I've been keeping up with the Tour de France via the Versus channel. OLN has a new name. I'm trying to figure out if I can get this added to my cable service at the house, but in the meantime the stream online is pretty good. 6th stage today. Can't wait.

Today's 80s video.... Howard Jones - "Like To Get To Know You Well"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD3qA54Fn_Q

The weekend starts tomorrow. I've got a nice 4 day weekend coming up, and I'm trying to finish up on school work so that I don't have too much teaching to do over the next couple of days. A new term has started, so it is a busy time. I just hope I'm feeling better by the weekend. I'm going on day 4 of feeling like utter crap.

When kids get sick, it can be an intense experience. Most kids get worked up when they throw up, but Alex tends to take it in stride. He got sick on Monday night in his bed, and we changed his sheets and cleaned up the floor beside his bed (he wasn't messing around when he puked). We got him settled back down and about an hour later he puked again. I stayed home with him yesterday and he seemed fine for pretty much the entire day, but he fell asleep on the couch at about 6:00. I should have known something was up. We put him in bed, and he ended up puking again. He's at my mom's house today, and she says he's been doing pretty good. She called me from Pizza Hut to say that he seemed like he was doing ok. I can't wait to clean up pizza puke tonight. I really hope he's over his stomach bug.

Long weekend coming up. That will be a nice break. We've got Friday off, and I'm taking Monday off as well. I'll get in some good workouts this weekend, hopefully. I feel kind of like I've fallen off the wagon. Things have been so hectic with my work schedule these past two weeks. I'm pretty much back on track at this point though, so in another week or two I'll be good to go.

Here's something to ponder... one of the most difficult things to try to do in the event of a zombie invasion is get a hot cup of coffee.

This, interestingly enough, is also one of the most difficult things to do at work before 7:30. That said, I've now got my coffee and I'm happy. I'm ready for the weekend redux, and sufficiently awake to ensure that I don't become a babbling incoherent idiot. Any more than usual, anyway.

I watched Twilight on Friday night. It was enjoyable, but a bit annoying. I can't fault it too much since I'm not exactly the target demographic of the movie. It's akin to someone going and watching Transformers and complaining about lack of character development and depth. It's a movie that you go to in order to see shit get blown up. There's not a whole lot of need for character development. We could debate that, sure. But for the most part, movies like that tend to be a bit one-dimensional.

Twilight nailed the whole 'moody teenager' genre. Once I acknowledged that, I was able to appreciate that the movie WAS a pretty good adaptation of the book. I enjoyed the interpretation of the character Edward. Now I'm going to have to go read the rest of the damn books at some point. Not now, though. I'm pretty much all set as far as Twilight goes. Moving on.

My dad came up for a visit this past week and was here on Saturday for a visit with the boys. We went strawberry picking. Had not done that before. It was a good time, albeit a hot and humid time as well. The boys were sports. Back at my sister's place Alex and Jack went into the kiddie pool for a bit and had a good time with that. Sunday was a blur spent marking thing off the to-do list. And now Monday has already rolled back around. I was here at work at 6:13 this morning. Friday is a day off, and it looks like I may be taking Thursday off as well. That would be good. It would give me a chance to get some "Nick" stuff done. Maybe do a good training session. I got out on the bike for 12.6 miles on Sunday and then went for a 3 mile run. I felt a sense of accomplishment, but didn't exactly feel like I had gotten a great workout. I'm still in a bit of a slump from missing so many days last week. This week I'll spend getting back on track.

I'm disappointed with myself. I've been inadvertently sucked into the "Twilight" fiction series. Yes, a series that is geared towards teenage girls. Allow me to explain.

I've been comparison shopping with eBook readers. I'm comparing the Sony digital reader to the Amazon Kindle and trying to figure out which one I prefer. What I've come to the conclusion of thus far is that the Kindle is more expensive but ends up being a better investment long-term because the books are cheaper. Plus it is a wireless device. The Sony is build nicely, but the books are more expensive.

So I checked out the Sony digital reader from the campus library and I was giving it another look. There are a number of books that have been downloaded onto it and one of the books was "Twilight." I read the first couple of pages out of morbid curiosity and before I knew it I had read the whole damn thing. It wasn't a page turner by any means. I basically just hate to start reading a story and then not finish it. But now that I've read it, I am interested to see how the movie does in adapting the story. I've rented it on Netflix and it arrived yesterday. Ugh.

So now what? There are more books in the series. What's a teenage girl to do?

