The Break and the Streak

Yeah, but the break and the steak would have rhymed

I took one class session off from grad school to do other stuff and totally blew all of the athletic endeavors. Literally, registered for four races - a marathon, a 12 hour ultra, a swim race, and a 4 mile octoberfest run - and competed in exactly zero of them.Yes it is frustrating, the marathons were my chance to knock out the new states this year. I really should have gone to the swim race, I think I'm just done with those. I had several friends there who told me it was a great day to be in the water, but I had to be up working until about 1 am the day before and just didn't want to get up at 6 to make it to the race on time.

So it takes a reset. There has been other stuff going on. I opened an Etsy store and put out a Craigslist ad to sell the beds, and that's going really well. So far I've sold 2 sets of bunk beds and a loft from CL.

Also I started a running streak - as of today (11/18) it's at 40 days and exactly 100 miles. I'm doing at least 2 miles a day, every day. No idea how long it will last - my original goal was 10 days, then a month. Next goal may be the first of the year? It's getting hard to figure out how I'm going to get everything done.

Grad school is back with a Business Law class. Not only is it really boring, but it takes a lot of time. Really this class gives me a whole new respect for people who went to law school. Every day I learn a new way to get sued or break the law. The only way to stay safe is to never do anything, ever. As an empath, I totally sympathize with people who need lawyers. When I worked in PC repair the jobs would be pretty quiet until somebody else was having the worst day of their week (or month, or year). Everybody that needs a lawyer for any reason is scared, or protective, or otherwise having their worst day. Totally could not do it.

The family is staying busy too. Evil Genius got her ears pierced, overcoming a fear that she's had for a long time:

Ella WON a poetry contest at the high school. For all grades, as a freshman, a 50 word poem contest, and she took the grand prize of the whole thing. Unreal. I mean, the grand prize was a $10 gift card but it's still an amazing accomplishment.

The State Fair came and went. This year we had the unreal luck of having huge traffic problems. It was so bad this year that both Saturday's we were able to charge people to park in our yard! 10 years at this house and that has never happened before.

That's a full yard

Also I finally finished installing these shelves in EG's room, and she got bangs, then green hair, now it's pink!

Cool floating shelves I built for her

Green hair with some old friends. We didn't know the boy had green hair too when we met up

EG is now pink haired

I also got to speak at Ella's school. The high school brings in STEM speakers periodically, and I volunteered to come talk tech, education, how I got into the IT industry, and how we do so much cool shit at the company I work for now. It was a blast!

me with Ella at the high school

So I really don't know how I'm going to get everything done, and it's pretty stressful. I have been running early in the mornings, but now it's in the 30's here and/or raining every morning so that's out. I'm going to come home some over lunch this week for woodworking. Mother Nature's worst joke is that the one time of year it's actually pleasant to be outside now, it gets dark at 5:30. I have to build these beds & stuff outside, built a new deck for it and everything. I'm going to try going to work early, building beds over lunch, leaving early, run as soon as I get home then woodwork until dark, then dinner and 4 hours of grad school. And that's every day until thanksgiving. I'm grateful for being busy, but this is getting hectic.

I'll leave you with some of the cool projects I've been building.

Those shelves laid out on the 8' x 12' deck I built just to assemble & finish furniture

The state fair

I ran by the state fair - this is always one of my favorite runs of the year

Got a visit from my good friend Alison as she walked over to the fair

This is a charcuterie board currently for sale in the Etsy shop

Bottom of the board. It's cherry & walnut

A twin over full size bunk bed

I made this cool table for the front porch from a slab of stump I cut off from my front yard

Super nice cherry box I made for a client's wedding present. The finger joints are a nice touch

Slides! Used a boat epoxy on the surface of the slides for 2 of the bunk beds

oh yeah, we had our anniversary! 21 years of marriage

This picture deserves its own post. I commissioned a local artist to draw Kelley as an anime superhero

Also built a trundle to go under EG's bed since we're going to have company this year for the holidays

crap I can't believe I didn't lead with "it's our 21st wedding anniversary" - you can tell I'm slipping.

