Oregon

Tomorrow morning, Amber and I are heading out to Sunriver, OR for a work conference at the Sunriver Resort. As I've stated before, I love the Pacific Northwest; big trees, mountains, lakes, temperate climate, etc. But I was looking at the weather this morning and there is a chance of snow on Sunday while we're there! A bit early if you ask me. We are hoping to go to a fall festival in Bend, a city nearby on Sunday, but I guess we'll see where the weather takes us. We have a fireplace in our room so we'll have to cozy up to that if need to. There will be a casino night as well; I have no idea how that's going to work as most people probably aren't going to gamble, but maybe I'll toss a few bucks on Red at the roulette wheel. One of the cool things is that on the 3.5 hour drive to Sunriver, we will be on Hwy. 26, which is the old Oregon Trail; it'll take us right past Mt. Hood. Let's hope it's not too curvy, otherwise there might be vomit.

The Longshots season is complete. We went 5-10. Not that great. I'm going to beg MSCR to let us stay in League #22 for the entire season this time so we can have us a winning season. I couldn't have asked for a higer quality group of guys though. I think I would prefer that over winning everyday. I turned my first double play at the last game (kind of). I got the toss from short stop, got the out at second, then everybody started telling me to throw it to first. I made the throw, but the guy was injured so he was barely running in the first place. It wasn't how I had pictured it; but it did the job and ended the inning.

I'm reading this cool book now called "Same Kind of Different as Me" by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. I'm about halfway through but it's starting to get the interesting stuff. It's a pretty popular book right now; it's about 2 guys, one very rich and one very poor and how they become lifelong friends and how God worked in their lives. I don't want to give away too much about the book in case you would like to read it.

I saw Sufjan Stevens on Monday night at the Majestic. Really great show. The trumpet player had this neat effect that made it sound like a whale, I don't know how to describe it. Oh, and of course I saw U2 a couple weeks ago. That was a looooong night. It took me 4 hours to get there due to traffic, then I got in lane for cabs only so I made it to Soldier field but had to turn around and spend the next hour trying to find a parking spot. I found one abouta 1.5 miles away. I missed Snow Patrol, but got there about 5 min. before U2 started. Check out the photos. I stood the entire show, then walked to my car, got home at around 2:30, woe up the next morning and ran 12 miles, then stood for 9 hours working at Ironman Wisconsin. I couldn't walk at the end of the night. Exhausting 2 days.

But the long run must've paid off as I ran like a cheetah at the Fox Cities Half Marathon with a time of 1:37:57. I don't think I've ever felt so good during a race before. It was perfect. I did everything the opposite of what I normally do. I got new shorts and shirt, I wore a running cap and I had a Garmin GPS I borrowed from a co-worker to keep my pace. And I loaded up on these electrolyte Jelly Beans w/ caffiene and man, they worked. Just a great day overall. Everyone did really well; Shawn got a PR by 20 min., Dobbins ran a 1:29. Heather did her first half faster than what she was hoping for and Sarah and Mr. D got PRs as well. I'm going to start taking George Costanza's advice and start doing the opposite of what my instincts tell me. Sound like a good idea? I thought so.

Anyway, perhaps I'll post from Oregon, but with the way this blog's been going, probably not :-)