Coach

The boys have a couple of friends over to play right now. They are brothers, 5 and 2. The older one, K, was on LilKat1's soccer team. So now, both boys call me 'Coach'. Even the little one. I'm just imagining them older, maybe like teenagers or something, and we have their family over for a barbecue. When I'm handing out food, will they say 'Coach! Can I get cheese on my burger?' I'm very curious to see how long the 'Coach' name sticks.

Warriors

Last night, the Warriors beat the Suns. I don't get the game up here, so I had to 'watch' by sitting at the computer with the box score open and periodically pressing Refresh.

And it was still exciting! The Warriors are doing really well! They started out 0-6, but have won 6 of their last 7 since then. Last night, they snapped Phoenix's 8 game winning streak, officially making the Warriors the best team in the entire universe right now (yes, I said official! You read it on the internet didn't you? Official!)

Anyhow, no one but serious Warriors fans (and I am one of them) would enjoy this clip. The sad thing is that if I thought hard enough, I might've been able to win this contest...



By the way...Popeye Jones...

100

I reached 100 miles today! It took me about a month and a half, but I did it! Woo hoo! Here's a picture of the certificate that they let me print out to commemorate my achievement...


If you would like to print out your own copy, go here.

Yay me!

Challenge Results

I just finished my 2 running challenges. I did pretty well in my How-Many-Miles-Can-You-Run-In-A-Week challenge. I actually did a lot more than I thought I would. I ran just under 30 miles. Not too bad! The hard part was that it was pretty cold and rainy during some of the week, but I still had to go out and run. On the last day of the challenge, it was particularly cold and rainy, and I wasn't feeling well. I was thinking of just running a little over 3 miles, but once I started running, I decided to bump it up to 4 miles. Once I got my 4 miles, I figured that I was already miserable so why not run a little farther. I ended up doing my longest run yet, a little over 5 miles!

I got 2nd place in that challenge, although I think the person that won seems a little fishy. They were behind me, but then somehow did just under 20 miles in the last day. Cheaters!

My other challenge was to run 50 miles before Christmas. I noticed that because I ran so many miles for my other challenge, that I was almost there. So I decided to see if I could do finish it before Thanksgiving. Which I did. Yay!

PrincessKat

PrincessKat is a little over 1 year old. Here are some things that she can do:

1) Tell you what it is she wants by pointing and screaming.
2) Grab you and pull you to where she wants you to go.
3) Climb EVERYTHING.
4) Put her hands together when it's time to pray.
5) Dance when someone starts singing and dancing on tv.
6) Stand on things that were not meant to be stood on.
7) Give hugs.
8) Give kisses.
9) Chase kitties.
10) Play ball (LilKat2 and I played a game with her where LilKat2 would throw the ball to me, I'd hand the ball to PrincessKat, and she'd run over and give the ball to LilKat2).
11) Knock over blocks.
12) Wave.
13) Blow kisses.
14) Put stuff in her bucket and carry it around.
15) Sense that you are going to wipe her nose with a tissue and run away.
16) Respond to her name.
17) Drop whatever she's holding on the ground when you tell her that she's not supposed to have that (or sometimes run away when you tell her that she's not supposed to have that. I guess it depends on how much she wants it.)
18) Make her brothers laugh by sneaking up on Dad when he's lying down, sticking her fingers in Dad's nose and mouth, and pulling his face like it was a bowling ball.

Yellow Blood

LilKat2 had a bad dream the other night. We went to go check on him and he was sitting in bed crying. We calmed him down and I sat with him for a bit while he tried to settle himself back in bed. Here's our conversation:

Me: Did you have a bad dream?
LilKat2: No.
Me: Then what happened?

(pause)

LilKat2: I have blood.

Me (a bit alarmed, and trying to quickly scan for blood in the dark): Blood? Where do you have blood?

LilKat2: Well...it's yellow...

Me (a little confused): Soooo....what do you need?

LilKat2: A tissue

Me: Ok, you got it
(gets LilKat2 a tissue)

So what I've learned is that if you don't teach your kids the words 'booger' or 'snot', you end up with Yellow Blood.

My first challenge

Well, I'm still running. In fact, I just entered my first 2 'challenges'. Challenges are these things you can sign up for on the Nike Plus website. If you win them, you get a little award on your screen. The first one that I signed up for was to run 50 miles by Christmas, which meant that I had roughly a month and a half to go 50 miles. Not too bad. The other one that I signed up for was to see who could run the most miles in 1 week. It said 'Beginners only', so I figured that this wouldn't be too bad either.

I was wrong. It has not been easy. First of all, there are some non-beginners in the challenge. At least I would consider them non-beginners because they're running 7 miles at a time. Second, there are people who include their walking distances. So they can run 3 miles, walk 3 miles and it counts as 6 miles. I'm only counting my running distance, so it's pretty tough for me to keep up. But the main problem is that my super-competitive instincts are starting to kick in, and it's wearing me out. The challenge started on Sunday night at 10pm. I seriously considered going out for a run right at 10. But my mom was over for dinner, and we played some boardgames afterwards. By the time she left, it was past 11. But I still wanted to go run.

