sewer geysers of Super 8

I will tell some more about the Lewis Family Tragedy. I made sure to reserve a hotel that had a pool because I like to swim and I thought Soapy would enjoy it. It turns out I did enjoy it and Soapy did too. It was an outdoor pool, the water was cold and the sun was going down but it was still fun and we got a cheese stuffed-crust pizza. It was looking like we were to be ensured a great stay. Of course, we had to ignore the smells and the mosquitos/beetles that were painted over on the walls. The smells alone were bizarre. There was the standard ammonia based cleaner and sleazy cigarette/cheap perfume mix drifting about but there was also motor oil, spoiled fruit and stale cinnamon. It was nauseating but it could be dealt with.
The next morning I went to take a shower and when I stepped into the tub I heard a squish and felt water on my toes. There was a pinprick in the bottom of the tub and some sort of filled abcess underneath so that water shot up when it was compressed. I thought this was cool so I calculated and double-pumped so I could get maximum height. I got it about 18 inches high before I noticed the smell.
I am pretty sure I was shooting raw sewage or, at best, filthy tub water all over my feet and calves. That is the end of my story, but it is still pretty gross, hey?

I switched my recruiter today. I hope the package gets transferred easily or else we might be here for a lot longer than 6 months.

driving is the worst

We are in Virginia. I haven't posted for two days because I was dying. Who knew that Super 8 could encompass so many smells and experiences. I will have to share later (sneak peek: sewer geysers). Missouri is the worst state EVER and Kentucky is pretty. Indiana? What is there to say about Indiana? Everything you have ever heard about West Virginia is true. Virginia has some terrifying roads. Also, The lemon tree is 1/3 mostly dead. It might be my fault.
Fruit snacks = emesis, big trucks = nemesis. I had some road rage flare-ups; I thought we were past that.
But we are in Virginia now and I am going to sleep in a room where the average age is 27.5, not 14.32. Wow. 14.32. Basically I have been living the life of an angsty teen for the last three days. TRAPPED IN A SMALL JAPANESE CAR. A small Japanese car that might be leaking a vital fluid. I tasted it in a Catholic Church's parking lot and it resembled salty water. Any ideas?

the car is loaded

and it all fit! 19 boxes of cereal, over 50 fruit snacks, 8 peaches, 1 lemon tree, 2 car seats w/occupants, 1 Anna, 1 Christopher, and too many diapers. We have a reservation 50 miles west of St. Louis at a hotel with a swimming pool. Soapy and I will likely play there all day. We are leaving early and will make it to independence soon after it opens for the morning.we'll play for about an hour and then go for a few more hours and stop at the hotel at about 1, right when we can check in for the day. We should be able to do the whole trip in 6-7 hour chunks.
Now we have to pack up the modem.

Kanye West and Toilet Posture

1) We have been packing and moving stuff all day today and have made tremendous headway. I am lying on the ground to type this because we have no furniture in our house except for 3 sleeping bags and 4 folding chairs. That is great and a good sign that we haven't been too lazy.
2) I am pretty exhausted and Anna has already left to go to bed.
3) I have just read two very interesting stories on Slate about (a) Kanye West (the opening line of the article quotes him as saying "Fur pillows are hard to actually sleep on." Ha!) and (b) western toilet posture and health. I recommend reading them if you are interested in (a) wealthy ego-maniacal music stars and/or (b) toilet posture.
Tomorrow is our big cleaning day. We will scrub the house down and pack the car up. It's getting exciting. We have decided on our route. We are going to take I-64 through Kansas City and St. Louis and then through Lexington and West Virginia (by the way, who even knows any cities in West Virginia?) until we hit Locust Grove, VA. Then Chris will canoe and chop wood to his heart's content until he leaves to shoot grenades and abseil down tall towers.

Still packing

Nothing new. We are in that limbo period where you end up packing things you realize you shouldn't have packed because you will use it once or twice again before you leave. We packed up the kitchen and it is the biggest pain. We had to take inventory of our food, decide what we were going to eat, what utensils and dishes we would need to eat it, what we would need to prepare it and then pack everything else. And then we had to do dishes because a lot was dirty. I had to unpack the toaster twice. Actually that has been it so far. We have done pretty well.
It is worse with clothing because you have to do laundry as you prepare what to take and what to pack away. It reminds me of an analogy I have heard about anticipating changes in the economy.
Imagine you are driving a car in a city but every turn of the steering wheel and application of brake/accelerator will be manifest in 5 miles. What a mess.
Speaking of automobile analogies, I heard another one that describes what piloting a submarine is like.
Imagine you are driving a car but all the windows are blacked out. The only methods to navigate are a stopwatch, a speedometer and a map. Also, you have three dimensions to navigate, you have nuclear weapons and people might be trying to kill you. That is a car I would not want.

