iPod Trauma

You don't realize just how much you rely on technology until that technology crashes!

My iPod froze up this afternoon!  GRRRR!!!!

It had my whole life on it!  For instance, I lost...

• My calendar
• My contacts
• My passwords (fortunately, I have redundancies on these.  I just have to dig out the old fashioned paper file of them and re-enter them)
• My bookmarked websites
• My list of books to read (over 100 book titles lost)
• My list of movies to buy (to replace all the videos that got thrown away)
• The kid's 'accounts' (I keep track of monies they earn and pay out periodically)
• Direct links to places I shop online
• My gift giving lists (that I have given and ideas for future gifts)
• My workout music play list (that one hurt a lot!  I can't run without my music, so I skipped my run tonight so I could re-populate the list.)
• And a bunch of other apps that make my life more fun!

Obviously, I was a slacker when it came to syncing my iPod to the computer, because if I had only done so, I would not have lost a thing.

RATS!!!

All is not completely lost, however.  I restored it to factory settings, then spent the rest of the evening recreating my digital life.  And I will definitely sync OFTEN from now on!

Fire Alarms and Hair Dryers

While I was in the middle of writing that last post, the fire alarms in the basement went off!  I went downstairs to find out what was going on (I didn't smell any smoke) and started silencing them one by one.  Will got into the breaker box and tripped the switch for them before I could finish.  He got chewed out for that one.

We couldn't find any source other than the fact that Helena was in the process of drying her hair.  We were worried for a moment that it was a carbon monoxide issue, but then we remembered that the co warning is accompanied by a female voice saying "Danger!  Carbon Monoxide!" over and over.  So, we just reset them and I came back upstairs to finish my post.

Yeah, no.  The alarms went off again.  All of them.  So, back downstairs we went.  We discovered that if one goes off, they all trigger.  It must have been Helena's hair dryer.  She stopped using it and switched to mine...  No more alarms.

Problem solved.

8 Miles

I registered for the Thanksgiving Point half marathon (April 30) yesterday.  It is official now.  I have 9 weeks to train.

I will be registering for the Utah Valley half marathon (June 11th) in a couple of weeks.  That one will be an easier race because the entire thing is downhill!  The Thanksgiving Point race is down, then up on a gentle grade.  Even gentle, it seems brutal to start going down and end going up.  However, I look forward to jogging through the beautiful gardens at the height of tulip season.

Erik and Deanna gave me a beginner's 10 week training schedule that they also plan to follow when the 10 week pre-UV half marathon hits.  When I first got the schedule, I thought I was behind in my training for the Thanksgiving Point race, so I moved ahead to week 4 on the schedule, which called for Mon. 3 mi., Wed. 5 mi., Thurs. 3 mi., and Saturday... 8 miles!

Before starting this, I had been averaging 5 miles on my treadmill workouts, so I figured this would be an acceptable place to start.  I have to say that the training is going very well!  Before this week I would never have imagined myself jogging such great distances!

I am still mostly running in the gym.  It is often too cold or too wet outside.  I know I could tough that out (I do have cold weather gear), but I don't have a reliable method of clocking the mileage, yet, so I prefer indoor running.  I am no longer using the treadmills, however.  I see a number of problems with the treadmills. 

1. Most of them have a maximum time limit of 60 minutes.
2. They are very cushioned and shock absorbed, so the training would not be as effective or 'real world'.
3. They are often either broken down or all in use.
4. And finally, I lose motivation on a treadmill.  It is hard to get a good rhythm going.  Each time a song ends, I tend to step off the tread and rest while waiting for the new song to start.  I don't do that in 'real world' jogging.

I jog on the indoor track.  There are four lanes.  The inside lanes are meant to be for walking, and the outside lanes are for jogging and are ramped on the corners.  There's always room for me on the track, even though I get frustrated sometimes with the lack of parental supervision going on at times.

Saturday is a good day for using the gym, though.  Not many people are there.  I maintain a steady pace that helps me count the laps and chew up the miles.  The lane I jog in measures 13 laps/mi., so here is my routine;

• 5 laps at 5 mi./hr
• 1 lap walk/recover
• 3 laps at 5 mi./hr.
• 1 lap walk/recover
• 2 laps at 5 mi./hr.
• 1 lap walk/recover
• Take a drink and start over on the next mile

So, you can see, 10 out of 13 laps are jogging.  It works REALLY WELL!

