PLANET3RRY

We are back from Arizona. We rolled back into our garage this morning around 1am Eastern. We had been gone since Tuesday morning when Knoxville was being pounded (flurries of some substance) with snow and schools were closing (which they do at the mention of “snow”).

Our trip went well and without much trouble either. We had one meeting that was rearranged, which gave us a free day on Wednesday and a meeting on Thursday night. As a result we were able to sleep in and adjust to the time change… AOT which is Arizona Only Time. The heat has gotten to those in Arizona and they don’t change their time for no one… ever. So, no one is ever early or late for church twice a year… well, they can’t use THAT excuse at any rate.

With our free day we went to a county park and took a few pictures. It was absolutely gorgeous and every view was a picture postcard… even the one where I got stuck with a couple of cactus pods… that postcard would say: “Damn, out of towners…”

We even played with some linear perspective and made some funny pictures…

The conference that we attended was Mary Kay Leadership, which is for Director’s only. That’s the top 2% of the company. This year’s theme was Think BIG! and that is what I did! I learn a bunch at these conferences, and so I took lots of notes and am in the process of consolidating them. Also the time allowed me to work on other things…

• I have most of my Trading Journal edited and will be printing that out to help track my trades from week to week.
• I have my 2009 Running Schedule penciled together and my Two Main Focus Marathons will be Flying Pig (Cincinnati, OH) and Flying Monkey (Nashville, TN)
• I worked a little bit more on the ASD Athletes’s paperwork. More importantly, I realized that I did more on the December Cruise than I thought, so I need to consolidate everything and I should be able to send that thing in soon

However, while I was there I didn’t get to do any running like I wanted… but I didn’t eat that unhealthy while I was there, so that’s about the same right?

But now I am back and start back up at work tomorrow… Poor My Lovely and Talented Wife had some gluten yesterday… the infamous Gluten Hangover that we get… she’s been sleeping ALL day. She woke up just briefly to eat some and then back to bed. Talk about messing up your sleep pattern… maybe she’ll be reset of time-zone/jet lag because of it… I dunno.

Oh, about the Au Pair, since there were a few comments about that… her Au Pair program is over and is over the age limit to continue. She changed her Visa to a student’s Visa and is now taking classes, therefore she is a full time student right now and taking classes.

For about the past 3 weeks, I had been in a slump… It had actually started somewhere around the 15th of December, but wasn't in full effect until sometime just before Christmas Eve, when my deserve level fell to a new low. I was not motivated to do a whole lot or anything at all.

As a regular reader (all 4 of you!) you know that I have run since Christmas Eve when I had a decent run at Lakeshore. Every chance I got, I chose to skip running and avoided it. Why would I do that? Why cut off running out of my life. Mainly because other factors in my life were causing me to avoid one of the things that I love. I had lost my passion for life, even my kids would not bring the joy that they normal do. I was in bad shape and even at Christmas time where we had plenty of family and friends around and maybe that made it not as worse as it could have been.

One of the things that is my therapy in this life… is running. Running recharges my batteries, clears my mind and gives me a chance to think about the big picture without having to stress about it at the time. Once I thought that I did not deserve to run, the whole I was digging was too deep for me to climb out on my own. And Jen knew that things weren't all that great with me and it didn't help that I wasn't communicating with her. And we all get this way from time to time. It's natural, in fact, it's universal law that we must feel and act this way, to what extent it affects us is under our control. This universe is controlled by equilibrium and cycles. Thermodynamics tells us that the thermometer is going to move until it becomes in equilibrium with our body temperature. The seasons cycle all through the year as we rotate around the sun. We can't escape it, but we can we do have some control on how it affects us… when we are upset small bad things have a bigger affect on us than we have just won the lottery, the bad thing still happened but we chose to not make it a bigger deal when we are happy because of our control.

For the past 4 days, I was at the Mary Kay Leadership Conference in Atlanta. Briefly, it is a 3 day event for Directors for training and motivation for the last 6 months of the Mary Kay Seminar Year. As a spouse, I get to go all the events that Jen qualifies for and am able to sit in on the training that other Directors attend. This way, I get the inside scoop on new products and promotions before most of the consultants out there! There were about 9,000 directors there and probably 100-200 husbands. I did see one male director and that was on-stage when he was picking up the keys to HIS pink cadillac!

