First Room

Here's a picture of the first room in the basement that is 100% officially done. 

The bathroom. 

Roughly a year ago:

Behold, greatness!

I know.  It's nothing spectacular.  It's a basement bathroom.  But it's done.  And we learned a lot.  Like make sure the floor is level.  And there are a 1000 toilets to choose from.  And vanities are expensive.  As are mirrors.  Especially since they break so easily. 

Final inspection for the entire basement is tomorrow and you'd think there'd be more pictures after that, but we have to set up the rooms, so it will probably be a while.  However, Wade's new computer screens(!) came today, so the office should be set up fairly quickly.  Which is good news since that means our bedroom will cease operating as a bedroom/office/entertainment hub and return to just a bedroom.  And our closet will no longer be a storage shed. 

And then maybe I can breathe again.

2009's Humbling Experience #4

Yes, more running humbleness.  Yes, I realize maybe this is a sign I'm in the wrong sport.  No, I'm not giving up.

Saturday, I ran a 5k with my training buddy, H, her 8 year old son, and a friend of his, who is also 8.  H. and her son stayed together, but the other 8 year old was like a bat out of hell.  He took off from the first.  Eventually, I caught up to him at about a mile and passed him.

Then at about 2.75 miles, he passed me back.  We were going uphill so I was waiting for him to tire out and start walking.

But he never did.

He kept on running, even when the group we were in made a wrong turn and ended up running back up the HUGE hill we had run down at the beginning of the race. 

And that's when I lost my visual on him.

But I'm pretty sure he got me by about a minute.

An eight year old, who has not been getting up at 5:00 in the morning to go running 4 days a week, beat me.

Signs I'm Maturing

• I wake up, by myself, at 5:15 four days a week, despite Wade's near daily insistence that I should skip my run and stay in bed.
• I wear the ugliest fleece pants almost every day and don't really care.  I don't go out in public in them, however. 
• I was the ONLY one to dress up for Toastmasters for Halloween.  To add insult to injury, my costume fell apart mere moments into the meeting and so I just looked deranged.  However, instead of cowering in shame, I stood proud.
• For years, I've been preaching that I don't really care what others think about me, but finally I really don't care what they think.
• I say what I want to say, unless it's not worth my breath to say it.  Then I just let it go.
• I haven't thought about the dream house in a long time.  I'm content where I'm at.
• I'm fully planning on cleaning out the kitchen today.  Probably.
• Someone said something less than flattering on their blog about me.  And instead of flying off the handle, and saying something I'd just regret later, I took some time to really think it out.  And apologized for the comment I made to set them off.  Which garnered a public apology.  Behold the power of words.
• One of my closest friends is 65 in body and 30 in spirit.  I want to be like her when I grow up.
• I have an actual friendship with my mom.  Not just a typical mother/daughter relationship.  She's also one of my closest friends.
• I'm gaining a less awkward relationship with my father. 
• I'm loving Toastmasters.
• There are times I don't want to get out of bed, but I do.
• I have found a passion.  With goals.
• I have an amazing twin brother with more strength then I ever thought humanly possible.  He's an inspiration to everyone who meets him.  I'm just sad it's taken me this long to figure it out.
• I have an older brother who is incredible and funny and smart as well.  15 years ago, it would've killed me to think it, let alone say it out loud.
• I have an incredible and amazing husband with a brain too large to be contained in his body.  One day, he's going to make millions.  And instead of daydreaming of the possibilities it will open up in the way of materialistic goods, I'm thinking of the good it will do to help those less fortunate.
• I have pretty much everything that I could need or want.  Except for a monkey.  But, I'm thinking I don't want one of those for fear it would try to eat me.  And not succeed. 
• I've learned that there are worse things than dying.  And I'm praying I never have to experience that.
• After last weekend's triathlon, I was more excited to see how my training buddy did than I was to see how I did.
• I have two AMAZING training buddies who let me rant and rave and still follow my insane self-penned training regimens. 
• I still dream of going on Oprah, but it's with less regularity now.
• I know the ins and outs of health care plans and how to choose the least crappiest one.  I'm still not on board the Obama Health Train, but I'm making my way to the station for perhaps another train that's on it's way.
• I have a slew of LMFs and not so many HMFs anymore.  It's kind of nice.
• I read books about events that I've never heard of.
• I read books about events I have heard of.
• I am not above going back to work if it meant that we stayed off the street.  
• I married someone who is not above delivering pizzas if he had to.
• I am gaining a new appreciation for how creative and energetic my four year old is.  Even if he never quits talking.
• My little girl is the most easy going person I've ever met, obviously not from my DNA code.  I hope she stays that way.
• I've learned to let some things go and to stand up for other things and to be happy with whatever the outcome is.  Unless it's pink walls. 
• I love myself and my life more now than I ever have.

