Personal
Purdue 5k
Well, guess I shouldn’t make statements on when I’ll post next. Obviously I don’t follow through on them. Moving on, much has happened since my last post.
- I moved to a much nicer place. I used to live in a small 550 square foot apartment but now I live in a 1200 square foot three-bedroom duplex. I now have an office of my own. Justin has our master bedroom as his office (it’s quite large). We’ve also got a spare bedroom for when family comes over. Full kitchen (yay to no more meals cooked on an oven that’s half the size of a normal one). Also, our property looks out on a nice pond with a track around it. I just took the picture of me to the right on my patio. Which bring me to number 2.
- I’ve been back into running. I started back up on February 4 and have been going strong on a new Nike+ coaching program. It’s actually the same one I was doing before but on Intermediate 1 level instead of Beginner. Except for one run that I ran at the gym, I’ve run everything around the pond outside my house. It was actually kind of fun running through the snow. It created a nice challenge from the normal runs. I’m very glad that the weather improved however – today’s run especially was my best yet. I’ve got better at pushing myself and have been able to bring my personal-best mile down to 7:41. My last three runs have all been better than the one before it. I’ve also resumed loosing weight. I’ll try to post a separate update on that tomorrow though.
- Justin and I went to San Francisco in late January. He was attending a conference and I tagged along for a vacation. After he did his presentation at the conference, we spent a few days together going around the city. The weather there was better than in Indiana. It was a pretty nice break. Pictures of the vacation are here, here and here.
- A few weeks ago I finally went and signed up for the Purdue 5k Challenge. It’s my first real run/walk event and I’m pretty excited about it. Will I beat everyone there? Not by a long shot. Will I do great? Absolutely. As stated in item 2, I’ve only gotten better recently. The best part is that the run actually happens to fall on a day during my Nike+ coaching program when I’m not running. So I’ll be ready for a nice short (relatively) run. The race is a benefit for the Purdue Cancer for Center Research. More information is on the Purdue Challenge website.
I’ve also made a few mystery purchases recently but I’ll be saving those for another post once I’ve got everything completed.
New Year Randomness
A few things for the new year:
- Congratulations to those in New Hampshire for being another state allowing gay marriage. It’s a crime that it’s not globally recognized, but we’ll get there eventually. I guess I wrongfully assumed that the phrase “…all men are created equal.” in the Declaration of Independence actually applied to ALL men.
- I was bad during the holidays and ran very very little, however I was able to at least maintain my weight, which is as good as one can hope for.
- I have removed the CAPTCHA from my site. Apparently my WordPress upgrade last week broke that plugin.
- I am fixing the RSS feeds as they apparently haven’t been updating since about July. Oops!
Have a great new year and I’ll post again soon – hopefully later this week.
Happy (almost) New Year!
Here’s to the end of 2009 and the beginning of a new era! It’s been a busy year which has certainly flown by quickly for me personally and professionally.
What I’m hoping for in the coming year:
- More rights as a person who happens to love a guy
- Continued weight loss thanks to Nike+ and diligence
- Moving out of my apartment
- Attempt to continue the more frequent updates to this site
- Attempt to continue to keep a relevant header based on the time of the year
- World peace
Have a great last few days of the year and party like it’s 1999!
Running from the weight
As I posted a few weeks ago, I have been actively using Nike+ and have seen real results from sticking with that program. Well, here are those results. The chart to the left is my progress. Every Sunday morning I weigh myself on the same scale at the same time of the day to have a good comparison. As of this morning I weighed in at a nice 182 lbs. I hadn’t been tracking my weight since I restarted the running, but so far I’ve lost about 20 lbs. While I am beyond happy with these results, it is pushing me to just keep going and see how much better I can make my body.
While looking around the Nike+ website tonight, I saw that I can create a “Mini” which is a character version of myself that will help motivate me. As I continue running, so does the little guy. As I have run more, I thought it proper to visualize that here so I’ve edited my header to have that Mini as well.
Real results with Nike+
Nike+ Hardware - Picture © Apple Inc.
