PLANET3RRY

Has it been this long since my last blog entry? Geez, a couple days of workshops, a day of traveling and the weekend really cuts down on guy’s chance to blog. I even missed Photo Hunters and Success Sunday this week.

Obliviously, I made it from Utah with little problems. I got back to Nashville Thursday afternoon and the drive home to Knoxville was uneventful.

But now that I have my Monday under control, expect a nice Reader’s Digest version of my life this past week real soon. Also I am going to have a new contest for this weekend’s Expo 10k! I can tell you that it’s going to be a BAG! That’s right, all you fellow bag fetishers… it’s a BAG! Details on the contest to come… plus statistics of my past Expo 10k races.

Utah was absolutely gorgeous… I have some pictures, but need to compile them before I put them online, look for some on Flikr and Picasa.

I’m in Draper, UT… Given the distance, it might have been prudent to have rented a car. But I don’t have that risk to worry about, but I won’t really be able to go explore Salt Lake City on the way back to the airport.

I am staying at a Fairfield Inn, so if you need some expert opinion, mine won’t be any good since this is not a Holiday Inn Express. I doubt that I will get much time to blog or play on facebook or anything else during the day, although I might get some free time. I will be around in the evenings here, but I think they are going to give us some homework.

The view here is impressive. My view hasn’t changed a whole lot, I still mountains when I look outside. However, these Mountains are much more pointy. I do have Stella with me, so I will take some pictures. Had a car, perhaps I could have driven to some places to snap pictures.

I am going to try to run Monday, Wednesday and check out the workout room Tuesday and Thursday. There is supposed to be a cold spell here, so that might cut down on the outdoor running. Of course, I am running at altitude ( 4500 ft) but I don’t think that I will be here long enough to really gain any benefit… *sigh*

I am approximately here: -111.871223,40.52693899999999

Well, I better rest…

I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest of what’s been going on in my Universe. It was a very busy weekend with lots of traveling and now we are home, but it seems that we are going to be on the go… How did so much stuff get planned when our Au Pair is on vacation? I dunno.

Anyway… Here’s the scenario: The In-laws My Lovely and Talented Wife’s Parents had some Rental Property in Winston-Salem. For some reason, the furniture had to go. So Lolo (Tagalog for Grandfather) goes to Winston-Salem from Loris, SC (think Myrtle Beach) with help. The get a 26′ U-Haul from W-S, load it up and bring it back to Loris. The furniture that is staying stays, a few pieces of furniture stays with dpal-in-law and the rest come home to Tenn.

So I got to drive the U-Haul for about 8 hours, sometimes in the pouring rain, almost all of the time with high winds, and the entire time with The Loud and Lovable Skipper Doodle, who slept in the cab with me most of the time. I started to get a feeling like I had a “Big Rig” out on the highway (having to go to the ‘Truck’ side of Rest Stops) but in all actuality still just had a van on steroids. Nothing exciting happened… didn’t get pulled over, didn’t wreck, didn’t blow a tire, didn’t have kids try to get to honk the horn, no long haired blonde in a red sports car drive beside me… wait, that last one was National Lampoon’s Vacation.

We use possessive’s in our household as marketing ploys for the kids. Such as “Oatmeal” is called “Daddy Oatmeal” or Green Tea (and/or Diet Coke) is called “Daddy Juice”. The U-Haul was a source of fascination for the kids and a personal training room for The Younger (our acrobatic, daredevil, stuntkid). We constantly had to shoo them away from the truck, which ended up being called the “Daddy Moose Truck”

One of the things that I was able to secure was permission from my neice (who needs a good nickname) to highlight her photography talent with pictures from our Photo Safari from Christmas. I let her use Stella and I used my Trusty-Rusty AV-1 35mm camera and we took pictures around the In-Laws house & pond. I have a good portion of my pictures, so I want to put up a couple of albums with her pictures… they are very good. I’ll have to see if any of my trade (successes) and go to fund her a digital camera…

Our house has been in perpetual sickness. Although the kids were pretty sick free (some congestion), we have been going nuts. I still have some congestion that is almost cleared up. I hold to eventually get back to running… sometime in the near future. February is going to be really lean on the miles this month.

