Bad Blogger

Bad blogger - that would be me. I just haven't had inspiration that intersected time to write up anything interesting. You know how it goes - now you get a bulleted list.

• We put on a Powerstroke Swim Clinic last Saturday - it sold out before the week was over and everything went smoothly. It's a long day for a Saturday after working all week, but we ended the night with some friends at a local restaurant.
  
• I rode the trainer while watching a movie on Sunday. My biking fitness is very low at the moment. I rented Easy A and it was surprising funny - I wasn't expecting too much but it turned out to be a good movie to pass the time on the bike.
  
• I ran later on in the afternoon and the calf has been cooperating. Run fitness, like bike fitness, is low, but I'm so glad to be out there again!
  
• We had an ice storm come through Monday night which pretty much shut the city down for all of Tuesday. I don't think we've lived here through an ice storm before and luckily this wasn't a bad one. It looks very weird to see everything covered with a sheen of ice. Our culdesac looked like you could ice skate on it.
  
• Work has been super busy. Blah.
  
• Auburn won! War Eagle! But I can honestly say I'm not a Cam Newton fan.
  
• You're probably thinking right about now, if her updates are going to be this boring, I'm glad it's only once a month.

Holiday

I had Monday off of work and it was awesome. I wish I had more days like that! I skipped Master's so I could sleep in and have a leisurely breakfast while I read a book. Then I headed to the pool and did the workout by myself - I know the benefits of swimming with other's, particularly our Master's team but when the choice was getting up at 5:15 and getting up whenever when I'll be swimming with everyone every other time, well, the decision was a no-brainer for me :)

Plus, I got to swim in the warm pool! They have two lap swimming pools at TAC, a competition olympic sized one that is set at 'competition temperature' (for us non-swimming folks, that means cold), and a 25 yard pool that is a few degrees warmer. A few degrees makes a big difference! We hardly ever get to swim in that pool for Master's.

For lunch, Marty and I went into downtown Cary and ate at the Soda Fountain inside Ashworth Drugstore. This drugstore has been around for 50 years and they have a cute little Soda Fountain counter and a couple of booths. Typical Soda Fountain food - hot dogs, sandwiches, milkshakes - I'm a sucker for places like these. I had a grilled cheese and chocolate shake and Marty had a tuna melt AND a hot dog.
In the afternoon Marty, Tassie and I all went for a 5 mile run. I love days like these.

Twenty Eleven

On the radio I heard the DJ say, "Happy Two Thousand Eleven!"

When will this stop? It's twenty eleven - right? Why have we been saying the long version for the past 10 years? Like why is everything "two thousand two" and "two thousand nine" and not "twenty oh two" and "twenty oh nine?"

When we say dates from past centuries isn't it like that? Like when I say, "my great grandfather was born in 1901" which is something I admittedly don't say very often, don't you read that as "nineteen oh one?" You don't think nineteen hundred one.

I don't know why but for some reason this has always bothered me and I thought for sure when we hit 2010 we could finally shorten it. And I think a lot of people do say twenty ten. But you would still hear two thousand ten. So I'm making an official decree to call this year twenty eleven!

Happy New Year, by the way :)

We stayed low key last night and went to dinner with friends before coming home and going to bed at 11pm. I know - LAME. I did wake up at midnight (hard not to with the fireworks) and then went right back to sleep. It was a good football day: Notre Dame, UCF and FSU all won.

This morning we got up and did a 5K at a local park then rode for 2 hrs a little later. I'm tired now.

Some Christmas Pictures

We spent an extra day in Chesapeake, Va at my sister's house after the area got 14 inches of snow. That is a lot of snow for the 'South!'

Here's my niece heading out to play in it.

Tassie had fun in it with her Great Dane cousins.

Marty had to dig us out so we could get on the road Monday.

The snowstorm didn't come until very early in the morning the day after Christmas, so Christmas day was nice. Marty and I went to a park near Virginia Beach for a run on trails - wish we had known about this park in years past! It sure beats the Dismal Swamp paved trail we've run before.

Here are a couple of shots from Christmas morning.

