Sunday, May 15, 2011

Jackson + Ragnar

This weekend was great. It started Thursday about noon, when I left work to see my new nephew, Jackson Javier Ward, who was born Thursday about 8:30 AM. That was cool. Matt and Raquel were kind to let me in for an hour or so and see him, hold him, and get to know him a little bit.
And looking at this picture makes me realize just how pale I am.

Then I left DC with some friends and ran a Ragnar relay. It was 197 miles long, and we had 12 runners on our team. I was the first runner, with legs of 5.8, 7.6, and 8 miles (in that order). The hard part of a Ragnar is the lack of sleep. I got about 5 hours in 2 days, and going into that last 8 mile run I was not in a good place mentally. Afterwords, after running like 21 miles, I got a little tight, but I'm doing better now.
The other hard thing about this race was the weather, which I was a little underprepared for. It was supposedly going to be 75 degrees and sunny on Friday when I was running. Instead when I started running at 8 AM on Friday there was a slight drizzle and it was about 50 degrees. And I only had short sleeves and shorts to wear. Eventually I made it to a Wal*Mart, where I got a long-sleeve T-shirt for $7.

Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture above, it says NY Giants on it. YUCK. It may have an encounter with either a trash can or some paint in the near future. Boys from Dallas don't wear Giants shirts around. It ain't right.

Saturday, May 07, 2011

Talents

So as I was talking with my Mom last night, I told her that I think one of the talents I've been given is the ability to see (and when I get upset, point out) the flaws of others. In other words, I can put people down and realize what sorry wastes of human flesh they are like nobody's business.

Thinking about it the past day or so, I've decided that I need to make more efforts to lift people up and encourage them. It's easy to break or destroy things - anyone can break things. The challenge is making something worth having.