What’s this? A new post from Mac? Yep, here it is. I know you’ve all been checking often in the hopes that I would be back soon. Let’s catch up a bit, shall we?
A lot has gone on in the last 27 days. I’ve been totally swamped: two weeks out of town, a little volunteer community project that turned well, not so little, not to mention the hacking of Get Fit Slowly. All of these things have kept me away from Get Fit Slowly. I still have problems allocating my time and staying on track when things get a little bit hectic.
But, I’m proud to say that I haven’t let my new lifestyle erode back into my old lifestyle. I won’t lie to you by saying that everything is perfect. I haven’t been eating perfectly, or exercising perfectly, but I have been doing ok and I’m proud of that.
2 vacations and 1 pound
3 weeks ago, we packed the kids into the car and headed out the door for Lincoln, CA. I was dreading the road trip part of this trip, but was really excited about the destination. The driving actually turned out great. The kids ate a lot of snack food in the car and watched a lot of videos, but they were great. Lincoln is about 30 minutes northeast of Sacramento and is the home of my inlaws. A week of golfing, tennis, walking, running, swimming, and hiking was highlighted by evenings out (with and without kids), massages, and oh yeah, did I mention golf? I played golf (unfortunately with a cart) 4 times, tennis with my mother in law once, and ran about 12 miles. The rest of the time, we hung out in the yard, rode bikes, and went to the park or the pool.
My wife’s exercise plan for the week was a little bit more ambitious. She attended the Western States 100 training camp. Three days of running on the Western States 100 course that included shuttle buses, aid stations on the course, and lunches after the days’ runs. All told, she ran 72 miles during the camp. 72 MILES IN 3 DAYS–did I mention she’s a little bit extreme?
The week was great, the activity was great, but the food was difficult. I once wrote about the difficulties I have with my mother’s pantry. But if my mother’s pantry is a piece of cake my mother in law’s pantry is the bakery. For example, the drawer in her refrigerator that is supposed to be full of vegetables is actually full of candy bars. Needless to say, I struggled with food a bit. But when I returned home, I had only gained a pound and the scale said 180.
Last week, after a normal week at home, we again headed out of state. This time, we packed the kids up and flew to Washington, D.C. to visit Pam’s sister and her family. They recently moved away from Tacoma, WA and added a new member to their family so it was important for us to get over there to see them. Traveling out there totally sucked. Our flight was delayed by thunderstorms and tornadoes in Denver. So we missed our connection, spent the night in Denver, and then flew on to DC (via Dallas) the following morning.
We had another great week. I set a goal of running 20 miles for the week and managed 25! I completed a 5-miler and an 8-miler and the rest were smaller runs on my brother in law’s tread mill. I was ecstatic that I set a fitness goal and completed it. Ever since the Eugene Half, I’ve been struggling with maintaining my fitness goals–mostly because I don’t have any right now. We also packed the kids up and headed to the Baltimore Aquarium, and various parks around Alexandria. We did have a great time, but I’m glad to be home and back into the swing of things.
This week, the kids have swimming lessons, and we have visitors from my family (including mom, sister, soon to be brother in law and his son) staying with us. It will be a great week. But mostly, I’m glad to be home and settling back into the routine.
Even after all that time away from the house, I weighed in at 179.4 this morning. I’m very happy about that.
Stop the Strip Mine
Another thing that has been taking up a lot of my time–way too much in fact–is a little community project. The landowner across the street from the entrance to our subdivision is trying to get his land rezoned so that he can open up a gravel quarry. As you can imagine, it’s caused quite an uproar. Our neighborhood, and the surrounding ones, have united to stop this pit from eroding the way of life that we’ve become accustomed to.
I’m a little bit torn on this issue. In general, I feel that a person should be able to do whatever they want with the land that they own. But the environmentalist in me doesn’t want to see another scar on the surface of the Earth. And the the realtor/homeowner in me especially doesn’t want to see one so close to where I live.
Since this issue has hit so close to home, I’ve volunteered to design, build, and maintain the website dedicated to providing information to people in the area. The design is simple, the content is simple, but the amount of email that I have to deal with (personal communication is not one of my strong suits) is very daunting.
Hackers Be Damned!
So our site was hacked–again. We think we’ve taken care of the problem this time. But things definitely aren’t back to where they were. I’m not sure about the design. I haven’t activated all of the Wordpress plugins that we used to have. In fact, I’m not even sure which ones are missing. For now, we can post and you can comment. You can tell who wrote the post which is something that has been requested. These are the important things. I’m sure there will be some changes in the future, but I’m not sure what they’ll be. But for now, we’re back up and running again.
I even have a few ideas of things to write about. And so does JD. Right JD?
macdaddy Administration, Introspection, Progress, Real-Life