Day 7.056: Structural inspection

It wasn't a slam-dunk today (to willfully use a US sporting term) at the house in Maine. However, I'm now home and I've been looking at the photos and videos that have appeared on the computer in my three week absence.

Most of them seem to have been taken by E5N1. Some of the videos are comedy gold, but I haven't got the energy to deal with them this evening, so here is a still picture that I would have been rather pleased with if I'd taken it.

Straight out of the camera for your pleasure - check out those walls!

Day 5.213: Seeing the Olympics

I had lunch at a sports bar with my colleagues today. When we arrived we noticed that of the forty or so TV screens exactly zero were showing Olympics coverage. We sat in disbelief for several minutes looking at the 'sports' that were showing which included little-league baseball and the local weather forecast. I had time to take this picture.

Then a commercial-break finished and one channel did turn out to be showing an Olympic event - the hand-ball - of course the more popular events will be saved for later so that they can be shown 'live' on the prime-time show!

We did have another Olympic-watching moment today though. When Exile #2 collected the kids from camp at lunchtime, E5N1 (who was wearing his London 2012 t-shirt) came to meet her followed by his camp-counselor.

"Did you really go to see the Olympics?" the counselor asked.

"No...what did he tell you?"

"That he'd been to the Olympics - to see the Women's Beach Volleyball."

That's my boy!

Day 5.159: Father's Day

I ran 23 miles this morning. It was obvious that the family had remembered it was Father's Day when I got back to find them all out on the driveway to cheer me home. I don't normally get a reception like that from my training runs!

After I made myself presentable, the kids presented their cards:

E5N1's (on the right) inside said "TO DAD BANANA LOVE [E5N1]"

Exile #4's was a booklet about me including such statements as "My father's favorite sport is football" and "My father is funny" with pictures to accompany (including what I'm assuming is a rugby ball!)

Exile #4 also took on photography duties - trying out her new camera.  Here are her pictures of the present unwrapping:

Such great gifts (the bottom right picture is a from a recipe in the "Smoke" book involving smoking a chicken with a can of beer shoved inside!)

And Exile #2 took the camera over to catch this Father's Day moment!

Day 5.053: Anyone for snowball?

We had a going nowhere kind of day today for a number of reasons.

1. Exile #3 was at a sleepover until 10.30am
2. When she came home she reported that she'd had only two hours of sleep.
3. E5N1 is coming down with a cold and was very unhappy at the suggestion of an outing.
4. E5N1 is coming down with a cold and his behaviour made us wary of an outing.
5. Exile #4 was determined to have one more play in the rapidly melting snow and have me take some photos.

In this last, I totally failed her - although in my defence, she didn't remind me when she was actually out or ready to go out - so here's a picture from her first session in the snow on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Exile #2 and I have been doing kitchen update research and a second session of filling in tax information, so we had our share of fun!

Day 5.026: Super party

It was only when I bumped into someone I knew at the supermarket that the real irony of the situation hit me.  We - the British ex-pats - were hosting a Super Bowl party!

We had a very nice evening with people who we've known for nearly five years (apart from the one year old!) and the game was everything that an independent or a Giants fan could wish for.

Unfortunately, a large number of the party were Patriots fans, but no-one who really felt too strongly was still here to watch the exciting end of the game so we got away without too much violent disappointment.

Day 5.005: Cool running

I do almost all of my running first thing in the morning, before breakfast. It's a time I can control - not that I find getting out of bed early easy, but I can do it.  So, I get up when my alarm goes off (or sometimes the second time it goes off) I have everything pretty much ready to go.  The next thing is to check the weather.  Sometimes I look out of the window, but unless a neighbour has left an outside light on I'm unlikely to see much, so I pick up my phone and check the temperature on there.

This morning it said 0°F.  I had been expecting it, but there it was.  Was it possible for me to run in those temperatures?

I've nearly finished reading novelist Haruki Murakami's wonderful memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running in it he nails the potential disaster in allowing excuses to stop him running, "I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished."  I'm perpetually afraid that if I miss a couple of days of running I'll just stop and never get back to it - so today had to be a running day.

To the two shirts, tights, gloves and hat I had been wearing on days when the temperature was in the teens, I added a pair of glove liners, a fleece and a pair of fleece jogging bottoms.  I swapped out my hat for a real cold-weather one with a velcro chin strap to hold it over my ears and added my regular high-visibility bib and headlight worn around my waist and off I went.

