Butter Aisle and the first thing I saw was a jar of White Chocolate Wonderful staring me in the face. No Freakin’ Way!

“No [internal self edit] Way, here’s some right here! AND it’s the same price here as it is on close-out at Earthfare!!!”

And there was much rejoicing on the Peanut Butter aisle in Kroger.

The Lord Taketh Away and The Lord Giveth Back…

Last weekend we were in Louisville Kentucky for a weekend with Dalene White. Dalene White is an integral part of the MK History. In 1963, when the business concept for MK Cosmetics was forming from an idea to reality, Dalene was right there. In fact, she could have invested $5,000 and have 1/3 ownership in MK Cosmetics. However, her husband (because women back then could not get bank loans) would not sign for a loan of that amount. She is no longer with that gentlemen (duh!), but had to give up being co-owner of a now, 2 Billion dollar private (no stockholder control) company. But Dalene is a multi-millionaire, so there is no worries there. In fact, her retirement is over $3 million bucks over 15 years… [ed. My Lovely and Talented Wife corrected me on Dalene's retirement] Dalene’s retirement is almost $500,000 a year for 15 years and she has served 11 of her emeritus years, so the math actually adds up to almost $7,500,000 as her complete package.

So we were at the Galt House, in Louisville KY where the Dalene White was being held. It’s a really nice, river front hotel. It’s pretty big too.

So Saturday morning we came out of our room and I notice that one of the room across the hall had some garbage piled up. I took a second look at there was some soda boxes, Coca-Cola brands. You know what that means, My Coke Reward Points! Sure enough, the codes on the box were intact. In a ninja-esque move, I went down and ripped out two code panels from the garbage piles!

SO I scored me 20 points! And am now over the 2500 point mark.

However, all the good stuff is gone now. I am anticipating that when Basketball season starts up (late Oct/Early Nov) that they will put some more stuff on line. So thanks to all of you who are sending me Reward Points, I appreciate it!

It’s RACE WEEK!

That means that my running schedule is upside down and it also means that this post is going to be about the Big South Fork Race, My History with the race, and the Guess My Time Contest!

Big South Fork is a National River and Recreation Area (a little different than an official park, but still under the National Park Service umbrella). Big South Fork is located on the Cumberland Plateau right on the borders of Tennessee and Kentucky. It’s 125,000 acres (505 square km) in size and home to the Big South Fork National River.

In late September/early October, The Knoxville Track Club hosts an event in BSFNRRA called the Big South Fork 17.5 mile Trail Run.

This will be my 5th running of the Big South Fork 17.5 mile Trail run, and the first time since 2004. Back in 1999, when I was training for my very first marathon, I saw that this race would fit into my schedule nicely. Although I had little to no trail running experience, the idea of camping out for a weekend of fun and running would be awesome. We didn’t expect the monsoon of 1999! It rained the entire time. From midnight Friday night until the time that we decided to call it a weekend in the early Saturday afternoon, it t rained and didn’t let up. In 2000, it did rain quite a bit but it did stop enough periodically. Our trip in 2001, was a gorgeous trip. We coordinated with some friends from work and spent a great 3-day (rain free) weekend. Listening to the UT football game and cooking out over the fire. I went back in 2004 as a day trip (about a 2-hour drive from Knoxville) and although it was wet, it wasn’t a monsoon!

Here is my Race Report:
2004: Nature 6 Terry 2

My Race History:
Big South Fork Trail Run    Oct-9-1999    3:00:15
Big South Fork Trail Run    Oct-14-2000    2:51:25
Big South Fork Trail Run    Oct-6-2001    3:04:40
Big South Fork Trail Run    Oct-2-2004    3:10:29

Guess My Race Time:
I don’t have a cool prize other than a “Congratulations” but if you would like to try to guess it, leave me a  comment or  use the “Contact Me” link at the top of the website and leave a message. I should be able to post something in the evening on an official time.

I mentioned in a previous post about Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robinson, who, by the way, left a comment on my blog. How cool is that!

Robert, from Simply Robert also responded with a book suggestion as well:

Good stuff. I’ll have to check this out. You might also want to take a look at Soon Will Come the Light by Thomas McKean.

Also, one of my NT (Neuro Typical) friends here in Knoxville suggested another book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon which is a fictional account about a autistic boy and you are reading from his perspective. He says that it’s very good, so I will have to put that on my list.

I went to Borders today to see if the Look Me in the Eye was here in Knoxville and that I could get my copy, but alas, it was not.

This Week’s Theme: Paper

It was another actual photo hunt. Same Place, different day, different bin. This time, I was taking a bunch of mixed paper and cardboard to the local recycling facility and decided to go ahead and make this one for paper this week. I’m not exactly happy with the artistic turnout of the picture, but sometimes you get the good shot, sometimes you don’t and sometimes you get that lucky shot that turns out great. Hmmm… now it’s time to think about next week: original.

Visit my Photo Hunt Archives

That’s right… there is a picture of me running, so therefore it must be a running blog. Oi, it has been a strange week of running.

