Coffee Time

Interwebs, we need to get together soon. Find a coffee shop, get a warm mug of happiness, find a comfy chair and settle in for a while.  If we were getting together for coffee today, here's what we would talk about.

Raleigh is balls cold. One the one hand, this is supposed to be a temperate climate, normal highs are in the 50's this time of year. And it's supposed to start snowing Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday mid-day and dump 3-7" of the white stuff on us. I'm down with this, just wish that our house had insulation in the exterior walls so we wouldn't be so frozen inside.

People say this winter is proof that global warming was a hoax, but this is really how every winter was before 2000. So I'd say that environmental conservation efforts have actually worked and we're back to where we should be. No doubt that would start some debate.

This was a good movie weekend. Saturday morning Bigun had a birthday party to go to. So I grabbed the Evil Genius and we hit the $2 theater near the house for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and a giant bucket of popcorn. She did actually show some good behavior, which is a rare treat indeed! Then I came home, ran 12 miles to get my long run done. Kelley's dad wanted to play with the kids for a bit, so as I was pulling into the driveway after my run, Kelley pulled in at the same time from dropping them off. We then went back to the $2 theater to see 2 Guns and have another giant bucket of recovery popcorn.  Needless to say, my sodium intake was through the roof this weekend. 2 Guns was much better than I expected, Marky Mark and Denzel in a great shoot-em-up thriller. Then we grabbed dinner a local japanese place and picked up the kids. They were pretty worn out by then, so after they went to bed we watched Mud, a pretty bad Matthew McConaughey flick that we had in on Netflix. It was a little dissapointing. There wasn't enough shirtless McConaughey for Kelley, and not enough plot twisting for me.

Sunday we went to church, and the kids almost behaved well. We had to baptize 18 people! Each one had to read a witness testimony. And it was mosaic Sunday, so the Chinese Church Praise Team had to sing a song (and they baptized 9 of the 18 people), and the Farsi Fellowship had to sing a praise song. It took an hour and 45 minutes. Normally the service is right around an hour, so I expected the kids to get more restless the longer it got. They kept asking why people were getting dunked in the water.

In the afternoon the kids and I got some time in the garden. Got the second raised bed finished off and turned the soil in there one time. The girls only fought twice while we were out there, so I'll consider that a win. After dinner and showers, they went to bed while Kelley and I watched Elysium, also in from Netflix. It was pretty bad. Matt Damon action flicks are usually better than that. They took the 1% vs 99% concept of wealth division that most of the USA is protesting about right now and stretched it out to unreasonable levels where only the rich get to use the cure for cancer, and OSHA suddenly doesn't exist anymore. The 1% only want money, they don't want the rest of us to die. horrible execution on the plot.

Bigun's spring outing date is changed! The plan was to have Morgan's wedding, then EG's spring outing, then Bigun's spring outing on consecutive weekends. But too many of the other dads in Bigun's tribe had date conflicts, so we got it changed to the only other available weekend, which happens to be the same date as Morgan's wedding. So we end up being the only pair that got screwed.

To make it up to Bigun, we're going to take the same weekend for an overnight trip just me and her. I have no idea where we want to go or what we want to do, and if we were having coffee today we'd certainly have to brainstorm on that one. She's big enough now to go on some epic adventures and do some non-child-like stuff now! I'm not suggesting a weekend in Vegas or anything. If you were a 9 year old girl, what would you want to do with your dad for an overnight trip? She loves biking and paddlesports, anything outside really. We could go camping, or whitewater rafting, or go hiking in the mountains. Maybe kayaking down a gentle river or mountain biking somewhere. We could go to the beach or do some standup paddleboarding, or maybe to an amusement park. If I wanted to move it up a few weekends, I could take her skiing in the NC mountains, she's love the snow. HELP! I need ideas here people.

Cedar Point might actually happen. The only two triathlons I have on the race schedule this year are the new Lake Logan 70.3 (I love the oly's that I've done there in the past) and Rev3 Cedar Point 140.6. While I shouldn't throw in too many sprints, it feels odd to only do 2 triathlons this year. Haven't done that few since 2008 when I only did my first one. But it looks like I've got the cash together for the entry fee for both of those ($425 for CP and $125 for LL in case you think triathlon is a cheap sport), and that was the biggest question mark on those two races. Now it's just a matter of getting the guts to pull the trigger! March 2nd is the price increase for both races, so I want to beat that. Should I wait until after the marathon to see how my body is feeling? I know it's a commitment to that much training, and Ironman training will have to start immediately after I finish these spring marathons. Should I sign up now or wait until after Myrtle Beach?

Might have found a 5k open water swim for this year! The Lowcountry Splash is a 5 mile OWS race in Charleston, where you start in Patriot's Point, swim under the Cooper River Bridge, then finish at the USS Yorktown. Swimmers go with the tide the entire way so there's plenty of current assistance. Yea, it's 5 miles instead of 5k. But get this: my two Ironman swim times (2.4 miles) are 1:14 and 1:05. In 2013, the finish times for this 5 mile swim ranged from 1:18 to 2 hours, they only had one person that took longer than 2 hours. My typical pool mile is 25 to 30 minutes, so I would expect that to take me about 2.5 hours, and I'm a really strong swimmer. So that must be one helluva current assistance. Do you think the field is only really strong swimmers, or is the current that strong? I wanted the 5k swim to be a real challenge, do you think that's challenging enough? It's on Memorial Day weekend and we can stay with my brother Michael, so that would be a great time to take the entire family down to visit him. I can't decide if that's the right race or if I should keep looking.

See what I mean? Coffee. We needs it. Help!