PLANET3RRY

This Week’s Theme: Rocks

Alien Patterns? Aztecs? Not Quite

These precise patterns carved into the land are being done again. Why? There is a building being built in Washington DC and to make it look like the other building in the Nation’s Capital, they have reopened a quarry outside of Knoxville that has veins of Marble which was mined years ago. We passed by this quarry when we took a ride on the 3 Rivers Rambler train which departs from Volunteer Landing from here in Knoxville, TN.
Have a Great Week!

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This week, when it has rained… it has POURED. One of the rains earlier this week lasted about an hour, but it filled up alot of my Hydrogen Dioxide Collection Units. Of course, with lots of rain in the forecast for the week, the only thing that my HDCUs will be good for will be breeding mosquitoes and other unwantables. I had wanted to go outside and look to see some of the drainage issue that my yard has (and it has alot) but as I was getting ready to head out, lightening flash and immediate thunder crash, sooooo, I just went back inside. Today we are expected to get some more wet weather.

Of course, all this wet weather has done NOTHING for my Topsy Turvy^tm plant. It died. However, the other tomato plants that I had bought, plus the tomato plants that my Father-In-Law planted are doing “marginal”. They seem to have decided to stop growing, despite the rain. I think on my biggest plant there were 2 blooms. Not tomatoes, but blooms. My cucumber plant on the other hand has about 20 blooms and 1 cucumber on it! It’s a very “stout” cucumber. It must be about 4 inches long, but 4 inchs in diameter. I’ll stop there.

I have to admit that this week at work things have been a little more relaxed with the workload. Although I am not back on my usual timeline of getting work done vs. getting Terry-work done, it is getting closer. I added a couple of links to the sidebars of my blog (in case you are ready this via Facebook Notes) and there’s a Geni link that I need to create as well. And if you haven’t already heard or read, I decided to sign-up for Twitter. 3 years of not signing up for Facebook or Twitter and now the circle is complete. And, as you may have guess, “planet3rry” is my ID on Twitter… that’s a no-brainer.

My running schedule is coming along, but still not written yet. I recorded some audio in the P3 Mobile Studio and I talk about that in the next episode of Gravity@1053 which should be out early next week. Perhaps by then, I will have that schedule written! I will be having a Long Run, tentatively planned for Saturday morning, and then maybe a short run on Sunday. And, I think and hope, that the schedule for the summer will be set and I will be able to make plans to work out at lunchtime and then I can add in swimming to my workout diet.

I do have a project on my list to create a HDCU of my own, using some parts around the house and a few other things. I should document the creation and post it… except that sounds a little like work in disguise. I did fix my lapel mic’s abilty to stay attached to my lapel with some good-ole 1980’s MacGvyering, but that was a fairly easy fix.

This Week’s Theme: Garbage

It's so sunny, I don't need this

Better late than never to send this out.

This was some garbage that was hanging out as was walking back to my car after work one day. If I had properly exposed this picture, it might have been better.

Have a Great Week!

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“Traveling through hyperspace isn’t like dusting crops, boy!
Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or
bounce too close to a supernova and that’d end your trip real quick,
wouldn’t it?” – Captain Han Solo circa A New Hope

Okay, so despite the fact that I didn’t chose to join the Twitter ranks about 2 years ago, I am now officially part of the twitter-thingie. I think that I might take it with the way that Runner Matt from the Dump Runners Club does and tweet most of my workouts. Not like I don’t need to enter them into Buckeye Outdoors anyway.

Speaking of workouts. I ran 2 days IN A ROW this week. What a nice way for the second week of my marathon training. Now all that I need is a PLAN. That’s right, your’s truly is making it UP as a go along. Not that I prefer this method, it’s just that Life has made sitting down and writing a schedule fairly difficult. And with a schedule that is slowly setting like cement on a humid day… the schedule is coming along. One thing that will help is the revamping of the morning routine, once that is streamlined, I won’t need to work during lunch, thus allowing me to return to swimming and running at lunchtime.

And as I look, I can see my desk… well, I take that back… Technically I can’t see my desk, thus requiring me to… clean it… *sigh*.

Oh, look for a new episode of Gravity@1053′ in the next few days…

Saturday was a freakishly short day. I think it was because we had an appointment in the mid-morning, which meant that you couldn’t do a whole lot, then by the time we got home, it was quiet time.

After quiet time, we headed downstairs to the new Kids Office. Well, The Elder went off to play a Lego game on the computer and The Younger went into the Work Shop with me.

He started to pick up the free weights and dumbbells that we had. Picking up a 12 lb dumbbell (1/3 of his body weight) and placing on the bench about stomach-height. This body is going to be strong, but we are going to need to work with him to help him cope with some anxiety issues.

Just before I went outside, I was relocating a few things in the Kid’s Office and so during a pause break in the game that I was assisting The Elder with, I said…
“I‘m going to move the Refrigerator”

The Elder, without missing a beat and who was already running in the direction of the bathroom, raised his finger into the air to reinforce his statement, “I’m going to Move… to the Bathroom!”

My Lovely and Talented Wife both started to laugh which The Elder overheard and asked, “was that funny?”

I thought I would share a few of the professional pictures that I thought I would share…

Look Fine! And YES that IS a Dump Runner's Club Headband

Thank GOODNESS it's over!

Am I Having Fun Yet?

This Week’s Theme: Pink

Heart-To-Heart

The Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation (mkacf.org) supports breast cancer research through a grant program and each year they try to offer more grants or increase the size of the grants so that the smart people can figure out a cure to a disease that affect one of my fave parts of the female anatomy… not only can it tear down a person from the inside out it affects the lives of many, many others. At the last Leadership Conference, Mary Kay Directors were given a heart so that they could put their donation In the Honor of or In the Memory of someone they knew (or didn’t know). Here’s a small section of the Hearts, also, this is just one side and this picture was taken during the middle of Leadership as well.
Have a Great Week!

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It was nice to have Friday off in celebration of Independence Day here in America. This meant that I had a 3-day home work weekend, which can be a good thing. Of course, as I write this on Saturday, it TOTALLY feels like Sunday, but tomorrow is Sunday.

During the first part of the day, I did some quite a few minor landscaping tasks. I am expecting some free plants (4pm’s and Goosenecks) and so I want to be prepare for them. Since our backyard is nothing more than a big hill, I started to cut some plateaus, so that I could be an orienmental retaining wall for them. As I type this, that project is about half done since I didn’t have enough bricks where I was to complete the wall… I have the bricks but they are about at the farthest point away on my property. And it will take me a couple of trips, unless I use the wheelbarrow, which to get that down there is about the same amount of work as the same number of trips.

Before I could cut the plateaus in the hill, I had to clear the weeds and brush that had grown wild over the past few months… sure it’s green and it does prove ample privacy, but it’s weeds and not where I want it to be… so it had to be cut and sorted. The excavated dirt I used as fill dirt for near my retaining wall (the real one for the patio) where I am taking out the Monkey Grass and transplanting it. I am expecting quite a few flowers… all free too! Now, there are large gaps in the cinter blocks that are used as the main support for the wall (the brick is more orienmental). The people who made the wall, did not fill any of the gaps and only put a small amount of concrete over the top. So, over the 20+ years, holes have opened and there has been some amount of erosion… leaving essentially sink holes in the ground. So that dirt was used to begin to level “back” the ground.

The process of getting the dirt led me to the next project because I needed MORE dirt… ALOT more dirt. So I started digging at my abandoned garden from last year. It had been a compost area previously, so there was a good amount of earthworms in there but I was about to get a good portion of the dirt that I needed, but I will need alot more! This, left me with a rather large hole on the side of the hill where I had taken the dirt. So… I filled it in with the green brush that I had stripped out earlier. I don’t really care if more weed grow right there, that’s okay… it’s the start of a new compost/organics area.

The other issue that address was the part of the driveway that also has a retaining wall. This was the “ramp” to the backyard, before we put in the fence. Now that the fence is up, the hill on the other side of the house has better access for large mowing machines, etc. Since our “relatively” new neighbors started clearing out the brush/wild area on their property, I have taken it to make our part of that to look decent, as part of a master plan, I think they are going to do some nice landscaping there, as opposed to let weeds, poison ivy and other plants grow uncontrolled. So again, I have been making some temporary retaining walls near the real retaining wall to help stop the erosion, plus maybe put some flowers there or something. Since there is no grass there, I usually put alot of our leaves there from the trees to help mulch that area, But since I just started year, there was no mulch and the weeds had come back in FULL FORCE (Cult Jam was right behind). But I had the upper hand. I had placed cardboard down as a Poor Man’s Weedblock, so their soil to grow their roots is less than an inch… easy pulling!

So neither of those projects are in their final stages, they are still a work in progress. Tomorrow (Sunday), I’ll finsh part of the wall and some of the the other projects. I have been using cardboard boxes as a cheap mulching box for the plants and sticks that I pull up. I’ll need to make a compost area since our compost bucket is running rampid with maggots and other unindentified yucky bugs. Yucky to see and touch, yummy for the ground.

Oh, and right before I quit working at around 4pm on Friday, so that I could head out to the Fireball 5k, I stuck some tea in a glass jar and stuck it out in the sun. But seeing that I left it out over night… can I call it Moon Tea?

I’ve been toying with reinstating my world renowned online running coaching thing. Seeing that Mommy Susan is under the tutelage of the AWESOME John “Mile 22″ Ellis and that Sam I Am is out in the South Pacific playing where the palm trees sway, I would say that right now, I have two slots open.

Here’s the Skinny on how my Online Coaching works:
From a Target Race Date, I work backwards to create a customized schedule for your training. And when I say customized, I mean that I ask you specific questions about your daily schedule, what types of running that you like to do, races in your area (I’ll look up ones too), etc. And I add in some flexible times because unless you are a professional athlete (and you wouldn’t be here anyway), life happens sometimes. So we have to make the best of what we are given. Think of it as the LemonAIDE Running Schedule.

During your training program, you can either email me what you did, how it felt, etc or blog about it, or post it on an online training website (might I suggest Buckeye Outdoors?). And you’ll get to pick the inner parts of my brain on running, what to expect, what to do, tricks, improvisation, etc.

How much does it cost? Well, seeing that Susan was my first (at Coaching!) she’ll always get a waiver of goods, no matter how many programs I make for her. So should it be free? I love to do it, but No, it’ would be easy to cast aside and not give it respect if I give it to you for free, even if I wanted to. If you were hiring me as a Statistical Consultant, my current going rate for new clients starts at $75/hr. But running is my passion and so it’s really fun (Stats is just fun) and so for me to shed any responsibility on associating cost with this, I am going to leave it up to the participant. What ever YOU think it is worth, then you can make a donation to my nonprofit organization, ASD Athletes.

When can I start? Anytime really, but expect a logical, realistic goal for the target race. Just send me an email. If you don’t have my email, you can use the Contact Page on the blog.

What Else Do I need to know? I have no idea, it’s 2:28am when I am writing this, so if you have a question that would be beneficial to all those interested, then please Comment and I will reply with an answer.