We traveled today from Knoxville to Myrtle Beach for a retreat this weekend. I am sad because I won't be able to participate in the Mary Kay retreat. All Mary Kay events are very good, very inspiring, much like a good book, you don't want to put it down. I will be taking care of Eric while Jen is busy. Well, eric and I will be shopping for most of it. And if the weather is nice, Eric will meet Mr. Ocean with his friends Crashing and Waves.

We were planning to meet Devaney in Wilmington, but he has a super abscessed tooth and is a lot of pain. Enough to send him to the emergency room since his regular dentist was out of town. Maybe next time.

The ride here was crazy. What normally took us 6-7 hours was over 8 hours. Eric was going stir crazy even though our new Odyssey has a DVD player… we watched baby Einstein about forty billion times. So any trip over (normally) 8 hours is going to be a two day affair. So in July when we go to Dallas for seminar, that will be a 2-dayer on the travel down and 2-dayer on the way back.

I am looking forward to getting my Chest Xray on Tuesday… I sure hope that it is clear. I think it will be. I am going to try to wake up early these next few day so that I can get some mileage in before everyone is up. Hopefully, the low tide will be working with me so that I can get some beach running this weekend.

Howdy all from the Sunshine state. We are here in sunny Florida for the Debut of Jen’s National Sales Director, Sylvia Kalicak. Last night was the big debut for Sylvia where some of Mary Kay’s most successful National Sales Directors were there, such names as Cheryl Warfield and Bett Vernon. These ladies make so much money in a month it is ridiculous. Like Cheryl said last night “money doesn’t solve any problems, but it gives you options.” Our goal is for Jen to be a NSD but 2010 and for me, this means that I will be able to retire before 40 and be able to help her most of the time while being able to pursue what I want to do, not sit behind a desk for 8 hours. Imagine having the ability to travel to cities to run marathons? How cool would that be. Plus we could be stay at home parents for Eric and Baby Incognito and not have to sacrifice our happiness for their survival.

We flew down on Independence Air, which is my old airline when I worked and lived near Dulles Airport. The flight was fine. Eric did well, only screaming a couple times. When we got our rental car, Jen asks me “How do they get the new car smell in these used cars?” I thought to myself and then looked at the odometer and the total mileage on the car was 8. Yes, that our car was soooo new, they probably drove it from the car dealership to the airport. How sweet was that? Eric was staying at Carina & eugene, in Gotha while we stay in a Candlewood Suites in Lake Mary. I just looked at the time and will have to continue later… tootles for now.

This year has been fairly good up to this point. We watched UT beat the socks off of Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl. Sunday, we took down all of the inside Christmas decorations and packaged them away for next year. we broke out all of our scrapbooking material so that she and her consultants could make their Mary Kay goal posters. Only one person made it, Janie and she made a pretty awesome goal poster. Jen didn’t make hers yet, but will in the near future.

As of total I have 6 miles for this year, all on the treadmill. I was supposed to run on Saturday morning, but that feel through and then I was too tired to run on sunday morning. I really really need to get my mileage in. I think that I am going to do a super duper long run the first or second week of February which will be about 6 weeks out from the marathon.

Jen had an appointment on the 5th for Baby Incognito. No pictures this time but the heartbeat was about 130-140 and sounded good. Our next appointment is not until Jan 31st when they do a full blown ultrasound, so we will have new pictures then.

Jen did say that she felt some movement yesterday while driving. With Eric, I felt him on Feb 14th, which almost corresponds to right now with Baby Incognito, so I am hoping that I can feel movement any day now.

tomorrow we are leaving for a week for some Mary Kay fun and excitement. We are first going to Orlando for our National Sales Director Sylvia Kalicak’s debut for becoming a National sales Director. Then on Sunday we are driving from Orlando to New Orleans for Leadership Conference. I am going to watch Eric while we are New Orleans, although I would rather be going to the conference. I can’t complain because any day visiting New Orleans is a good day.

