Labor Day Weekend

It’s been 20 years since I graduated! And thanks to Facebook, it would have been 20 years since I got in contact with some of my high school friends. Being from a small graduating class from Saint Vincent De Paul High School (now closed) in Petersburg, VA, there weren’t a whole lot of people who attended college with each other. During my 4 years at Longwood College, there were 3 of us from my class and I can’t remember, if there were any other from future classes or not. Anyway, there are ALOT of my graduating class that I have not seen in 20 years… and with the help of Facebook, most of them I just haven’t seen in PERSON in 20 years. Of course, there is Patrick who is 1/2 a world away riding horses on the Mongolian plains, visiting Tibetan Monks not because some rock band said “go save them”, and going back to Bangkok, Thailand to do some secret government thing… my Morse Code is stale since it’s formally “dead” but it was some like “club, bang-bang, americans, uh-oh wife Jennifer is coming, later.”

So with 20 years of anticipation, we headed to Virginia to visit my High School Alma Matter, and in doing so, I unleashed a Antiquity-Maelstrom in my workshop as I was trying to find great crap treasures that would bring back fond memories when I could ligitimately call myself a “Saint”. I found my yearbooks (of which I just had seen weeks ago) literally the last 30 seconds in the house. No, seriously. My Lovely and Talented Wife was calmly describing what I should do about being prepared and vigorously get to the van so that we can leave on time. I had my yearbooks, some photo albums, soccer schedule, letterman’s jacket, a vintage (circa 1983) memo from the school copied on the mimeograph machines (that patented “blue” color) and some other crap stuff.

I do have to admit that I was a little bummed that not more of my class or the classes around ’89 wasn’t there, but I still had a great time regardless! But then again, had there been that would have taken away from seeing the people there and getting to chat with them! My Lovely and Talented wife had a good time as well, luckily most of “Terry being Terry” stories happened at Longwood… I think the next reunion will have a broader announcing range to make sure that those that Aren’t In The Know, In The Know.

The next day, I was really excited to go visit St. Joseph Elementary. This is where I did my time from Grades 1-7 and then 8th grade at Gibbons High School before Bollingbrook was bought and St. Vincent de Paul was created at Bollingbrook’s old campus. And who better to visit the Elementary school with than Jason Turner, the future lead singer of Jaymo and The Barbarians, if I had my way. Jason and his wife Kim (who went to Longwood during my time) plus his two girls joined forces with me, My Lovely and Talented Wife, and The Elder and The Younger. For the most part, things were pretty much the way they were… same lockers but with about 20 more coats of paint, the step in hallway that was broken and fixed was still a different shade of fading, the clocks in the hallway were still there, but since replaced with newer faces.

It was pretty amazing that while we walked through the room Jason and I were to reminisce about the classroom Teacher for that room, what subjects we had, and other crazy stuff that went on during the course of a year. We were also amazed that they had shortened the long hallways, they were not nearly as long as they were 20 years ago.

Another big change was that the Sisters of Mercy Daughters of Charity [ed. thanks to Pete for the correction] were no longer living there, so the Convent for the nuns are now just regular rooms. It was highly unusual for use to go into the Convent area during my 8 years there, but the few times that I did cross that barrier it was to go to the chapel that they had there.

Some of the more strange places that I wanted to see where the old book room, where they stored all the books from year to year. It was always a spooky place being a small room in a semi-hidden alcove near the Cafeteria. The other place was the closet underneath the stairs, where we could purchase office supplies, which now that I think about it, I have been an Office Supply Junkie for years now. I was even challenged one morning while buying a number of the wedge/arrowhead style #2 Pencil erasers on whether my mother (who worked as an aide there for a few years) knew of this. “uh-yeah”

The cafeteria had not changed, well, except that since the Russians are no longer the enemy and “that” cold war is over, the Emergency Shelter (read: fallout shelter) signs weren’t as predominate as before. There’s a huge underwater mural painted on the (again, shortened) hallway at the cafeteria. And I did the standard pose by the small counter with a tray, as-if I was in line for another round of hot dogs (unless it was pizza day).

All the kids played outside on the asphalt playground, just like the good ole days. Not sure if they still have Nerf touch (sometimes tackle) football games out there, but a few things were a little different, such as the modern playground with the soft rubberized matting. Back in my day, it was all asphalt and we liked it! The green fencing that is around the windows of the cafeteria is showing it’s age. Back in 7th grade when I was figuring out that not all girls are icky and filled with cooties, there was one that I would “show off” by doing some acrobatic football catches INTO the fence while she was at lunch. Flowers might have worked better, but I was on a limited budget, plus girls weren’t “that” cool yet.

