Florida Sunset

Only in NJ can I get Lingerie and Cleats at the same place

Sunset at South Lyon Football

He's Going the Distance

Last Saturday, Bob, Brad and I ran the local Witch's Hat 10k race. This was my second time running it after doing the race with my brother-in-law Kevin, with last year's time being 46m 2s and a 7:25 min/mile pace. I ran the 10k a couple weeks after running my first half marathon and didn't really know what to expect. My goal this year was to beat that time.

I ran the first three miles at a 7:05 pace and then started dropping off a bit for the final three. I paced myself against the same 70 year old man Kevin and I followed last year, but this year I passed him in the end. The final leg to the finish line is up hill, which is brutal, but you've got a whole cheering section there that makes you dig deep.

This was Bob and Brad's first 10k and Bob finished in 55 minutes, which is great. Bob and I waited for an hour at the finish line for Brad for a while and then started getting worried. We walked back part of the course and couldn't find him. As old as Brad is, we figured he'd had a heart attack and died. Apparently he pulled his achilles tendon (one would expect that he would of pulled his groin).


I had my heart rate monitor on this year, my heart rate got to places I've never gotten it before, even on my long runs. I was upwards of 181bpm towards the end as compared to my resting heart rate of 45bpm normally, and 175bpm on a typical hard run.

My time was 44:46 with an average pace of 7m13s, 12 seconds per mile better than last year. You can see the runkeeper map here.

Emily's Horse at riding lessons

Movie Review by a Middle School Kid

I found this on the wall in a group of movie reviews and posters on
the wall. Nice movie choice...

Quality Emily Quote

Emily: "I'm Mad at the cat."
Me: "Why?"
Emily: "Because he's bad luck."
Me: "Bad luck? Why?"
Emily: "I wouldn't have gotten a punishment if it weren't for Rascal being bad luck. Black cats are bad luck, Dad."

Nate's Pic of Daunte Culpepper

The Lions QB was at our High School FB game last night watching his
son play on the opposing team. Kid Rock at a Panthers game last year
and now this. Our opponents seem to be a big deal.

Afternoon picnic in the park with my wife

Emily's new pet: Colleen the Snake

I found this Gardner snake while I was running today. I carried him
home and Em named it after her friend, Colleen Sugar.

Sleeping Beauties

Early Adopter - Story of My Life

Running out of Duty and Obligation Sucks - My Affair with @runkeeper

Most people don't know this, but I'm not sure I enjoyed running all that much last year. I talked about it all the time, including how I started in April and ended up running my first 10k and half marathon by the end of the year. When I look back on my running last year, it was pretty miserable. I remember getting to the end of my half marathon telling myself, "I'll never do this again."

Running last year consisted of me measuring, charting and plotting, following programs pushing myself again and again. The joy for me wasn't in the run itself - it was in pushing myself, and seeing how hard and how far I could go. The joy for me was when my long run each week would grow from 4 miles all the way to 17, when my 3 mile time dropped from 36 minutes to 19 minutes. Short of the runners high I would get at the end of my route, the actual running part was rough. I had to listen to books on tape or podcasts so that I wasn't left to mull over the fact that I still had X number of miles left to go.

The funny thing is that this year, I love running in a way I never did before. I enjoy it during the run. I look forward to my runs. I know how far and how fast I can push myself, so that hasn't been the rush for me. I don't write down my runs any more (short of my runkeeper tweets, which everyone in my family seem to love), I don't consciously map out a course before I got for the run. I simply head out in a direction and go as far as I feel like running. For some reason, this changes everything. I have a rough pattern for the week - but nothing too rigid. I do a long run anywhere from 8-15 miles every week, a speed relay run and runs just to run. I'm running because I want to, because my heart feels compelled to run and to move. When I'm out running, I can run with or without music or podcasts, thinking, reflecting, but never hating the run I'm on, because at any time, I know I can turn around and end it - just because I want to.

Today, all that changed. For the first time all summer I sat down and mapped out a course of about 15 miles. I was trying to find a new course and wanted to be able to tell Cathie where I was running in the event that I didn't come home, she could go and find my body. I set out to run, not because I wanted to run 15 miles, but suddenly feeling like I HAD to run this course, HAD to run 15 miles. My heart wasn't in it. In the past I had run a similar course and remember smelling the smells, hearing the birds, noticing the farms and horses. This time, it felt dry and sterile. Does the heart really have this much to do with how we pursue something? Seems like it does for me. It got me thinking of other areas where the same concept applies.

Growing up, I reached a point growing in my faith where I was doing all sorts of good things (going to church, going to catechism class, learning good things and doing good things), but felt like I HAD to do them, and as a result, I resented them. When I was suddenly given the choice to go to a youth group on my terms, all the sudden it changed the whole context of things. I've often pushed myself to DO the kind of things on the outside that are good, decent, righteous things - but that only lasts for so long if I haven't been changed on the inside.

I'm gradually learning that Jesus came to set me free from a faith built on the pillars of duty and obligation, from doing the right things externally without the right kind of heart and being the right kind of person. I'm learning that when I give my life to Jesus, he changes my heart to one where these kind of actions naturally flow from. I've seen it in myself when I let go and stop trying to arrange my life just so, and allow God to change me inside. The more I focus on Jesus, the more my heart changes. Crazy, huh?

Contrary to what I'd said last year, I'm running a half marathon again this year and a 10k. I'm in better shape, I'm faster and can run distances with an ease I never thought I'd achieve. I'm interested in seeing how my times are this year, but I'm not as interested in breaking records, as seeing what naturally comes out of my training program this year.

5 lbs of fresh rasberries

Picking Rasberries

Thoughts on my Kindle

I got my kindle a few months ago. It's a pretty amazing device. I've been playing around with this trying to figure out how this technology could fit with what my company does as a future offering in the document space.