Killer Cereal

Anna bought me some Cinnabon cereal a few days ago and I really love it. It is such a poor breakfast choice, I can't help but love it. It looks like a bunch of miniature cinnamon rolls and it makes the milk very sugary.
I was a bit shocked that even this stroke of genius, perhaps to worst cereal to hit the market since Kellogg's Smorz and Extreme Creme Taste Oreo O's, is trying to play the health angle. The back of the box has a large spoon holding an entire cinnamon roll with frosting dripping down it and the tagline "The indulgence of Cinnabon. The goodness of Kellogg's."
I get that this is not an explicit claim of healthiness, but "goodness" is not what I would use to describe anything related to Cinnabon.
Also it claims to be a "Crunchy Cinnamon Multi-grain Cereal" but I checked the FDA website and there is no legal requirement for the usage of Multi-grain other than having more than one grain. I could have a Multi-grain meal of goodness if I poured beef gravy on deep fried Captain Crunch Berries.
I have no problem with bad cereal or even with junk food. In fact I love junk food. I think McDonalds is one of the greatest inventions of the last 200 years and I would defend my love of Pop-Tarts to my impending death, but to try and pull off a health claim for garbage is not cool. Especially because with the rebate, they are giving this cereal away for free.

Packing

It was a productive day today. We packed up a lot of junk and started hauling it out to the garage we rented. I moved most of the book boxes today. Those were so heavy. I packed up a considerable part of my side of the bedroom, too. I didn't wake up until 11:30 so it really says something about how hard we worked seeing as the day doesn't seem like it was a huge waste.
We are decided on moving on Saturday morning. We have yet to pick a route and places to stay. We want pools at each stop and preferably a playground, chocolate river, and glass elevator. We have our audiobooks (Atul Gawande, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Thomas Friedman, et al.)and CDs (Sufjan Stevens, Flaming Lips, Burt Bacharach and Jack Johnson) picked out and a bag of DVDs (Blue, Thomas the Tank Engine and Elmo) for Soapy to watch (thanks Mom).
We have been talking about how awesome it will be to eat in the car and I am excited for my stash of fruit snacks and non-water beverages.
We are also excited because today was the first real day of our 3 week vacation. I have no work and won't have to do anything job-related until mid-September. Virginia will be full of wood chopping, canoeing, and museum visiting. I have been reading lots of spy histories to prepare for the International Spy Museum in DC. It costs something like 18 dollars, so I want to know enough about the history of espionage to appreciate it $18 worth. Maybe I should read that KGB book about the high profile defector next. I wonder if I could finish it in three days. Maybe not. I'll check it out tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

Promises

The lesson was not a resounding success. I thought they would be more into Assyrians than they were. I kind of calculated a lot more discussion time about their battle preparations than we actually used. But we ended the lesson early and I learned about their new school year.
My point is, I will not be discussing Margaret Barker and her essay on Josiah's temple reforms. I highly suggest you listen to it if mind-blowing awesomeness interests you though. You can find it here, though only in mp3 format. It was a devotional or forum at BYU.

Here are some other promises I have not made good on:
- Jeremy, if you read this, I never did participate in your dissertation study. I meant to and I think I told you I would, but I didn't.
- Sascha Struffi, I know you are not going to read this because you are a German guy that I met at the Olympics 6 years ago. You told me to read Conversations with God and write you an email telling you what I think of it. I have not done that. I even have the book. Anna bought it for me to make me feel bad and I tried to read it once but it was too hokey and I think I even left the bookmark in it. Anyways, Mr. Struffi, I packed up that book and it is going into my storage unit for at least 6 months and I doubt I will get to it in the next year. So... hopefully I do that sometime.
- Remember how I promised everyone that followed my blog an ice cream sandwich about 2 years ago? I am pretty sure that I wont make good on that promise. Perhaps someday in the future, but I wouldn't count on it.
- Some of my coworkers from the jail made me promise to visit them and show them the baby (that would be Josie) after she was born. I never planned on doing that. That was always meant to be a lie.
- Anytime I leave a job and my coworkers somehow finagle a 'Man, I am going to miss working here' out of me, that is a lie too. I have never felt bad about leaving a job.
- Growing up Lisa and Bryan and I would make oaths with each other. We felt it was ok to break your word or a promise, but we all understood that you could never break an oath. I am pretty sure it is because Mom explained to us that an oath was a promise that you couldn't ever break no matter what. When we asked what happened if you broke an oath, she told us that you can't break one so it isn't a question of if. That was impressive. Also it is impressive that kids would pick up oathing from the Book of Mormon. Ha ha. And then Mom made us stop because she thought it was blasphemous for us to oath about stealing candy or doing chores.
- Totally off topic, but remember when we would watch Lion King or The Brave Little Toaster and fight about who got to be each character? Remember how we would get into real fights and sometimes there would be tears? Man, why was that so compelling? Is this a common thing for kids to do?

