Runny, Part 5

So I'll run 2 - 3 times a week for only about 3 miles each time. I'm taking glucosamine... I've never been a pill guy but it's basically chopped up shrimp casings or some chitonous substance... wait a sec, I forgot to mention that one of the reasons I'm running again is related to my anti-pill thing. It turns out that my cholesterol has recently crossed a threshold that has caused my doctor to recommend I take a drug to get it down. I've always had slightly high cholesterol in the 200-225 range but since my good cholesterol level was high, my doctor just said keep up the exercise and decent diet.

But now it's 230 and rather than go the drug route, I'm going to go stricter on the diet and keep up the running. My typical diet every day is a bagel with hummus (instead of my usual cream cheese), coffee with half&half (can't skip this) and for lunch, black bean burritos with spinach and more hummus instead of cheese, a bag of raw veggies, and a bag of cereal then whatever my wife makes for dinner. So we'll see how it goes.... if the cholesterol gets worse, I'll likely end up on Pravichor or whatever is making the rounds these days.

Anyway, although I miss running for real, I'm going to keep to it for health (not to mention the stress-relief and getting-outside thing!) I don't want to overdo it and hurt my knees which may threaten my hiking plans.

Speaking of, the fam did it's biggest hike ever together today... about 7 miles up and down Blood Mountain, the highest point on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia. Erin and Liam made it to the top with nary a whine and Finn stayed on my back like the smart lad he is.

Diamond Dave

Thursday I heard that the guy who played Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, Fess Parker, had died. I do remember having a coonskin cap at some point in my childhood but I don't really remember seeing much of his shows. We did watch Disney's "Davy Crockett and the River Pirates" a few years ago and it wasn't bad for what it was.

Anyway, the first thing I'm thinking is could they re-do a frontiersman show? Make it serious and realistic?

The 2nd, Fess in the 60's picking up chicks in a bar "Hey, I'm Davy F*cking Crockett!"

Top o' the mornin'

Last week, Team Keough went to downtown Decatur for a booksigning (well, "stamping", her hand had been injured) by Mary Pope Osborne of Magic Treehouse fame.

While Kerry braved the madding crowds with Erin, I wandered the square with Finn and Liam. There were a few guys putting up some banners around Mac McGee's, an Irish pub for St. Patrick's Day. From the outside, the pub looked very inviting and I was a wee bit parched. The fact that I had watched a show on the Food Network the previous night where they were in Ireland demonstrating how to pour the pefect Guiness did not help ease the temptation to head in. Having the kids though was a little awkward and we were planning on eating at Doc Chey's again so I declined.

Tonight though, once again yet another St. Patrick's Day has passed, another one much like the others with a few Smithwick's (the current beer being pushed as 'what they drink in Ireland'), and corned beef and cabbage, a meal I've always loved, my older son is starting to like a lot, and my daughter still is disgusted by... like seemingly 75% of everything we put in front of her these days.

Two additions:
1) a trip to McDonald's, a fine Irish establishment, for Shamrock Shakes, and
2) a shot of Bushmill's

Another St. Patrick's Day where Erin tries to trap the wily Leprechaun... this time with a trap on the kitchen table and another in her room using a glass of green food-colored tainted grape choose... which she promptly spilled onto the carpet AND neglected to mention it.

Sure and begorrah, tis a wild child she be.

Runny, Part 4

So my plan was to start biking at work for exercise... I bike on the weekends, I'll just start taking short rides at lunch... maybe I can find a big hill in Norcross... there's a big landfill just south of Jimmy Carter...

But it didn't work out. Biking is a heck of a lot more of a hassle than out-the-door running. So maybe I'll join a gym. But now I get to work at 7 because of traffic... I don't see getting up at 4 to get to a gym. Actually, that could work... what I don't see happening is going to sleep before 10 the previous evening. Once the kids are in bed, that's my time to catch up on crap...

I could do a gym in the evening... possibly... but I really don't want to go to a gym anyway.

1) I like getting outside.
2) Actually going somewhere and having to go back is a great motivation vs. some computer thing.
3) I'm a cheap bastard.

So I decide to start running again.