Book Review Friday 11/13/09

Book: The Gardner Heist
Pages: 226
Author: Ulrich Boser

I was more than pleasantly surprised by this book.  I had grabbed it off the shelf at the library because I was in a hurry and it was the nearest book. 

It took me a while to get into it, but once I did, I couldn't put it down.  The book is a written account of the investigation in to the world's largest art theft, the Gardner Art Museum, in 1990.  I wish I still had the book in my possession to spit out the facts, but something like 14 paintings were stolen, worth more than $500 million, in an 88 minute time span.  As of today, none of it has been recovered. 

The book detailed a world that I didn't know even existed in real life; the Boston Underworld of mafias and hit men.  I assumed that the viciousness of it was Hollywoodize, but if what the book protrays is true, then it's straight from the movies. 

The cast of characters woven into the account are intriguing, though I wouldn't want to ever meet them.  I loved the descriptions the author used to accurately portray the main players in the investigation. 

I would definitely recommend this book to most anyone, art lover or not.  I'm not familiar with a lot of art but I found the book to be beyond fascinating for the understory it told.

This book proves that some of the best stories aren't made up. 

Catching Up Part 1

So many great stories, so little time.  But, we'll start the week with the triathlon I did Saturday. 

For the record, I haven't really been on my bike since the triathlon I did mid-August.  And I've been swimming, but not so diligently.  But my running has been doing great, so I thought this would be a walk in the park.

And walk it was.  As in walking my bike up the hill.  During the race.  And walking to the swimming pool instead of running because I was exhausted.

And yet...so awesome. 

After my triathloning in August, I took some time off from the swimming and biking to work on my 5k time.  And because it was two less days I had to get up at 5 am.  Besides it's hard to bike in the cold.  But a training buddy, H., and I signed up to do the Turkey Tri in Orem.  We had heard good things about it and I needed to justify my demands for the road bike that Wade graciously granted me for our anniversary.   And, triathlons are AWESOME.  I can't wait until I have more time to devote to actually training correctly for one.

Anyways, we arrived to mass chaos on Saturday morning.  There were 400+ people entered in the race, which is roughly 300 more than any triathlon I've done.  We didn't anticipate so many people and it was all a little nuts and stressful to get to the starting line on time, but we made it.

The format of a triathlon is usually a swim, followed by biking and then capped off with a run.  However, because it's November and we were swimming in a pool, they reversed the order and we began with the run.  My strategy was to go all out for the run, recover on the bike, and swim as fast as I could.  And I all but managed to do just that.

The run was fairly benign.  There were some tough parts, but I finished in 27:51.  I held back a little bit because I knew that I still had two more events, so I'm pleased with that.

The biking was a total other story.  The course was two loops of 5 miles each.  There was a nice downhill section through UVU campus and I was really enjoying myself despite being passed by everything from really fast people to people on mountain bikes with big, ole, fat tires.  That was until I turned the corner and saw the two hills looming before me.  I made it (barely) up the first hill and then I started up the second hill.

As a side note: up until now, all my training--in both running and biking--has centered around avoiding going uphill.

When riding a bike, there is a minimum speed that you MUST attain to stay upright.  Up the second hill, I was slightly on the right side of this minimum speed.  I wasn't moving very fast, but (a) I was still moving and (b) I was still on my bike, which was more than I could say about some people.

For the record, I'd like to point out that this next part was NOT my fault.  I was merely trying to get to the top of the hill.

On my left hand side was a lady who, until a certain, albeit important, moment in time, was ahead of me.  That was until she slowed down to just BELOW the minimum speed in which you must be going to remain upright on your bike.  As a consequence, she started to teeter and weave towards me.  I started teetering in response and it looked to be like it was going to be a crash.  However, she overcorrected to the other side and since I was barely moving, I was able to get my feet out of my pedals and put them down before I fell over.  The other lady was not so lucky.  She then overcorrected again, bounced off my bike and landed on her side.