My pace is slow and steady.  I watch people come and go.  Most people arrive, blast around the track for a lap or three, then go their way again.  I wonder if they feel pity for the plump, middle aged lady just chugging along in a slow jog?  Guaranteed they wouldn't feel that way if they knew I had been at it for over an hour and was on the downward side of my sixth MILE, not lap!

I completed 8 miles in 1 hour and 43 minutes.  Mile 7 was the hardest.  Surprisingly, mile 8 felt great and it took me a moment to realize that I was done after the final lap (that I jogged rather than walking)!  I felt like I could keep going!

That's pretty incredible!  I didn't, though.  I knew better than to push it too far.  I'm not even all that sore today, the day after.

I did discover that I was way off in calculating which week in the training I should be on.  Last week should have been week 1, not week 4.  Oops. 

No worries, though.  I just plan to repeat week 4 this week, then do 2 weeks at the week 5 level, and 2 weeks on week 6.  That should get me back on track and much stronger than if I stepped back my workout.

Now what I really need is a decent pair of running shoes!  That is scheduled for next weekend.

"Each Person's Mind is a World Unto Itself"

My principal told me that this morning after I told him my children's reaction to the snow.

It snowed last night.  It is still snowing heavily.

When Helena went out to scrape her car and start it up this morning, she came back in wanting to know if there would be school closures.  She was disgruntled at the amount of snow.  We had a foot of snow overnight with much more coming down.

When Will woke and realized it had snowed, he was jubilant!  He can't wait to hit the slopes with all this new powder.  It is very light and powdery snow.  He wants to go to Canyons Resort with his friend, Cody, but I think he'll have to be content with Sundance since Canyons costs $90 for a day pass and he already has a season pass to Sundance.  I understand the attraction, though.  Canyons is the largest ski resort around.

As for Helena wishing school would close down for the snow... that is a pipe dream.  I only remember school being closed ONCE in all the time I have lived here.  Blizzards rarely even shut things down here.  We all just blaze ahead in all the slick mess.  Most people have four wheel drive and there is at least one guy living on every block who has a snowplow attachment for his truck or four wheeler.  Bill's 'snowplow attachment' is his backhoe.

I have four wheel drive... on the Expedition...  that Helena drives.  I am stuck with the little Alero that slips and slides all over the place.  This morning's commute was particularly slippery.

Ah well.  At least it is Friday!

Work Frustrations!

I am about to vent.  It is going to be a LONG rant.  If you don't want to 'hear' (read) me ranting and raving, you are very welcome to just skip this post.  I am sure I will be back to my happy, happy, all the time self tomorrow...  At least, I HOPE SO!

Okay.  So, this rant needs a little background information.  Or maybe a lot.

Back in mid-January, my principal put into my box (in the teacher workroom) a packet of information just released from the district outlining the procedure for applying for a summer collaboration grant being offered by the district.  If I wanted, I could pull together a team of art specialists who were willing to meet together for four days during the summer to collaborate and plan curriculum while focusing on one of the 'four essential questions'.

Not that it is important, or that you probably even care, but the 'four essential questions' are...

1. What do I want my students to learn?
2. How will I know if they have learned it?
3. What will I do if students haven't learned it?
4. What will I do for students who already know it?

 After finding other like minded teachers, we were expected to go to an orientation meeting about the grants where we signed a roll so they would know we had attended.  Attendance in the orientation plays a factor in which grant proposals would be selected and awarded.  We then needed to select one of the four questions above, and write up a S.M.A.R.T. goal (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) grant proposal and submit it to the district with all the pertinent signatures and the backing of a building administrator.  If we do all that, and if the stars align just right so that the heavens smile down upon us, we will be one of the lucky teams to be awarded $1000 per team member to accomplish our goal.

Great.  So, I did all that.  I found another art specialist who was willing to not only join me, but also to go along with the goal I had in mind.  We told the District Arts Coordinator (DAC), who sent out a blanket e-mail to all the rest of the elementary art specialists telling them to contact us if they wanted in on the grant proposal.  We heard back from two others.