OSB hoodies were a hot commodity this Christmas season - but I got mine!



Haileigh and I also got matching Eclipse DVD's.


A Total Wine gift card and Marty is one happy camper.

'tis the season...

...for Christmas parties! My department at work had a Christmas lunch at Maggiano's. Did you know that Maggiano's means "oversized portions to help you gain 10lbs between Thanksgiving and New Year's"? I know, it's amazing they could fit such a thought in one word, but those Italian's are sneaky.

That same night, we hit up the FS Series Holiday Party where Marty received a special present from Jason and the gang - a Shake Weight. They were all, "This is why Marty is one of the fastest triathlon swimmers in the area" and "Powerstroke!" If you have not heard of the Shake Weight, I suggest you push that rock out from over your head. But I'll also put the commercial up for you, since it is Christmas time and I'm feeling generous.



They have one for women, too, in case all you girls out there are interested in purchasing one for yourself. Now this next video is hilarious but may not be suitable for younger viewers, or for those who may get offended easy. Saturday Night Live did a skit based on the Shake Weight:



Okay, enough talk about how I'm going to have AMAZING arms in just 6 minutes.

Friday night was spent with some good friends and Saturday was chock full of Holiday Spirit. We started the night with the TAF group at Cafe Caturra before heading over to the main event - Nas's Christmas party. This party features a very popular white elephant gift exchange. We ended up with a space rocket projection alarm clock.


Honestly, it's really cool. The person who brought it had told her husband beforehand, someone is either going to think this is totally stupid or some geek is going to love it. Huh.

I did find an Sam Adam's Oktoberfest in the fridge. Yeah, I don't care that it's December and this beer was probably made 3 months ago. It's my FAVORITE Sam Adam's beer. And everyone knows that their Oktoberfest only lasts for about a month and a half while their disgusting Winter Lager lasts until March. It was like my birthday finding this gem in the fridge. Or maybe like Christmas.

Weekend of CEU's

In order to recertify as a USAT Triathlon Coach, you need to obtain a certain number of continuing education units. Marty and I had originally planned on getting our Level 2 USAT certification in Colorado Springs back in October, but when we found out that the curriculum was mostly geared to coaching juniors and pro's, we decided that it wouldn't be worth our time and money (that's not our clientele). Instead, we saw that Charlotte was hosting a USATF (Track & Field) Certification that would be worth 10 CEU credits towards our recertification.

This was really good for Marty since he will most likely be coaching high school track this spring. And it was interesting to me since I have a pretty extensive track background, although it's exclusively with the distance events. Even so, you can't go to one of these and NOT learn additional information and new discoveries/training methods. Plus, it was neat to learn more about the jumps and hurdles and all the other events that I don't have much knowledge on.

The clinic was excellent. The information was interesting and the speakers were top notch and great. The amount of hours was insane, though!

Friday: 5pm -10pm
Saturday: 8am - 7pm
Sunday: 8am - 4pm

We got an hour lunch break on Saturday and Sunday and a few 5 min bathroom breaks sprinkled throughout. That was it.

It was definitely worth it, no doubt about it. It just made for a very long weekend and when you work a full time job in addition to that, it's tough to turn right back around Monday morning. Oh well, sometimes you have to suck these things up.

Picture Page!

Saturday night the Victorious Secret Doughman team reunited for a farewell party for one of our members, Brooke. Her and her husband are moving to Boulder in a couple of weeks and we're really going to miss them. Don't worry, Brooke is going to fly back in May for the 2011 race.

Sunday, Kari and her husband graciously came over to take family pictures for us. Marty put some of the good one's up on his blog. I'll put up some of the not so good ones. It's actually sort of hard to get your dog to look at the camera - there was a lot of "Tassie! Look here!" shouted from Kari and Bobby. Even so, I was surprised at how many she did look at the camera. Here are some of the others:

Tassie, look right.

Now look left.

Now look right again.

Tassie, sit on my knee and look chagrinned.

Tassie, sit. No, not that way!

Argh!

Tassie, stick your nose in the air.

Ducks!

Tassie, do something funny with your tongue.

Marty, look at Bri lovingly :)