Well, I didn't run that night. Instead, I ran the next morning...in the FREEZING COLD WIND and RAIN! I did a shorter run, just over 5km. But then I also ran again that evening, another 5km to make up for not running the night before. The next morning, it was cold, but not raining. I did another 5km. But I didn't run again that day and felt really guilty about it. Which brings us to today. Last night, I was in first place. But today, the run/walker did a 4+ mile run/walk to go ahead of me. So I decided that I was going to go ahead of them. I did 4.25 miles, my longest run by almost half a mile. And now I'm in...2nd place still. The 7 mile workout guy did 2 workouts and is now way out in first place by himself. I'd have to do another 4+ mile run to catch him. Which I would actually consider doing, if I didn't have basketball tonight.

But I am considering trying to do another 4+ mile run tomorrow morning. And I know I would be miserable the whole time. The morning after basketball, my body is usually pretty sore. Plus, I think it's supposed to be another cold, rainy morning.

When I did track and field for the community college several years ago, the coach said that I had a problem with overtraining. I'm starting to think he's right. I also think that I will be much happier once this week is over.

Funny Sunday School moment

There's a family at our church, the L's, that are one of my very favorite families. I had their older son in my Sunday School class a few years ago, and now I have their little girl, M. Now this family is a very nice family. I enjoy talking with both of the parents. And the kids are great. But sometimes, things happen that remind you that even the nicest people have their bad days. And if you happen to have one of those days around your kids, you may get unexpected results.

Well, this weekend, our family went orienteering. I've been telling the L's about orienteering for a while now, and they keep telling me about how much they'd like to try it out. So Saturday morning, I called them to let them know that there was an orienteering event at one of the local parks. No one was home when I called, so I left a message. The next morning, they came in to my Sunday School class to drop off M. They thanked me for the message and said that they would've loved to have gone, but they were busy all day. I told them about what a nice day it had been, perfect for orienteering. The dad said something to the effect of 'Well, it sounds like we would've had a lot more fun doing that than what we ended up doing' and his wife nodded in agreement.

After M got checked in, she started coloring with me and some of the other kids. I asked her what her family did all day yesterday. She kind of scrunched her face thought about it for a second. After a few moments, she said 'Well...my dad was yelling at my mom...then I was late to a birthday party...but I got to see them open presents...' Right after she said 'my dad was yelling at my mom' I started laughing. It was too funny.

When M's parents came to pick her up, I said to the dad...'So I asked M what you guys did on Saturday...and she said 'Well, my dad was yelling at my mom...'' He just kind of looked down, wiped his hand on his forehead, and said 'Yeah...it was just one of those days...'

Now I'm wondering what kind of things our kids say to their teachers about me and Mrs. BigKat!

Stuff I read on the internet

Here's a couple of interesting things that I found today...

1) Remember that show, American Gladiators? I loved that show. When I was a sophomore in college, I was watching it on tv and they said that they were going to have a tryout right by my house. I decided that I had to give it a shot. I knew that one of the challenges was to do 24 pullups in 30 seconds. I was in pretty good shape, so I could do this fairly easily. One of the other challenges was to run a 40 yard dash in under 5 seconds. I knew I could do this as well. One of the funner looking challenges was when they matched you up with another candidate in a game of PowerBall. I wasn't sure I could do all of the challenges, but I knew I could at least do a few of them.

Well, it turned out that I couldn't do even one of them. The first challenge that everyone had to do was the pullup challenge. Unfortunately, what I didn't realize was that they didn't use a normal pullup bar. Instead, they brought in some scaffolding for people to do pullups on. The scaffolding bars were very thick. I was pretty much just hanging on by my fingertips. I ended up falling off of the bar twice and only got 17 pullups in. A lot of the guys that made it used pullup straps so that they wouldn't have to grip the bar. If I had done that, I truly believe that I would've been an American Gladiator champion. Well, I would've at least gotten to play PowerBall.

Anyhow, this article says that they're remaking American Gladiators and are going to have a new show on NBC. Looks like I need to start practicing my pullups!

2) A long time ago, did you own the game Mastermind? The original box looked like this:

 

My parents owned this game, and the box sure made it look like it was a very grown up game. If you had this version of the game and grown up, sophisticated people in the picture intimidated you as much as they did me, then you should read this article.

Tennis

When I was little, tennis was one of the big sports in our family for some reason. My dad played a bit. He had a bunch of fancy tennis rackets. My uncle and aunt played a lot. I remember one time going with my dad to play a game of doubles against my uncle and my cousin. I was a bit intimidated, especially since I really didn't play tennis much at all. First of all, my cousin was older than me (still is actually), so he was 'big'. I even think he may have been a Teenager at the time. Second, tennis seemed very important to their family, so they played a lot. When they played doubles, they would actually run plays! My uncle would say something, and then they'd both run to the net. And then there was me, the kid who couldn't even serve properly (actually, I still can't serve).

I wasn't very good at tennis since I rarely played, but I did enjoy it. I also liked watching it, Wimbledon especially. For some reason, I liked rooting for John McEnroe. I remember getting really excited when he beat Bjorn Borg. I also remember watching Wimbledon at my aunt and uncle's vacation house in Santa Cruz and being shocked that this Boris Becker kid actually won Wimbledon. He can't win! He's not even seeded! McEnroe should win, not Boris Becker!

I don't follow tennis at all anymore, and I never play. But I just watched this commercial and it brought back a bunch of those goofy tennis memories.