Best Christmas ever!

When a runner says that, you know it means one thing: I got a Garmin Forerunner! And not any Forerunner, wifey got me the fancy new Forerunner 405! It's so sleek, so stylish, so streamlined--I love it! I've named him Fenny, after fennel, the English translation of the word marathon. We left our camera at home so there are no pictures, but when we get back to NYC I'll take pictures of the newest member of the sRod running family. (BTW, I am never forgetting our camera again, we had to buy a disposable camera yesterday and apparently those suckers go for $20 nowadays. WTF? They should come with a photographer for that price.)

There are the usual list of reasons I love Fenny: cool techno gadget, stylish accessory, runner status symbol, GPS tracking, pacing, etc. But the main reason I'm totally stoked about this present (thanks again wifey!!!) is that it will save so much time. Mapping out routes always takes so long, and then memorizing them is a tricky business, especially when you get home from a long run and realize that you accidentally cut two miles out of your run. Then there are all the stats that I no longer have to tediously write down every morning.

My only apprehension with Fenny is becoming an addict (see Nitmos and any other runner with a Forerunner). I've read all the stories of not being able to leave the house because the Garmin wasn't charged or delaying runs because it was taking a long time to find the satellites. By comparison, I like the simplicity of running with just a watch. So I've made a little promise to myself to not freak out if Fenny isn't cooperating one day and I have to strap on the plain ol' Timex. (Let's see how long this lasts).

The frustrating bit is that a full-fledged Fenny test run will have to wait until next weekend. I (intentionally) didn't bring any running gear on this trip. I don't like running around my in-laws' 'hood because it's all mountainous and cold-like, and I didn't anticipate running while in West Virginia with my family because we'll be skiing the whole time (although the weather looks iffy right now).

Hopefully all your Christmases/holidays were just as fantastic!

Merry Christmas to all

Get it? It's a Christmas runner! I'll stop the horrible humor now.

The snow storm on December 19 cancelled the Time Warner appointment we had scheduled. Now the appointment has been rescheduled for the 30--just in time for the next storm, I'm sure. I am never getting internet back home again. At least the internet is working here at the in-laws' place.

By the way, since I haven't run in over a week and my in-laws run a bakery out of their house expect a very fat sRod after this holiday season.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hate Time Warner

Sorry peoples. Of course the morning after I say that I'm going to catch up on posts and start posting more on my normal schedule is when my internet connection decides to die. After spending an hour unplugging and plugging and restarting every piece of technology in the house I got on an hour long phone call (90% of which was spent on hold) with Time Warner to figure out what was wrong.

Note to those of you with paperless bills (like myself): ALWAYS write down the phone number to your internet service provider on a paper somewhere, otherwise when your connection goes out you don't have a way to look up their number.

It turned out they couldn't do anything over the phone and we had to setup an appointment for a technician. When the guy came yesterday morning he said that the signal coming into the building was coming in at 30 which is way too high, it's a problem with the box on the outside of the building and he needs to set up an appointment for an engineer to take a look at it (huh?). This basically means it'll be mid-week before we're up again at home.

Now that we've been computer-less at home for over a week we bit the bullet and came into wifey's office to use the computers to get catch up on stuff.

I'll be catching up on blogs tonight, among a thousand other tasks that I didn't want to do at work (because my whole office can see my screen given the layout of the place).

Sweet Jesus do you people write a lot...243 posts? Really?

The busyness continues

That's right, busy-ness. Between coming back from vacation, Christmas shoping, and clients that don't quit throwing last minute demands this week has had very few pauses. The good news is that--save for the week of vacation--I have been running about twice a week and doing oft-neglected weight training at least once a week. Also, the pains in my knees that have been off and on since the Marathon and have been starting to freak me out have appeared to subside after a week of consistent stretching.

I'm hoping to get a full post in this weekend and, now that I'm back at the gym regularly, see a few gym carnies posts in the near future. I'm also catching up on 150+ post in my blogroll...so look for some dated comments from me.