...miserable yet awesome.

Today was a LONG day… I worked in the morning, had lunch with some of my 4-H alums who were home from college for Thanksgiving, had a make-up fiddle lesson, assisted with the Area 4-H/FFA Crops, Entomology, & Forestry judging events in Plymouth, and then went to the gym to run. I just got home about 45 minutes ago and had a nice big bowl of Special K with granola on top for supper.

My run tonight was miserable yet awesome.

5K Prep Update

The running preparations have been going pretty good since the last time I wrote. I’ve been doing intervals of two minutes of walking and seven minutes of running.

Old Crow Medicine Show is AMAZING!

My sister Anne, bro-in-law Jeremy, my friend Randy, and I attended our second Old Crow Medicine Show concert in Chicago at the Vic Theatre on November 19th, 2009. Shows like this are in venues that are standing room only on the main floor, so you have to be early. We were waiting outside the door when the doors open and got to be right down front; leaning against the stage the whole time…it was awesome!

(The trip to the theatre is another whole story, since Randy and I had to get from a conference at Purdue in West Lafayette to the Vic in Chicago…it was all going good until we hit traffic. I really don’t know how people deal with that traffic on a daily basis. It was hell.)

If you're unfamiliar with the Old Crow Medicine Show, you should become familiar with them...they're awesome. I'm especially enamored with Ketch Secor, the fiddle player. Actually, “enamored” might be too weak of a verb. Ketch is amazing and thanks to our great spot against the stage, I was probably not 7 feet away from him!!

If you want to know why I'm enamored with Ketch and his fiddle skills and why this is an awesome band to see live, check them out on You Tube or check out this live footage on their website: http://www.crowmedicine.com/media/video-fall-on-my-knees.htm

I took a BUNCH of pictures. Here’s a link to my photos from the show… http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=125829&id=634281938&l=922c8a85ee

Today's Lesson: Don't Eat and Run?

A few weeks back I joined the Valparaiso Noon Kiwanis Club. The club meets every Wednesday at noon (thus the name) at Strongbow’s for lunch. So far, I’ve been enjoying meeting some new people at the meetings and trying to get the hang of how this organization operates. Each week there’s a different program. (Side note:  If anyone who's around Valpo ever wants to consider joining Kiwanis or just coming to a meeting to see what it's about, let me know!)

This week we heard from one of our very own Kiwanis members who is retired from the United States Air Force. She presented a very intriguing program about a segment of the military for which she worked that accounts for service men and women who were lost during past military conflicts. During the years at the end of her career, she was involved in accounting for those lost in the Vietnam War. I found it all very interesting. She gave us a few web links to check out to learn more about these efforts: http://www.jpac.pacom.mil/ and http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/

I just wanted to mention that, now I’ll get back to how Kiwanis is playing into the originally intended theme of this blog which is my “Fatty to 5K Quest”…

Some Hoosier “Double” Trouble: 2007 Spring Turkey Season

The following story was written by my hunting mentor, Randall L. Dickson, of Thrill Kill Decoys. The Thrill Kill blog is full of lots of turkey hunting information, photos, and videos: http://thrillkilldecoys.blogspot.com/.

It was a typical spring morning in northern Indiana, with a crisp chill creeping under my skin while a clear blue sky materialized overhead. I’d been back in my Hoosier homeland for a week, following 15 days of barely-interrupted turkey hunting across Tennessee and Kansas. But the itch hadn’t gone away, and I couldn’t stay out of my favorite turkey woods on this Sunday morning, with Indiana’s season opener looming just 3 days in the distance.

I've been at it for two months now...

Though it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here, rest assured that I’m still involved in my “Fatty to 5K Quest”. I haven’t given up yet.