We met up at the orientation meeting and got all our John Hancocks onto the application.  Then I went home and did all the work of writing up the proposal, e-mailed it to the team members to get their 'ok', got my principal on board with it... you get the idea.  I jumped through ALL the hoops over the past month in the middle of training a student teacher and hiking the Himalayas backwards.  Okay, maybe scratch that last one.  I am being over dramatic.

I submitted the final proposal THIS MORNING.  One day early, just to play it safe.



I got a call at 2:30 this afternoon from the art specialist at Sage Hills Elementary.  She was wondering if I had gotten all 6 of the people I needed for the summer grant and is it possible that she could join my collaboration team?

GRRR!!!

First of all, you don't need 6 people on the team.  Second, WHERE WAS SHE ALL THIS PAST MONTH?!?  Procrastinating, that's what!  She said she heard about it from her principal 6 weeks ago, but never got the papers about it.  When I questioned her she admitted that, no, she hadn't made it to any of the orientation meetings.  She wanted to know if I had sent out an e-mail to the whole district about the grant and I told her that the DAC had sent one out for me, but the deadline is TOMORROW and I had already submitted it anyways.

This is just like that annoying person who was assigned to be in your team for the school project.  You know the one.  Never shows up, never contributes, but wants their name on the end product so they can get the grade.  She doesn't even know what our goal is, she just wants a chance at $1000.00.

Well, SO DO I!  That's why I worked on this all month!

Maybe I wasn't as nice as I should have been.  At least I was professional as I told her she was too late.

But then, you know me.  I couldn't help feeling guilty about telling her to 'take a hike', even if I said it politely.

I called my co-conspirator (the other teacher who came on board with me in the beginning) and got her two cents and her 'okay' to include little miss procrastination IF possible.  Then I called the district to find out if it was even possible to add another name to my already submitted proposal (and would it hurt our chances if she hadn't been to the meeting?).

To make a painfully long story shorter, I will wrap up by saying that the Procrastination Gods must be looking out for this woman, because it is all green lights for her, so long as she is willing to drive down to the district offices before 4:00 tomorrow and add her signature to my grant proposal.

Harumph.  I hope she is worth the added effort and stress.

Daddy to the Rescue!

Today, Helena stayed after school to get her math homework done in the high school math lab.  That way, if she had any questions, she could ask the teacher instead of me.  Don't get me wrong.  I love to help her, but we sometimes butt heads and I can't always figure out the darned story problems at the end of the assignments!

Anyways, after she was done, she found her two best friends, Megan and Daniel, also still at school... just leaving the library.  They all decided to go to JCW's (a local burger joint and high school hangout) to get a shake.  When getting into the Expedition to leave the restaurant, a woman none of them knew came up to them to tell them that they had a FLAT TIRE!  This kind woman had noticed it and did a good deed by telling the kids before they drove on it.  We are all very grateful to her and we don't even know her name.

Unfortunately, none of the kids knew how to change the Expedition tire (we need to fix that).  They couldn't even figure out how to get the spare out of storage under the car.  In their defense, those are BIG tires!  Fortunately, Helena has a Daddy she can rely on to come to her rescue.

Helena called Bill and he immediately left work and drove his big work truck over to JCW's.  His work truck has an air compressor on it, so he just aired the tire back up and followed the kids as they drove back to our house.  He then aired it up again (it was a severe leak) and drove it straight to Big O where the tires are warrantied.

I also have to mention that Helena told me that the kind woman was going into the restaurant when she told the kids about the flat.  She took a booth that faced our car and would look out at it from time to time.  Helena was embarrassed about that, but I believe that this good Samaritan was just making sure the kids got the help they needed.

I am so grateful to have a husband who will drop everything and go rescue his teenage daughter!  I am also glad that he is so capable of handling the situation.  How many dads have a handy air compressor conveniently located on their vehicle?

So, thanks Bill!

The Cone of Shame

Remember the day that Pepper managed to sneak out and stayed out all night?  We noticed not long after he came back home that he was missing one of his back claws.  Somehow he had managed to rip it right off during the night while doing who knows what.

He won't quit licking at it.  It won't heal.

Now he has to wear the 'Cone of Shame' while it does heal.

