More New Bloggers!

After helping Wes and Blakely get inspired to start blogging, we've got some more new bloggers in Jamey and Mary Droddy. We've been friends with Jamey and Mary since they moved here several years ago. They will be moving to Shreveport, Louisianna in January, so they've started a blog to help keep everyone here at "home" in touch with them. Check them out at The Droddy Blog.

See...everybody's doing it...who's next?

Houston, we have a problem...

Last week one of our neighbors spent several hours getting their inflatable Christmas decorations set up just right, with the spotlights pointed exactly where they needed to point for the perfect Christmas display. Unfortunately, this is what they look like most of the time...

Nothing says "Christmas spirit" like deflated snowmen and Santas.

Christmas Decorating

We're a little late on this since we actually did our Christmas decorating a couple of weeks ago. I've always loved being able to decorate the house for Christmas, and though I've never quite gone as far out as Clark Griswold, as you can see in the photo to the left, we've got quite a few boxes full of Christmas decorations. Seems like each of the last few years we've had to run to Target to buy just one more box in order to get everything back to storage after Christmas.

So, after getting our ginormous Christmas tree in the house, lit and decorated, we got to decorating the rest of the house. I think it turned out pretty well, and except for the warm weather outside, we are definitely in the Christmas spirit! Here's a sampling from around the house. Oh yeah...we added a stocking to the mantle this year...but not for the reasons most people would suspect!

Book Review - Once a Runner

In a recent issue of Runner's World magazine, there was an article about the newly published sequel to the book Once A Runner. I'd never even heard of the book, but it apparently is a "cult classic" book for runners. It is the fictional story of Quentin Cassidy, a college "mile" runner who gets kicked out of school, moves into a mountain cabin to begin a grueling training regimen and compete in the Southeast Relays against the best miler in the world.

Originally published in 1978, the book is out of print now. It is such a cult classic that original prints of the book go for upwards of $300 on Ebay and Amazon.com. This fact alone got me intrigued, but I sure wasn't going to pay that kind of money for a book, and I don't have the time or patience to sift through the bargain bins at used bookstore. Luckily, I found it online...literally. Someone has scanned the entire book into a PDF file. Probably not completely legal, but supposedly the author knows about it and doesn't care. I printed it out page by page and finished reading it on my trip to St. Simons.

It was pretty well written and very interesting. Competitive running is not really my thing, but the book does a great job and getting into the mind of a true competitive runner. The training regimen described in the book makes my little 35-mile-a-week program look truly amateurish. If they do reprint it next year, as rumored, I may have to pick up a real copy. I may even have to go ahead and put the sequel, Again to Carthage, on my Christmas list.

St Simons Community Church - Almost Finished!

As Joy has written about before, my main project over the last year has been a new building for St. Simons Community Church. The building has a large auditorium that will seat about 1,000, educational space for children, youth and adults, and of course some administration space. The church has been meeting for several years in some space at a retail center, so they are anxious and excited to be moving into their new home.

Our work is pretty much finished. The church has some work left to do to get the building ready for full time use, so they will actually begin having services there around the first of March. This has been a great project to have worked on for the last year, and the people we've worked with at SSCC have been tremendous. If you happen to be on the island anytime, be sure to drive by or visit one Sunday. Here are a few photos from my trip down earlier this week...

Main entry into the Sanctuary

Entry drive and drive-thru Portico

The Clubhouse - Children's Theater

The Wherehouse - Youth Room

Main stage in the Sanctuary

Cooties!

The Friday-before-last, Joy and I babysat for our friends Jamey and Mary. Their boys, Jonah and Seth, begged us to play the game "Cooties" with them. You may recognize the game from the picture. Needless to say, the game has changed a little since I played it as a kid. The premise is the same, but the parts and pieces that you attach to the Cootie body are a little different. Joy, however, had not ever played the game. In fact, she had never even heard of it!

Well, in her quest to learn more about Cooties, Joy came across this very important public service announcement which the parents of any small children need to see.

Speak to your kids about cooties before cooties speaks to them first.

Marathon Update #6 - A New Personal Best

This is week 13 of my 18-week marathon training program. I'd modified the last couple of weeks in order to fit the Atlanta Half Marathon in, so last week was supposed to be a recovery week with a shorter long run on the weekend. This week was supposed to be an 18-mile long run, but I debated whether or not to cut it short since I'd done 16 last week. The 18-mile long run is the next to last long run in the program before I start the "taper" to the marathon. You gradually reduce mileage over the last couple of weeks in order to let your body recover some in preparation for the race.

