Odd and Gross

Dead Frog

We don't use the hot tub much during the summer, but Emily enjoys it the most all summer long. The hot tub seems to attract frogs, and Emily goes out there, finds them, and puts them in her aquarium and feeds them, playing with them for hours each day.

I went out to warm up the hot tub yesterday and noticed that the circuit breaker had tripped. I reset it and ran the jets only to have it trip again. "Crap", I'm thinking, "These things are never cheap to fix." I checked some of the connections and found nothing wrong, so I pulled the panel off of the circuitry to see if there was anything obviously wrong. There was something obvious enough for even me to notice, and I'm disappointed at myself for not getting a picture of it.

Splayed across the circuits was a big 'ol frog that had crept in through a wiring hole and kamikaze'd himself across the wiring. I pulled the frog off the wiring and everything worked beautifully.

Cathie's Back

Cathie's been having back pain along with some numbness in her legs for the past five months. Unlike me, Cathie doesn't complain and she doesn't take pain meds. She went to a chiropractor for a bit and then to physical therapy without any real improvement. Finally both recommended that she get an MRI done to get a better idea of what was going on. It turns out that she has a tear in her disc between l5 and s1. They've recommended that she continue physical therapy and that she will hopefully see improvement in the next 3 months.

Race Standings

The final results are in for the Portland Half Marathon. I didn't stay around long enough after finishing the race for the awards ceremony, and they just posted them online. Out of 112 racers in the half marathon, I finished 57th overall with a time of 1h 57min, so right in the middle. In my age bracket (35 to 39 Males) I finished 6th (5th in my age bracket was a time of 1h 36min). Not great, but not horrible for my first race. I really don't have much desire at this point to do another 1/2. Kevin and I are doing a 10k in town next weekend, but that shouldn't be too tough.

Panther Jamboree

On Saturday we had the kids Panthers Jamboree. Maddie's cheer/pom team did their routines and Nate's team had a series of scrimmages against the other teams in his division. First thing you have to understand about this Panthers organization is that it's HUGE. Each football team has 31 kids, six coaches and a couple of unit directors. There are 15 different teams, 5 in each of the three levels of freshman, JV and varsity. Throughout the year the kids play teams from the surrounding communities, so this is a chance for all of the teams in the division to play each other and for everyone to see all of the cheer and pom squads.

I jumped in my car from the half marathon in Portland and drove 90 minutes to get to the event, but I just missed Maddie's team cheering. We sat in the 95 degree beating sun, getting even more dehydrated as the day wore on.

Maddie is loving cheer and she's great at it. She's a gymnast at heart, so she loves the stunts and is in the flyer position, which I learned means she gets thrown in some of the cheer stuff and is at the top of the pyramids. She practices the cheers all the time, which get stuck in my head for hours on end. The company who made their uniforms sent the wrong outfits, so they had t-shirts for the event instead of their regular game attire. Cathie said Maddie did a great job and had a big smile on her face the whole time.

It was fun watching Nate's team play. They scrimmaged for almost 2 hours straight, 20 minutes of offense against a team, and then switching and running defense. No score was kept. Nate is playing Tight End, Cornerback and Special teams on kick-off, all in starting positions, so he plays a lot of the time.

He's only 75lbs, but he's got the reputation as one of the hardest hitters on the team. His coach shared with me that he wanted to move Nate to the lineman position, where guys are 140-160. Ouch. This is their last week of five day/week practice. They have their first real game on Saturday and then practices switch to three days/week once school starts.

It's Me or My Dog

Emily loves to watch just about every show on Animal Planet, including a British show called It's Me or the Dog. In the show, a dog trainer helps rehabilitate problem animals. I walked in today and saw Emily watching the show. I asked her what was wrong with this dog and she explained:

Emily: "This dog is really bad. He's always humping people."
Me (thinking I'd misunderstood what she'd said): "He what?"
Emily: "Humping people"
Me: "What does that mean?"
Emily: "It means he climbs on people's legs and doesn't let go."
Me:"Oh." (Not sure of what to say), "Ok."