Lavelle Hall was a stand-alone building that the high school used for classrooms as well as serving as the High School Library. Although we only had high school classes in that building for 1 year, it was easy to remember most of the classes that we had there. Now, the upstairs is a St. Vincent/Gibbon memorial room in the main room, while the other classrooms are being rented out as needed. The entire downstairs is being rented out to an after-school program these days. Another big change that was the gas station/garage that was right next door to Lavelle Hall is gone…

One strange event was that Randy, the coordinator for the tour, found an ALIVE Opossum in a trash can. Apparently, the varmint made it in, but couldn’t make it out, so it was just lying in there eating the food and waiting for a slow and rather boring death. I commented that “In East Tennessee, we’d take that home and fry it up real good like”! We took the trash can, that was in a wooden holder (hence it couldn’t knock it over), and took it to part of the schoolyard that we could tip the can over and it would have to move in a way as not to be pissed and attack us. The Younger HAD to know what was going on, so never wanting to miss any sort of time to educate, I had the kids stand about 10-15 feet back and I tilted the garbage can to where the could see in, but it the Opossum was going to make a break for it, it wouldn’t scare the bejeezus out of the kids. The kids haven’t talked about it since, so it Opossum must not be as cool as other things like Fire Trucks, Trains and Legos.

We definitely enjoyed ourselves and it was nice to be back everything. Even my old house at 1810 Varina! Hopefully next time we make it that way, we can catch up with a bunch more people!

Stay Tuned! More on September to come!

Over the past few days, starting sometime in the afternoon of Thursday Past, the Family and I began a trip to Richmond Virginia to attend the 90th Birthday party of my Grandmother, Grandma Higgins, my Step-Dad’s Maternal Parental Unit. As far as I know, so that means, as far as I am telling you… she is the oldest living relative that I have. Well, there might be some In-Laws over in the Phillipines from My Lovely and Talented Wife’s family. You know those Pacific Rim peoples… eating rice and drinking Green Tea and living to 300 years old.

So, let me put in the disclaimer that Grandma Higgins is the oldest living relative (yet to be confirmed) in addition to be the oldest caucasion relative (pretty sure on this one) that is in my family.

The Big 9-0! Just like 38, just comes once a lifetime… but way more cooler than 38. However, when you reach the 90th, you don’t always have the greatest desire to drink shots, or go out Go-Go dancing or anything like that… leave that up to the young whipper-snappers… what’s WRONG with the youth today???

So the party for Gma H. was to have dinner Saturday Night and then Cake and Ice Cream back at her place. All of her Children came to see her, 4 boys, from basically the 4 corners of the US came to attendance, plus some of my Stepdad’s cousins, but for me to figure how they are related to her, would give me a headache. They would be… for me… Great Cousins? well, they are GREAT cousins… and they live in Tennessee, just a few miles to the West of us!

As part of our trip to Virigini, we decided to also head [CLASSIFIED] and to [CLASSIFIED] so that [CLASSIFIED] and [CLASSIFIED] could [CLASSIFIED] with [CLASSIFIED] [CLASSIFIED]. We also wanted to [CLASSIFIED] while we were at [CLASSIFIED] so that [CLASSIFIED] would have no idea that [CLASSIFIED] had [CLASSIFIED] [CLASSIFIED]. During our trip there, we stopped at a food eating establishment and just before we going to order, the power went out. And the power went out for the entire area… NOTHING. The only lights anywhere for as we could see was dark. Even the Golden [CLASSIFIED] of [McCLASSIED] was dark, so being hungry, we kept going, except that was one of the last places to stop before getting to [CLASSIFIED] which was still [CLASSIFIED] miles away. Anyway, we made it [CLASSIFIED] safely. I did take some [CLASSIFIED] but I will have to keep them [CLASSIFIED] until I get the green light from [CLASSIFIED] to un[CLASSIFIED] them. Wow… using [CLASSIFIED] really makes it faster to blog. I should [CLASSIFIED] more [CLASSIFIED] often!

I had wanted to go visit a friend that was in somewhat close proximity to [CLASSIFIED] but I ended up losing my phone while taking some pictures of the kids while outside. So it was a phone hunt to try to find my phone. but as usual, I found my phone in the last place I looked. That put us late leaving to get to Grandma’s Party we had to change our plans completely and ended up having to not see [CLASSIFIED]and [CLASSIFIED] or you can call them [CLASSIFIED] since they are joined at the hip.

We also left late enough that we were going to miss dinner, but we had called our Party ahead of time, so they were going to order and bring food to us. Which they did… and it was awesome. After getting to the hotel, showered, dressed, feed and ready to go, we were made our way down the road to Grandmother’s House… there were a few hills, but no real “woods”.

Not to drag this post out for another day in Draft mode, we had a great time at the party. The Kids were particularly hyper for the most part, but they had fun while they were there. They got to meet all of their Great Uncles, one of the wives… their great-GREAT cousins… and of course, their Great Grandmother who turned 90. Grandma’s party was rockin’ pretty late. It was after 9 or 10 before we left and the kids were on the decline… The next morning, I was going to see some friends who live in Richmond, but given the time for breakfast and packing the van, and visiting, and their schedules… it just didn’t happen. We made our way back to Tennessee late Sunday night and ready to make the best of the week coming up!

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 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…

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 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.

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.

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.

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…

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.