When I left the house at 5:30, I still wasn't sure whether I'd do 14-miles or 18-miles. I'd drank a lot of water on Friday in preparation for a long run, and I grabbed a couple of bananas on the way out the door. It was an absolutely perfect morning for running. Hit the streets at Stone Mountain at about 6:00 and cruised the first lap. 4.8 miles down. I was feeling good so I didn't even stop for water. Second lap around wasn't too bad, and was about 1-minute faster than my first lap. 9.6 miles down. Grabbed a sip of water and some Sport Beans and headed back out.

The sun was coming up now, and I was starting to feel the miles but my legs were still feeling good. As I was finishing up the third lap, 14.4 miles, I had a decision to make. Stop or Run. I sipped some water, gave it a quick thought and said, "what the heck." About 41 minutes later I was finishing up my fourth lap around the mountain for a new personal best 19.2 mile run! That's over 2/3 the total distance of the marathon, so pounding out those miles is very encouraging. Next week will be a drop-back recovery week, and then my last long run of 20+ miles. Five weeks to go...

Wedding Dance

I tried to get Joy to do something like this at our wedding, but she refused. I wonder why?


(h/t: Kelly)

1,000 Visits!

Sometime early this morning, we passed the 1,000 visit mark. Not too bad a milestone for our little blog here. Still a long way to go to even get into Carlos' neighborhood (372,000+), but thanks to everyone that stops by. Hope you are enjoying it, and we'll try to keep working on it so everyone knows what's going on!

P.S. I know it's probably actually only about five people who check the blog five or six times a day, but 1,000 is still a fun number!

Carter Martin Classic

The Martin family have been friends of our family since I was a child.

This is the story of Carter, Scott and Leigh Ann's second son who died of cancer in 2004. This video was shown during the 2006 Carter Martin Classic. The Classic is held annually to raise money for cancer research in cooperation with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

Please visit http://www.cartermartinclassic.org/ for more information or you can visit Children's Health Care of Atlanta and select The Carter Samuel Martin Experimental Therapy Research Fund to make a donation to help find a cure.

Marathon Update #5 - 16+ Miles and a 100-Mile Month

From November 1 to November 30 I logged 123.8 miles! Hard to believe, for me, and I never would have thought that I would actually accomplish this kind of quantity in training. Its a good thing I'm a morning person or else a lot of those 5:00 AM runs would have probably gotten skipped. Last week alone I put in almost 40 miles, which is, by far, my heaviest workload so far. I finished the week and kicked off December with a 16.4 mile run around Stone Mountain Saturday morning. It was a long, hard run and a little bit slower than any of my previous training runs. But it is the miles that are important in getting the body ready to take on 26.2 miles.

This is my Training Log chart since the beginning of September when I started my official marathon training program. It's good to see those long run bars get taller and taller. 42 days to go!

By the way, if you have any interest in checking out the Disney Marathon Program I posted about below, you can see the whole thing online. Just click the linky.

News That Makes Me Feel Old

Saw this article the other day on ESPN.com about the 2008 Major League Baseball Hall of Fame candidates. A player has to have been retired from the game for five years before being eligible for the Hall of Fame.

Seriously? David Justice? It seems like it was just a few years ago that he was the hero of the Braves only World Series championship. Tim Raines? These guys were in their prime when I was in high school and college and they are already eligible for the Hall of Fame?

I'm not sure if David Justice will make it into the Hall of Fame, but I just can't believe that he's already eligible. Boy, I'm getting old.

Thanksgiving

A few pictures from our Thanksgiving...I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Emily & Erin fixing their plates.
Jenny's chocolate cake...

Men watching football...Girls were playing games.

The Countdown Begins

The reality of running the Disney Marathon in January is starting to set in. I got my official race program in the mail yesterday. I will be #9931.

55 Days and counting...

Not Quite The Griswold Tree, But Close...

So, we went Christmas tree shopping Monday evening. We started out at Pike's, because Joy wanted to try to help them get out of bankruptcy (And at the prices they were charging for trees, we might actually have made a dent!). Didn't find one that suited us, so we headed down to the local Home Depot.

The prices were much better, so were looking through the 9'-10' trees looking for a good one. We had pretty much settled on one, but - like an idiot - I decided to pick up one more. Immediately, Joy says, "That's the one!" Unfortunately, it was actually a 10'-11' tree...but not wanting to disappoint my wife, we got it anyway. I strapped it to the top of the Envoy and off we went.

While Joy headed off to her Monday night Bible Study, my dad came over to help me stand it up and string the lights. Turns out that the trunk was a little crooked, so we had to do a little sawing at the base to get it stand up straight in the stand. Eventually, we got it up and got it in, and boy is it BIG! I'm pretty sure that its the biggest tree we've ever gotten, but it looks great and now it is starting to look a lot like Christmas!