zoo visit

Friday at the zoo- we saw the Hudson the polar bear attacking the stream of water from the keeper's hose, a tiger biting a large plastic barrel, a flurry of butterflies, Christy in her new elephant yard, and the super cute new baby gibbon. Then Cathy and I met Susan, Colleen, and baby Kendalyn for lunch! By that time it was super hot (or at least in the suffocating tent where we were waiting waaaaay too long to order food). But it was great to sit and chat and enjoy a nice day with friends and then of course an afternoon nap. : )

Gibbon and baby

when you believe...

Monday night June 29, 78 people from the Edge and Fountain of Life Church spent two hours serving at Feed My Starving Children in Aurora. I had a chance to serve with Willow in April, and was super excited to do it again just two months later. FMSC packs a chicken and vitamin flavoring with dried veggies, soy, and rice, and these meals are sent all over the world to help starving children - giving them one meal a day. One meal a day certainly doesn't seem like much, especially with the excess that we are so accustomed to, but many of these kids get NO meals a day. And to be provided a constant, nutritious meal has made such a difference to the kids that receive it. We worked for about 2 hours, labeling plastic bags, scooping ingredients, weighing and sealing the bags, packing them into boxes, and carrying boxes and ingredients back and forth in the fever pitch of the warehouse. That was the serving. But it's not the part that really gets me...... That's when we sit in a room afterward being told how many kids our two measly hours of work helped - and seeing these pictures and vidoes of the UNBELIEVABLE transformation that these children go through as they are brought back to health. ...these emaciated and worm-infested kids on death's doorstep that now have a chance to grow up.... to make it through one more day.

Sitting there, I just had this feeling that I can't even really explain, like my heart was just going to explode with love for these children, so happy to have made a difference for them. Then in the car a few days later my ipod flipped to a song that just captured it perfectly...

"In this time of fear, when prayers so often proved in vain, hope seemed like a summer bird - too swiftly flown away. Now I'm standing here, with a heart so full, I can't explain.... seeking faith and speaking words I never thought I'd say..."

There can be miracles. In our two hours of work we filled 118 boxes - 25,488 meals - which will feed 70 children one live-saving meal a day for an entire year. I can't wait to go again.

step up

Yesterday I did my first walk "for a cause." Our company had sponsored the Step Up! for Autism walk to benefit Little Friends, Inc., in Naperville. We met Sunday morning at Centennial Park for the 3 mile walk - there were about 1500 people there. It was great that the hot weather had calmed down a bit and it was a breezy, sunny, 80ish degree day. ....and a 3 mile walk is a great excuse for an afternoon nap!

back in the swim of things...

For those of you that have never tried swimming for exercise or a tough workout, you should. (Cathy can attest to that) I swam all through high school and for 2 years in college in a masters program, but it's been a while since I've been a pool regular. I've been riding my bike fairly often as of late, normally in half-hour increments. I'll usually burn around 300 calories and keep my heart rate in the 150s while I ride, but never feel exhausted or that I am working extremely hard.

But I jumped in the pool on Saturday and swam 1,000 meters - which took 30 minutes as well and I burned about the same amount of calories. But the amount of effort and work that it took to get through that half hour was significantly more than the bike ride. When I got home I collapsed on the sofa and fell asleep during the crosstown game. It took a lot out of me.

I know that swimming is a great workout for the arms and core, and of course once I get used to it again it'll seem easier, but all I was thinking during was "please just let this be over with." And.... I'm not sure that will be a great motivator for me..... but I think I'm willing to try it a few more times and see how I feel, and see if I can't get back into the swing, er - swim of it.

Olympic training

Olympic Peninsula, that is. In just about a month I'll be traveling out there from Portland with Tim and Erika. Yay, vacation! But it occurred to me that we'll probably be hiking or walking around quite a bit - at much higher elevations than I am used to! And I want to be able to go and do everything that we want! So I got out on the bike last Saturday for a 7.5 mile ride, and then rode to and from work yesterday (11.2 miles). I had wanted to do the same today, but realized I'll need to build up to it. I hadn't been able to ride earlier in the year because the weather had been so miserable, and then it jumped to uber-hot! If I can ride to work several days a week (and keep the eating in check), I should be in a bit better shape by July 17! I'll check in with some progress updates....