loser post

I promise that tomorrow will be a better post. I found out tonight that I will be teaching the older youth Sunday School class tomorrow and I am preparing a lesson. I am pretty sure we are supposed to be on lesson 32, but I was told to teach lesson 30. Lesson 30 is about the temple and the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah. There is a really great talk about Josiah's reforms by a Methodist Preacher named Margaret Barker. She is a biblical scholar who specializes is ancient temple theology and is President of The Society for Old Testament Study.
I will post tomorrow what I learn after I study tonight and teach tomorrow. The youth I am teaching are really sharp too. Last time I taught them, we talked about Sampson and they wanted to know about the Nazarite vows and covenants.
I ate a lot of grapes and peaches today. It is nice to have fruit sitting out, especially knowing that we will be moving soon so it all has to go. We were talking about leaving early today if we get everything packed up. That could be kind of fun, leaving whenever you feel like it.

I have come by the highway home

And lo, it is ended.
I am finished with temp work! I have been working temp jobs since May 2009 and I will not work one (hopefully) ever again. In three weeks I report for Basic Combat Training at Ft. Benning and then I will have full-time salaried work on out. I was thrilled to leave work. I think Cain put it best in Moses 5:33:"I am free". Nyuk nyuk nyuk.
But really, temp work stinks. Even today my manager made me stay later than I ever had before to finish petty filing and some small tasks on next week's schedule. When you are paid hourly as a peon, no one cares about your ideas or capabilities, only your heartbeat and gross motor skills. People will squeeze you to the last minute to get their money's worth from you and still feel ripped off.
In my head I am trying to figure out how to make "temp work" and "chump work" sound funny together in a sentence, but I think it only works if you hear me say it. I will go try it out on Anna. If she laughs, I will assume you all would have laughed and I will take the credit for a joke well conceived...
Awesome. She laughed and asked me if I was done writing my post yet. It might have been a pity laugh, but it still counts.

Also, I gave up on my goal of doing 2000 jumping jacks and settled for eating 9 mini bagel pizzas. That is not such a big change in goals but I felt ethically bound to disclose my alterations. I still consider myself a hero.

We will probably start packing up the house tomorrow. I am pretty excited to get cracking. It is always fun to load up packed boxes and furniture in garages/trucks because it is like macro-tetris. Considering I moved and packed all last summer as a minimum wage day-laborer (my many years in the Elder's Quorum Transport Co., LLC notwithstanding) I have become quite the moving and packing profi.

victory!

I did 300 pushups yesterday. I had to stay up late to do them, and I ended up finishing them 5 at a time, but they got finished.
My next goal is to do 2000 jumping jacks. I don't even know if that will be hard or not. I have never had much respect for jumping jacks because I don't see their point. Rhythmic hopping and flailing don't really build muscle and it doesn't seem like a really effective cardio exercise but maybe I will feel differently tomorrow.
That is another thing, I will do them tomorrow. We have guests coming over tonight and I don't want to hop around all evening. I'll do it as my celebration for finishing my last day of work tomorrow. I will eat a carton of donut holes (they are on a super sale at the grocery store down the street) and then do 2000 jumping jacks.

Bag + pushups

Thanks Kathy for the awesome tote bag! It came in the mail today and I have been trying to think of all the sweet things to tote around. I finished Sunrise over Fallujah last night (at 12:30, after I went to bed at 11) so I will probably go to the library with Soapy tomorrow and we'll see how it works out. Probably the librarians will be jealous of my sweet prize and wish that they had placated me with a win. But no. This is better than anything I could have won from Lincoln City Libraries. Thanks Kathy.