This is what I looked like in the early morning sunshine when I got back just over an hour later.  The temperature was still 0°F.

For the first time ever, I didn't see a single runner or dog-walker. A few people drove past but I managed not to catch their expressions.

The run was OK. I walked outside and felt OK, I took a breath and thought, "Oh yes - that's cold!" After a mile I'd cooled off from the outside but was starting to warm up from the running and realised I was fine. Then I started to worry about whether I would get too warm and have to take some clothing off - but worried that if I did I would get cold. I needn't have worried about that.

The shoulders and back of my fleece gradually got a coating of ice and so, more surprisingly, did my knees - but that didn't really bother me - I was warm and running easily.

In fact, the problem came after about seven miles - and it was my little fingers - as has often been the case on my less-frigid winter runs.  I pulled them out of their finger holes, balled them into my palms and finished up - I ran just under eight miles in all.

So - yes - it is possible for me to run when it's 0°F.  I found out when I got home there was a wind-chill advisory due to the extreme cold.  Fortunately my route is fairly well sheltered.  Still, I'm considering this morning's run to be fairly hard-core, if only because I seemed to be the only one brave or foolish enough to be attempting one.

Day 4.364: High, diving

A couple more Duplo adventures.  The first was my answer to, "Can I build a tower up to the ceiling?" along with my answer to, "Will anyone help me?"

And the second is what happened when Exile #4 let her imagination run free.  E5N1 may or may not have helped - he was certainly there (except when he wasn't):

Talking of swimming, which we weren't - except in pictures, the girls had their first lesson today after "the holidays".   They both reported that it was the "best lesson ever" so maybe it is not a bad thing that next Monday is another holiday so it will be another two weeks before they have another one.

Day 4.300: Know it sounds frunny...

After a rough first week of running after my first 10K race, I had a good run again and decided it would be good to run one more race this year - so I signed up for the inaugural Fall Frun 10K.  So this morning, bright and early (slightly more and less so respectively because of the end of daylight saving time), I made my way to Shenendehowa High School where the gym and the running track were being used for the event.

The actual race was mostly on the public roads of Clifton Park but the end of the race was three-quarters of a lap of the track which was a fun way to end things - I hadn't run on a track for many years.

The race was very well organised and had some fun technology including instant online results during the race and live video streaming.  I don't think it kept Exile #2 and the kids in rapt attention however!  I hung around at the end hoping I'd won the guitar in the draw, but sadly, despite my chances being increased by the dwindling crowds and the must-be-there-to-win rule, I'll have to settle with coming away with a personal best - having knocked a rather pleasing thirty seconds per mile off my time from two weeks ago.

So, after a 195 day furlough for the feature, it's (a fairly simple) pop pun 120 for title watchers like Frun-day morning.

Day 4.226: Friends and sparring partners

We spent the afternoon and evening with friends.  The seven kids (from three families) and seven adults (from five families) enjoyed a fairly idyllic afternoon - the kids playing nicely and leaving the adults to have a rather civilised conversation on the deck.

It was much later before I realised that I hadn't taken a single picture (a serious breach of my blogger's code).  By then we were the only visitors left at the house of our hosts and Exile #4 and E5N1 were dressed to kill (well, to hit anyway).

There was no fighting.  We had a lovely time.  I'll try to do better.

Day 4.154: Gym-tastic

I left work in time to see the girls' end-of-year gymnastic display this evening.

They both did very well, doing the three presentations (floor, beam and bars) in their different ways.

Earlier I had missed E5N1's equivalent event - but Exile #2 captured it for me and I'm happy to share it with you.



So cute!

Day 3.168: It's just a game

Of course I'm talking about the baseball yesterday. We had a great night. The home team (who we root, root, rooted for) won and it didn't rain. As ever, the whole event was fun and the fireworks were great. Here's the slideshow - it was a lot of fun trying to get good shots of the action and the spectacle and the fireworks.



Of course, today brought another sporting event. Sadly.

But enough of that - If you are reading this before July 2nd, you might want to rush over to BBC Radio 2's page here and enjoy They Might Be Giants. They are on from 2.15 to 2.40 and do two songs, their own Meet The Elements at 2.28 and a wonderful cover of Squeeze's Up The Junction at 2.37 (they point out during the introduction that it contains everything that Americans don't understand about the British - a subject very near to my own heart!).