Many months ago I started working out. Needless to say, it didn’t really work out that good. I had originally tried working out by doing all the weights and using the treadmill and biking machines. It was nice for a short time and all, but I very quickly lost the enthusiasm to keep up with it. I then purchased the iPhone fitness app iFitness to try and get me back but ended up never going back to workout again.
Yep, I’m still alive
Just a fairly quick post. I’m still alive and kicking, just have been even less frequent in posting than usual (I’ve been trying to post at least one a week or two).
Some quick updates:
- We took a nice trip to Buffalo NY and Toronto almost two months ago. Pics here here and here.
- A few weeks later we went to Indianapolis for lunch and then went to a Corn Maze in Lafayette. Want to see some pictures?
- Last weekend Justin, Dad, Corey and I went to Chicago as a bachelor party for Corey. We went to the Museum of Science and Industry, ate at Subway, then went to Shedd Aquarium. It was a pretty fun trip ending with us getting drenched. More pics!
- I had stitches a few weeks ago after a few moles were removed (all normal) and finally went running today for the first time in several weeks. Felt great!
- Lastly, I’ve been secretly working on a project that will go live here in the near future. It’s coming along nicely after having been stalled for quite a long time. I’ll post a decent update for that once it’s ready.
In the meantime, I’ll try to actually post some stuff occasionally.
Wedding bells… or not.
Recently, Justin and I have been discussing more and more about getting married. A few months ago Corey and Danielle announed that they were getting married next September 25. I am very happy for them and glad that Danielle will become part of the family.
The talk of marriage brought me back to wanting to get married to Justin. Sadly, because of the state of the country and with the current laws, that’s not quite as simple for us. Along with getting married to really express our love for each other, we thought that it be good for his future also in that it may help when he graduates in order to try and stay in the USA.
However, our dreams were pretty much crushed this weekend when we started looking into things far more closely.
King’s Island
This weekend, Justin and I went to King’s Island with my coworker Dennis, his wife (Julie) and their boy (Matthew – 4yrs old). Now, one thing to take into account with me and amusement parks is that I have a huge fear of heights. Even then, it’s not really the heights that get me, it’s the vertigo from the heights. Naturally, one of the biggest goals of this weekend was for me to ride a roller-coaster (or two) – namely, the Diamondback.
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April Canoe Trip
Today, we left home at 9:30, stopped at Burger King for breakfast (french toast, tater tots and a drink), then drove to Delphi Indiana to Hodges Canoe Trips for a Purdue Village sponsored trip. Last week we signed up for $5 which covered everything once you are there.
We arrived at the location at 10:30. It is right along the Wabash river just off of Highway 18 near Delphi. Although we were supposed to leave by 11, we didn’t leave until almost 11:15 because the people organizing the event didn’t get there until then. We then got in a small bus with the boats in tow (10 total), and drove 4.5 miles north along the river. We were the first into the water of the group but our canoe was facing the wrong direction so had to try to get it going correctly.
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“You’ve already lost. My generation doesn’t care.”
From Unzipped:
“Yesterday, Iowa’s Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley tried (and failed) to introduce a constitutional amendment that would reverse the state’s unanimous Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage from last week. The clip above is of Majority Leader Mike Gronstal’s response to such an amendment, and it pretty much makes us want to marry him.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself! So I didn’t.
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- ran 2.23 mi on 3/18/2010 at 5:38 PM with a pace of 8'06"/mi http://go.nike.com/01nhv2to
- ran 8.02 mi on 3/16/2010 at 5:24 PM with a pace of 8'35"/mi http://go.nike.com/a6kfld
- ran 2.02 mi on 3/15/2010 at 5:33 PM with a pace of 8'12"/mi http://go.nike.com/6ebs0b8
- ran 5.03 mi on 3/14/2010 at 2:21 PM with a pace of 8'34"/mi http://go.nike.com/21k5ivl
- ran 5.02 mi on 3/12/2010 at 6:29 PM with a pace of 8'54"/mi http://go.nike.com/782nm6f