Somehow I managed to finish the Rock n’ Roll marathon in San Diego yesterday. 26.2 miles in 6 hours and 44 minutes (official chip time 6:44:06). That’s not a fast time, but I’m happy that I actually finished this one. Overall, I was 14470 out of 15771 that finished the 26.2 miles - supposedly 22000+ people started it. I ran the first half in 3 hours and then hit a wall at about mile 21 and slowed down quite a bit. Ioan finished it in 4:00:07 and Michele finished in 4:32:46, so they had to wait for me at the finish line.

I never imagined how inspiring it would be to do this marathon. There were people out there that I never would expect to even start a marathon, let alone finish. There were people crossing the finish line an hour after I had (I think they cut the rest off after that and shuttled them to the finish), barely walking, but smiles on their faces. I saw people fall hard while we were running downtown and ended up watching them come into the finishing area smiling and laughing. Michele said she even saw someone come across the line with a walker…crazy stuff.

My feet took the majority of the beating yesterday. There are some pretty huge blisters that showed up…I think they started developing about the 15 mile mark. I never cramped up and don’t really have too much muscle soreness. Tylenol 8 hour is good stuff
Michele, Ioan and I are already talking about what to do next. We’re thinking about a relay triathlon or something. I hope that we do. This was an awesome experience.

I’ll write more later and add some pics when I get home. Going to do some relaxing today.

Christie had an ultrasound yesterday and it looks like the new baby is going to be a girl. I’m pretty excited. Part of me wishes we were having a boy, but Mackenzie has been so great that I can see another girl making things even better. It just sucks to be me because I’ll be sharing a house with 3 women

I keep coming up with things that “should” improve the development process at work. Why does it seem like the more of those things that I come up with, the less that gets done by me? Seems like there are all kinds of big ideas coming up and being implemented, but then I become the bottleneck because the processes all include having to rely on me for input or supervision. How do people get around that? I really want to hand some of this stuff over to the programmers, but they’re so damn busy that it might not get the attention it should be getting. We hired someone to handle QA and I’m hoping that he fits in where I need him. So far he’s pretty detailed about stuff…almost too detailed, but that’s what I like.

At least I can look at World Cup Blog and see how well everything can come together. We’re kicking some ass with that thanks to Bob, all of the writers, Chris and everyone at BootsnAll that has put an effort into it.

Maybe I need to rethink this 2 foot high stack of books and papers on my desk marked for future reading…

The Myth of Keeping Up

Just read these articles about Earl Woods (Tiger’s dad) and couldn’t help but think that I hope that I can be near as good a father to Mackenzie and the new baby…

Earl was right all along

Earl was a teacher, philosopher, warrior and friend

Just sitting here in a cafe at Marco Polo Airport in Venice checking my email and killing time. Bought 60 minutes of access for about $6.50 (depending on what the exchange rate actually is for USD to Euros). I’m waiting for Sean to get here and we’re being picked up by one of our Hostel partners.

On the way in, we flew over the Alps, which were beautiful. Here’s a pic:

Our new house is finally complete and now it really is ours. Got the keys tonight and started putting our own finishing touches on it. We hope to be ready for move-in within the next 3 weeks.

Looks official to me - we’re going to have another one.

Guys Only

Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Car Wash Fun

Some fun commands:

Kiss
Destroy the Car
Wax
Wash
Love
Blow

Additional command ideas are appreciated

I watched Murderball on Saturday night. Great movie. I didn’t know what to expect. A friend recommended it to me. It was really inspiring to see that these guys who are quadrapalegic haven’t given up on life and can actually enjoy sports. The part on teaching quadrapalegics how to have sex was pretty funny too…I’d never really thought of the issues involved in that kind of thing.