10 days off will do a blogger good

One of two things occur to push me over the edge and force me to blog.

1) I think of something brilliant and have to share it with the world.  This occurs far less often than...
2) Someone in a Lexus cut me off on the commute in and has made my inner rage boil.

So I haven't thought of anything that revolutionary and all the Lexus drivers must be on holiday.  Thank God.

I was going to leave the blog at that, but I figure it HAS been 10 long days and all, so I'll dump what little beans I have.  That didn't sound right...

K-man is an absolute hoot.  He's really chatty now and has been hammering out quite a few more words these days.  His favorite word is ouch.  He says it all the time and thinks it is absolutely incredible that he can say it once and then the rest of us go around the house like the bunch of seagulls on Finding Nemo.  He's also getting pretty good at wheeling around the house, and loves his big brother like nothing else.  I love watching him come pile on Aiden and give him some love.  They are so sweet right now.

AB is turning into quite a young man.  I'm very proud of him.  He is still chock full of questions, and those questions usually revolve around movies (especially Star Wars).  Penny and I both get pretty frustrated by the relentless stream of questions, but it is nice that he is engaged and isn't buried into a PSP.  I'm sure those days will come too.  Just wait til K-man steals AB's PSP.  I'm sure you'll see some true brotherly love then.

Penny is under a lot of stress at work, and they just laid off a few people.  Nothing major, but definitely something that was very sad for her.  She hadn't ever been around a layoff situation (one that I'm a little too familiar with) and it was difficult for her to be one of the survivors and see hard-working people let go.  On a more positive note, she's been working out a lot and getting ripped.  Needless to say, as her muscle tone goes up, my lippyness goes down.

I've been hitting the bike pretty hard, trying to put up a better showing at my next race on Dec. 5th.  I'm still not expecting a top 3 or anything, but I could see a marked improvement between races 1 and 2, and I'm expecting every bit as much improvement between 2 and 3.  I'm slowly burning the lbs. off I've been carting around for the last decade, and it's pretty nice.  I can see some difference, but still have a long way to go.  As long as I keep moving in the right direction and getting "fitter", I'm good with that.

Hopefully I'll have some good news in a next couple of weeks regarding something I've been working on for awhile now, so as soon as I'm able to share, I'll do that.

I'll be back on soon.

Explain to me why

I enjoy suffering on Sunday?

Sunday morning I went out to the fine city of Leavenworth and raced in the De Stad Series' Veteran's Cup cyclocross race. The course was a lot more wide spread than the Boulevard cup, and it had a couple of long climbs and a couple of fast descents, with two sets of barriers. I didn't get to the course in quite enough time for a proper warm-up, so by lap two I was toasted. I started to feel a little life in my legs by lap 4, but by then, the damage was done. Average heart rate was 180, max was 198. Maybe next race I can hit 200. Ha!

I've had mixed reactions coming back from this race. I really didn't feel very whippy, but I held my own on the descents, and I even had a couple of barrier jumps go fairly smooth. But I had some go pretty poorly too. I just need to practice those a bit more. I'm still pretty sore from the hills, but this is to be expected. I've been trying to do intervals and some cardio work, but it's going to be a long haul before I'm jumping barriers and lapping people.

It's a journey I'm looking forward too.

Going for the deuce

Oh my, the coffee has kicked in. Speaking of kicking (that was a lame segue), here's some pics from AB's last soccer game. What a stud.

Halloween Pics

So I'm a little late posting pics, but I think they're worth it.  The first half of the pics are from the neighborhood hay ride.  The kids went around on a trailer with hay, and ended up at one of our neighbor's houses where he had his firepit blazing for smores and a professional story-teller.  It was a fun evening.



I am racing at the Veteran's Cup tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to it.  The 70-degree temps we're having are only bolstering my excitement.  Sure, cyclocross is supposed to be muddy, cold, and miserable, but if you can race in warm temps, why wouldn't you!?!

My Coffee didn't come early enough today.

On Mondays, Coffee is in a special place of honour, so it gets capitalized. Three cheers for Coffee! Unfortunately, I got in and the fan was already spinning with the remnants of barnyard animal crap on the blade, so I didn't get to indulge in my little ritualistic caffeine-infusion until I was already grumpy. But now all signs point up, and I'm doing better.

I've been reading my e-buddy Greg's blog "Mud and Cowbells" this morning and he had some great write-ups of the CX action in Boulder this weekend. Definitely not something for the masses, but he is mighty with the pen/keyboard and sometimes has some really nice non-bike blog entries (is there a sexier term for a singular blog entry? blogette?)

We had a pretty nice Halloween here, and I'll try and get the pics up soon. AB was a Jedi (imagine that, I know!) and Kieran was an Ewok. Now since I'm apparently related to all 24 people that haven't seen Star Wars, I've posted up what an Ewok looks like.  They are in Return of the Jedi, and help the Rebels (good guys) take down the shield generator that is protecting the Death Star. Obviously they succeed, otherwise we wouldn't be here with me typing and you reading this blog, because we would have been smashed to bits by the Death Star.