Everyone knows.....

We had an open house on saturday and of course no one showed up. Apparently everyone in the world knew that open houses were only supposed to be on Sunday's except us. We had this conversation about 5 times over the last week...

Us: "Yeah we're having an open house on saturday.."
Everyone else in the world: "Hmm really a saturday open house?"
Us: "Why, is that bad?"
Everyone else in the world: "Well typically saturdays don't work for open houses"
Us: "Why is that?"
Everyone else in the world: "I don't know, that's just the way everyone does it"

It really amazes me sometimes how so many people can know something that I've never heard of, and most of them have no idea why they believe it. For instance, my wife's aunt once told us that she was worried that our oldest daugter was "liver grown". She was very serious about this and very worried about it. I asked her what that was, and she had absolutely no idea other than the fact that it was really bad. Apparently this is something that was spawned years ago that has been passed down as truth through the generations and no one knows were it comes from. All they know is that if a baby's hand can't reach it's foot behind it's back then they must be "liver grown", and that's really bad. Of course I spoiled all the fun of worrying by asking questions like...

"What does that mean?"
"How do you know that this is a real medical condition?"
"What doctor told you about this?"

My final conclusion was at some point in the past someone was running out of things to worry about and therefore invented this horrible condition in order to fill that void in their life. The amazing part is that several generations after whoever it was still believe it to this day.

Just for the record, although I tease my aunt about this, I love her dearly and she is all you could ask for in an aunt-in-law, this one incident is just a great example of how things get decided, and "everyone knows" scenarios get started without anyone knowing why. I figure the first open house was on a sunday because the people were just busy on saturday and so now they all HAVE to be on sundays, just because.

Oh well, you really do learn something new everyday...

So close, yet nowhere near

Last night was a bit depressing. We went to the pool and took the girls swimming for the first time this year. Kylie was still pretty tentative but Kerrigan took right to it like she'd been doing it for ages. Our girls continue to be different in every way.

I've been feeling pretty good about the progress I've been making with my fitness training and the results are definetly there. I obviously lost a lot of weight, and now with the lifting I'm doing I can start to see the muscle definition coming in. The "mirror test" tells me that I'm definetly making progress, and I have started getting excited about when I might be able to say that I look the way I want to.

Last night, reality hit me over the head. We were playing in the pool and this male lifeguard walks by. This dude was probably 17, if that and just totally ripped. Not huge but very defined and not an ounce of fat on him. Suddenly I felt like I might as well be 400 pounds and eating donuts for every meal for all the good I've done compared to this guy. It was pretty depressing.

I realize that had I done this workout and stuff when I was his age it probably would have taken me about a month to look like that, but the fact that I'm probably close to twice his age means that I have to work a lot harder to get there. I was really kicking myself that I didn't take some "before" pictures last fall because I know I have come a LONG way from where I started, and it would have been encouraging to actually see the progress that has been made.

I know I need to just keep at it. I'm on the right track and it might take a while but I'm going to get there. It's just hard to not be frustrated sometimes.

Viente Nueve

My spanish is a little rusty but I'm pretty sure that the title of this entry says "29". This week I had my last birthday that starts with "twenty". Unless of course I live to be 20,000, but I'd say the odds are against that.

Being older doesn't really bother me all that much, since I'm in better shape now than I have been since high school, but I guess it just makes me take things more seriously. I really just want to be the best Christian, Dad and husband that I can. I hope as I get older that I getter better at all of these.

I guess I had better take the time this year to really enjoy being the last possible age that someone can remotely be misconstrued as a "youth". 29 is really quite an adult age but, technically I'm still in the "twenty-something" age group which lops me in with college sophmores and people who can't wait to turn twenty five so their car insurance will go down. I have nothing in common with those people, but thanks to society, I'm still a "twenty something" for 360 or so more days.

I'm curious how I'm going to handle next year. I doubt it will bother me much to be honest. Hopefully I will continue with my fitness training between now and then and can just stare in the mirror and laugh at 30 like a small dog trying to bite my ankle. If nothing else my wife will get a good laugh at the scene I just described...

My Weekend Rocked

We are trying to sell our house. In fact, we are meeting with a realtor tonight to discuss getting it on the market. Since my wife has accepted a job at our church, it just makes sense to move closer to town.

So in order to help out the look of the front of our house, we decided to buy enough gravel to retop it. Turns out that we needed 20 tons of gravel to put a two inch coat down. I was hoping that the driver would be able to drive forward as he dumped it so that it wouldn't be quite so much work to spread it but apparenly he misunderstood me because he just dumped two gigantic piles right in front of my garage door.

So I spent about 5 hours on saturday and 3 hours on sunday with my wife's help shoveling gravel into a wheelbarrow and spreading it. Needless to say my back is pretty sore. I decided not to work out today since I figure I did about a week's worth over the weekend.

There is still a pretty noticeable hump in front of my garage door but I smoothed it out as best I could. Hopefully no one will notice because I have no interest in putting any more effort into than I already have.

Hopefully our house will sell quickly because I'm nervous about not being able to get it sold. You never know how that stuff is going to work out.

Sorry and Update

Again sorry I have been so absent of late. Things at work have been totally crazy.

In recent weeks I've done some pretty cool things. I went to an NHRA event with my brother in law and it was amazing. If you haven't been, it should be on your list of things to do once, even if you aren't much of a car person. Totally cool.

Fitness-wise things are getting back to normal. I've managed to get my diet back under control and I'm going to a new class now at work. We have new trainers so our old "Boot Camp" class has been replaced with "H.E.A.T." which stands for "High Energy Athletic Training". So far I really like it. It reminds me a lot of the stuff I used to do in preseason sports in high school and the old stuff was getting to be kinda routine so I'm happy to have things changed up a bit. The new trainer also works our abs a lot harder than the old one did, which is where I need a lot of work anyway.

I've started lifting again after a 2 month layoff. Life just got in the way. I'm working with the new trainer to formulate a more specific lifting plan to get me where I want to go. Hopefully it will work out. I did some super sets today just to try something new and I can't hardly move my arms. I'm going on vacation in about 6 weeks so I want to be in the best possible shape I can be by then.

That's about it for the update.