This is from the top of a VERY large hill that I have to surmount at the beginning of every bikeride to work. I go above my anaerobic threshold every time (above 173 bpm).

speaking of the balcony....

I made a new friend there today, señor Gray Catbird. I heard his very unusual call while sitting on the sofa during lunch, so I popped out to take a look. At first I thought it was a squirrel that was angry at the cats, and if you've ever heard an angry squirrel you know what sound I'm talking about. And on the tree directly in front of my balcony was a grey bird, screeching away. I grabbed my trusty A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America and thumbed through till I found him - a medium gray bird with black on the top of his head, orange-red under the tail, and he normally keeps his tail up. Is related to the Mockingbird and can imitate many other birds and even frogs. What I heard him doing was his call, not his song, but it was supercool. He hopped about for about 40 minutes, even sat on the picnic table and stared at me for a while, and was still there when I went back to work. Thanks for the lunch date Mr. Bird!

Below is a video that shows you what he sounded like... I thought the title was appropriate. I mean, don't we all scream before eating swiss cheese?

a lazy day on the balcony

I had disturbed Dinah's napping in my reading spot.

Merl on deck.

I hope I'll be able to keep some of these flowers alive inside when winter comes...

helping out the Didelphidae Family

A little over a week ago I was sitting out on my balcony when I saw one of the apartment complex employees (Jennifer) holding a box and staring under a bush. I asked her what was going on and she told me they had found a baby opossum. I went down to see if I could help, and she wasn't kidding when she said baby. It was probably only 4.5 inches long (not including the tail). The little guy was all alone, it was the middle of a hot day, and the sun was beating down on this bush. Jennifer said would take it to a nearby wildlife sanctuary where it would be cared for until it was older - if we could get it in the box. The opossum was (obviously) freaked out, kept hissing at us, and retreated further into the bushes. Finally though, the baby backed up next to the building so I jumped into the bushes, set the box on the ground, and guided him in there by grabbing some nearby twigs and using the "chopstick method." Success! One saved opossum. Good luck, little buddy.

why the Chevy HHR is the most obnoxious car I've ever driven...

The first few days of this week I was in Minnesota on a project for work. The rental vehicle that I picked up at MSP was a white Chevy HHR. (I didn't include the color in my assessment of obnoxiousness, but white is my least favorite color for a car)

Over the three days I experienced the following:
1) The windshield and windows are very small.
2) I found it odd that the tachometer was in the center of the dash, and the spedometer was off to the side. It made looking at my speed sort of, well, obnoxious. : )
3) You can't put on your seatbelt with the armrest down, because it covers where the belt buckes in. But then you need to put the armrest back down because there is no center console.
4) The evening of the first day, after driving three hours in the car, I noticed I had bruises on the outsides of my pinky fingers. It wasn't until the next day that I figured out why. While many steering wheels have some version of a horizontal "x" configuration, this particular one had a "t" shape inside it. Therefore I could not rest my hand at the bottom of the wheel as I normally would while using cruise control on the highway. I had to hold onto the bottom sides. NOT comfortable.
5) Day two I opened the front door to get in, and the bottom of the door went right into my shin.
6) Day three, as I was getting ready to drive back to the airport, I put my suitcase on the back seat. Oh! but I had left something I the front seat that needed to go into my bag! So I go to get it and *WHAM* - another huge and painful bruise on my thigh. Because the shape on the inside of the door doesn't match the outside. I will illustrate with a picture below....

Needless to say, I will not be driving one of these again.

Hello World!

And a new blog begins.... It's been a year and a half since I have posted anything online (we're not including facebook here). I thought it was time to try something new. A fresh start... I'm not really sure what this blog will be like, and I'm certainly not the same person I was even a year and a half ago.... I guess we'll see!