Alex had an awards ceremony / pizza party last night for t-ball. He was very well-behaved. Lack of parental involvement and supervision at these sorts of things continues to appall me. It's like these parents just feel that they can dump their kids off, and since they're paying for the kids to be in the league they don't have to be involved. Even if they're at a game or practice and they see their kid getting into trouble, they won't step in. Sure, you don't want to undermine the coaches. That makes sense. The problem I have with this though is that the kids should be behaving well from the start. It shouldn't be an issue. If they need to be told every ten seconds that they're doing something wrong, then there's a larger problem there. I'm just saying that it reflects poorly on the parents, and makes it seem that they aren't addressing the behavioral issues at hand. Bottom line - kids can have fun without being crazy and getting into trouble every ten seconds, and it seems like a number of kids want to try to push this limit instead of just acting normal.

Okay, enough soapbox stuff. Time for something mildly amusing. Alex's daycare had a fundraiser in order to raise funds for a new playground. The fundraiser was Little Caesar's pizza kits. A neat idea - people buy these kits that include frozen dough, sauce, cheese, etc. and then put them together and bake them at home. There were other things as well. Desserts, appetizers, spices... it was a good selection. So Merrie and I both took forms to work and had the people from work look at the selections. We both good good responses, and placed our orders. When I went to pick up Alex yesterday I was informed that the orders were in, and I could come back later in the evening and pick them up. I got back over there after Alex's t-ball and backed my car up to the garage, because that's where the orders had been split up. I was directed to a stack of boxes that was taller than Alex. I got those loaded into the car and was informed that there were an additional two stacks of orders that were ours. I'm not shitting you, we had two thirds of the boxes that were in the entire order. I have a Subaru sedan. I had a VERY hard time fitting all of the boxes into the car, but that wasn't even the least of my concerns. My biggest concern was figuring out where the hell I was going to put the boxes once I got home. We have a chest freezer that is about half full, but I was only able to fit about 4 or 5 boxes in there. It was literally a case of going through the refrigerator and freezer and figuring out what we could do without. I didn't want the fundraiser stuff going bad before we could distribute it. In additional to clearing space in our freezer and fridge we had to bring about 6 boxes over to Jack's daycare. The worst part is that I was going to bring my orders in with me today but I had to be here so ungodly early, I wasn't able to swing by Jack's daycare to pick my boxes up. Damn.

After I dealt with all of this I was determined to get a bike ride in last night because I haven't done any training since Sunday. It was my first time being able to wear my new Primal cycling jersey so I was pumped. It rained and it was cold, but I still got a ride in. 12.6 miles. After I got off the bike I felt like crap. I felt weak and tired. Definitely can't miss any more training sessions.

Kids love to make noise. I'm convinced that nothing gives a child more joy than making noise, not with the purpose to annoy, but with simple self-amusement in mind. Take Jack, my one year old son, for example. He likes to shriek. I would say yell, scream or shout, but 'shriek' is a much more fitting description. It's mildly amusing because of the face he makes when he does it. If provoked by Alex, his older brother, the two of them will shriek back and forth for hours. Nothing will bring on insanity in grown-ups like the two of them engaging in this self-fulfilling activity in the car. There's nothing to get the old heart pumping quite like Jack sitting in the back seat, calm and quiet, and then all of the sudden belting out a scream that splits your eardrums. I've nearly swerved off the road more than once when he does this. I have a very small window of opportunity to stop this before it escalates.

"No Jack. No yelling." As I say this, I can practically hear Alex sucking in a deep breath in order to produce a louder, more poignant and mature scream than Jack is capable of.

"Alex, don't yell. You know it will get your brother going."

Too late. As I'm saying this, Alex lets loose with a blood-curdling yell of his own. Jack replies, and then the two of them are screaming back and forth. It's like some sort of twisted tennis match. They volley screams to each other, reveling in the pleasure of it.

Seriously, I don't know about these kids sometimes.

I've finally gotten back up and running, after being down for a couple of weeks. I've got a new netbook and I've migrated all of my files off my work PC, so no excuses now with not logging on and posting a blog now and then. I've been out of the writing game too long!

Podcasts abound. I finally got around to posting the podcasts I recorded last week and I'll be recording a new podcast tonight. I want to start recording more audio while I'm exercising because I really dig the format. When I've been listening to podcasts of people talking about working out while they're actually doing something, it tends to make the whole thing more enjoyable.

Podcasts abound. I’ve been posting podcasts a lot more frequently than blogging, because I’ve just been strapped for time. I like writing a lot more than I enjoy talking into a microphone though, so I need to get back in the habit of blogging. In the meantime, the podcasts are something at least!