My first half marathon

I ran in my first race ever this weekend. I started running about 5 months ago at a point where I couldn't even run a mile without dying. I literally hated running. I kept going at it, timing myself each time and trying to better it each time. I would run as far as I could and then walk until I could run again. When I eventually got up to 3 miles, I was doing it at about a 12 minute/mile pace. Before the race, I'd gotten to the point where I was at a 7 minute mile, as low as 6:22 minute/mile at times.

I trained for this half marathon more diligently than I'd ever trained for anything in my life, physically or spiritually. I followed a pretty strict regiment, running 4 times per week, 2 short, 1 medium and 1 long run. My long runs got to almost 14 miles prior to the race. I set the goal for myself to do the 1/2 marathon in under two hours, which seemed doable based on my long run times.
Kevin and I met up with Pat, one of his fellow-teachers in East Lansing, and the three of us ran together for part of the race. There were a few hundred people in the race in Portland. It was very hot, very humid and the course was very hilly, but at least it was very nice and scenic.

Kevin, Pat and I started out at a pretty fast pace, around 7:40 min/mile for the first few miles as everyone was bunched together. They had water stations every couple of miles where people would hand you paper cups. I found that I'm not good at drinking water while I'm running. It all seems to spill all over me. Kevin, Pat and I ran together for the first 6 miles or so, keeping about an 8 min/mile pace and then we split up.


At the ten mile mark I was at an 8:30 min/mile pace and it got very tough at that point. One of the biggest encouragements throughout the race was having Susan and the kids and Will and Monaca along the course cheering us on. They would cheer and yell and shout encouragement and it made all the difference in the world. It would give me a boost that you wouldn't believe. Cathie and the kids couldn't make it because they had their big kick-off for the football/cheer season back home.

The last three miles were the toughest of my life. Mentally and physically I was just exhausted. I was struggling to keep running and not walk. I hadn't brought my iPod with me, which was a bad move. I had nothing but my own thoughts, thinking about how tough it was and how much longer I had to go. No distractions from my own thoughts, which I desperately needed at that point. I finished the race at 1 hr 57 minutes and I was excited mostly to be done, secondly to have done it under my goal time of 2 hours.

It was very cool training for this with Kevin. We ran together, shared our daily results via google docs, held each other accountable and encouraged each other. We're both very competitive and we pushed each other well. e in town in a couple of weeks, which should be a bit easier.

I was soaking wet from the heat and humidity and exhausted. I drank a bunch of gatorade and jumped in my car to drive the 90 minutes home to make it to the kids football/pom jamboree.

At this point, I don't have any desire to do another half marathon any time soon, let alone a full marathon. Kevin and I are running at 10k her

Thanks to Marko for this video... Check out the slow-mo in the end and watch the landing closely. Ouch.

http://view.break.com/527310 - Watch more free videos

Last day of doing my volunteer parking lot duty for Panthers!

Every family has to put six hours of volunteer time in every season.
I'm making the world safer again this year by working I'm the parking
lot. At least I get to wear this cool vest.

Anniversary Gift

I didn't realize that we're supposed to exchange gifts on our 16th anniversary, but I continue to learn every year I'm married to Cathie. Cathie gave me a collection of gifts, each one representing the ten reasons she loves me, including a "Best Husband of the Year" award - an award I periodically claim for myself, and now have a real ribbon to prove my stature.

Each gift had a little heart attached to it, explaining how it represents her love for me. For example, a bottle of hot sauce had the message, "You are even hotter 16 years later" and a yo-y0 had, "You stick by me in life's up's and downs." It was an awesome gift and meant a lot to me.

Not having gotten Cathie anything, and not wanting her to know this, I quickly grabbed my guitar and played a song for her, to the tune of I gave my love a cherry from the movie Animal house. I don't think she had any idea that I hadn't been preparing for months for this gift.

Em's Horse Camp

Emily got a feel for what slave labor looked like this week, and loved every minute of it. She took part in a horse camp that gave kids a feel for what it's like to own your own horse. Throughout the week, the kids spend 6 hours a day cleaning, training, grooming and riding their own horse. They learned how to brush, clean and scrape the poop out of the horse's horse-shoes.

They ended the event with a competition. The kids were awarded prizes for their riding skills, grooming quality and racing abilities. Emily received the first place ribbon for her riding skills even though her horse had other ideas on what it should be doing. She really did a great job out there.


Emily, as many know, loves animals more than life itself and with all of the horses, donkeys, cats and dogs, she was in heaven. She received a special award for her love of animals. Her instructor explained that every day when she'd arrive and leave, she would go around to greet and pet every single animal on the farm.

This is one of the other animals that Emily took care of, the opera singing donkey. If you gave it an apple, it would sing Opera, or so Emily claimed. I never heard it.

My Marriage is of Legal Driving Age

Cathie and I celebrate sixteen years of marriage today. We met through Youth for Christ, a high school youth group, and we dated throughout college. We were married by the Trent Bushnell, the head of YFC after Cathie graduated from MSU and I still had a year left of school. After we got married, Trent and his wife Patsy took Cathie and I through this set of videos by Gary Smalley called Hidden Keys to Loving Relationships. These videos were amazing and really helped set us on a course to have a fantastic marriage.

We lived in 400 square feet of married housing on campus and then in an apartment before moving to Novi for a new job once I'd graduated from State. We went through some tough stuff in the first years, including a series of miscarriages. One of the big things in both of our lives was getting connected with Crossroads Church (where we still go) almost 14 years ago.

I've married my best friend in the whole world. People don't realize that Cathie has a similar (yet slightly more mature) sense of humor to mine. She just has a much better filter. Cathie has an amazing wisdom and common sense that complements my complete lacking in both areas. She happens to also be a smoking hot woman who I still lust after even 16 years into our marriage. Cathie has also learned to be a tiny bit less stubborn since we've been married (progress is measured in nano-stubborns).

One of the most memorable gifts I've ever gotten for Cathie had great intentions behind it. I had heard this guy named Ken Medima at a Youth Specialties conference since these songs. He would right them custom, on the spot and they were awesome. He had a service where as a gift, you could fill out a form and he would write a song about that person. While I was waiting for the song, I'd put together a slideshow of pictures on a DVD all set to plug this in. I got the song a couple days before Christmas and it was, um, well.... Let me put it this way... My family still laughs about the song and actually dug it out not too long ago and we all laughed hard about it. I'll see if I can find it somewhere.

Both of our parents have been fantastic role models in what great marriages look like and what it means to stick together through thick and thin. I can't believe how quickly it's all flown by. Three kids and two houses. One dog. Three cats. One guinea pig. A bunch of gold fish.

Cathie is the woman of my dreams. I thank God every day for her.

On a side note, it's no surprise that Cathie was the first to wish me a happy anniversary. Also no surprise that she finished it with an "oh yeah, I was first!"

Big Tires

As part of our workout this morning, we did the Strongman Tire Flip. It involves lifting and flipping a 200lb+ tractor tire over and over down the length of the field. It uses almost every muscle in your body at a high level of intensity. Plus, it's a lot more fun throwing a big tractor tire around over doing squats on a rack.

Maddie's Dream

Maddie came down the other morning and told me about this dream:

"I dreamed that I was at the olympics watching Michael Phelps swim. During his race, I jumped into his lane for some reason and cost him the Gold medal. I felt really, really bad, even after I woke up."

We've been watching the Olympics non-stop. Maybe a little too much.

Guy's Weekend

While Nate and I were at the NASCAR races, Cathie and the girls headed to Dewitt to hang out with her parents and grandparents for the day. The girls decided to stay over (in no way related to our suggestion that they would be much more comfortable NOT being around a bunch of smelly boys). After the news, Nate and I proceeded to lay out the perfect guy's weekend. We went from NASCAR to BW3's for wings and football and then headed home. We tried to rent Madden '09, but no luck, so we played a little guitar hero and then watched the U.S. team crush Spain in basketball. We watched a movie and then stayed up watching the olympics until very late. We slept in on Sunday morning, made a big breakfast, watched some more of the olympics, played some more guitar hero and then headed out to see the new Mummy movie (so-so).

I'm so proud of Nate and the person that Nate is becoming. We have fantastic conversations about everything from great "What if?" conversations (i.e. "What if you could be the best in the world at the sport of your choice, what sport and what position would you choose?"). I really dig these kind of weekends with him.