Runny, Part 3

Then we stop and drink a little at another spot off the side of the road while the "runners" keep on truckin' down the line... finally I cross the finish line.... along with one other guy that like myself, actually wanted to get a time.

Speaking of, my time from went I crossed the starting line was 2:29:00. Last year it was 0:49:20. Not bad when you consider I drank about 6 beers along the way...

And then, naturally, we all ended up at The Highlander.

Banner Weekend - Part 2

Well, I keep getting behind in these posts so let me wrap this one up...
after the zoo, we didn't feel like driving back to the burbs it being such a swell day and all, so we went to Doc Chey's in the Highlands, a nice, safe choice.. they even had kid's menu's and crayons.... man things have changed intown, ya know?

Anyway, a bit of a surprise especially given my post about the kids only liking standard fare but they loved it. And $4 for each kids meal... what a bahgin. Best, of all, Kerry and I got to enjoy a meal on a deck with real music and ketchup nowhere in site.

The next day the whole gang ended up biking on one of the new Greenways. Well, Liam and Kerry were biking, I was sitting on the side of the path re-attaching Erin's training wheels. She can "ride" without them... using the strictest definition of the word... she just can't steer or go straight for more than 3 feet. But then we did all ride... the kids saw other kids they knew... and we had fun.

But I didn't really get enough exercise so decided to another ride on my own. I was pondering doing my Taco Mac run but then a friend called and asked me to help him get his pool cover off. His place was about 7 miles away so I set off. I had picked a route to avoid as much riding along busy roads as possible however I had to assume there was an extra back way connecting two subdivisions to a third. One I knew about and involved a ride on a rocky maintenance trail connecting a park and some kind of power utility station. The other I had to hope for the best.. it looked to be no prob on Google Maps - Satellite.

But of course I ended up sloshing through a less-than-sparkling stream, riding along the trail-less side of a weed-covered hill, then pushing my bike up pretty much a cliff (I failed to notice the "contours" on my so-called problem-free route) to finally make the cut-thru. Then, it took some time to haul the soggy leaf-mass cover Deadliest Catch-style from the pool and, with the sun quickly sinking, I had to kill myself to make it back the 7 miles to home before dark.

Yup... a good weekend.

Banner Weekend - Part 1

Last weekend was fantastic. Of course the amazing weather was only more so given the fact that the weekend before, we were sledding after the biggest snowfall in Atlanta since 93.

Friday night, didn't do much but blog a little... but I was a-buzzin' on Bushmill's so chalk it up to a good night.

Saturday, we went intown and visited some friends in Oakhurst, I ate a pricey and tasty sandwich at Nectar in the village, then went to the zoo which had all the Finn favorites: gorillas, elephants, lions, and the pandas. Erin was into the meercats. Liam later made a poster about a Red-Tailed Boa Constrictor he saw (and touched) at the zoo for scouts.

And Daddy lost his employer's BlackBerry.

I had it attached to the backpack I was hauling Finn around in and we had taken him out of it but I neglected to find a better place for the phone and it must have slipped off. I realized this in the parking lot as the zoo was closing so went back to the gate. Things were a madhouse so I figured that even IF someone had already found it AND turned it in to a zoo person, the likelihood of it actually making it the lost and found by now were extremely slim.

But I knocked dilligently on the door with an actual LOST & FOUND sign and after a little while, a guy came out with my BlackBerry... and promptly dropped it to the ground as he was trying to pass it to me.

So like 90% of the things I "misplace" (such as my keys that right now I haven't seen for 3 days), I got my phone back.

Runny, Part 2

So we start off and I do the first mile down past the pizza joint and none of the Hasher's are there so they must be at the next spot. Unfortunately, my info on the "next spot" is very iffy and I end up making some calls and running to around the 4 mile point then back to the 3.5 mile and doing a lot of standing around looking for a group with a flag among the thousands of revelers until suddenly, I end up on a side alley with a bunch of screaming people with a few coolers of beer making speeches and congratulating a hash contingent from Puerto Rico and then it's off again to the next beer stop.

Runny, Part 1

The last time I posted about running was this.

I had planned to keep it serious for the Peachtree but my knee kept hurting so I gave it up. However I had signed up for the thing so damned if I'm not going to show up and do something but what?

