Brian's Studying Chair

Brian got a new chair to study in. Now I get my chair back so that I don't have to sit on the exercise ball! 

SINKS

Even rarer than DINKS lately, this couple has become SINKS.
Brian started summer school at Pima to do some review for his big return to UofA. This time he'll be enrolling as a chemistry major. I wish him luck and admirer his energy.
As for me, I'll hope for some homework-less weekends this summer and fall so that we can still do some fun stuff.
I'll probably be reading a serious amount soon so welcome all book recommendations (except mysteries that is :)

(First) New Furniture!

Isn't it awesome? The above includes our Todd Oldham vinyl couch as well as Sadie's new pink shag bed (so she wouldn't be jealous).
The below is our new recliner that is really cool except for the head grease pad which I had to put on to make Brian mad.

Bird Nest

That's adorable, right? A dove nest on our neighbor's back porch.
Wrong, it's funny. Those clear plastic things are bird spikes, they're supposed to gouge the birds in case they try something like this.

Evaporative Cooler

Brian and I finally installed an evap cooler. Now we're enjoying ice cold air on the cheap!

Daruma

The thing in James' arms is a daruma. I just like the picture. You're not going to get an explanation.
So Brian is criticizing me for not giving an explanation, I'm just going to give a link here to his highly up-to-date and complete blog: http://brianzacher.blogspot.com

Sadie's Easter Bunny?

The morning after Easter, I went out for a little jog and when I came back, Sadie was eagerly trying to put this cute little bunny ON my feet. Sadie was so proud of herself she could hardly contain her excitement. She was wiggling around like she didn't have any bones in her body. I assume now that what I was doing to avoid getting the bunny put ON my feet looked much the same. After much cajoling, I convinced Sadie to put it on the patio and to come inside with me so that I could give her a treat for being such a good dog.
Finally I worked up the nerve to go outside and discard the poor bunny. I grabbed a broom and dustpan and slowly approached. I was dreading having to try and move what I thought would be an icky, squishy bunny into the dustpan. When I prodded it with the broom, the bunny was as hard as a rock. Rigor mortis was fully in effect. I discarded the bunny and then went inside to try and stop squealing.
That's when it hit me.
Sadie was a bunny-catching imposter! There is no way she could have just killed this bunny and for it to already have full rigor mortis. Since she was asleep in the bedroom with me up until 45 minutes prior, she could not be the murderer. Phew! My dog didn't kill a harmless bunny. But what she did was much worse. She was taking credit for the neighbor cat's handiwork.
I have to say I'm ashamed of her. I thought she had stronger integrity.
Sorry about the ickiness factor of this story. But aren't you glad I didn't make you think too much about the part where my dog goes and picks up an hours old bunny corpse?

Easter Eggs

My mom came down to my house for easter. I love dyeing eggs but for the last few years, those little tabs that you dissolve in vinegar have been hard to come by. I just keep finding these fancy kits like the sponge kit that we used here. Not as stinky or messy and thus, not as much fun.

Kevin got married

I just keep falling more and more behind on this blogging stuff.
Kevin got married back in late March. He was so nervous, excited and goofy.
They both looked like they had a lot of fun that day and I think that this guest did as well.
Happy marriage Kevin and Marti!

Lost Dutchman Race February 19, 2006

I can't believe that I forgot to blog about this!
This is Denise, Brian and I after we completed the Lost Dutchman 10k (or half marathon in the case of Brian).
It was a beautiful race with perfect race-day temperatures. That is, after the sun came up it was beautiful temperatures.
This was the first time in my life I have actually trained for something physical. I never participated in sports when I was growing up so had never had the experience of trying to improve my performance.
For this event I actually had an 8 week training schedule and except for a 3-day travel episode in the middle of week 4, I stuck to it. It was a tough schedule but it was intended to improve speed.
It seemed to work. I improved my per-minute mile time by 1 and 1/2 minutes!!! Although I can't maintain that training intensity all of the time (I was beat most nights toward the end of training), I am excited to keep trying periodically to boost up my training level and see what results.