Maddie the Latch Hook Queen

"Dad, latch-hooking is a tough sport. I'm sweating already."

Gentleman, Start Your Engines

My Dad was kind enough to take his boys (his sons, grandsons and step-sons) to the NASCAR races at MIS yesterday. This was our first NASCAR race ever so we had no idea what to expect. My Dad had us get there very, very, very early to make sure we could enjoy every morsel of the event. There was a ton of pre-race activities and we spent hours wandering from tent to tent getting free swag and people watching.

My step-brother Mark is the real fan around NASCAR racing, while my brothers, Dad and I have never watched NASCAR and had no idea what was going on. Mark answered all of our dumb questions and helped us get what was going on. We had no idea who we were getting our pictures taken with or whose numbers we were wearing.

You could get your picture taken with all sorts of cardboard cut-outs of the racers, which we did regardless of who they were. Steve-O found his new hero, the Cheerio driver guy (Steve-o's diet consists ONLY of Cheerios as a part of an experiment that he has submitted himself to on behalf of the children of third-world countries. Very noble).

At the Toyota booth, you could get spray-painted tatoos of their drivers numbers, so of course, we all did. While in line I asked the fella with the mullet behind me what number I should choose and he told me who the top 3 most popular numbers were. I ended up getting #20, Tony Stewart (who came in 3rd). Nate got the same number, because it's also his football number (chosen because it is also Barry sanders number). I considered getting the tatoo on my neck, but then re-considered the combination of paint and sun-burn giving me a semi-permanent NASCAR tattoo.


Notice that Dan and Dad are both wearing collared shirts. When Jon arrived, he was wearing one also. He seriously thought that you had to wear one to get into the hospitality tenet. When we first arrived, we met up with Kevin at the National Guard booth, they had a fitness competition which you could win t-shirts, hats and frisbees. Jon asked if I would do the push-ups to get him a NASCAR t-shirt so he wouldn't have to wear a collared shirt around. We all got into it, I got 70 push-ups in and won a shirt. The kids participated in the two-minute hang as well. Note that Kevin, Drew and I are all wearing our t-shirts here.

We wandered around and had a couple of beers checking out the rest of the tents until we stumbled around the Navy Seals Fitness Challange. They have a series of events that you do back-to-back to see if you could qualify to be a Navy SEAL (the greatest, most elite warriors in the world). The SEAL who was running the event was calling out to the all of the guys without shirts on that if they thought they were man enough to not wear a shirt, they should be man enough to take the challange. For the record, Kevin and I had our shirts on at this point. We got to talking with the guy and he goaded us into doing the challange, at which point we felt obligated to remove our shirts. It consisted of a rope climb, sit-ups, push-ups and then chin-ups. I don't remember my wall-climb time, but I got less than 60 push-ups, 50 or so-sit ups, and ten-pull-ups (all to strict Navy SEAL Form)

Even at age 37, I found that I can qualify for SEAL training. I also found that if I ever try out again, I should do it without two beers in my belly on a hot day. Both Kevin and I felt like crap for a couple of hours afterwards.


One of the best parts of the whole event was the people-watching. As you'd probably guess, the event involves a lot of tattos, beer, mullets, raunchy t-shirts, tube-tops and no shirts. They were very strict on what you could bring in, so you knew the pros that had the see-through back-packs filled with their head-phones and radio scanners to listen to the pit-crews.

One of my highlights was watching a couple get married at the event. They really love their NASCAR apparently.

We ran into these two guys - "Fanny pack guy with the collared shirt" and "backwards hat with the barbwire tattoo and budweiser guy"... Oh wait, that's my brother and brother-in-law.

Ok, so about the actual race itself. Michigan International Speedway is huge. It holds a billion people, all baking in the hot sun. I think they purpsely face the stands so that the sun shines on our necks (hence, the term red-necks). The cars are loud and fast. We had great seats.

I decided to root for #20, Tony Stewart, since I had his tattoo on my arm.

We kept trying to show Steve-O where the cars were, but he had a tough time figuring that out.
All in all, it was a fun day. I can now say I've been to a NASCAR race, and I actually read the re-cap today on the race in today's paper, which is the first time I've ever read anything about car-racing.

You can see the rest of the pictures online here.