The Life and Times of the Watters Family

Happy Birthday To Me. Happy Birthday To Me.

Dang, that’s conceited.

It is by birthday, though. I’m twenty-seven (27) years old today.

Preliminary Training - Stage 10 - Day 2

Preliminary Training - Stage 10 - Day 1

Preliminary Training - Stage 9 - Day 4

Today was the last day to include some walking in the training. Starting on Tuesday, it’s all jogging/running the entire time. For the next two weeks (Stage 10 of the Preliminary Training) it’s 30 minutes of jogging 4 days a week, and then, on June 7th we start the first week of the actual training program.

I’ve noticed a lot of changes since I started this process two months ago. Since I started tracking my training progress on this site after my knee injury, I’ve lost nearly 7 pounds. I’ve gained a ton of muscle in my legs since then as well. Back then, I was only jogging for 5 minutes at a stretch and I couldn’t fathom how I was going to jog for 30 minutes consecutively. What a difference a month makes.

I also need much less sleep and although my work stress has increased considerably, I’m generally able to cope with it better.

Preliminary Training - Stage 9 - Day 3

Preliminary Training - Stage 9 - Day 2

Preliminary Training - Stage 9 - Day 1

Preliminary Training - Stage 8 - Day 4

My sister Kelly rejoined me today and should be with me throughout the rest of my training.

Preliminary Training - Stage 8 - Day 3

My Blogging Co-worker

In passing this afternoon, I thought I’d check out the website of one of my co-workers, which I’d never read before. It looks like he hasn’t posted recently. Maybe I should ask him about that. He’s a good guy and I enjoyed what I read while poking around the archives. Hopefully he’ll start writing again.

Preliminary Training - Stage 8 - Day 2

The second of back-to-back days is always a little more painful than the day before. Today was no different.

At Least, I Thought I Agreed With Dave

After a somewhat discouraging series of posts last year between April and June, there’s kind of been a moratorium on commentary about the greater weblog/syndication world. I found that nothing productive really came out of it, and I wasn’t really invested enough to continue to post about the topic. I tried it, and it was interesting for a while, but I’ve moved on.

I still read Scripting News nearly every day and I still think Dave Winer is a bit of a nutjob a fair bit of the time. Sometimes I agree with him, but I rarely feel strongly about it when I do. Usually it’s about something run-of-the-mill or otherwise meaningless. Today, however, I found myself actually rooting for Dave, which, to be honest, felt a little, well, dirty (j/k).

As I write this, though, the inspiration for my short step out of character isn’t posted on the site any longer and appears to have been replaced by this bland little item. Apparently, Dave was semi-spurned by IDG, the organizer of the Syndicate conference for posting the details of his interactions with them regarding his finding a personal sponsor for his appearance. In particular, I’m betting they didn’t like the criticism he leveled after they told him he couldn’t have a personal sponsor. He had written a very honest, but fair response to their attempt to censor his weblog by threatening his ability to speak if he didn’t stop posting the details. He said, thanks, but no thanks.

Hey, I don’t agree with the guy very often, but I sure appreciated what appeared to be his stand on this issue. I hope he re-posts it soon.

UPDATE:

Looks like I spoke too soon (about his taking it down). He just moved it off the front page. It’s posted at the bottom of this entry at reallysimplesyndication.com.

UPDATE:

BTW, the moratorium is back on. Also, Dave is back to being his good ol’ nutty self again today.

Preliminary Training - Stage 8 - Day 1

This morning I jumped straight into Stage 8, skipping the last two days of Stage 7 (15 min jog/5 min walk). I was getting behind schedule, having missed two Sundays in a row. Because of the long layoff, it didn’t hurt so much. The true test will be tomorrow when I go do it again. This morning was also the first morning that I ran without my knee brace on my left knee. It felt pretty good, so I think I’ll try it without the brace again tomorrow.

Although the race, and not my weight, is the ultimate goal, I have been frustrated lately that I’ve been stuck at 248 lbs. That means that in the three weeks since April 19th, I’ve only been able to lose 5 lbs, despite regular exercise and a more balanced diet. The optimist in me says that it’s because of all the muscle I’m building, but the pessimist says that I’m just destined to lose weight slowly.

Preliminary Training - Stage 7 - Day 2

Preliminary Training - Stage 7 - Day 1

Today was the first day of Stage 7. For the first time, I made it across the Alabama Street Overpass. Anyway, today felt good. The shin splints that had been troubling me seem to be largely cleared up and my knee is pretty much back to normal, at least as long as I’m wearing my brace. I covered a lot more distance this time and, for the first time, it’s really starting to feel like I’m making progress.

Preliminary Training - Stage 6 - Day 3

Today, my sister, Kelly, joined me on my jog/walk. She’s decided to run the Portland Marathon with me in October. In the mean time, we’ll be training together. She’ll be in Mexico for the next week or so, so I’ll be going solo again for Stage 7 of the preliminary training (15min jog/5min walk), but she’ll be back again for most of Stage 8 (20min jog/5min walk) and the rest of the training as well.

It’ll be fun to have a partner. It definitely makes the time pass more quickly and it helps to keep me motivated throughout the run. It’ll be great to spend more time with her, too. She’s ten years younger than I am and I moved out of the house when she was in elementary school, so we didn’t really hang out growing up.

Helping Grandpa

The boys had fun today helping Grandma & Grandpa (Cam’s parents) work on their new kitchen remodel.

While they were working, Sean said, “I love working with my Grandpa! He makes it fun. He tells stories like we’re archeologists and maybe we’ll find something cool. I love that Grandpa!”

On the way home, Sean said, “I really want to help Grandpa work on fixin’ up his house. Maybe I could go over there like one day a week in the morning and come home at…like…midnight?”