And then... hallelujah!!!

I heard that the Hashers were going to have a pubcrawl during the run and, of course! What could be better? Why not combine my two loves... running and drinking... into one... running WHILE drinking! Sheer genius!

By Hashers, I mean this group of runners/drinkers (throughout the world, by the way) that I've always heard about and associated with certain members of over the years but surprisingly never really committed to in any form whatsoever until...

NOW.

I get off the MARTA and my starting time is around 7:40 or something (I can't remember) but I run south instead of north along Peachtree to a pizza joint that the Hashers are meeting at and sure enough, there are two guys sitting at a table out front and YES they are drinking beer. I go to the bar and buy a pitcher with thoughts that this is about the first time I've drank beer before 8am since... well, I was going to say since some frat thing where we were camping and had no water so had to drink Busch but damn... that was probably after 8 so who knows when was the last time I drank that early? But knowing my memory, I'll be damned if I'll claim it as a record.

So, to make a not so long story less so, more people show, more beer is drank, and most aren't signed up for the run and those that are aren't bothering to start at the starting line but I have a computer chip thingie on my shoe so after cheering for the wheelchair racers and the fast guys, I hoof it on up to the starting line a mile away and stand in the massive throng of racers... a-buzzin'.

Whiteout

Just a quick one on the big snowfall in the ATL. Here's a pic of Liam sleeding on the hill down the street from us. He's on the slide from our plastic kiddie playground thing which actually made a great sled. We've had that playground (structure? I'm not sure what it's called... it's a plastic block thing made out of panels with a slide) since we lived in Buckhead with an infant Liam and it was given to us by some friends who said they had inherited it as well.

True Romance in John's Creek

Kerry and I never do a whole lot for the romantic holidays... Feb 3 was our 9th anniversary. As a tribute to something I did a few years ago, I remade a dinner from Trader Joe's (Trader Vic's would've been somethin'! Maybe next year....hmmm....), and got a tiny bunch of flowers and a card from Publix. When I was picking up the card, I noticed a card with a Grey's Anatomy theme and thought I'd look for one with Lost, something Kerry's huge into and is in it's last season right now. But no dice. I went up to the Hallmark next door and the lady said she saw one which caused me to ransack the store in search but nope...nada.

So I went home and whipped up a goofy card of my own.

For Valentine's today, I got her a little "I Love You" frog that plays "You Really Got Me", a song that I semi-planned to air guitar to at our wedding reception but didn't follow through.

Today, it was cold and slushy outside, so we did a "hike" around the mall. I carried Finn on my back, my bid at weakly simulating exercize outdoors. The kids liked seeing the giant fish tank at Bass Pro, the Lego store, and an indoor shoot'em up pellet gun thing not to mention watching Dad do a climbing wall. Too bad Kerry didn't get a shot of me actually on it!

A week or so ago, a little frustrated at seeing all the cool restaurants in the paper that I had never been to, I said we should make a goal of going to a different restaurant once a month. But of course, when we decided to go out this evening, we ended up at the same place.


It's tough when you have kids. For Liam and Erin's sake, you gotta have a place with basic burger and fries/grilled cheese selection. We push them to try different foods at home but since we rarely go out, who wants to battle at a restaurant? And for Finn, you want a place that's relatively loud so you're not bugging anyone too bad. And even then, I spend half the time walking him around (literally) the restaurant.


Anyway, so the choice was Steak n Shake, Taco Mac, and Chili's. Steak n Shake was hands down the kid's favorite but I didn't want a greasy (albeit tasty) burger... my doctor recently informed me that my cholesterol has finally crossed a threshold... more on that in a later post. And I refused to break my 15 year streak of never ordering anything at Taco Mac except for Wings and beer.

So we ended up at Chili's... the same dang place we've been to the last two times we went out. Oh well, happy Valentine's Day.

Merry Christmas!

I left work at 3 today to avoid the inevitable traffic mayhem resulting from the afternoon snowfall. I brought my laptop AND my monitor so I could work at home but - sorry - I played with my kids in what, as far as I can tell, is the biggest snowfall since just before I came to Atlanta in 93.

But what I've wanted to blog about for a week... and never ended up doing because 11 just keeps rolling around and I get up at 5:20am... is last weekend. A busy, busy weekend.

9am Saturday morning the Pinewood Derby. Liam had designed, cut some, sanded, and painted his car with an eye for speed and his car easily won each of his 4 heats so he assumed that he would win a trophy... there being 3 for each group and 3 overall but no, the top 10 in his group were all basically 2.4 plus or minus 0.05 sec and he ended up in 7th place.

Then we made it to the 2nd half of a chess tournament. It's "interesting" that soccer and football around this area seem to be 80-95% Caucasian but chess... at least the tournament... was about 5% Caucasian... interesting a.k.a "pathetic".

Watched Toy Story 2 Saturday night thinking that Finn might get interested in something on the TV other than Thomas the Train but nope...

Sunday, sickened of seemingly endless days of rain, I was determined to get outside and do some hiking. Erin joined me and we did the AT from Woody Gap up Big Cedar Mt and back... a fairly steep climb and the whole deal was in ice and snow. Unfortunately, I failed to notice when we left the house that Erin had on bellbottoms and "Mary Jane" open top shoes.

No complaints from Supah-Koopa-Paratroopah Erin.

Just stone cold hiking.

She's the one that, someday, will do the whole damn thing.

C.H.U.D.

Well, I was going to give the whole long story about everything Liam and I did on the scout trip to a cave in Kentucky but you can look here for the overview.... athough that site doesn't prepare you for the fact that you will be living in a world of "muudy" clay... meaning EVERYTHING that touches the floor or walls gets instantly stained with reddish-black clay.... no big deal for the clothes we were in but the comedy of gingerly positioning backpacks, tarps, pillows, spare clothes, sleeping bags, etc was something to remember!

Anyway, although our tarp was positioned pretty close to a vile port-a-let, we had a great time.

The key thing for me is that, assuming his memory is like mine (and hopefully it won't be), although 99% of the stuff Liam does in these years he will completely forget when he grows up, he will never forget the fact that he spent the night in a big cave waaaay underground. He'll forget that we crawled around through tunnels and maybe even that we went out on an underground lake in a boat but he'll remember that he slept overnight in a cave.

Just like last year when we had an even better time on the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier in Charleston. Liam won't remember exploring the control tower and the pipe-and-gauge-festooned bowels of the engine room and eating sausage and grit in the mess but he'll remember the fact that he spent the night on an aircraft carrier. Too bad that even though I brought ear plugs, I can't forget the snoring...

Note that in the picture to the left, Liam is sitting on his bunk...
my bunk was the one UNDERNEATH that one!

Weekend To-Do List: Sunday

1) Short hike with kids
check
2) Help Liam on Pinewood Derby car
just about done
3) Ride bike
check
4) Drink Purple Haze at Taco Mac
check
5) Take down Xmas lights
check
6) Take cargo carrier off minivan
check
7) Tell Erin "magic laundry basket" bedtime story
check
8) Read Thomas book to Finn for 34th time
check
9) Write up blog about cave trip
not started

Weekend To-Do List: Saturday

1) Bring trash and recyclables to Recycling Center
check
2) Help Liam on Pinewood Derby car
on-going
3) Do 300 push-ups
check
4) Read Thomas book to Finn for 30th time
check
5) Organize den achievements
check
6) Write up blog about cave trip
not started

Weekend To-Do List: So Far

1) Drop off tiling tools at Tom's
check
2) Answer Cub Scout e-mails
check
3) Test whiskey allergy theory
check (I'm cured!)
4) Drink beer while listening to ipod and screwing around on the Internet
check
5) Drink a few more beers while listening to ipod and screwing around on the Internet
Hmmm... let's see...
check

Into the Wild

Today, Liam and I walked across the street and into a wooded lot that backs up to an area of brambles and pines that follows a creek that snakes between two subdivisions and a possibly abandoned new one under construction. There was no path and we crossed over two small wire fences. We wandered for about a mile and half and saw nothing but a retention pond, backyards, and a few concrete manholes. When we got back home Liam said it was the coolest hike he’s ever done.

From an article by Michael Chabon in the New York Review of Books (it’s also in the book by Chabon that I’m currently reading):

Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood
By Michael Chabon

This is the kind of door-to-door, all-encompassing escort service that we adults have contrived to provide for our children. We schedule their encounters for them, driving them to and from one another's houses so they never get a chance to discover the unexplored lands between. If they are lucky, we send them out to play in the backyard, where they can be safely fenced in and even, in extreme cases, monitored with security cameras. When my family and I moved onto our street in Berkeley, the family next door included a nine-year-old girl; in the house two doors down the other way, there was a nine-year-old boy, her exact contemporary and, like her, a lifelong resident of the street. They had never met.

The sandlots and creek beds, the alleys and woodlands have been abandoned in favor of a system of reservations—Chuck E. Cheese, the Jungle, the Discovery Zone: jolly internment centers mapped and planned by adults with no blank spots aside from doors marked staff only. When children roller-skate or ride their bikes, they go forth armored as for battle, and their parents typically stand nearby.

There are reasons for all of this. The helmeting and monitoring, the corralling of children into certified zones of safety, is in part the product of the Consumer Reports mentality, the generally increased consciousness, in America, of safety and danger. To this one might add the growing demands of insurance actuarials and the national pastime of torts. But the primary reason for this curtailing of adventure, this closing off of Wilderness, is the increased anxiety we all feel over the abduction of children by strangers; we fear the wolves in the Wilderness. This is not a rational fear; in 1999, for example, according to the Justice Department, the number of abductions by strangers in the United States was 115. Such crimes have always occurred at about the same rate; being a child is exactly no more and no less dangerous than it ever was. What has changed is that the horror is so much better known. At times it seems as if parents are being deliberately encouraged to fear for their children's lives, though only a cynic would suggest there was money to be made in doing so.

On the 2nd sip I begin to admit

Two Fridays ago, I stopped into Pop’s and bought a bottle of Bushmill’s Irish Whiskey a little in honor of the upcoming St. Patty’s Day but mostly because I wanted to try a different liquor. I’m a beer drinker but every once in a while I’ll have a drink. Being something easy to mix, usually it’s Bacardi that I’ll keep on hand. But when me best rum ran dry, I decided it was time for a change.

I’m not much of a liquor drinker and I have have basically zero experience with whiskey.

I have vague recollections of a party at the home of the only “girlfriend” I had in high school involving my inane decision to put WASP’s debut album on the turntable and a bottle of Southern Comfort… which I don’t think is even whiskey.

My second “whiskey experience” involves a night in Colorado Springs with a cousin who liked to drink Jack & Coke’s where I ended the night gazing rapturously into the eyes of a future Mandarin translator for the Air Force and started the next morning with a 30 lb cinder block on my head.

So I decided to give it about 15 years to give whiskey another go. But something happened to me unlike anything that has happened before.

I poured a shot and took a small sip. It had the usual grimace-inducing bite of any strong alcohol but it also had a smoothness that wasn’t unappealing. A little while later I took another sip… same thing but I soon noticed a small annoyance that I can only describe as feeling like I had a thin metal bar embedded in the back of my head running from the middle of my neck to the just below the top of my head. I ignored it and after a while the shot was down and the annoyance became a dull pain. A dull pain that remained there for two goddamn days.

Since it started right after two tiny sips, I can’t imagine it had anything to do with the whiskey unless I’m allergic to peat moss or whatever is used to make Irish Whiskey… Three-Leaf Clovers? Heather on the moors? Sheleighlies?? Plus I have a whole g.d. bottle of Bushmill’s in my cabinet.

Kerry thinks it's because Bushmill's is generally considered the "Protestant" whiskey... Jameson's being the Catholic one.

I’ve been reticent testing either theory because I don’t want to have a throbbing bar in my head for two days but I gotsta know.

What does a pig say?