While attending Leadership, I had a self-actualization moment (at the spouse specific class) where I learned something about myself and broke out of the slump. I probably leap right out of that pit I dug with Mary Kay kicking me in butt to help me up (She knew how to motivate). I'm thinking much clearer now, I can communicate to Jen more effectively now and now I am ready to run (literally).

I have a cut out Adidas ad taped up in my office that lists the 7 Stages of Marathon:

• 1. Ritual
• 2. Shock
• 3. Denial
• 4. Isolation
• 5. Despair
• 6. Affirmation
• 7. Renewal

and for those of you who have run marathons, you know that these are pretty much right on target. Well, I was definitely feeling numbers 4-6 and I very grateful that I have a way find my source of renewal. It's different that it's the values and training of my wife's business… I just hope that others can find their source that renews their mind and soul.

I am running today at lunch! It should be a train wreck… I'm going out for 3-4 miles and I thinking… hmmmm, I only have 10 weeks left until the Knoxville Marathon… better get started!

Having a blast so far . Lots of walking but well worth it.

As you know from my previous post (via mobile phone) that The Clan is here in Atlanta! The kids are staying with Jen's old high school friend while Jen and I are downtown Atlanta (I can see the CNN and Phillips Arena from the Hotel room) getting ready for the Conference. We will be here until Wednesday Afternoon and the pick up the boys, have dinner with a College Friend of Jen's and his wife and then back to Knoxville!

I'll get to go to some husband specific classes to help Jen with her business. After all, if she is going to retire me in the next few months so that I can do things such as spend time with the boys, run marathons, photography, learn the guitar, etc then I need to figure out what I can do to help.

With the paid account of LiveJournal, not only can I post from my mobile phone, but I can send in a voice post from any phone! Isn't that cool? So, I may figure that out and post an audio post tomorrow. Sweet!

No running in the month of January yet. I did bring my running shoes, but not sure if I will be able to get down to the fitness center or not.

And as for those who I regularly leave comments, it'll be a couple of days. So, see you then, if not sooner. I'll post when I can!

Okay, from my last post, I was a few minutes late to check out and get to Lunch. All was okay though. We sat as a Pink Generator unit at Lunch: Janie & Jody, Kim & Dan, Elba, Carina and Jen & Terry. After lunch we went for the closing session of the debut again by Cheryl Warfield. I have pictures which are still embedded in the camera and have yet to be downloaded. Cheryl is a great speaker and was very motivating to everyone in the audience. We said our goodbyes and hopped in the car to travel to Tallahassee.

Sunday, we traveled to New Orleans via Interstate 10. Nothing of monumental interest during our travels to New Orleans. When we got into the city, I took the wrong exit to the hotel. Well, wrong isn’t the correct word, let’s try inconvenient. For those of you who have not been to the Crescent City, the steets that run primarily North/South are two lanes, but those that run East/West are mainly one-way streets. So, if you miss your turn, you may have to drive around a bit to get to back to where you want to be. As was the case for the HI Express. Once we made it there, we valeted our car and brought up our bags. The room we had overlooked Cardonelet Street, which turns into Bourbon Street on the otherside of Canal. For a Holiday Inn Express it was a spacious room, but that has more to due to the fact that the buildings in NO are quite old and larger than today’s standards. We ended up getting a pizza for the night since the places near us were already closed and we didn’t want to venture out into the city that night. When Jen went to register, I found a Wal-mart close to the convention center and you know you are in New Orleans when the Wal-mart has one whole row dedicated to hard alcohol. Not the mixer, but the actual hard stuff, Beam, Bacardi, etc…

Monday morning we walked to the convention center as to avoid getting the car from valet and thereby being obligated to tip. Not that we do not tip, in fact we feel obligated to tip everytime but we don’t want to handover our money right away. So we walked. Eric was in the backpack carrier that we borrowed from Marty & Solange. He loved being in that thing and it made it much easier for walking around and having two hands free. We dropped Mommy off at the convention center and we went to the aquarium. I also have pictures of the aquarium which are also on the camera still. Eric seemed to enjoy the Aquarium but it was more like a play area for him. I think if was a little older he would like the fish as well. After the aquarium, we went down and around the Riverwalk on the Mighty Mississippi. Jen got a ride home and after me going out to find food and the nearby restuarants had closed, we decided to order a pizza and salad… we are in New Orleans and we are eating pizza and not cajun? For SHAME!

