While on my run today I saw for the first time a 2008 Volvo C30. All in all it is an okay looking car and being a Volvo I’m sure it is a fine car. But what immediately caught my eye was the rear hatch and glass. It reminded me of something, but what? Oh that is right. An AMC Gremlin. That is a good choice. Let’s build a car that looks like the ugliest car ever designed.
On the other hand the rear hatch does kind of remind me of a Ford Pinto too. Another good car to model after.
Maybe it’s just me.
Tags: AMC Gremlin, Ford Pinto, Volvo C30
I completed my longest training run before the marathon today. I managed 20.25 miles at 9:41 minutes per mile. Slower than I’d like to run in the marathon, but faster than I had planned today and that included a large number of interruptions. Traffic lights, crosswalks, traffic and even a train slowed me down a bit. The weather was cool (verging on cold actually), but it felt good after 5 miles or so.
Using the McMillan Running Calculator this time gives me an estimated marathon time of 4 hours, 17 minutes, 43 seconds. I’d really like my time to be under four hours even if it is 3 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds and 99/100s. I think I can do it. A number of factors should help me out. First is I won’t have to stop at any lights or wait for any traffic (or trains). Second, I’ll have plenty of water. Today I ran with just one bottle holding 3 cups of water. This is just about 1/3 of what I’d like to be drinking. Third, my new shoes arrived along with new insoles. They are exactly the same model I have now. I’ll break them in over the next couple of weeks. It will be nice to have shoes with some padding again. I’ve literally put hundreds of miles on my current pair and they don’t really have the same level of cushion they once did. Fourth, I’m planning on trying out some of those little gel packs. It is supposed to help provide some energy and electrolytes while you run. Lastly, and maybe as important as anything else is that it will be a race. I’ll have adrenaline pumping and I always get a boost running near other runners. Hopefully it will all add up.
Nearing 20 miles runners talk about “the wall”. Basically “the wall” is the point at which your body has used up its glycogen stores. Without available glycogen the body has to burn fat which it doesn’t do very efficiently and can only do aerobically. Your body starts to give out. You lose the will to keep going and your basically in bad shape. In a marathon you still have 6 miles to go, more or less. I was supposed to hit it today. I’m not sure if I did or not. I was certainly tired and I was definitely hurting, but I’m not sure I really hit the wall. My muscles hurt in a different way than they did after my 18 mile run. More deep down and at the bone, but I’m not sure that was “the wall”. I guess I’ll find out for sure during the marathon. Hopefully things like the energy gels, plenty of water, and ample sports drink will minimize the effects.
From here until the marathon I enter the taper. I run less and less until the week before the marathon where I only run nine miles. My longest run is only 12 miles and I don’t do anything for several days before the race. My plan is to stretch religiously, eat lots of carbs and try not to overdo it. After the race I plan to do something like what I did today. Drink a lot, eat a lot, shower (very important) and then go take a short nap. After that I plan to get up and eat a lot of bbq. After all 26 miles should burn roughly 3100 calories so I can pretty much eat anything and as much of it as I like.
Along with the tiling project we’ve had a few other projects mostly electrical. First we put in a new thermostat (thanks to my dad). It has about a million options, but is frankly darn cool with it’s touch screen and all. A couple of hours of fiddling through the settings and we once again had heat. The best part is that it switches from heating to cooling and back automatically. We have had a couple days in the last month that we’ve needed both A/C and heat within a few hours of each other.
Then a couple of days ago I was turning on the dining room light when I got a shock. Not one of those little shocks you get when you have a nifty static buildup. No, this was a shock that made me glad I wasn’t holding Jillian or Wesley at the time. So in one of my many trips to Home Depot for tile supplies I picked up a new dimmer switch. I started flipping breakers in the garage and then testing the circuit with my multimeter. After doing all of them I got a bit concerned. All breakers off, 110v coming across the switch. Hmmm… So I went outside. Yes here in Texas they put individual breakers on the outside of house. I thought it might just be my house. After all a builder who glues tiles to the wall might just be a bit lazy with other things too. But I talked to Chris who told me his house has the exact same thing. He has a NICE house.
So to turn off the breaker for our lights I have to go outside, around the side of the house and flip it there. Why? I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like that in Washington. Maybe it’s common other places, but it still makes zero sense.
Tags: electrical, house, texas
It has been said that you don’t truly own your own home until you’ve started a 30 minute, $20 project that turns out to cost more than your down payment and last for weeks. If it hasn’t been said before, well I’m saying it now. We recently started such a project in Wesley’s bathroom. I had notice 4 loose tiles. They were down in the corner and looked a little off. They weren’t falling off or anything, they just looked like they needed a little attention. The plan was to carefully remove the tiles add some fresh mortar, grout, caulk and ignore forever. The project went according to plan right through step one.
The tiles came right off. And then I saw the water damage. So off with more tiles and more tiles and more tiles. I had to keep removing tiles until I got well past any wet areas. So 44 tiles later we have a good size mess. Typically tiles are attached to the wall by way of mortar. The wall itself is made of concrete board that resists water and has sufficient texture to hold the mortar. Not our intrepid builder. Back in 1986 our builder decided that drywall technology had reached its apex and could now be used in bath surrounds. Apparently he (I’m assuming the builder is a he. Totally sexist assumption I have nothing to back this up)thought that drywall meant that it would keep the wall dry. Wrong. He also decided to skip mortar and go with glue. Needless to say it wasn’t exactly a textbook installation and removing the tiles was quite a mess.
As the tiles came off I also removed the drywall. Behind the drywall was a vapor barrier. Oh wait. No, there wasn’t a vapor barrier. Again I can only assume the builder was convinced that his drywall was superior and needed no assistance. So instead of a vapor barrier we had wet insulation and an ant colony. Yay! Ants! As I opened up the wall the ants began to flow out of the wall onto the remaining tile and into the tub. I immediately got the out of the tub. So far the ants we’ve met in Texas (and there have been many) haven’t been exactly friendly. Basically they bite and bite and bite and then you get little pustules that itch for weeks. I immediately got on the phone with Amber who was out and about and said “bring me home something to kill ants I don’t think the organic orange stuff is going to do it”. I did spray the ants with our orange oil spray which helped keep them in the wall, but didn’t exactly make them dead which was what I was looking for. I locked the bathroom door and waited for Amber to come home.
It turns out the ants aren’t really that bad. They aren’t fire ants fortunately or I’d probably have given up and had someone else do the work. They were pretty docile and I haven’t been bit yet (I’m crossing my fingers for luck, but it makes typing hard). But there were a lot of them and they need to not be in the wall or streaming out of the wall crawling all over me and the house. So they had to go. Sorry little guys.
Tags: home renovation, remodel, tile, tiling