No Marathons

Well big surprise, it looks like I'm not going to get in any marathons this year. Getting old sucks. Since my first marathon in 2009, I've done at least one each year except for the injury-ridden 2017. Grad school takes up a shitload of time, and since I fell off of my roof back in June I really didn't have time to train much for these. The 2019 marathons were supposed to include the Boring Marathon in Boring, Oregon and the Dirt Circuit 12 hour just north of Knoxville, Tennessee. Not even trying to run anything local this year with all of the grad school and woodworking stuff going on, just knock out the fly-to and drive-to states and keep studying. I have logged a grand total of 18 miles in July, August, and September in training.

I still made the trip to Oregon anyway with Ella and my Mom so I'll picture dump about that. Still bailed on the Tennessee trip though. We flew to Oregon on a thursday, and the flight got in about 1 pm so we decided to do downtown then. Luckily, we found a Duck Store so I could get Kelley her hoodie and it was pretty easy to walk around downtown. We hit Voodoo doughnuts too, and Powell's City of Books. Downtown was actually pretty dirty and there was lots of homeless people, it was by far the least impressive part of the trip. We did get to have dinner with Amy Cissell that night at a wonderful brewery. Meeting her finally was amazing, we've been friends for over a decade.

Friday we went hiking east of Portland, saw all of the massive waterfalls and even went across the Columbia river to Washington State, just to say we were there. Went to the packet pickup anyway, I've paid for 2 registrations for this same race, I was getting the t-shirt anyway. Saturday we went to the coast. Oswald West state park was really cool, hiked past a mountain stream that leads to a cool cove beach, it was Ella's first time seeing the pacific ocean. Cannon Beach was the next town up, that was really fun. I would love to get a week there with friends. Then we finished the coast trip at Seaside, but it was just as tacky as Myrtle Beach. Very disappointing. The drive to the coast was a big surprise, we had to get through some serious mountains with beautiful forest.

Sunday was supposed to be race day, but it was supposed to rain. My choice became to walk for 7 hours in the rain or go to the zoo. If it wasn't supposed to rain all day I would have walked the marathon, but the weather and my already tired feet made the decision for me. After the zoo we drove through the suburbs some and found more ice cream. Portland is a really cool place if you can avoid downtown. It was in the high 90's the whole time in Raleigh, but temps were barely above 70* the whole time in the PNW. And it didn't feel like there was any humidity. So comfortable! We flew back on Monday and that was all.

Ella's first flight!

In the Phoenix airport. That is some serious sunshine

the grand canyon from the plane - first time I've seen it

The Duck Store!

I love U of Oregon football so this place was a dream

Voodoo Doughnuts!

Powell's City of Books!

I FINALLY GOT ME SOME CISSELL!

Friday, looking over the Columbia River

That's a big tree!

And that's a 200 foot waterfall!

Ella is king of the rock

another quite large waterfall

Multnomah Falls is 620 feet of pure amazement

We hiked up to the bridge in the first Multnomah falls picture

Ready to throw Ella into the falls

Columbia river from the Washington side of that bridge

The Boring Brewery! Packet pickup for the marathon included a free beer

Ella's first time seeing the pacific ocean - it's back there

Now that's a big tree!

Oswald West State Park hike to the beach

All of our feet in the pacific ocean

It's a screw & brew!They put a beer garden inside of a hardware store in Cannon Beach. amazing

Ella in this tidal pool

I was the only guy on the beach without a shirt on

Mom got in the tidal pool too

Ice cream. yes.

Seaside. I think these people were all drunk.

Ella did not want to leave Seaside

At the zoo, she got into an eagle's nest

I got to pet a cougar (it's behind glass)

She rode a horse

and I got eaten by a lion

Then she got a german pancake as big as her head

flying home past Mount Hood

This really was a fantastic trip, even if I was bummed about not running the marathon. I wanted to meet friends, see the waterfalls, hike some trails, see the big trees, and hang at the coast. I got to see the cool side of the pacific northwest.