Yay! I'm in Kentucky!

Actually, I'm in Lincoln, but my running and cycling miles for today put me in Kentucky for my virtual transcontinental trip. This virtual trip is part of national health research being done by Dr. Paul T. Williams at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. I started tracking my mileage last August, and it took me this long to log 555 miles, which is the distance they have you travel in Virginia! I never thought I'd make it out of that state. You can log your miles for running, walking, or cycling. I was skeptical that I'd keep this up, but somehow I did. (maybe because I didn't have a lot of miles to log during winter!)

As you log your progress, they display your location both with photographs of your current whereabouts as well as where you are on a map. Here's the scenery a few miles back while still in Virginia.


And a map of me now just over the Kentucky border:

You can add partners on your trip and track your progress together, or set up various e-mail notifications for when you don't enter data for a week, you don't meet your weekly goal, or a partner passes you. I haven't messed around with any of that-I just want to get across these states! It would be nice to think I could make it through Kentucky before the summer is over.

Eagle Three-peat

The final game is in the books-Central won their third straight Class A basketball championship last night. It was a tight game against Bellevue East with some questionable calls thrown in for added tension, but the final score was 59-58. I tried taking a few videos with my camera during the game, but they didn't turn out very good. Here's a clip I took just as Creighton recruit Josh Jones made a slam dunk. (the basket is made in the first second of video. Watch carefully or you'll miss it.)

I realize it may not make a lot of sense to still be so intense about Central High sports fifteen years after I graduated, but I think high school sports offer more of what I love about college sports. (and what makes me ambivalent about most professional sports) It's about school and team pride and playing for your teammates and classmates. It's not about salaries, bonuses, and endorsements. It could also be that we didn't have a ton of athletic success when I was in school, except for a soccer championship in 1992-I happened to attend I-Back High right between when Calvin Jones graduated and Ahman Green transferred to Central. There were no trips to Lincoln for State playoffs while I was there.

After the basketball excitement, I caught up with Corrie and a couple of other guys out on the O Street bar scene. I won't discuss some of the odd things that occurred in a short span of time, but we did find Hopkin green frog at Iguana's.


I didn't mis-type that-I was indeed in Iguana's. I'm 33 years old and I did some kind of shot named frog sperm. I admit I had a good time, even though this didn't fit in with my preferred bar scene, which is either hanging out for the duration of the evening at Duffy's or sipping cocktails at the Starlite Lounge. I'm getting too old and too lazy for the bar hopping the kids do these days.

The Blanket is done, now the baby can come

Amy and Jeff's baby blanket (not for Jeff but for the baby, sorry Jeff! I can put you on my to do list if you'd like a full-size blanket) arrived safely in Colorado last week, so now I can talk about it without ruining the surprise.

It was a really fun pattern to do, but it turned out bigger than I expected. I think I had to make two extra trips to the yarn stores to buy additional skeins. I really wish they made yarn that repelled cat hair because I spent a good amount of time and a good amount of my lint brush removing the stuff, even though I was very careful while crocheting to keep the cats away and only expose as little yarn as possible between the bag it was in and the piece itself. (and yes, Scabbers, the cat of cat sweater fame, is in the upper part of this photo, but he was not allowed on the blanket.)

My new project is a knitted pillow to match Corrie's striped blanket. I'm only using one of the colors from the blanket (thank you, Jana, for the yarn freebies) and the pattern incorporates a striped motif. It's hard to tell it's a pillow from this photo, but it will make sense later on. I have a long ways to go-the main part of the pillow pattern is supposed to be at least 32" (you fold it in half to make the pillow shape) and I think I've only knitted about 10" of that right now.


In other news, the tulip report this week is not good, as anyone who lives here could guess. I'm sure they'll be fine-they got an extra layer of insulation, thanks to Thursday night/Friday morning's snow. I realize now looking at this photo that I didn't get the same tulips we were monitoring before, but it was too cold out to go back and find the right ones. I didn't even bother looking for the crocus.