Thursday, September 8, 2011

Sonya's first day of preschool

The day Sonya has been waiting for finally arrived! She began preschool at Busy Bees. Here are the obligatory first day of school photos.



Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Fact Check: Lewis & Clark - The Dating Days

Many of you know that my lovely wife Karren is prone to exaggeration.   This week, we've been de-cluttering: first our garage and then our bookshelves.  I ran across a couple of binders from our dating days while working on the shelves which had some information about our volunteer work for: Lewis & Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition.

As many of you know, I love history.  When an opportunity arose to learn more about Lewis and Clark while doing some good for my community, I thought it would be fun.  Karren and my first date was on her birthday.  When I asked her two months later if she wanted to volunteer with me, she said yes.

This is where Karren claims I manipulated her.  She states that before she knew it, I had committed her to a long term activity and that I had her married before the service was over.  Furthermore, I knew what I was doing and that it was all a ruse to ensure success.

Anyway, back to the binders.  Buried in these binders, I found these sheets of paper:

We had 6 training session from September 7th through November 2nd and then volunteered 9 times between November 12th and March 11th.  Since our wedding was in mid-February, the dates did extend past our wedding.  So, it is true that our time at the Oregon Historical Society did extend past our wedding date and that it began early in my courting of her.  Karren also claims that she started really liking me in early October, so from her perspective, our time as docents began before this point in our relationship.

I do still dispute that this was all a ruse to get her to marry me, but it is indeed true that we were docents from the early days of our dating until just after we got married.  All of this was before allergy season, but that leads to another exaggeration we can explore later .... :)

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Great Place to Run 2011

I participated in this years Great Place to Run event for Intel.  I ran the 5k and leaned (or more likely relearned some important lessons):
1) You should really train for these things.  I haven't run for many years and it showed.  I had to walk some portions of it and I am SO sore.
2) Walking is good when you aren't prepared.  I could have got a better time, but at what cost?  I didn't want to injure myself.
3) I like running.  It feels good.
4) Sunscreen is important, even on a cloudy day.

My Time: 0:34:58 (11:15 pace)
Place: 506/1443 Overall, 362/784 among males, 64/99 among males 30-34

Course: