Well tonight I stopped in Jackson, Mississippi to stay with my grandmother. 12 hours from Raleigh, only about 35 hours to go. Tomorrow I will be driving to Dallas where I am staying with my cousin and we are going to go out and hit the town. Then I am praying to make it in one day from Dallas to San Diego (probably not going to happen).

Tonight I did my hour run, and broke the 8min barrier! I ran a 7:55 mile for the hour, averaging out over 7.5 mph. Hot dog! And after a 12 hour drive and 4 hours of sleep last night, I am even more proud of it.

Well cheers all from the deep south, more updates to come.

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! I know I certainly had a gluttoness good time. Tomorrow I have about 20 bills to go pay, then I am determined to clean the house. This will probably end up being a multi-day Trading Spaces-esque job, but I have got to do something constructive!

Time permitting I am also going to be looking at either renting or buying a plasma cutter and a mig welder. I also need a good high speed electric random orbital sander if anyone has a few extra laying around. I am at an impass with my car so more tools must be brought in to deal swift justice to it.

I honestly don’t know if, when or where I will be going this summer. All I know is that I definitely need to get out of Raleigh for an emotional and psychological respite. Hopefully after a few days of relaxation I can get the fingers of my brain wrapped back around the various projects and duties I have to get finished around here.

So my first week of training has been going well so far.

I have been keeping pace with my regiment, and have yet to injure myself or be unable to complete anything. This is pretty encouraging for me. I will post my completed regimen for the week once it’s all done

Man, I haven’t done a real post to my journal in a month! Rather than doing one giant boring one, I will split up the latest happenings over the next couple of days.

Tonight’s will be a short one.

I finally got around to ordering new contacts. I decided to pay the extra 15% and get colored ones. I might say the actualy contacts look weird as hell, not at all how I would have imagined color contacts to look. They also don’t seem to fit quite as flawlessly as the traditional contact lenses I have used in the past. BUT, I do like them! Even though they are supposed to be deep blue, mixing with my brown eyes ends up with a gray/blue look. I like it

Since I already have gotten started on my personal appearance, might as well continue the trend. I have decided to let my hair grow wild for a while. I am going to make a concerted effort to not get a hair cut until Christmas. No trims, nothing. I will keep shaving though of course! I’ve always wanted to have a mop top, so I guess we will see how this goes.

Eyes and hair, check. Next up are the fingernails. Everyone that has known me for a long period of time knows how badly I used to treat my nails. Now I am very proud to say that my cuticles are finally completely normal and healthy. 6 of my nails are doing well, 3 more will be grown in properly by the end of the week and the last one, well I am going to have to quit messing with it!

Last on the list is the general body. This weekend I am going to start the long, grueling process of preparing to run a marathon, building up to hopefully completely a full IronMan triathlon. These are two goals I desperately want to complete in life. In addition I want to get my body and mind into peak condition. I have to give a lot of thanks to Abe Lui who has very graciously helped me by building a training program for me. Without him and his continued support and assistance I know I wouldn’t have ever gotten off the ground. I really hope to be able to compete in and finish a Marathon by Fall 2005, and to compete in a half IronMan by Spring of 06. But I am realistic about my progress, so I am going to just stick to the program and see how well I can develop myself.

LJ Stalker Finder
From Go-Quiz.com

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So somehow up until this past week I have avoided the tortuous joy that is crosswording. I was sitting at the pool down in Key Largo (another huge post to be made later on this) and I thought man it would be fun to just dabble with a crossword puzzle while I sit here.

Fast forward a few days, and now I am working two of them (LA Times and the original from the local Key Largo paper) and I am thoroughly stuck on both. There is a definitely sense of reward when I get another word in there, but the agony of trying to finish makes the whole thing a little bittersweet. I just hope this whole process makes my vocabulary better so the next puzzle will go a little bit more smoothly.

So a call goes out, I think there should be a gathering of crossworders to help those like myself who agonize all alone in trying to complete the monumental task that is the crossword puzzle.

Preface: I have to park in the Visitor Parking deck downtown. Contractors don’t get reserved parking. 4 Bucks a Day, yes it sucks.

So usually once or twice a week when I pull into the parking garage, there will be some moron (note this has so far ALWAYS been a moron in a HUGE SUV, but it’s entirely possible that the morons and SUVs have no correlation) who has parked all sideways, basically cutting off a PRIME parking spot for another patron, most noteably ME. Whenever this happens, I pull my nice little Saturn into said spot and usually climb over the center console and get out my passenger door. I also ALWAYS leave a note on the tank parked next to me saying: “Please learn how to friggin park, or maybe quit driving a damn BOAT”.

Now this has been a continual thing since February. Finally, earlier this week I was vindicated. There is a habitually badly parked Ford EXPEDITION (the ones that look like cigarette boats), in the deck. I get to work on Tuesday and I see the expedition mid park. Of course it is a mid 40’s Woman, ALONE, driving this tank of a vehicle. She was backing it in far away from any other vehicles. I have to give her credit because backing in is the only way to properly park these monstrosities. Well as I go to park I notice her pulling in and out of the space 5, 6, 7 times. So she actually got the message and was trying to do better. Kudos to the lady, she actually stayed within the lines, but the parking job was still very subpar. Improvement is improvement however, so I am happy.

:)