What a dejected cat!  He keeps bumping into walls and door jams.  He is so disoriented and miserable!  And yet, he still wanted me to let him out with that cone on his head.  Not a chance, you crazy cat!

Finally, Pictures of Newborn Meg!

I know.  I am a sloth.  Meg is now three weeks old and I still haven't posted the pictures of her on her day of birth.  I am a delinquent Auntie.

But now I am going to make it up to you by posting them!  So, here you go!

Will's New Hair Color

This is actually old news.  Sorry.  I've been a bit swamped with stuff on my schedule lately.

Anyhoo,  One day, when Helena and Megan were having a physics homework/hair dyeing party (because how can you do the one without the other? -smirk), there was some leftover hair dye.  Will came rushing up to me in the living room and BEGGED me to let him dye his hair with what was left in the box.  I tried to talk him out of it, but he was insistent.

I have to say right now that I have always loved his strawberry blond/red hair.

He has always HATED it with the loathing that only comes from a child who has been teased and harassed mercilessly by other kids.  Oh yes.  Red heads know something about discrimination based on physical appearance.

In the end I said he could.  The color on the box was called 'mahogany'.  It gave him really dark brown/red hair at first, but since we are talking cheap box color, it has faded now to just a medium brownish/red hair.

He is very happy with it... and so am I because it is still red!  Just a darker version.

First Trail Run of the Year

The high today was 51* F.  That may not sound very warm to some people, but after the bitter winter cold of January, it felt balmy!  The snow is melting everywhere and my yard is a nasty, muddy bog!

It felt so warm that I decided to go on a trail run instead of going to a treadmill at the gym.  The air was so crisp and the chill of the air was just right to keep me comfortable as I ran.

There is a point on the trail that was my 'push to' point.  You know, the destination I would push myself to make it to because it was really, really hard.  That point was the concession pavilion at Art Dye Park.  I got to that point today... and breezed right past it!  I had set a 45 minute timer on my iPod so I would know when to turn around and head home for a 90 minute workout.  The pavilion at Art Dye was only the 30 min. mark.  So, I kept going.  I ended up turning around a few minutes before my timer went off, though, because I realized I was losing daylight.  I didn't want to be jogging after dark in my black outfit (that ended up happening anyways, though).  It took much less time going home because it was all downhill returning and I was able to jog the whole way.  I need to adjust the timer to account for that.

There were a few spots on the trail that still had snow and slush on them, but I just walked over those patches carefully, then went on my way.  On the return (after the sun had gone down), some of the wet patches of trail were also icing up, so I had to watch out for that, too.  Still, I really had a good time and I just LOVE the view from the upper trail of the whole valley at sunset!

And I am Already Planning a Second One!

So, I haven't run the Thanksgiving Point half marathon yet, and I am already planning to run a second half marathon!!!  Yup!  The Utah Valley Half Marathon!  It sounds great!  It is in mid June.  That is a good time frame, because the first race is at the end of April.  That gives me good training time between the two races.  The course starts up in the canyon next to the Sundance turn off and is entirely downhill through the canyon, along the Provo river trail and down University Ave. to Provo Town Centre Mall.  There are no turns.  My brother, Erik is going to run this one, so I decided to join him.  Bill says he might do this one, too.

So, I really need to get busy training... and get myself some new running shoes!

New Goal!

I have decided to enter the Thanksgiving Point half marathon!

It will be held April 30th.  That gives me two and a half months to train.  I had intended to enter until I pulled my Achilles tendon.  I have had a hard time recovering from that, but today for the first time I felt that I had a shot at it again.  I did a 90 minute workout on a treadmill this evening and managed to go 7 miles in that time.  That would make a 3 hour half marathon (13.1 mi.) if I could maintain that speed the whole time (which is unrealistic at this time).  I need to improve on that, but it does not seem insurmountable. 

You see, the marathon organizers have posted on their web site that the race route would be maintained (police directing traffic, water stations manned, etc.) for 3 hours from the start of the race.  That means that I have to make sure I can finish the race within that time frame.  With 2 1/2 months of training, I am sure I can do that.  I have no intention of trying to win anything... I am not unrealistic about this.  I am still in really bad shape.

But it would feel really great to accomplish this, it is on my bucket list after all!