as a former grand rapidian who still has friends and family in the area and visits regularly, i’m not sure how i missed that there was record flooding along the grand river ( and presumably elsewhere ). it looks pretty serious but i assume we’re not talking 1904 flood serious. any reports from the streets?
update: someone sent me a link to a crazy picture taken at the riverfront plaza. wow!
so i’m standing, staring at the fridge wondering what i can whip together and a plan slowly comes together. a wonderfully tasty plan. a plan so wonderfully tasty that i can’t believe it had never occurred to me before – BACON AND BLUE CHEESE BREAKFAST TORTILLAS!
i scrambled some fresh eggs from The Girls and started a traditional omelette, then added a bit of cooked and crumbled of organic prairie bacon and organic valley blue cheese and folded it and let it cook for a bit while steaming some sonoma organic, yellow corn tortillas until soft. for a spicy finishing touch, i added a few drops of hot sauce.
i’m not sure the picture does the amazing taste of the bacon and blue cheese breakfast tortilla justice.
it’s definitely going into regular breakfast rotation.
after a long, long, long period of serious unreliability from my “hosting with a human touch” hosting provider who i’ve been with for more than a decade ( who apparently has decided to not answer emails but i’m not going to name names), i’ve moved the vast wasteland over to amazon web services on the hopes that i can get back to better than 50% uptime and, you know, when you click on a link it will actually work.
it was relatively painless getting things running in the cloud, but my LAMP stack admin skills are a little rusty so let me know if anything goes BOOM!
while i was futzing with my backend, so to speak, i took the opportunity to finally bring back the logo which got dropped during a redesign a ways back for mundane reasons. who knew it would take me a few years to bring it back. hi. ho.
and i took the opportunity to remind everyone, front and center in the header, just how long i’ve been doing the vast wasteland. intertwingled SINCE 2000! it never ceases to amuse me that after 13 years the vast wasteland is still in the top search results for the phrase coined by ted nelson to refer the complex of interrelations in human knowledge.
who knows, maybe i’ll even make an “about” page after 13 years.
update: right after i published this mysql crapped its pants. so we’ll see how this goes. might be a little bumpy while i tune things.
odin loves collecting special boxes to stash stuff in and at some point he got this box which is a souvenier commemorating a redwood empire railroad run on july 31st, 1931 loaded with 118 cars of redwood which was then the largest rail movement of lumber ever.
i assume, but have no idea if it’s true, that the box is made from redwood from that day? and i wonder when the box was actually made.
so i decided to take a picture of it and ask the internets because i’m sure someday someone will find this post and give me the answer!
the box has a stamp from union lumber company in fort bragg, california which was incorporated in 1891.
i did find a cool black and white video on youtube circa 1930 which shows the redwood empire special chugging along with a sign on the side of the train that states “100 CARS OF REDWOOD LUMBER TO POINTS EAST” but doubt it’s from the same run.
so, i found myself in an easter church service and was bemused to open the program and find it done in none other than comic sans which is a font originally intended to imitate the feel of comic book lettering and is infamous for misuse which is chronicled on sites such as ban comic sans.
it certainly wouldn’t be my first choice for an easter church service program but, hey, the CERN scientists presented higgs boson findings in comic sans and the vatican published a 62-page online photo album to commemorate Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy in the font so the church program is actually in pretty good company.
while we’re Beginning of The Neverending Hockey Season in the big city of onalaska, wisconsin, our community ice arena is closing down for the season in our little town of viroqua which means The Last Open Skate of The Season is upon us.
what will we do from 6-8pm on saturdays and sundays?!
i thought it’d be fun to see if i can still shoot clumsy video and skate at the same time while attempting to avoid the rink rats. is it just me or does odin appear to take out a kid on the ice as he races around the rink? whoops!
after skating around for an hour with his poppi ( yes, he still tolerates me skating with him for awhile before ditching me for his buddies ), it’s time for The Races!
and yes, he won again. but next year he’ll migrate to the next age group and have to skate against the 9 and 10 year olds. so this might be his last win for awhile. but maybe not, he’s pretty fast.
want to know what motivates a eight year old to win every race? the prize is rink concession food that he most certainly mostly doesn’t get at home 
and so The Last Open Skate of The Season ends, with The Prized Nacho with Weird Cheese Food in hand and maybe just a bit of an attitude about his poppi taking his picture.
4 weeks after hitting the hundred pounds lost mark, i’ve lost 6 more pounds which means, through the magic of math, i’ve lost 106 pounds!
according to the BMI calculators, at 189 pounds i have a body mass index of 23 which puts me in the the 23rd weight percentile for my 6’4″ frame and also means i weigh what most other people my height wish they weighed. it also means i’ve erased 23 years of weight gains and now weigh what i did in high school.
truth be told, i haven’t really been trying to lose any more weight. in fact, i’ve been trying to not lose any more! i guess i’ll have to try a little harder. after running clear across the country i’ve been gradually cutting back my miles and have been averaging 25 miles a week, down from 45 a week. alas, it’s going to be tough but i’ll just have to eat a little more
and, yes, i’m still working on phase II fitness towards the goal of doing 100 consecutive push-ups and 200 consecutive sit-ups and am making steady progress.
after 5 weeks, i’m heading into the last week of the training and did 175 push-ups today, 480 for the week and 1,308 total. and i did 261 sit-ups today, 698 for the week and 1,970 total which is all a little mind-blowing since i could barely do 10 push-ups and 30 sit-ups when i started. progress! just one week until the test to see if i can do 100 consecutive push-ups and 200 consecutive sit-ups!
i guess it’s probably time for a before and after picture
normally at this time of year, we’re closing out another fun hockey season. the last games are played and the ice is melted at our community arena and we enjoy a few weekends with nothing much to do as the weather warms and spring sets in.
but this year, odin has been enjoying hockey so much that he decided he wanted to join the heat hockey club in the big city of onalaska, wisconsin.
they have enough players and money to keep their ice year round and they had their first practice of the off season this weekend and continue through june! which means, in all likelihood, we’ll be gearing up for hockey on 80+ degree days. and it also means we’ll be making a trip to the big city twice a week and giving up a good chunk of our weekend days. but odin had a great time at the first practice running drills and meeting kids from around the area so that makes it all worthwhile.
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i get asked every day how i lost lost 100 pounds and the shortest answer i give is that i ran a lot and a little less. at the time i hit the 100# mark i had run 2,357 miles ( as of writing this i’ve now run 2422 miles ).
i wondered how far 2,422 miles is, in terms of driving across the U.S., and thanks to this ask metafilter post learned that 2,357 miles is almost exactly the same distance as the shortest drive across the continental U.S. from san diego, california to jacksonville, florida.
so, i’ve run the equivalent of the shortest drive across the U.S. with plus two marathons and a half marathon!
and that’s how you lose 100 pounds
and so it was finally time for the raffle drawing and, while we sure hoped somebody who bought a ticket for odin would win at least one of the prizes, turns out we didn’t sell any winning tickets.
but remember, everyone who bought one is a winner for helping odin to get a new malamute puppy!
i don’t want to name names because i didn’t ask if everyone was comfortable with being publically thanked, but thanks to all who bought a ticket. you know who you are and your generosity is very, very, very much appreciated.
i’m not exactly sure when we’ll be getting the puppy. i think it might be around june depending on how the breeding goes. i’m sure you’ll hear more about it in the future.
and remember, you’ll have 6 more chances to win a prize in upcoming school fundraising raffles, but i can’t promise we’ll get a new puppy every year
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