23 weeks later and now its a PAPAYA!

So its Christmas again…eh


Cool....

I love the idea of Christmas, and I love Christmas itself, its just very time consuming. Not to bah humbug especially because Kelci lives for Christmas, I just find it overwhelming. Outside of the occasional nativity scene the purpose of Christmas is overlooked. Its ridiculously commercialized and maybe that’s great for the economy but it just seems so superfluous in regards to what Christmas means. Personally I don’t need 24 hour radio stations playing different versions of the same 20 Christmas songs, and advertisements for breakfast with Santa at Gander Mountain. I’m sure next year when we get pictures of Max with Santa it won’t be in front of a 30% off gun rack. But there is only another week and then the tree comes down and goes back under the stairs for another 11 months.

But even with all the Christmas distractions.. eh I mean enjoyment J we had a pretty great week. Thursday was dinner in old town with some of Kelci’s co-workers. One of her friends is changing jobs so we went out to Playa Azul. It was a good meal with some good friends. I had skipped out on my bike workout earlier so I don’t know if I really earned my Super Burrito…but it sure was delicious! Friday was the early day at work, then due to the cold and wind I ended up on

The weekend went crazy fast. Work was busy enough to fly by Sat morning and then at home we had a nice lunch and then I hopped on the bike trainer for 1 ½ hours while Kelci took a nap and then did cleaning. Then Kelci left for Christmas shopping and I just lounged around. It was a crazy cold and windy day. Sunday was an early morning with breakfast in bed then headed to the Y. Ran 4 miles on the treadmill then did a 6:12 mile on the indoor track. Base training for running is so boring at 8:30-9:00 mile pace so just felt like running fast. Then I hopped in the pool to loosen up, then rushed home for the Steeler's game.

The game wasn’t on TV locally and neither of us wanted sports bar food, so we pulled the game up on the computer and watched it on our computer screen in the bedroom. And while a 22 inch screen isn’t much it still got the job done. And so did the Steelers. Polamalu had 2 picks and Farrior had 1 and the defense scored most of the points. Eh… that’s Steelers Football

After that Kelci went shopping with her family and I settled down with a Ezra and Coke to watch the Chiefs get destroyed. The horrible thing about this team is every time they play well enough to raise expectations they immediately fail to reach them. Its pretty sad and while their playoff destiny is still in their hands if they cant beat the actually pretty good Rams next Sunday it’ll probably be all she wrote.

Monday was just another Monday with a run at the Y and some delicious BLT Kelci was jonesin’ for. Then Tuesday after work we did some shopping then headed to Babies R Us to register. Kelci and I were both completely overwhelmed right from the get go. We didn’t know what we needed, what we wanted, and what was pointless….so we pretty much just registered for anything. And 1 ½ hours later and 130 scanned items we left knowing a little bit more than when we came in.
Some things I learned:

200 diapers = 40 bucks and a newborn can go through 15 a day. That math comes out to about 80 a month, In DIAPERS only. Absolutely Crazy! And then there are tons of things just to go with diapers, diaper bags, special diaper only trash cans, wipes, jells, creams, and what not.

Baby food containers are cheap, but they take up space. Our little kitchen is pretty crowded, and if we end up with half of the bottles, Tupperware and food sets we registered for, our already overly crowded Kitchen is going to get even cozier.

While a crib is ridiculously expensive that’s the least likely place Max is going to sleep. We already have a bassinet, but there are baby rockers, and sleepers and pack and plays and bundle carriers. Etc etc etc
So basically all this kid is going to do is Eat Sleep and Poop, and if that’s the case and our families and friends come through on the registry we should have all three covered.

I got through 3 quick reads this week.

The first was a John Grisham novel – Playing For Pizza. While his normal book is usually based in the court room this one centered around a football field. In Southern Italy. Its about a Career backup football player who ends up throwing 3 interceptions in just a few minutes during the AFC Championship playing for the Browns (like they’d ever play in the AFC Championships!) He wakes up in the hospital with a Cleveland Lynch mob outside his window and he decides to get out of town. He ends up playing in NFL Italy for the Parma Panthers. It’s a fairly short book that just flies by and is pretty entertaining.

The second was a book I have been waiting to read for some time. Its called Again to Carthage by John Parker. He wrote a book in the 70’s about a Olympic class collegiate Miler named Quentin Cassady, called Once a runner. It was a book he wrote not for money but because he loved 2 things, writing and running and as a elite runner himself he truly got into the lifestyle of a 70’s distance runner. He sold once a runner out of the trunk of his car for years and it was only briefly published. So for 20 years copies were ridiculously hard to come by and it was selling used for 50-100 dollars. I was able to find a digital copy online a few years ago and read it sitting at my computer. Well now 25+ years later he picked up a few years after where he left off is Quentin’s life, and Q is now a Olympic Silver Medalist, a successful lawyer and a recreational runner. But due to some big emotional losses he realizes that hes not done with his Olympic dreams. So he sets to work and over the next year and a half tries to turn himself back into a world class runner, but this time at the Marathon. A absolutely great book that’s def worth reading.

The 3rd book is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and is book 1 of her hunger games trilogy. It’s a young adult series not far from The maze runner, Harry Potter etc, but its set in a post apocalyptic USA where the totalitarian government rules over 12 districts and from district 12 is a young girl who supports her family illegally hunting the grounds outside of her district. She ends up as her districts contestant in the “Hunger Games” a fight to the death contest pitting 2 teens from each district against each other. It’s a fairly good book I reread before I dig into the rest of the trilogy that I have not read yet.