Tuesday we got the car and drove Jen to the convention center. Eric and I went to Melairie to go shopping at a running store that I saw back in 2002. It was boring other than fact that they had some B&W candid pictures of Steve Prefontaine. We didn’t really go anywhere else exciting, but back to the hotel. I suited Eric up in the kid carrier and went to the French Quarter. We walked down Bourbon Street and down to Jackson Square back to Canal and then stopped for lunch. I got the Po’Boy that I had wanted… crawfish to boot. That evening we went to Landry’s Seafood Restaurant for dinner, I had another Po’boy and some Abita, so I had a Lousiana dinner. Jen had Oysters and Eric, well, I forgot… he usually eats off of our plate.

Wednesday, Leadership ended and we made it halfway to Orlando. We stayed at Hampton Inn since they had internet and laundry. We had bought Eric 3 new outfits while in New Orleans because the diapers he had kept leaking (Huggies). Despite that we were out of clean clothes for him. Eric had discovered that if he stuck his hand in his mouth far enough, it would cause him to gag. So the clothes he was wearing had vomit all over them plus his carseat. Thursday, we made it back to Orlando and had a 2 hour delay at the airport before arriving in Knoxville very very late.

Friday, I had to go to work. So, I totally slept through the alarms and arrived late. I would have updated this blog then but I was inundated in American Samoa report work, which is what I should be doing now. Friday night, doesn’t seem like we did anything for the evening. Jen did turn it into a date night by putting in the movie Elf. I feel asleep about halfway into the movie after eating a lot of popcorn.

Saturday, in the morning Marty and I ran a little less than 17 miles for our Knoxville Marathon training. The last 5-6 miles where pretty tough, but also the hilliest part of the course we took. At Panera, I was sad that they got rid of their Cinn-ful Crunch Trio combo, but happy that they brought back their Chocolate Chip bagels. I love chocolate and the thought of chocolate bread was (at one time) replusive, same thing with other bread-like substance such as chocolate pancakes. Call me crazy. Well, I am over that now. I make Chocolate Chip/Peanut Butter pancakes now (thanks Gray and Laurie) and I prefer chocolate chip bagels (thanks Jen P) over everything except for Panera’s Cinnamon Crunch bagel. We went to the Pugh’s for dinner that night. The appetizer consisted of Venison poppers which were jalepeno pepper hulls with venison and cream cheese wrapped in bacon. YUMMY! The main course was venison and chicken soft tacos with all the fixins and desert was pumpkin cheesecake. Eric and William are buddies, so there was plenty of mayhem going on in the house. Jen did have an allergic reaction to the Pugh’s cat and had to take a benadyrll that evening, so we knew that Jen might not wake up early the next morning

Sunday, after church, Jen and I started getting our end of the year finances together and making our Quicken actually reflect more of our accounts today. I started to rip all of our audio CDs so that I would have all of them on the computer. This was something that I had started in May while I was still in school. Lately, I have been wanting to make mixed tapes for the Civic, so I thought that if I could burn a CD that was 45 minutes long, I could make a cassette tape much much easier that way. If all I had to do was drag and drop the songs into a CD then I could just play the CD, hit record and walk away. No more changing out CDs or anything. The problem was to get the CDs into MP3 format. The new computer was fast at ripping the CDs. When I did it while in school, I could get a ripping speed of around 6x faster than recording it real time. So a 6 minute song would take 1 minute to rip. Well, the new compter was ripping CDs at speeds excess of 18x which made ripping a whole CD take about a minute or less.

Monday, Martin Luther King Day, No Work for me. Most of the day was spent getting the finances in order so that we can afford to stay in our house. We are moving to an all (or almost all) Cash basis. The credit cards didn’t get us in trouble but they do make our finances must thinner. So this way we allocate what we spend money on and stick to it. Plus, it will curb all the crap that we buy that ends up cluttering the house. I finished with ripping the CD except for like 5 albums and the CD singles that I have. I am not sure that I will rip those, except for a few CD singles that sound better than the album version. One strange incident on Sunday, while Eric and I went to get gas, two cops pulled into the gas station where I was. I watched them from the Xterra as they were talking with a gentleman inside the store. As luck would have it, the gas station ran out of gas while I was filling the Xterra. I can usually get 16-17 gallons into the Xterra unless it is bone dry. After 8.5 gallons, it stopped, completely. So I went went to go get my receipt from the pay at the pump, but nothing came out. So now I was forced to go inside. As I tried to go inside, the cops were having their conversion right in the door way which made it harder to get around. Nothing exciting happened but it was rather weird.