The Latest from Jeff
Happy Mother’s Day to my beautiful wife…
… my fantastic Stepmom and my incredible Mom.
Two pieces of technology I wanted to gush about for a few minutes.
First, Skype. I feel like the last guy getting on the Skype train. The last hold out. Listen. It’s not worth it. The holding out part, I mean. Skype is pretty fantastic!
We just had a baby, yadda, yadda. My Mom was in town for a few weeks to help us get settled. Having her go home was a big, big change in our little guy’s life. But check this out. Two days later, Evan got to see and hear his Grandma again. Even better, he also got to see and hear his Nanna; and his cousins Kali and Kaitlyn got to see and hear Evan for the first time.
You can only say so much about the video phone concept, and I was still on the fence until we actually tried it. I’m sold. It is intoxicating.
Second is Netflix, again. I’m an old school Netflx subscriber. I left for a while, but came back for lots of reasons. I was bummed for a while that the Watch Instantly feature wasn’t available for Macs for a long time, but they finally came around.
So, last Tuesday I got a surprise Netflix disc in the mail. When put in my Wii, I get to watch all this stuff instantly on my TV. All this content right there to browse and watch. I’m a Dish Network subscriber and have a few minor complaints. The On-Demand stuff is slow; the broadband connection has never worked right with multiple customer service calls. In general we’re happy, but the Netflix/Wii system worked flawlessly within 5 minutes of the disc being taken out of the mailbox.
The timing of these is great, what with the baby leading to us continuing our homebody trend for a bit longer.
I’ve broken down and agreed to do the run leg for the Alpha Ski to Sea team.
Ski to Sea, for those that don’t know, is a seven-leg race from the Mt. Baker Ski Area to Marine Park in Bellingham. I did the Cross Country Ski leg last year. It was my rookie year, and I did pretty well for not having cross country skied in 25 years.
So I’m doing the running leg this year. It is eight miles down hill from the Ski Area to the Shuksan Department of Transportation station. It’ll be the fastest eight miles I ever run.
I’ve dreaded doing this leg of the race because running eight miles downhill is pretty hard on the body. Knees, shins, toe nails, etc. Also, there is an added factor this year. I won’t be able to devote as much time to training as previous years, because I’ve got a new baby boy that is interesting me a bit more than running 20-25 miles a week in the rain in preparation.
Adding to the time issue is the fact that the run starts at more than 3,500 feet above sea level, and the oxygen content is some 20% lower than at my house. So I’ll need to make a few trips up to the mountain to train and acclimate myself to dealing with less oxygen. There is a 2,000-foot drop in elevation over the length of the run, so I will get more and more oxygen, I just want to make sure I don’t wipe myself out in the first mile.
The good point: it is a good way to kick off my summer training and fitness. If I don’t do it, I will run way less, and not be in shape at all for swimsuit season.
Anyway, I’m doing it. Memorial day weekend, I’m going to wake up at 5 a.m., ride up to the Mountain with Ryan and Jonathan, stand around a ski lodge for a couple of hours in running shorts and a t-shirt, and then run with abandon down the mountain.
We have launched a page for Evan. Photos will be added as he does more and more impressive/adorable things.
Born March 17, 2010. Weighing in at 10lbs, 2oz. 23 inches tall.
Recent activity
-
05-09-2010
-
04-15-2010
-
04-09-2010
-
04-07-2010
-
03-17-2010
-
12-20-2009
-
12-09-2009
-
07-05-2009
-
06-25-2009
-
05-17-2009
-
05-10-2009
-
05-10-2009