12.27.04 through 12.31.04
Our goal was to leave Loris around 11 am and I knew that we’d never leave until noon at best, which is our plan to say we are leaving early but have a later anticipated departure. During our travels from Loris to Colonial Heights, there was very little excitement. In fact, the only real problem was on Interstate 95, in the middle of North Carolina, we were averaging around 20-30 mph. The reason for this was that a snow storm had hit central NC and the beach area of Va a few days earlier. Now, the roads were fine, but there was snow on the ground. Once you got to the VA state line, however, the snow was gone.

We made it to Colonial Heights and where we saw Great-Grandmother Higgins, Grandpa Higgins and Janet. All waiting to see Eric and the changes since October. For GGma Higgins, this was their first meeting. I think it would have been nice to have been able to bring Eric when he was smaller and less mobil so that she could hold him. Eric is a wild child now and does not sit down very much anymore.

Tuesday (28th) our goal was to find some boots for Jen and for the Xterra to get an oil change. Both were successful. Eric ended up sleeping throughout the oil change and even while Pete and I went to get me a Slurpee…mmmmmm. After dinner, Jason and I arranged for him to come to visit, which was his first time meeting Eric. Jason and his wife Kim are Eric’s godparents. Being that Kim is very near due with thir second child and Jen’s tiredness of being on her feet all day looking for boots, it was just Jaymo and I cruisin’ the Boulevard. We ended up going to Friendly’s which is where we often went when we were in High School. Jason actually worked at that Friendly’s for a while. I got my absolute favorite, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup sundae made with chocolate ice cream. Jaymo and I caught up with what was going on plus reminisced about the good ole days.

Wednesday (29th) we left Colonial Heights and traveled 460W to Roanoke and then down to Knoxville via 81 and then to 40. We stopped in Blacksburg to see on of my UT Stats compadres, David Edwards. He is currently pursuing his Ph. D in statistics from Va Tech and should be finishing in 2007ish. It was good seeing his, unfortunately his wife Beth was at work, but we did spend a while with him at a Wendy’s right off the interstate.

We made it home just fine and I got to feed Spunky. Spunky is our across the street neighbor Sheila and Jim Kohl’s pet gecko. Now, she doesn’t speak like the one that Geico has, but getting to feed her is pretty cool. She gets fed crickets into her aquarium home where she hunts them down and eats them. She pauses like a cat and even her tail wags before she lunges. She is not accurate all the time and sometimes gets a mouthful of sand. Here are a few pictures of her.

New Years Eve we spent with Marty and Solange at their house. we had Ham, potatoes and coleslaw for dinner. After the kids went to bed we watched the movie Dodgeball which was a pretty funny movie.

12.23.04 through 12.26.04
We made it through the stomach bug right before Christmas. In fact, I found what turned out to be liquid gold… Propel. As if water wasn’t already healthy, Gatorade, a few years ago, made “fitness water.” you know, water with a little flavor and few minerals, jack up the price and wah-la. [For those of you who read Dilbert, I also buy bags of soil but not bottles of air... yet.] We feared that Jen had become very dehydrated from the stomach bug that she was unable to drink very much. I had gone to Kroger to get some Powerade and while milling around the beverage isle, I saw Propel. Hmmm, I thought, flavored, but not sweet and it’s not carbonated. So, I gambled about $4.5 that these 4 plastic urns would carry the nectar that Jen’s body and Baby Incognito would desire. [Editors Note: Now that is the 2nd trimester, I might changed the name, maybe]

And it turned out to be a success! Propel was what Jen needed. I knew all that schooling would come in handle to make an educated guess. Anyway, on the 23rd, I had to leave work a little earlier than planned so that we wouldn’t leave too late. After all, Eric is handfull these days. We left around 6pm, I had wanted to get through the mountains before dark because I was worried about ice. There was no need. The only thing that was a real problem was Eric’s ears and the change in elevation. We made it to Loris, very very early on the 24th, around 1am or so.