There are two conditions that my house exists in. Either of which you can immediately determine from about 10 yards away:

STATE 1: ERIN IS AWAY/SLEEPING/READING
STATE 2: ERIN IS NOT AWAY/SLEEPING/READING

Basically, she is just shy of screaming nearly all the time. Eating, watching a movie, etc., her voice for some reason just carries… and carries…

Also part of the reason that it’s so easy to thell whenever the house is in STATE 2 is that if Erin is running around yelling, Finn is running around yelling, and likely Liam is laughing at his manic siblings so it all blends and sounds like a McDonald’s PlayLand.

More kid updates: Erin has been very participatory lately, having a part in a live nativity and singing in a church choir at Christmas and being in a mock “fashion show” with a few 5th graders for a school talent contest. Also, it’s Girl Scout cookie time so if you are having a hankerin’ for some Samosas,. let me know!

Liam’s favorite place is still in his room with his Lego’s. The other day he got in some minor trouble at school but then was very evasive about what had happened so he missed one of his Cub Scout den meeting’s as punishment. Tomorrow night we’ll be sleeping in a cave in Tennessee with his pack so I’m sure that’ll make up for it.

A few weeks ago I got on his case for not knowing a lot of what he was supposed to study for a big test the next day. I’m not saying he didn’t know the subject matter just that there was a lot of stuff (Internet, workbooks, etc.) that he was supposed to study but he didn’t even know that that was the case and had never looked at them. He’s not the most attentive little fellow, ya know? I got all irate talking about “things are going to change around here” and drawing up plans for charts and an organized workplace but then he ended up getting only one problem wrong.

For a guy that hardly knows any words, Finn is pretty dang talkative. Although he’ll go on and on pointing at things and talking nonsense he does know a few things:

“What does a cow say?”	Finn: “Moo”
“What does a horse say?”	Finn: “Me-heh-heh-he”
“What does a pig say?”	Blank stare. For some reason, he won’t say “Oink”.
“What does a cat say?”	Finn: “Meow”
“What does a doggy say?”	Finn: “Heh-ha, heh-ha, heh-ha” (a dog panting)
“What does a dinosaur say?”	Finn: “Rrroarrr!!” (same for bear and lion)
“What does a car say?”	Finn: “Vrooom”
“What does Erin say?”	Finn makes a real high pitched mewling. Very funny.

Also, all those sounds also seem to be his words for the animal/person in question. He’s also got words for basic functions: “Food”, “Nurse”, etc. but they aren’t at all the actual words.

Did I mention I’ll be sleeping IN A CAVE tomorrow night?!

"Water's cold." "Yep... deep, too."

Over the years, I’ve noticed that whenever I ask the question “So how long did it take you to drive to everyone with very few exceptions will answer with a dirty, filthy lie. When I am asking the question, I am not asking “How fast did you do it when you when you were in college with a case of Jolt and an empty bottle hurtling through the dead of night?” nor am I asking “If there was no traffic and all the lights were green and you knew the cops would look the other way, how fast COULD you make it?”, I am asking for an actual goddamn time that I can use as a reference for gauging my own trip NOT a gauge of your manhood.

Oh well, I am just bitter. Of course, the average time for a family trip from the suburbs north of Atlanta to Orlando is six and a half hours. Every knows that. Maybe seven if it’s a holiday, you know how bas traffic can get.

You know what the typical time is for Team Keough? ELEVEN F'ING HOURS! Note my wording, I said “typical”. This is not our worst time thrown out there for comic effect… this is the typical time. We did 12 on the way down this Christmas and 11.5 on the way back but I say 11 because I’ve done a few 9 hour ones when I’ve gone in the middle of the night.

But ask anyone… even people with families… 6.5 – 7 hours.

It’s 486 miles from Cumming, Georgia to DisneyWorld. That’s an average speed of over 70 mph the whole freakin’ way! LIARS!!! SLIMY ROTTEN LIARS!!!!

I go about 70 by the way. But I also stop for gas and for restrooms… just like everyone else must do unless they’re in some ubergreen, urine-powered vehicle. And I’m not the type to force three kids to sit in a cramped box for that long, we’ll usually make one or two pretty long stops at a place with a playground to give them a chance to run around a bit.

But the killer is 1) we travel a lot around the holidays, and 2) our route is the infamous ENTIRE NATION FUNNELING INTO FLORIDA TO VISIT THE GRANDPARENTS one.