Well, it's been a week since my last post after posting almost daily for a few weeks. It's been a busy and wonderful Holiday season. Here are some highlights:

- Awesome Christmas! The kids has a great time and have had a great week with their family and friends and new toys.

- We enjoyed the company of my parents and in-laws as well as visits by many friends over the course of the week with plenty of indulgence (over-eating) and a little exercise.

- My wife and I took on our annual Christmas project (still in progress) by fixing up our dining room. We are painting and I am building some neo-classical casing to encase our otherwise boring dining room entrance. When I'm not working or training, I enjoy wood working type projects.

- The low light was a rather bad car accident in which my little Mazda 626 was totaled. A high-school girl didn't even see me as she raced out of a fast-food restaurant and t-boned us. The best news, of course, is that everyone was okay - especially given that my 2 1/2 year old daughter took the impact. Whew! We are just thankful she was okay.

- And finally, a little political note. We watched Star Wars III last night. I had forgotten there was some controversy regarding its potential jabs at Bush. Regardless, I loved the movie. The whole series were a bit hokie perhaps, but I love sci-fi and I thought this one was one of the best and perhaps the best of the 6. As far as the political undertones, I found them amusing and not particularly relevant but nonetheless interesting. You could in fact look at a few scenes and suggest that the Jedi better represent Bush's views: the Jedi plan to spy on the chancellor for example. Also, the Jedi were (GASP) going to kill the chancellor because his evil "was too dangerous." In fact, had he succeeded in killing him, there would be no Darth Vader and the dark side may have been vanquished. So much for "war is not the answer." Anyway, I loved the movie and was not thinking politics while watching it :-)

Have a Happy and Safe New Year!

HooDo

My wife and I ran together this morning. A rare treat for a family with 3 kids all under age 10. We have both run a few marathons, but rarely get to do this, so having family in town for Christmas afforded us the opportunity.

L-dog, as I'll call her, just completed the NYC Marathon last month. It was not her best in terms of time, but she acknowledges that it may have been the best experience running along side 38,000+ other runners and about 2 million spectators. Here's a mug shot of her crossing the finish line!

It's fun to run together as it turns out to be some of the best together time we get unencumbered by other distractions. This time we talked about her career as a MLM Party planner and whether or not she should pursue an opportunity with a different company. Of course, we also discussed other hopes and dreams for the future. We both sometimes come up with the greatest ideas (and sometimes the silliest) while we are running, together or not - must be the pheromones.

Run stats:
Miles: 7.1
Pace: 8:39
Temp: 30F
Dreams: UNLIMITED

Life is good. Run Hard.

I heard a discussion on talk radio this morning regarding this contentious topic. This is a topic I don't have much trouble with - not to say I'm right so much as I'm just very comfortable with my conclusions. While it may taint your opinion of my stance, I will say that I am not religious or spiritual in any way - although my wife is and we go to church periodically.

First Amendment Issue. I do not believe the "establishment" clause necessarily prohibits the discussion of Intelligent Design in a public school. I believe that clause has been pursued much too aggressively with the likes of Newdow (God in the pledge and now on coins) and the ACLU. The existence, or non-existence, of a God to me does not establish a religion. I view a religion more as the specific definition of that God and the culture and philosophy around that deity. I'm not an atheist and I don't buy their argument that the use of God on public institutions is somehow a violation of the first amendment.

Having said that, based on what I know about Intelligent Design (admittedly, not much) I firmly believe it does NOT belong in a science class as an alternative to the theory of evolution. Evolution, with all of its flaws, is based entirely in scientific reasoning. While it may not be right, it is based on what we know and can observe. ID on the other hand, is based on what some want to believe. To suggest that there is some first cause may in fact turn out to be right, but given that the only proof is that things ended up in order instead of chaos is not scientific in nature. ID is based in part on filling in BIG blanks based on what we don't know. Sure, evolution fills in blanks, but based on what we can observe. I'm not saying that one is better or more right, simply that ID is not a scientific theory so much as it is a logical and philosophical one.

From listening to news about this topic, I get the distinct impression (and I could be wrong) that the push behind ID is almost exclusively coming from conservative Christians. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, but it tells me that the effort is more to protect a creationism ideology than it is to advance science. I don't feel that evolution has to be antithetical to creationism anyway.

Bottom line: Don't teach ID in my kid's science class just to protect your child or project your beliefs on others. Don't teach evolution like it is fact, but rather challenge the flaws - and use science rather than supernatural reasoning.

Quite an eventful ride home last night.

First I had some guy yell ARE YOU CRAZY at me. Well, yes probably, but the funny thing was that this guy was not directly behind me. He was at least 2 or 3 cars back and maybe more. The car behind me chose not to pass for some reason (I hate that, but won't complain if they'd rather stay back there and wait for an easier pass) and a car a few back honked. This was for about all of 100 yards before I got to a stop sign. Then the car in front at the stop sign had to wait for about 20 cars to go by, She went and I had to wait for one more then I went. and then the yell came. Maybe he thought I was the reason he was losing all of about 1 minute of time on his commute. I'm not mad at the guy and I think his anger was misplaced a bit, but people (including me sometimes) get so angry on their commutes to the point of being utterly irrational. When I've done that in the past, I feel so bad about it two minutes later and for the next hour! These days, I have become much more patient in the car and on my bike. Good for everyone.

But that's not all. About 9 miles in, this guy on a bike literally blows my doors off he passed me so fast. Well, I was taking it easy, but I don't like people passing me so I quickly caught up and tried to hold his wheel. Catching him was easy, but it was all I could do to hang on. When we hit a little rise, he completely blew me away - although I was able to catch him at the next red light about a mile later. I would like to say that if I was on my faster bike with no backpack and commute bag that I could have stayed with him, but I have to admit the guy was just plain fast. Oh well, I have some work to do. In the meantime, it took me at least an hour for my lungs to recover from that workout - ouch.

Ride ON!

Well, for Atlanta at least, it is cold. It does get colder, and I will probably see a morning or two in the teens, but this morning's high-20s was pretty cold for riding your bike.

Fortunately, that's not my bike, but I did feel like that at first. I didn't think the 5 to 10 degree difference would impact me very much, but I felt the cold on my bare face for the first time - may be time for a mask. Of course, after about 15 minutes into the ride I was mostly fine. I tried some of those ski boot warmers and they helped a little, but I still need to work out some better gear for this temp.

Miles: 13.1
Time: Didn't even want to know - just took my time and enjoyed the scenery
Temp: 28F
Blistex: frequent and heavy applications - nothing worse than chapped lips

I also ran yesterday. Starting to feel better on that end. We ran just short of 6 miles still averaging quite a slow pace of around 8:45. No hurry for now, plenty of time for that later. Even though it was sunny and around noon, it was still quite cold at around 38F. It seems that this December is colder than normal.

Ride On!