Also, I was sitting at my desk at work trying to think of a new goal and I decided to do 300 pushups before I go to bed tonight. I figured that maybe if I did that, then I would have a good story to tell, and if I didn't then I would have an even better story to tell.
Anna came and picked me up from work (I usually ride my bike, but I have been getting a lot of flat tires lately and I work seven miles from home and it is annoying to fix a tire in the work parking lot and the pump I use gives me blood blisters but mostly I am lazy) and I told her about my goal:
Anna: "Wow" She responded in a disappointingly neutral tone "Are you sure you want to do that?"
Me: (deflated and worried I wasn't impressing her) "Why, isn't that a lot though? Won't you be impressed?"
Anna: "Well, its just that it will take a long time and you will waste both of our evenings."
Me: "Whatever. I will do them in like, 5 seconds. I will do them while I catch up on those THREE EPISODES of Heroes you watched while I wasn't there."
Anna: "Man. You are totally right. I am scum and I should probably go buy you some ice cream to go with the brownies that I always want. I realize now that brownies without ice cream are offensive and even though I won't ever take any of your ice cream, I will never have any unless we have ice cream to accompany it."
Me: "I am glad you see it my way."

That is verbatim. But actually Anna is hard to impress. 300 pushups should be enough to impress anyone, right? I think she is beginning to get too used to me. I think my only solution is to run 700 miles away for 6 months.

Forms

I listened to a lot of my lectures (Odyssey of the West II; a Classic Education through the Great Books: From Athens to Rome and the Gospels) today and covered the section on Plato and Aristotle. I have taken philosophy courses before but I had forgotten how much I enjoy them.
One of the ideas I like most discusses how we recognize anything. Every time we leave the house we see an entirely new world. The trees we see are not the same trees that were there the day or even the hour before. Cells have died and fallen away, branches have broken, leaves have moved, there are different animals in or around them, but we still deal with it ok. We do not have to reevaluate our world and our understanding of it every time we encounter something new.
I took a class on Immanuel Kant and we spent a lot of time reading about Kant's attacks on empiricism, or the idea that you can only gain knowledge from experiences. If you could only know what you have experienced, then you could never anticipate anything, because any sort of anomaly is given the same weight as what we would consider a natural law. There could be no natural laws because physical sensation does not prove any natural law, it only confirms what is happening.
The example I liked best was one where my teacher dropped his pen and said that if we were true empiricists we could not be surprised if the pen stayed in mid-air or even shot to the ceiling, because we would have no other knowledge to create shock. I thought that was kind of cool.
A little off topic, but the reason I wanted to write about the lectures, was the presentation I was listening to about imagination. I don't remember what the big idea behind it was, but the professor said that people go to the Grand Canyon (a big hole) to be astounded. I haven't ever been but I would like to go because of this example and a West Wing episode. The speaker said that when you look at the Grand Canyon it is impossible to take it all in. It is such a huge spectacle that when you close your eyes or turn away, you cannot recreate what you have seen because it is too massive- it is too immense to comprehend.
In West Wing, Toby Ziegler said "You know when you go out West how they
say, don't miss the Grand Canyon, it's one of the few things in life that when you see it, it doesn't disappoint? That's Roy Ashland." I think Roy Ashland was a senile Supreme Court Justice in the show, but I hope that it is true for the Grand Canyon.
If I go and am disappointed, I will give up on nature and probably get engrossed in video games or something. Nature, that is a threat.

Uhhh

I don't know how Bryan posts everyday. I forgot I had to do something until a few minutes ago. We had pancakes for dinner tonight. Anna used a new recipe but doubled it like we did for our old one so we had twice as many pancakes as normal. That was pretty exciting. Soapy wanted syrup on her pancake but then just licked it off. I put a little bit on the side of her plate, but then she just tipped it and drank it all. Speaking of Soapy, she has this new fascination with trains. She will sit in a cardboard box and make chugga chugga noises. We went to the library and got a bunch of train books for her. We would have read them tonight but she was acting kind of hyper and cried about really small things. She stepped on a book and it slid an inch and she started bawling. I don't think she had a very substantial nap today.
I had some Care Bear fruit snacks in my lunch that I swiped from Soapy.
I only have four days of work left. Then we will pack for a week and drive to Virginia.
Man. I have got to start planning these posts out in advance.

