Indy's Fastest Fat Man

I forgot to mention that I competed in a pretty interesting event a couple weekends ago. There's 38 floor skyscraper downtown called the First America Building. Every February, there is a race to the top as a charity for Riley Children's Hospital (where Jen works). This year a friend from work convinced me to do it.

The race is run in a staggered fashion, with a person leaving the bottom every 30 seconds. You give them an estimated time when you sign up and the fastest people go first. That's supposed to eliminate any passing in the stairwell. I signed up for 6:30, so I started at number 147. My friend also put in 6:30 and he started at number 151.

Anyway, it was a very, very difficult event. It wasn't really like anything I've ever done before. My legs got tired, obviously, but I felt like my real limitation was just the lack of oxygen in the stairwell. I couldn't get my breath. To top it off, the air was really dry and cold. That resulted in some pretty severe throat irritation. I was spitting up some blood the rest of the day.

Anyway, by the time I got to the top I was exhausted. Unfortunately, the race ended in a small room. There were a lot of people packed in there, so once again there wasn't much oxygen. I couldn't get my breath back and I couldn't get my heart rate down. Nothing worrying or anything, it was just exhausting. Eventually an EMT asked me if I wanted to take a few puffs off their oxygen tank. That really helped.

On the elevator ride down my friend and I were trying to figure out who had the best time (I was also attempting not to puke in an elevator full of people). Judging by my condition, my friend was pretty sure he had one. We had a $10 bet going, so he was pretty happy.

I finally recovered once we got down to the bottom. We waited around for a while to see the inevitable results. What were they? Well, he ran a 6:30 just like he predicted. Me? I ran a 5:30, far better than I was hoping. I was so surprised that I didn't believe him at first. But sure enough, the results were in. That explained why I was so tired.

I ended up 50th overall out of 1300 people. To top it off, I placed first in the "over 200 pound" category. That's right, I'm the fastest fat man in Indianapolis. Oh yeah!

Snowed In

Jen and I are loving the weather right now. We've both got to take work off yesterday and today because of all the snow we got.

We got about a foot of snow over the last two days. And since Indiana isn't used to that much snow, they pretty much haven't cleared anything off. It's pretty much impossible to drive anywhere. So that means no work for us!

It's like we're back in grade school and we get a snow day! Now we've got to get some sleds and find a big, big hil....

My week in Ohio

It's been a busy week for me. We did some manufacturing trials this week for the project I've been working on. It's been fun, but stressful.

It started last weekend. I worked 8 hours on Saturday and another 8 hours on Sunday getting everything set up to go. Then we took off Sunday night for Canton, OH. That's a boring 5 hour drive. Ugh!

Of course, all of this "overtime" happened just days after our illustrious leader decided to stop paying us for overtime. The massive amount of work doesn't go away, of course, just our pay. Can you tell I'm a tad bitter?

Monday we went to the supplier and set up for our first trial. (Note that Monday is a holiday that Rolls-Royce gets off. This means that, once again, I worked 9 hours that I don't get paid for. Brilliant!). Everything went pretty well that day and we got everything done that we needed to.

Tuesday was a much easier day. We basically just waited around for our supplier to do their part of things and we supervised.

Wednesday was a repeat of Monday. Thursday would have been a repeat of Tuesday, except I had to drive to Toledo to visit a different supplier. Plus, while that was happening I had to have another guy from work drive to Cincinnati to oversee some stuff for me at a thrid supplier and keep me up to date on the phone.

So, you see, it's been quite the week for me in Ohio. I've been all over the place. Tonight I'm back in Canton. I'll make one more quick visit to our supplier here before I head home tomorrow. It will be nice to have the weekend off for some relaxation.

Life in General

Well, I think this is a new record for time without a post. I guess there's just been a lot going on recently so I haven't gotten around to it. Plus, the only people who really read this are family and I already saw them at Christmas. But if I don't start back up I think Grandma is going to disown me. So here goes:

Jen has decided to take a pediatric position in Danville. That's a little bit West of Indianapolis. She still has to have a lawyer look over her contract, but she's told them verbally that she's going to sign. It's a great practice and the other two doctors are both very nice. She'll have a good time there. It will be so nice to have us both on a regular schedule. We're not going to know what to do with ourselves.

I've decided to put off my PhD for a while longer. I told Jen that if she'd leave the option open for me, I'd like to postpone for three or four more years. Basically, I just didn't feel ready to dive into it. I'd like some more experience here at my job, I'd like more time to finish my MSCS at IUPUI, and I'd like the two of us to get our financial feet under us a little bit more before I take all that on. Plus, I think I'd like to try to teach a couple classes at IUPUI before I go back.

So that means we'll be looking to move soon. Jen needs to be within 30 minutes of the hospital she'll be working at, and right now we're at 35. So we're going to move to the Avon area, which is between Indianapolis and Danville. It won't really be any change in commute time for me, but she'll only have to drive about 10 minutes to get to work. That will be nice.

We're excited about getting a new place. We've been looking around a little bit and we have tons of options. We pretty much just have to decide on a price range and then find that "perfect" place.

We're not so excited about selling our current home. That's just going to be a pain in the butt. We've got a few things to fix up around the house, both inside and out. Hopefully it will go fairly smoothly. I guess we'll find out.

Okay, so that's it for now. I'll be in Ohio the next couple weeks on business, Wish me luck.

Drag Racing Nationals

I think I forgot to mention that I went to the Drag Racing Nationals a few weeks ago. It was awesome! We got to see funny cars, top-fuel, motorcycles, etc. We even got to walk through the pits and check out what was going on. It was a lot of fun.

Anyway, here's a picture of hte funny cars taking off. Notice how great our seats were...
 

Michigan State

Wow, they lost again. Absolutely amazing.

Whew

Ahhh..... thank goodness for the Colts.

Michigan State

Okay, what do we have to do to get MSU to get their head out of their bum? I swear we don't know how to maintain a lead. Every time I've ever seen us get a lead over a good team we blow it. It's like we can't believe it's happening so we get all wussy and let them come back. We need to learn to BURY THEM! AHHHHHHH!!!

I now hate Notre Dame even more. Hopefully the Colts will win today. Hopefully...

Lawn of the Century

Well, thanks to the rain and my laziness the lawn has reached an all time record length. It's been two weeks since I've had a chance to mow. Okay, not "since I've had a chance", just since I've done it. Eventually the neighbors should go ahead and do it for me.

I also haven't managed to bike in over a week. I tried this weekend but I had problems with the tube in my rear tire. First I got a hole in the original tube. Then I realized my replacement tube was the wrong size. So by the time I finally got a new one I didn't have time to ride. Then we had cruddy weather the rest of the weekend. Oh well.

Class is going okay. We have a test next Wednesday. We haven't covered anything terribly difficult yet so things should go okay. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Anyway, that's it for now.

Dish Network HD

Jen and I decided to switch from DirecTV to Dish Network satellite. We wanted to get a DVR (digital video recorder, think computerized VCR) but we also wanted it to be high definition.

DirecTV's current stuff like that is definitely lacking. They only have five HD channels, plus their DVR is old and soon to be obsolete. They say that they will replace it, but you never know.

So Dish Network has something like 27 high definition channels and a brand new DVR that looks pretty cool. Plus it's something like $20 less per month. Not bad.

So the Dish Network guy is supposed to come this morning and set everything up. I'll let you know how it all goes.