Taipei 101

This is the world's tallest building. There is no way to capture how big it is unless you ride the world's fastest elevator to the top of it (1010 meters/minute ... so clever) and look out at how small the 50-story buildings are all around you. 1,667 feet tall, it is amazing in every way.
The tower was opened on New Year's Eve, 2004. This building could be cut off from the rest of the city and still run autonomously. The entire building is outfitted with fiber communication lines but has its own satellite communications system were the connection to ground communications cut off.
The first 6 floors of the building is a mall with movie theater and the best food court I have ever seen. Of course there is McDonalds, Subway and KFC. But there are several udon noodle bowl places, a really good Indian counter, a Mongolian grill, a sushi bar, and several other places that I couldn't name which region the food hailed from.
We saw a movie the last night that we were there. That itself is another experience. We walked up to a machine that is a lot like an atm. We picked which movie we wanted to see and at what time. Then we picked the seats we wanted to sit in and any concessions that we wanted (butter, soda, etc). Then we swiped our credit card and about twenty seconds later had little slips of paper that we turned in for popcorn and entrance to the theater.
I think the Taipei 101 was the best part of Taipei.

Snowmobiling

At the beginning of March, Brian, his parents and I traveled to Winter Park Colorado. The purpose of the trip was for Brian and his dad to do their practice ski run. The ultimate goal is to ski some amazing place in Banff Canada for several days (I think). However, since it has been several years since Brian skiied and maybe more than a decade since his dad has, they thought they should practice. Barb and I went for fun and moral support should it be harder than they were expecting.

So it turns out that skiing was fine and they skiied one lovely warm day but the next day, we all decided to go snowmobiling. That was awesome! It was the first time I had been on a snowmobile so I was quite surprised when I found out that I got a cush seat and even hand warmers. This was the way to do "cold weather sports".

We rode the snowmobiles up to the Continental Divide and back down for about a total of a two hour ride. It was a blast. It was really sunny so we got lots of icy patches on the way down to slide around in.

Solar Stats

We are rocking on John McNair power production. For more details on our solar production, see http://www.shelley.is.dreaming.org/solarpages/main.html

Problems With Technology

Further evidence that we are all the same all over the world...

Cake Walk (not really)

Yesterday at Safeway they were having a kind of cake walk. Brian and I were picking a carrot out when they made an announcement on the intercom about having a drawing for a free cake in 2 minutes. Brian grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the bakery and we found a little purple number to stand on. I took #10 because my normal #6 was taken by an old lady who was working very hard at ignoring my comments about how #6 is my favorite number.

Anyway, it all washed out because they called #10! This is what is left of the cake. It is okay cake but the frosting is nasty.

Do they have german chocolate cake in Germany? What is it called there?

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, Brian and I went out to check out our community's luminaria display. It was pretty chilly out so Brian was way happy to sit on the cold curb to get this picture in the dark.

Team Relative Insanity Take Two

Well, we did it.

Year #2 for the team and this time we had the correct Steve participating. The race was a beautiful sunny morning on December 4th.

We all did really well and more importantly, had a blast doing it.

Good job team!

Turkey Trot

Brian and I finished a 10k turkey trot yesterday morning.

I was so completely tired at 5 miles that I was thinking of walking a little bit. Then I see Brian walking back toward me and he's cheering everyone on. I flagged him down and he came over to run the last mile with me. I think that everyone should run with a personal Brian.

It seems that since I've changed my "usual" run to 4.4 miles, my body is now okay with that distance but as soon as I reach that distance, there is a huge urge to quit running. I think the best thing for me now would be to vary my distance daily.

Brian of course completed in 41minutes. 10th in his age division. I'm so happy for him. And it's none of your business how fast or not fast I was.

Vaccinations

I got lots of vaccinations yesterday for my upcoming travel. It will be my first time traveling to countries where disease is prevalent and vaccinations highly recommended. I got a lot of holes in my arms.

I got shots for:
typhoid (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/typhoidfever_g.htm),
yellow fever (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/yellowfever/),
hepatitis A,
hepatitis B, (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hepatitis/index.htm)
polio (http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/pink/polio.pdf),
tetanus and diptheria (http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/VIS/vis-td.pdf) and
meningococcal (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/meningococcal_g.htm).

On top of those, I got a tuberculosis test (which is another hole in my forearm) and anti-malarial drugs that I have to start taking a week before leaving. Phew!

Have fun reading about all these nasty diseases.

Sneaky Post

I am supposed to be putting together the neighborhood newspaper right now.

That's what Brian thinks that I am doing and that is why he is currently doing dishes after making dinner and getting the mail and feeding the dog and basically doing everything. I just got the idea that it would be super sneaky fun to post and then see how many days it would take for him to bring it up.

I'll let you know.