Two more books

I figure that whenever I don't have anything to post about, I will write about the books I am reading. I finished two over the last few days. I listened to People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks and I just finished Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt about 45 minutes ago. They were both interesting, but I liked Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil more because it was non-fiction. I usually think a true story is more engaging and impressive than fiction.
It is about Savannah, Georgia and the crazy people who lived there in the 80's and early 90's. There is also a murder mystery and a sassy black drag queen named The Lady Chablis.
People of the Book started out really great-an old Haggadah was found with illumination (apparently forbidden in Jewish texts) and lots of little mysteries: a butterfly wing, a blood stain mixed with non-kosher wine, some sea salt, and a painted cat hair- but it ended a bit drama-your-momma when Mossad and conspiracy and fraud were brought in for no real reason. The beginning of the book was really intriguing without the hokey hijinks, so why make it a thriller? The story follows the woman who is studying the old text while an alternate story tells the history of the book in reverse, explaining each of the mysterious discoveries. To be fair, I might have liked it better if I had read it instead of listening to it. The plot would have seemed more connected.
Now I am reading Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers and listening to some of those Modern Scholars lectures. I got a set about Western Civilization from Athens to Rome and the Four Gospels. Sunrise over Fallujah is the sequel to Fallen Angels about the Vietnam War. I read it a few times in middle and high school, so I am excited to read this one. The protagonist of the sequel is the nephew of one of the protagonists in the original.

I feel so bad

I feel like I got kicked in the ankles, knees and thighs all day, but I finished my sweet marathon. I left the house at 4:10 and walked (slowly) through the door at 9:26. I felt a little sore, but much better than I had expected. Then I showered and felt all the chafing that I hadn't noticed before. Hopefully I will be back to normal by the time I have to go to work on Monday.
Leaving that early was probably a good choice for running, but it was scary. I didn't even know I was still scared of the dark. There was no moon last night so it was very dark. The sun started to light up the sky at 5:45, so I went over an hour and a half without light. I had to look at the sky just above the treeline in order to see where the path was. Everything looked the same if I looked down or straight out.
I saw two shooting stars, watched the constellations revolve and disappear when the sun came up and almost ran into a groin-high post.
The first 13 miles were easy. The second 13 were horrible. But I am done. Also, knowing that I burned approximately 3000 calories means I am just fine having eaten that 2100 calorie pizza for dinner tonight, cheese stuffed crust and all.

Booty!

As in treasure! I got two packages today and go to open my secret box of running stuff. I got a pair of pants and a dress shirt that I ordered online that smell like cheese; a box with electrolyte jelly beans and a running shirt (courtesy of Potomac River Running, my secret sponsor); and a secret box full of energy bars, gels and love. Yeah!
I should get sponsors for my life. If anyone is interested in sponsoring my sleeping habits, I could use a new pillow. Also I wouldn't mind a motorcycle or a vacation to Atlantis.
Just one week of work left and then a week of packing. We drive out of Lincoln on Monday the 30th. So far our only goal is to see Independence and check out the temple lot and the visitor's center there. Is there anything cool in between that anyone would recommend? I wonder how far out of the way Kirtland is. Sometimes I get Kirtland Ohio and Kirkland Signature mixed up. I have to double check in my head.

I was so sure I was going to win

From June 1 to July 31, Lincoln was having a summer reading contest. Every book you read got you one entry into your local branch drawing (there are about 9 or 10 branches in Lincoln) and after four books you were entered into a city-wide drawing for a tote bag or something. I got really excited about this because I like contests and I was so sure I was going to win. This happens to me sometimes. I start figuring odds and decide that for some contests, I am destined to win. I don't think I have actually won any of them yet, but that doesn't seem to shake my conviction.
I put down my books that I had been reading and started picking books that I knew I would get through quickly. I finished my first four in about 10 days.
I read:
-Carrie by Stephen King
-Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius
-One of the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout. I remember Archie was in the war in this one and Nero Wolfe was jogging in the park everyday to train to kill Germans but he was grumpy because they only ate steamed vegetables. Ha ha ha.
-Airtight Willie and Me by Iceberg Slim

I handed in my sheet and got a complimentary water bottle and went to read more to increase my chances of winning the Gere Branch Library prize (one was only allowed to submit one sheet for the city-wide drawing).
So I read:
The Pluto Files by Niel DeGrasse Tyson (which convinced me that Pluto should NOT be a planet)
Mary Mary by James Patterson
The Spy that Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography by John Dominic Crossan
The Increment by David Ignatius
Heavy Words Thrown Lightly by Chris Roberts (a disappointing book with a great premise: the historical roots of popular childrens' rhymes)
The Mission Song by John Le Carre
Balance of Power by James Huston
The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L Carter
The Devil In the White City by Erik Larsen (a well executed [pardon my macabre pun]historical non-fiction account about both America's first known serial killer and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair)

So I had all these slips of paper and I was reading all the time to cram in as many books as possible. I was so sure that I would win. But the deadline came and went and I hadn't heard anything. I still have not heard anything. A part of me really believes that the library has not pulled the winners' names yet. I am sure that the only people that read more than me were probably the crazy unemployed people that sponge-bathe themselves in the drinking fountains. Or cheaters that counted the books they read to their kids and magazines.
Anna says that they probably picked the winners the next day and let them know, but if that is so, why haven't they called?
I think they should change the criteria to win. So that it is fixed in my favor.

August 11

1) A butterfly smacked me in the head on my ride home from work today. It was a pretty big Monarch, about three inches high, and surprisingly solid. It flew into my forehead and then beat me about the eyebrow and fell away. I hadn't ever been assaulted by a butterfly before.

2) My recruiter called today to confirm that I was going to report to my MEPS (military entrance processing station)for Basic out of West Virginia. Dang it, Army...

3) Slate magazine put together a cool application that has tracked the most common names on facebook. You can search by surname and look at the most common given names that match it. I was shocked to see how many Joseph Smiths there were (1,402) which shouldn't be really surprising given that it is a comically generic name, but it really is because it is such an associated name. There are also over 17,000 John Smiths. And 1,510 Chris Lewises.

A bad omen

I am suffering through the consequences of not drinking water. I have this dinosaur headache that feels like the backs of my eyes are drying out and getting sucked in by a vacuum. I had one bottle of water (during lunch) and didn't take another drink until I got home from a move-in at 6:30. This was after a 14 mile bike ride and an hour of heavy lifting on a heat-advisory warning day.
Now I have had too much water and my stomach is getting full. Have you ever had so much water that it starts to taste gross? It tastes like dull misery. I became hyponatremic once at the Athens paralympics because my missionary companion and I had a water drinking contest. I had 11 bottles of water over the day and felt really weird. Drinking contests are really dangerous.
Other than that, I am destroying my chances of a wildly successful marathon in other ways, too. I am going to eat mini-pizzas and oreos for dinner and probably will not run far or hard enough tomorrow morning to get my body prepared for Saturday.
I am not too worried about it (even though I should be, despite the great story I am about to tell you about) because I heard a great story that I would like to tell you about on RadioLab about limits. The story discusses physical and mental limits and how we can meet and surpass them at times. They interview a woman who wanted to test her body in the Kona Ironman and finished in spite of her body, and a man who participates in RAAM (a bicycle race across America) and discusses the common physical and mental deterioration. There is a story about the negative aspects of a really great memory. If you have an hour and like interesting things, I think you should listen to it. Bryan likes it, I think you will too.

A marathon

I have been planning to run a marathon since January. I was told in January that I wouldn't enter Basic Training until September, so I decided to set lots of goals to help pass the time. One of them was to run 100 mile before Josie was born, which I accomplished. Another was to max out on the Army's sit-ups and push-ups, which I definitely did not accomplish.
Next Saturday is my chance to run a marathon, which I hope I will accomplish. My route is set up so that if I don't accomplish it, it means I have not made it back home. You should know that this is not an organized event. It will entail me getting up at 4am and running 13.1 miles away from home and then coming back again. I was talking about it to Mom and she said that I should write about it. She said she would sponsor me if I wrote about it. SO i am going to write posts from today to September 13 or 14 (I don't know what time I have to report on the 14th) and in exchange she will make me a t-shirt and buy me some of those energy-electrolyte jelly beans.
She didn't know what they were, but I have always wanted to try them so I made her add them to the deal.
I think this run is going to hurt pretty bad. I was getting pretty good at my half-marathon time in April (while I was finishing up the last of my 100-miles-before-Josie-gets-born goal) but I have done very little long distance running since. Nothing over 6 miles in fact. The good news is that as long as I finish, I will have gotten first place. And because I am leaving at 4am, even if I was to walk the whole thing with my hands in my pockets, I could probably be home before noon. But I am hoping to get below 4 hours, and also to not collapse from dehydration. I only know of one drinking fountain along the way. I suppose I could drop off water bottles the day before on my bike. That is a pretty good idea actually.
Well, wish me luck.