I’ve actually done something each day this week, but I have been unable to get a post detailing my runs. It’s been hard enough to even read my feeds, much less comment on them and then write my own post. So, I am going into step-by-step (i.e. non -Reader’s Digest) account of my running week… so be forewarned!!!

Running this week:

Left foot, left foot
Right foot, right
Feet in the morning
Feet at night.
Left foot,
Left foot,
Left foot,
Right.
Wet foot, dry foot
Low foot, high foot
Front feet, back feet
Red feet, black feet
Left foot, right foot
Feet, feet, feet
How many, many feet you meet.
Slow feet, quick feet.
Trick feet, sick feet
Up feet, down feet
Here come the clown feet.
Small feet, big feet
Here come the pig feet.
His feet, her feet
Fuzzy fur feet
In the house and on the street,
How many, many feet you meet.
Up in the air feet
Over a chair feet
More and more feet
Twenty-four feet.
Here come more and more…………………………….and more feet!
Left foot. Right foot.
Feet. Feet. Feet.
Oh how many feet you meet.

Okay, so it was the Dr. Suess edition of how my running went this week! Monday was a nice Interval Day, I did some 800m repeats out on my Fab 4 course, which was made the whole 800m (1/2 mile) interval less exact, but more fun than orbiting a track. I only did 3 of them, (technically, if you do 10 of them in a real Yasso Workout, you can predict your marathon time), but I would venture that my marathon time is still around that 4:16 I predicted a few blog posts ago.

Tuesday, I went out to run with the intent of recording a Race Director’s update for the Phedippidations World Wide Half Marathon (and Kick the Couch 5k) Challenge! Well, I was getting so pissed off at cars (background noise) and my own akwardness of running and talking into a microphone that I was getting physically upset. I changed my course direction a number of times, totally messing up my routine. I actually said outloud (and it recorded) that I was so F-ing pissed off right now. Somehow, I ended up making another crazy turn and was pretty close to the aquatic center. So, I say down and recorded my audio and decided that I would call it a day. I needed to calm down. I may have gone a mile or so… maybe. But you can hear me on the next episode of Phedippidations… doing my race director thing.

Wednesday, there was no running… only swimming… 400 meters to be exact. Not exciting. Well, the did have the pool set up in Olympic Pool style, which meant that instead of 22.8 meter lengths, they were 50 meter lengths. Makes the math easier. And for all my non-metric friends 400 meters is about 1/4 mile.

Oh, I am doing a 2-fer today… oh, which reminds me that I haven’t heard from Soon-To-Be-Dr.-David which probably means I need to send him an email. But I did 5 miles at lunch and will do some more tonight. Not sure now how much I will be doing, but next week is RACE WEEK! It’ll be the week before the Big South Fork 17.5 Mile Trail Run. So, look for the standard Guess My Time and This is BSF posts about the race.

From my It fits on the Palm in my Hand post, Marianna commented:

I can’t remember if one of your readers recommended it here, but there’s a new book out that got 4 stars from People magazine. It’s called Inside Asperger’s: One Man’s Tale Look Me In the Eye by John Elder Robison.

I actually have this book on preorder with Borders! My Lovely and Talented Wife had sent the link to his website sometime ago and I poked around. When I saw that he had a forecoming book, I was very excited!

I am very excited to read a first hand account of what it was like to grow up with Asperger’s. I am very curious to see how closely my childhood was to his. Now, I don’t have an “official” diagnosis of Asperger’s but given the clues, we have (in our non-Holiday Inn Express expert opinion) concluded that I do have Asperger’s and that I am pretty high functioning, probably due to learning how to adapt over the last 35, ehhh, almost 36 years.

Here is a link to John Elder Robison’s Blog Look Me In The Eye. It’s pretty fascinating, especially when you consider that right now he is prepping for his multi-state book tour. Taken from one of his blog entries, here is a short schedule of where he will be promoting his book:

• September 25 Barnes & Noble New York, NY 7:00 PM
• September 26 RJ Julia Madison, CT 7:00 PM
• September 27 Brookline Booksmith Boston, MA 7:00 PM
• September 28 Attending the Asperger Association of New England event, Boston
• Watch for me on Weekend Today
• October 2 Borders East Madison Store Madison, WI 7:00 PM
• Listen for me with Diane Rehm on National Public Radio
• October 3 Harry Schwartz Booksellers Shorewood, WI 7:00 PM
• October 11 Food for Thought Books Amherst, MA 7:00 PM
• October 16 Buttonwood Books Cohasset, MA 10:00 AM *reservations required
• October 18 Elms College Chicopee, MA 4-9 PM *reservations required
• October 25 Northshire Bookstore Manchester Center 7PM
• November 2 UMASS Lowell Lowell, MA 7:00 PM
• November 15 Tattered Cover Denver, CO 7:30 PM
• December 5 Amherst Books Amherst, MA 8:00 PM

So if you can get out and see him, that would be great. So far, East Tennessee is not on his touring schedule.