Another travelling binge is over. We spent the weekend in Souderton, PA, primarily for my grandparents' surprise 50th anniversary party. Even though they know about everyone in town, we still surprised them! We got to do several of our usual favorite things, including breakfast at the Family Heritage and dessert at Friendly's. We added a new favorite tradition of going garage-saling too :-) Some of us are staying home for a while now, but next weekend I am going back to Souderton to run in the Philadelphia Half-Marathon.

Apparently, there are two parts of The Flats: East and West. The East has been torn down, but the West is something to see. Oops! Anyway, glad to be home now :-)

I'm in Cleveland for IBM purposes today and tomorrow. I've been enjoying the stay and the area. We drove around downtown Cleveland with the rental car's NeverLost system leading the way. We tried to go to a place called "The Flats", on the local Great Lake (which one?), but it was a huge letdown. We ended up in a steak restaurant, so all was not lost :-)

Had a nice holiday weekend, although it was just me and the dogs. Elise was out camping with the Pines High group (like older Girl Scouts). I did some studying, reading, game playing, and a lot of dog walking. Hank and Scout are totally pooped! But that is best for their behavior :-) I just finished getting packed for my trip to Cleveland tomorrow. I'll be coming back Wednesday night.

The past week or two I've been busy study for the Sun Certified Java Developer exam. Although I already know Java, I'm going for a little piece of paper that says I do. Unfortunately, the exam is filled with arcane tidbits of syntax that nobody actually uses. I'm writing flash cards to help study, right now I am at 190 flash cards for the first seven chapters (ten chapters total). There's a few duplicates in there, but all in all a lot of material to learn!

Haven't written much lately, just working hard all week! Juggling a few things at work (some might call it "thrashing"), and doing smaller projects around the house. Looking forward to a good run this weekend, as most of the week has just been recovery from last week's race.

I ran in the News and Sentinel Half Marathon today in Parkersburg, WV, and boy are my legs tired! I spent the week telling myself that the race course would be very similar to the Charlotte race course I ran in April, as in same number of hills and same hill difficulty. Let me tell you, that was an outright lie! The hills on this course feel like they will never end, and I am not sure if they really do (where were all the downhill sections?). I was able to follow my race plan reasonably well. I was hoping to be between 1:05 and 1:10 at the 6 mile mark, and I was right around 1:06. As a matter of fact, my 10K split was exactly the same as last year, to the second (1:07:48)! This relatively slow start meant I was mostly in the back of the pack, and after the first mile I was about fifth from the end of one several hundred (or a thousand?) runners. But the slow start also conserved strength, so I was able to pass people for most of the rest of the race. The official race times have not been posted, but I unofficially recorded 2:21:09 on my watch, which is a personal record for the distance by a minute and a half, and a personal course record by over 34 minutes!
Last night the race sponsored a pasta dinner (spaghetti), and today they sponsored a pizza dinner (Dominos and Papa John's). When you add in my finisher's medal, race t-shirt, energy bar, and the incredible number of water stations (18?), this race is one heck of a value at $35!

This post is a few days late, but I've been rather tired lately. Monday night, I flew into New York for a business trip. We had a quick layover in Philadelphia, and then went to LaGuardia. Unfortunately, my bag did not make it onto the same plane. As I filled out a lost baggage claim, the lady behind the counter was giving me grief about why I checked a bag. She asked me, "What are you, lazy?". I was wondering if she was aware of the new aviation rules. Fortunately that bag only had my dress shoes, toothpaste, deodorant, and a few similar non-essentials. The bag did eventually arrive at my house on Wednesday. But, this ordeal did take some time, and when added to my late in the evening flight, it meant I got to my hotel room at 2:30am. Fortunately, my brain woke me up three times before my alarm. Went downstairs for the breakfast buffet, $16 plus tax and tip! Wowie wow!
The business part of the trip was pretty uneventful, as we accomplished what we sent out to do. Now I am in class at work, learning about an IBM-enhanced version of the Linux operating system. Pretty good so far, although the lab machines are misbehaving a little.
Tonight we set off for West Virginia, to Parkersburg, the site of my half-marathon race on Saturday. I did my last training run last night, now I just have to eat and sleep well. I'm looking forward to the race!

I had a lot of fun with this wedding weekend. The travel was not as bad as I expected, as a matter of fact I was rather impressed with how things were handled. It looks like orders were seemlessly distributed from Homeland Security to every area of the airport. Well done! The wedding itself was very nice. The bride and groom are quite fond of each other, and that is always nice to see. I was not alone in eating way too much at the festivities either :-) I'm back in Cary for less than 24 hours, and then it is time for a business trip to Holtsville, NY. Then I'll be back for two days, going to class at IBM. Immediately after that, I leave for Parkersburg, WV and my half marathon race!

It is bad enough that they were trying to blow up planes, but now they have crippled our air transportation system again!