I offered my assistance, but she was mad at me and yelling at me for being on her right side or something.  Anyways, it wasn't my fault.  She was the one who was going to crash into me.  I'm just lucky she didn't take me out with her.

Yeah, she's fine.  I made sure that she got up and everything.

I'm nice like that.

But, I lost all my momentum for the hill and had to walk my bike up to the top.  Which, since I wasn't the only one doing it, wasn't as humiliating as it could've been.  And it wasn't my fault.

The second time around, I was able to ride my bike to the top of the hill, but it wasn't pretty.  I was pretty certain I was going to pass out before I crested, which would've caused a host of problems.  But I made it.

By the time I hit the transition area for the swimming, I was beat.  I crawled my way to the pool and stepped in.  As I began swimming, I formulated some thoughts in my head.  I can't remember all of them but one of them was this:

Triathlons-by the very definition of the word--are a three event race.  There are three events.  Therefore, you should be able to at least do all three events.  Like swimming.  If you can't swim, then maybe a triathlon is not the sport for you.  Running along the pool until you can't touch the bottom and then doggie paddling to the wall is not swimming.  Nor is holding on to the rope and pulling yourself along that way.  If you want to complete a triathlon, you should learn to swim first.

I'm just saying.

I had other deep and profound thoughts as well, but I don't remember them as clearly.

I finished in a respectable 1:25:46.  Not too bad considering my lack of training.  And for the first time EVER, I left feeling like I could not have done anything better.  I gave everything I had.

In April, they do the EXACT same race (obviously not called the Turkey Tri) that I think I'm going to do after (theoretically) spending the winter on my bike indoors (fun!).  We'll see how that all pans out.

I finished and I had a blast.  And really, that's all that matters.  Except for maybe taking down that biking time.

A Home for the Holidays

The holidays are quickly approaching and I've been thinking a lot about what I want.  Which isn't a lot.  I have pretty much everything I want.  But there is one BIG thing that's been lurking in my mind now for a little while...

I have a confession.  I hate my house.  Why?  It's big, it's spacious.  It has a few nice things in it.  But it's UGLY.  Like government-issued ugly.  Dorm-style ugly.  A house, not a home.

Except for the basement.  That's GORGEOUS.  Speaking of which, I need to still post pictures.  Later...

Anyways, when we built it, we were college students and we were looking for cheap.  Which we got.  We didn't upgrade the paint, just went with the standard issued white.  We hung 2 inch blinds because my parents helped us out with them.  Otherwise we would've gone with the cheapo mini blinds.  But beyond that, we really haven't done much.  Wade painted the nursery before we had Josh and I painted the master bath last year in a misguided attempt to liven up the place.

Now that the basement is nearing completion, I've been looking around at the state of our upstairs and it's made me depressed.  The walls are chipped.  The paint is peeling.  The window ledges cracking.  Essentially, it's a house that's been lived in for 7 years with next to zero upkeep. 

Apparently, it's hard to maintain a strict six month deep cleaning schedule when you have school/work/kids. 

And essentially don't care.  But that's for another day.

So today, as I was perusing my usual blogs, I came across an entry by my friend Juliana.  She wrote about beginning a program that was made up by another one of her friends that's called "A Home for the Holidays".  Basically, she's breaking up the OVERWHELMING task of decluttering your house--and life--into little manageable tasks that take about an hour a day. 

An hour?  I can devote an hour to the project, can't I? 

Oh, and I will.  Because that's what I want for the Holidays.  A home.  Someplace where I'm not embarassed to invite people in or have parties at or just to be at.  It will take me longer than the next 50 days because I want to repaint and all that fun stuff, but if I can get rid of some of this junk, I'm sure by the beginning of the year, I'll be ready to tackle the hard stuff.

And who knows?  By doing it now, we can be ready to move at a moment's notice if the chance comes up. 

Not to be Outdone

In my quest for the perfect Halloween costume for Josh, I all be neglected Aunika.  So, I searched the house for Josh's old costumes but didn't find them.  At the store on Saturday, I picked up an instant bunny costume to relieve me of some of the guilt I was feeling:

This last picture pretty much sums up the entire Halloween experience for my poor little girl.

Because we then left for the ER at about 9:30 because she woke up with a fever, gasping for air and wheezing. 5 hours later, we returned home with an ambiguous diagnosis of croup and/or piggy flu--call back in 24 hours for the results. But she sounded a lot better and we all slept until 11 am.