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I’m spending the week in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, doing my part to “Provide Complete Comfort and Genuine Value” to Nordyne’s customers. But am I letting my travels negatively impact my new found training motivation? No way! 4.46 miles yesterday and 4.51 miles today on the Holiday Inn treadmill, trying to run off the incredible lunches catered in for our team. And the scale in the fitness room must be calibrated at least five pounds light. Everyone is a winner! Jason pointed out to me the other day that Ryan Hall has run nine marathons. I’ve run fifteen or sixteen (not sure at this second how many) plus two ultras. Plus, it probably took him a little less then 20 hours to run them. I spent 23 hours in 2011 alone running marathons. Clearly I’m a more experienced marathon runner then Ryan Hall – therefore better. Sweet.
Two weeks now without missing a planned run. I’m starting to get back in the swing of things. All runs have been with the Vivobarefoot Ultras and my calves are holding up well. Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon here I come!
This floor will hopefully support Kathy and I and our stuff for forty years or so. Here’s a shot from my back yard:
Eventually that will be my walkout basement. The builder is moving along and the great weather is definitely helping. Unfortunately, we’ve got snow in the forecast… Instead of a goals post, I’m just going to list my resolutions (which look shockingly like goals): 1) Treat Kathy like a Queen The Tuesday after Christmas, here was our future home:
I miss visiting on one working day and this is the sight that greeted me on Thursday:
That right – from a hole in the ground with some concrete forms in place to a fully poured basement foundation and no concrete forms in the area. Pretty cool. We also spent a good part of the holidays picking cabinets and vanities and flooring/rug/tile. It is coming together at least in my mind’s eye. Wrapping up 2011 running in a nutshell: The weather was glorious this weekend. Fifty degrees on Saturday and mid-fifties and sunny on Sunday. Did I take advantage of this by running? Nope. The planned five mile run got preempted by a ‘getting the house ready to sell’ activity. We need to improve the existing home’s curb appeal in order to help speed its sale. A good suggestion from the realtor was to take down and re-paint the shutters. Hey – this is a job I can tackle! Saturday afternoon I took advantage of the nice weather by removing the shutters from the house. They are secured with clips which are anchored into our brick facing. One thing I didn’t anticipate was that a third of the anchors came out of the wall with the shutters when I pulled them down. Turns out, the anchor plastic had degraded over the years and I would have to replace these clips when I reinstalled the shutters. Removing these shutters would normally be an easy job, but half of them are on the second story windows. So out came the ladder and I balanced myself on top of it while prying the shutters loose from their clips. Kathy washed off seventeen years of grime and dirt and stacked them in the garage to dry. We finished before dark and the removal was relatively uneventful. Sunday morning, it was paint the shutters time. I do not have a paint sprayer and there were only 18 shutters so we decided to hand paint them. What a pain in the rear! I’m not much of a fan of painting, but the pair of us bent to the task and got it done, coating them with a glorious shade of flat black. Stunning! Again, luck was on our side. One coat was all it took to return them to their original hue (aside from some limited touching up in some hard to get to corners). By lunchtime, it was time for the reinstalling. This was always going to be the trickiest part of the operation. First I had to replace the missing clips with new anchors. That proved to be pretty easy – I could set the ladder against nice smooth brick facing and get them installed. Hanging the shutters was another story though. The solid brick facing is exactly where the shutter had to go. So the ladder obviously couldn’t sit there. I had to position the ladder onto the ledge of the window. To avoid smashing out the glass, I had to make sure the ladder reach wasn’t too long. Plus, there is a significant growth of shrubbery which dictated where the ladder could reasonably rest at ground level. These constraints meant that for most of the second floor install the ladder was at the wrong angle on the wall and situated too low to safely reach the top edge of the shutter. How much money did I save by choosing to do this myself? How much would an ambulance pick-up and hospital visit cost me? But I put those questions aside and spent part of the afternoon going up and down the ladder, perching precariously over the edge to line up my shutters, and reaching dangerously over to push the shutter back on its clip. Kathy helped brace the ladder at times which was nice. But my main advice to her was that if the ladder started to fall get out of the way and dial 911! Luckily no ambulances (ambulanci?) were required to be dispatched to our address. The shutters are all up and looking like new. Another job well done. Now, on to the exterior light fixtures… During a brisk sunny Sunday afternoon, I began construction on our new house by starting to dig the basement. There was no ‘pre-dug’ frame of dirt out there to make this easy. The ground was hard and covered with a thick healthy turf. Dignitaries from all over the world weren’t able to attend. [...] You are viewing the site of the future world headquarters of Team Flash. We are performing the ultimate sacrifice to try and stoke the United States’ economy by building a new house. This is a completely unselfish move on our part. We are employing an army of carpenters, plumbers, electricians, architects, and home [...] The MASTERS Race for Remembrance was held November 19 on a cool but sunny Saturday morning. I’m finally getting around to a recap; the delay due in part to a sad event (Metro’s passing) and an exciting one (to be revealed in a couple days here on the blog). I haven’t run a step [...] Kathy and I made the difficult decision yesterday to put our cat Metro down. He was twenty years old and had been diagnosed with kidney disease two years ago. During the last two years he ate a special diet and had been slowly losing weight, but about ten days ago, he basically quit eating. [...] After paying to run the New York City Marathon three times, I finally got my shot at actually running it last weekend. I was ‘lucky’ enough to get in the first year I applied but was forced to wait for Jason’s name to come up in the lottery. After being a three time loser, [...] |
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Eat healthier, mostly by cutting down heavily on soda and candy