I like my device a lot. I've read a number of books on it, and I get my Wall Street Journal delivered to it daily.

Here's what I really like about it:

• It works over a cellular network, not a wireless network, so you can get content any time, any where.
  
• The size and form factor. It fits well in my hand and in my backpack for when I travel.
• The easy of which you can buy books and even test drive a book is great. You can shop from the device or from the web site.
  
• The end user experience is awesome. The packaging was awesome and when I opened it up, it was already linked to my Amazon content, with a personalized letter from the God of Amazon - Jeff Bezos.
  
• The ability to have it read to you through headphones. I ran across my first book where the publisher had turned the feature off, which was annoying.
• The screen quality. The screen is ePaper, which means that once you light up a pixel, it stays lit up without additional power. It actually cycles the screen every so often with a picture of a different author, in fairly high resolution.
• I love the iPhone sync feature. On my iPhone, I can open the app and read exactly where I've left off on my Kindle, and vice versa once I go back to my Kindle after reading on my iPhone.
  

The downsides I've found so far are:

• No back-lighting. I think Amazon treats this more like a book, which needs lighting as well.
  
• No touch-screen. I don't mind it as much as think it could provide some cool features
  
• Power consumption will give you roughly a week of usage, lots longer if you turn off the wireless connection.
  
• You have to be a bit stealthy to read this on an airplane before you get up to 30,000 fee because of their rules on electronic devices.
• No ability to check a book out, like you would from a library. The books are cheap, never more than $9.99, but the library is still a lot cheaper.
• PDF viewing. You have to convert PDF's to Amazon's kindle format unless you have the larger Kindle, which will read them natively. The upside is that can e-mail content to your kindle's e-mail address and for around $.10 it will deliver the document right to your device, converted and ready to go.
• You can't charge it with a standard usb cord, instead having to use Amazon's special plug to charge it with higher voltage.

All that being said, I think this will change things. I'm trying to start to use this for document storage for meetings. It will never be a notebook computer, even though you can browse the web with it. You can highlight areas of a document and clip notes out that you can reference when you sync it up to your computer. I haven't figured out how to deliver an article or book clip via e-mail yet, which would be nice. I'd love a print driver that would easily feed documents to my kindle instead of a printer.

Twilight Football Practice

Riding the Roomba

My brother Dan sent me this video... We have a roomba, a robotic vacum cleaner we call rover. I'm pretty sure that after Emily sees this she'll try and teach Rascal, the giant cat, to ride it. Here are even more videos if you're into this stuff as much as Dan.

Family Walk

While Nate and Maddie were at practice today, Cath, Em and I took Lola for a walk to a nearby pond. Lola had a blast running around chasing the birds and bugs. I'm pretty sure that Emily had more fun just watching Lola run, and she gave us a play by play of everything Lola was doing - even though we were only ten feet away watching the same thing.

Being a third child, Em soaks up the one-on-one time like this and we had a blast doing this with her.

Season 3 of Panthers Football

Panthers season has officially begun. Our Saturday's are booked for the next 12 weeks. Last year Maddie cheered for Nate's team. Nate has moved up to Varsity and Maddie does cheer and Pom for the JV team, which plays a couple hours before Nate.

The South Lyon Panthers football organization is pretty amazing in terms of it's organization and structures. It's all parent/volunteer run, which means that each family has to sign up for a certain amount of volunteer time. I chose the chain gang this year, which is about as a fun as a volunteer job can get. How do you beat standing on the sideline next to the action, watching the kids play and listening to the opposing coaches bad-mouth your team?

This is Maddie's second year of cheer and Pom (yes, there is a difference) and she loves it. Her background with gymnastics gives her the chance to do some of the stunting and she's a natural leader out there with the girls.

This has been an interesting year for Nate as he enters into Varsity. The guys on his team are as big as 230+ lbs and at 80 lbs, he's one of the smaller guys. He's been playing corner and running back, but the contrast in size, as you can see from the picture on the left, is pretty huge. There's nothing easy about an 80lb guy hitting up against a 160lb line men, or getting tackled by one. They intensity of the workouts has increased significantly from JV. They run the guys hard, near the equivalent intensity of what we do in our Triad workouts. They had some extended three hour practices last week and I felt for Nate when he came home wiped out. I think the team is seeing a big difference from the conditioning, as they've still got plenty of gas in the second half of the game.

I'm so impressed with Nate's attitude about about the intensity and the disparity. Nate doesn't complain, he goes in with no fear, and he works his tail off. As happens with all of the teams, the coaches play the bigger, faster second year guys and the more junior, smaller guys don't get the same kind of playing time. It's frustrating for Nate, but he gets it, and I think it motivates him to push a little harder to stand out. I never had the guts to do what Nate's doing when I was his age and I'm so proud that he is. He's doing it because he love it, not because of what anyone else wants him to do.

For the past few years, I've also been the unofficial team photographer. Don't get me wrong - love doing it, but it just takes a ton of time. Not only do I take pictures through the two hour game, but it takes me 2-3 hours to go through the pictures and edit the 500-700 pictures down to the a couple hundred really good ones. I try and get pictures of all 30 players, not just the stars who make all the plays. It's amazing how cool you can make an out of context show look, by cropping it just right to not show the fumble or the missed block. At first I wasn't sure if anyone actually looked at these pictures. One of the Mom's on the team shared with me that some of the Dad's go through the pictures one-by-one with their sons, looking for their own pictures, missed blocks and good hits.

My Tombstone

Em and I saw this when we were out for a bike ride the other day. We cut through the cemetery and stopped to check out some of the tombstones. How cool is this one?