Hooray for Running

Today was the first race of the season. The State Farm Run was today. I did the 10 mile. I'm pretty happy with how I did (1 hour 38 min, 9:54 pace) seeing as how I haven't done much running at all since the marathon. I've been having a really hard time trying to figure out how to get in my running since I work all the time. My 2 options are either wake up really early and run before I head out to work for the day or stay up late and run before bed. I'm not a wake up early kinda guy, so that leaves running before bed, but I'm having a hard time keeping my motivation when bed is calling my name. I'm always glad when I make myself run, I just need to get myself in a routine.

I never in a million years would've thought I would enjoy running so much...I actually miss it when I don't get to run for a while. It feels so invigorating to get outside and get my legs going. Plus it's great meditative/prayer time. I'm not good at having "quiet time" with God at home because, well, we have a really big t.v. Running's great because there's no tv...just you and the road...plus you know, the whole health benefit...I remember when I first started I literally couldn't go further than like 3 houses down the block before I had to stop and walk because I thought I was going to die...I like seeing myself get in better shape so I can be healthy and be a good husband to Joyful, and someday instill a healthy lifestyle in our hypothetical child by setting a good example.

I also wanted to publicly say how impressed I am with Ave Pickering...he started running maybe 2 or 3 years ago and he's great! He's almost twice as old as me (sorry Ave), and he totally kicked my butt today. He had a 9:02 pace for 10 miles...crazy stuff...

Ahhh, Tulsa

Wish I was there...this weekend is the annual International Soul Winning Workshop in Tulsa, OK. I always enjoy going there...it's a wonderful time of worship and learning...plus it's nice to see Alice and Shane for a weekend. From what I read on people's blogs, it's a wonderful workshop once again this year.

This picture was on Keith Lancaster's blog from Memorial Drive's rehearsal...a lovely picture of Alice and Shane singing together. The fact that Shane is able to be at the workshop is due to the awesome power of God...check out his blog for the details of that if you want, but Satan was working to keep him away from the workshop, but God wanted him there. The fact that we're leaving for Europe in a week and a half kept us away from the workshop. Mom's down there this year...I bet they're all having a wonderful time, and I look forward to hearing Shane's report of the workshop once the weekend's over and he's rested up.

I should have known...

I was so excited after the first day of the Tournament my bracket was at 91% correct, now I sit at a lowly 45%...sad.  Stupid low ranked teams that don't know they're supposed to lose.

 

I added a link on the side there for "Matt's Bike Ride".  You should check out his site, it's really neat.  He's a guy I used to work with at Macaroni and he's on a bike ride from as far north as you can get in Alaska to the bottom of South America.  He's seeing such neat stuff and having awesome experiences.  It's always so neat when you see someone do something huge like that.  It makes me wonder what I would do if I didn't have any obligations.  I think I would really enjoy taking a road trip (in a car, not on a bicycle) across America and just see what I see...sleep in the back of the 'ole HHR most nights and just see the country. 

 

What would you do if you could?

Bracketology

So this year, for the first time, I decided to try doing a couple brackets for the NCAA Tournament.  Nothing involving money or anything, just the free one on ESPN.com.  I did 2 of them, one where I actually put a little thought into it, and one where I put the team that I'd personally like to win.  Obviously the latter is already completely toast...the one where I thought a little bit is doing surprisingly good.  At the end of Day 1, I only missed 2 games...I had picked George Mason to upset Notre Dame (mostly because I can't stand Notre Dame), and I had picked the 9 seed Kent State over the 8 seed UNLV as pretty much a coin toss...other than that, though, I'm looking pretty good...

 

So basically what I'm saying is that I rule.

Hooray for technology!

So today at church, they unveiled the all new and improved Heartlands church website! When I got home I flipped through it and gotta say that I'm most impressed. Nice, professional looking site. It's at www.heartlandschurch.org if you're interested. It's even got a satellite picture of the land that the church is hoping to purchase. I'll put a link on here later when I'm messing with the blog some more. I discovered a handy feature of this blog...I can e-mail my blog and have it post automatically. Kinda cool if you ask me. So when Joyful and I are in Europe and don't have the laptop (who wants to lug all that stuff around Europe for 3 weeks?) I can go to an internet cafe or something and e-mail the blog and let people know what we've seen or some deep thoughts that came to me while sitting at a little cafe in Paris. It's just amazing how connected you can be if you want to be.

Only 25 more days...

33 Days and Counting

So lately with me working a ton during the week and spending a lot of time with Joyful over the weekends, we've been spending a lot of time working on planning for Europe. We spent about 4 hours tonight hanging out at The Mill planning and researching. We can't wait to go! Only 33 more days!

It'll be so great to see all the things we've seen in pictures, and then take our own pictures so that all of you can look at our pictures! I can't even fathom how many pictures we'll take there. We got ourselves extra batteries and a new, bigger memory card, so now we've got 3 1/2 Gig of memory for pictures, which I think will be about 2,000 pictures. Crazy stuff...

I learned tonight that one of the roads we'll go on in Rome was built in about 200 B.C. Seems to me that Lincoln can't even build a road that lasts longer than 4 years without having to be fixed...

be thankful...

Colossians 3:15
And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.

God calls us to be thankful for everything He has blessed us with...sometimes it's easy to be thankful..."Thanks, God, for the raise at work.", "Thanks, God, for the sweet new car." Sometimes it's not so easy...how do you find something to be thankful for when a loved one dies? How can you be thankful when you unexpectedly lose a job? How do you give thanks when you can't afford food to put on your family's table? You can give thanks knowing that God is in control...he won't give you anything more than you can bear, you can give thanks knowing that you are learning something that God wants you to learn...verse 17 of that same chapter says, "And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father." We are representatives of Jesus! We should definately be thankful for that.

Speaking of things that I'm thankful for...I'm thankful that God made it so that cat pee glows under black light...Joyful and I took advantage of the beautiful weather yesterday to open up the house, rent a Rug Doctor, and clean the heck out of all our carpets. I'm also thankful that the State of Nebraska passed a state-wide smoking ban. Normally I wouldn't be thankful for that, because I think that individual businesses should have the right to decide whether or not they allow smoking based on what their customers want, but I'm happy because it looks like the state-wide ban might (hopefully will) supercede Lincoln's ban. Nebraska's ban has an exemption for tobacco shops, and Lincoln's doesn't. So if the Nebraska ban supercedes the Lincoln one, we'll be able to legally smoke inside Ted's! That would be sweet...but seriously, even if you don't like cigars, how dumb is it that you can't smoke inside a tobacco shop? Who do they think they're protecting? If you work in a tobacco shop, clearly you're okay with tobacco and smoke.