What’s new

Not a whole heck of a lot is new around here. I’ve been running still, trying to win this Nike challenge at work. At the time of writing this, I’m about a half mile away from first place, so winning is definitely do-able. I’ve managed to log about 82 miles so far this month. For you math majors out there, that’s almost 4 miles a day. I’m not marathon material, but overall, that is pretty good. At least for me anyway. One thing that I’ve learned is that consistency pays off.

I’ve been taking a few pictures here and there of bugs lately. Not sure why. I guess I’m growing bored of taking pictures of sunsets and the “normal” stuff. Laura and Haley seem to be getting a little tired of posing as well. We did go to Memorial Gardens on Friday night though to take some pictures. Memorial Gardens is a cemetary, but there are some fantastic photo ops in the Crystal Grotto. The biggest problem we faced was that the sky was overcast and it looked like rain. Hardly the environment you’re looking for when you want to use natural light. We’d been putting this off for a while until we had an evening where we could make use of the setting sun’s light. We ended up overcoming it by bringing our own strobes and putting them up on stands. I covered the flash with a straw colored gel to throw some “sunlight”. We only got a couple of pictures because we didn’t heed the advice of others and bring bug spray. In the 20 or so minutes that we took pictures, Laura got probably 15 mosquito bites. We packed it up early. At least we got a few good ones!

4th of July, Woodworking

So as I mentioned in a previous post, the 4th of July was a lot of fun. On the photos page we finally posted the pictures. Check em out if you’re interested.

We still haven’t taken Haley’s 4 month pictures yet. Maybe we’ll go get some good ones at Memorial Gardens this weekend. I’ve had the gear set up in the living room to do her photo shoot for a couple of days now. The only problem is, the backdrop usually hangs from the curtain rod over the main window in the living room. So we really need to wait until it gets dark outside. Lately, its been getting dark around 9 and Haley is ready for bed then. Maybe we’ll get it done one day this week.

I thought about doing the shoot in the morning, but that would cut into the running. I’ve got a little catching up to do on my work Nike challenge. I was pretty far ahead of most of the people at work. Then my iPod died on me. According to the guy at the Apple store, the battery has a life of about a year and a half. Not that impressive. Anyway, 72 bucks later and I’m back in business. I’ve just got to make sure I don’t miss any more runs. Tonight I’m missing one since I have to babysit. Laura’s out with some girls. One of the ladies I work with says that I’m not babysitting, I’m fathering. Father’s don’t call it babysitting. I’m not sure what to call it.

I did some woodworking this weekend. I’ve decided I’m getting back into it. Basically, I hacked up a 2000 dollar door to make some 20 dollar recipe boxes. The in-laws upgraded their front door and gave us theirs. Turns out it was going to be a huge pain to make it work on our front door due the location of the hardware and the side of the door the hardware was on. They didn’t want the door back and I couldn’t find anyone to take it. So, rather than throwing it away, I made some use of it. I’ve got a LOT of mahogany left over from it. I just used 3 of the center panels to make the boxes. I’m going to make something neat out of the rest of the door. End table or something like that. I just have to figure out what.

Happy Birthday!

Well, it’s not REALLY a birthday.  Haley is 4 months old today, though.  As you can tell from the picture above, she only had one friend show up today.  I think she was expecting a cake, so she wasn’t too happy when she found out she was only getting milk.  She’s planning on going and seeing a bunch of friends, though, with Laura so her day should get better. 

We had a lot of fun over the 4th of July.  We had a dozen or so friends over in the afternoon and evening for a cookout and an all out battle over who is the best at washers.  Shep and I still hold the title for those interested.

 One thing that we’ve started doing lately is this Nike Challenge thing.  Basically, you have this gizmo that goes in your shoe and another one that plugs into an iPod.  It measures how far and fast you go.  When you connect your iPod, it automatically uploads it to the Nike website.  There you can see how you are doing as far as mileage, time and calories are concerned.  You can set goals for yourself and you can also challenge other people.  I’m in a challenge at work and it really pushes you to run more.  It even lets you put the results on your own website:

Pretty cool! This is one Laura and I are doing. If you want in, click “sign up for this challenge” and we’ll add you.