Shallow Thinker

Long, long ago, I used my deep, intellectual skills to reflect upon a walk along the beach that I had with my oldest daughter.  Since then, she and I have walked numerous paths and had many adventures.  Back in November, Kelley and I took the girls back to Dauset Trails, one of their favorite hiking spots.  For the fun of it, I carried along my GPS to see how far we traveled.  As my brain tends to do, I forgot all about doing this.  Until today.

I plugged my watch into my computer to see where I have run recently and to analyze the statistics of my runs.  As I was going through the data, I came across the map of the Dauset Trails adventure.  It took me 15 minutes to figure out what in the world was going on.  I should have known by the shape of it that it involved me following a couple of Little Misses around.  It almost looks like one of those old cartoons from Family Circus.

Last Year

Three weeks have passed and I am just now getting around to updating on my resolutions past and my resolutions forward.  First, let’s take a peak at last year and see what I said.  (CLICK HERE)  Well, it looks like I only had one resolution.  And I didn’t get it.  But not to worry.  I have an explanation!

Photo from Photobucket. Found by google. Completely stolen from the internet.

While I did not weigh 172 in July, I did hit the target weight in March.  I combined better and leaner eating habits with a lot of cardio and dropped down to around 168 at my lowest point.  While I weighed less and was in better shape, I wasn’t very comfortable.  Every time the wind blew, I had to grab onto something to keep from blowing away.  So in March or April, I started to do more strength training.  I started a modified version of P90X where I did my own cardio and disregarded his insane nutritional guide.  I’m not going to work-out AND eat healthy.  That’s just silly!

So, the results?  I’m up to 192 right now.  A 24 pound swing!  From what I can tell, I’m putting on about the same percentage of fat and muscle as I had before the climb.  So while I am getting heavier, I’m putting on some muscle weight.  Also, I kicked the Mountain Dew habit early last year.  Unfortunately, I started drinking Coke at the end of this year.  But, I’ve already kicked that habit, too.  (I’m thinking about doing some heavy drugs just so I can say that I stopped doing them.)

So for a final rating on last year against my resolution, I give myself four smiley faces and a thumbs-up.  (Note: Grading scale is arbitrary and pointless.  Just like my resolutions.)

This Year

So, what are my goals for this year?  Glad you asked.  I decided to take my own advice and set one goal that is achievable and one that is nearly impossible.  You can match them to the correct category.

• Finish my masters degree.  I am currently taking classes #8 and #9 with #10 on tap for the summer.  This has me crossing the finish line in August.  hopefully.
• Become Massive.  Like the incredible hulk.  I want to have muscles on top of my muscles.  But I don’t want to work too hard for it.  Actually, I don’t want to work at all.  Maybe I need to get my hands on some good steroids. Do you know any suppliers?

So that’s the review and the projection.  Should I have included anything else?

At this moment I’m supposed to be editing a document that feeds into a final report.  But I’m not.  Why?  Excellent question.  Here’s one of the sentences that the author put into the document:

To provide a basis for system analysis, a hierarchal decomposition of functionality has been prepared to use as a straw-man design against which each of the individual functions can be addressed across the full range of available new and emerging technologies, assessing performance risk, compatibility with operating environment, other on-board system technology applications, and availability for production.

WHAT?!

No, stop.  Don’t reread it.  It won’t help you at all.  You still won’t make any sense of it.  But I have to wade through another 36 pages of run on sentences, misapplied big words, extraneous adjectives, and vague generalities.  I thought I went into engineering to avoid having to read stuff.

Maybe this will all make sense if I read the report upside down…

I believe that I may have mentioned my affection for Wipeout and American Gladiators before.  I think that the draw is that I am naive enough to believe that I could actually compete in events like these.  I’ve even been on the look-out for tryouts in my area, but thus far, California remains definitively not in my area.  It’s unfortunate, really.

But what if I had a chance to do something like this.  Would I actually do it or would I shy away?  Let’s say that someone made a running course that was 3.22 miles.  And suppose it had some obstacles.  Like jumping over fire.  And climbing a cargo net.  And rappelling down a wall.  Maybe even crawling through mud.  Stupid, right? How much would someone have to pay you to do things like this?

As it turns out, you only have to pay $45 to subject yourself to such torture.  You actually have to pay them?!  Yeah, that’s right.  Who in their right mind would be stupid enough to do something so dangerous and actually pay for the opportunity to do it?

I’m in the 2:00 wave for the Southeastern round.  May 22.
www.warriordash.com

You do get a free warrior helmet.

I’ll be the first to admit that every school system has their problems.  I’ll also be in line to discuss how our local school system seems to have a much larger pile of problems than the rest.  Horrible decisions are made almost every day and top administration officials seem concerned only with protecting themselves and promoting their friends.

So, like any dysfunctional group, the local school board isn’t the best at planning ahead.  For about a week, the local weather services had been predicting a chance of snow for last night.  But yesterday turned out to be one of the warmest days of the week.  It reached 50 degrees.  Not sunbathing weather, but certainly nothing to cry about.

In the late afternoon yesterday, with the temperature hovering in the mid-40’s and the precipitation definitely not falling, the local school board made the decision to close schools.  And because my daughters’ preschool follows their lead, it shut down as well.  At the time, I thought it was preposterous to make such a decision at that time.  Wouldn’t the wait-and-see approach be more appropriate?

It just goes to show what little I know.  I took a couple of picture of the great blizzard that hit our area last night.  Here’s a shot of our front yard looking across the street over to our neighbor’s house:

How did I survive out there?!  And you want to know something even crazier than all that snow?  I actually tried to drive to work in that mess!  Our parking lot was beautiful under such a thick blanket of snow.

So if you’ll pardon me, I’m off to build a snowman.  I’ll probably make just as much progress on the snowman as I’m going to make on this report that I’m working on.

Yes, I know that I haven’t blogged in a bit.  It’s not from a lack of ideas, it’s from a lack of time.  And because I’m a slacker.  Either way, I have a few things in the works.  Here are the teasers for when I have time:

• A check to see where I am vs. my resolution(s) from last year.  If you want a challenge, you can guess how much I actually weigh now.
• A look forward to this year.  What do I want to achieve?  How many jobs do I expect to get fired from?  Again, feel free to use the comments section for suggestions.
• A review of how much I get to play with baby dolls and barbies now that I have two girls.  At least they let me keep a little train set and some legos.
• I’m sure that once classes start back on the 14th, I’ll have the need to write a bunch of posts about how much school stinks.
• I’ll also write about how I should probably go and get a PhD.  (And this is where I expect Kelley to hurl something at her computer.)
• My friend, Lance, killed somebody on New Year’s Eve, but I was too busy trying to be a rock star to care.

So, there’s my list.  If you have any requests, like a funny story about meat consumption, feel free to let me know!