Now the plan at the Palomares household for Christmas is to stay up late until midnight then a frenzy of focused paper tearing commences as you begin to inventory all the loot that you got. We tried to nap Eric a few times during the day since his schedule was all topsy-turvy from the trip.

Eric was a little tired at midnight, but he did enjoy the mayhem around him. He seemed to like ripping the paper, which was evident from back home where he will tear pieces of paper to very small particles.

Christmas morning I ran around Loris in some colder weather. I put on my “almost tights” since it was sooooo cold, in the mid 30s which is arctic for the Beach area. I mapped out my route that I took and found out that I ran 13.8 miles through out town in a time of 2:16. I guess that time is okay, but I was running for 8 minutes and walking for 1 and my pace was only a 9:53 mile. That puts me at a 4:16 marathon which is depressing. I will have to run again today when Jen gets home.

we saw The Jordans (Kip, Joy, Caleb and Rachel) that even which was my first attempt at a pecan pie. I tried to make it with a graham cracker crust and it was a flop. The filling wasn’t that bad, but the crust just sucked. I will have to use my Grandmother’s secret pie crust recipe. Everyone else in household watched a movie.

We went to the new Tanger outlet malls with Mommy P. Our mission was to look for some boots for Jen P. My mission was to go to the Old Navy Outlet and not blow a wad of cash. I only bought one shirt for 6.99, but my weakness was at the GAP outlet. Since Jen has been in Mary Kay, the outward image is important and needless to say, the first chapter of Dr. Phil’s book essentially says the same thing. Oh yeah, and so does the Fly Lady (Sink Reflections). So, I have been trying to also portray a more professional image when I leave the house, as I am a surrogate consultant, but seriously, I am the CEE of the household. That is Chief (because I have some small percentage american indian - blackfoot tribe - in me) Executive (because we have to have important sounding names, I could think of a few fun ones) Encourager (because as a MK husband, that is my biggest contribution that I can make). “My income is your income” - Jen P. So why wouldn’t I want her to be prosperous?? Anyway, I found nice stuff at the Bass Outlet that I really like.

It’s about time for me to pick up Eric, so I have to end this promptly. Jen is at an organizational workshop with some of the other MK directors. We really hope that we can fine tune our systems to be more efficient. We really need to find a babysitter, Eric is currently over at the neighbors who is always so sweet to watch him at the last moment, but it is not fair to her that we rely on her all the time. Although it is nice to be able to walk across the street to get him. Plus we trust her.

Hopefully my next update will be at the home computer… please wifi work this time…

JASON AND KIM TURNER HAD A LITTLE GIRL AT 12:02pm 2-11-03. LAUREN PAIGE TURNER! WHEN WE GET A PICTURE, WE WILL POST IT ON THE BABY PAGE.

Has it been a packed 2 weeks. Every Since we went to San Francisco, my life has been CrAzY. San Francisco was awesome! Jen had a conference that she was presenting some of her work at TVA, so she arrived on Monday. I had classes, etc, that week, so I skipped my class on Thursday and flew all day to get to San Fran. Friday, we spent down at the Fisherman’s Wharf where we took the tour of Alcatraz. For being a “rock” it was very interesting the history of that famous island. While in San Francisco, we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast in the downtown area. I must say that the public transportation there was great. Thursday night and Friday day we spend upwards of $40+ on parking. Friday night we parked the car on the street and when we went sight seeing on Saturday we spent $6 on public transportation (all day). So it was great. There is so much to do there, I would like to go back and see the art museum there, that would at least take one full day.

School is going okay. I had my first test in Design of Experiments and it didn’t go over very well. It was a very tough and long test. For a regular semester test (not a Final) it took the first person to finish 1 hour and 40 minutes! for a 1 hour and 15 minute class. So, My chances of getting straight As this semester is in question, but not completely out the window.

I got accepted into the Virginia Creeper Marathon. So that is a definite. I have to ramp up on my training. Of course, I say this every time and every time I do not log in enough miles etc… so. I am running my first long distance this weekend, so I will have a gauge on what to expect in March.