This is one of the coolest stories I’ve heard in a while. The short(ish) version is this: Elden, THE Fat Cyclist (you can read about him here) wrote up a post where he said (in jest) it was time for a career change and he decided that a pro cyclist sounded like a great job. [...]
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I’ve got a bottle neck in my blog post process, and that bottle neck is uploading photos to Flickr. I normally like to have at least one photo, or video, to go with each blog post, but I am so far behind on uploading of photos and video to Flickr, that it has brought my [...] I saw this on Twitter today and thought it described most organizations perfectly. An organization is like a tree full of monkeys, all on different limbs, at different levels. Some monkeys climbing up, some down. Monkeys on the top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look [...]  My last post ended with, “That’s about it in terms of the big events for me.” After reading that, Amy came to talk to me and said, “That’s about it for big events?!” She clearly missed the ‘for me’ part (which I’ve bolded above). Anyways, here’s a quick update on what has been going on with the rest of the family. I think the biggest news is that Grace is crawling now! She can really get around and therefore it’s much harder to ‘watch’ her now – you actually have to watch her! In addition to the photo that accompanies this post, Amy took a video of said crawling action, and provided you’ve got the right permissions, you can check it out on Flickr. If you don’t have permission and want it, let me know. In other Grace news, she’s got 2 teeth and is working on a bunch more. Amy’s birthday has come and gone, and in addition to her adding another year onto her age, she also got a pretty kick ass birthday present this year from yours truely. :) She’s been saying for a while now that she needs a better camera to take photos of the kids with, so that’s exactly what I got her – a shiny new Nikon D5000 with a 18-105 mm VR lens. It’s pretty kick ass if you ask me. She’s got lots to learn about how to use it, but her plan is to take a course or two I think. She’s already taken some cool shots with it, so I look forward to seeing what she does with it in the future. Hmmm…what else. Oh yes, Liam is transitioning out of diapers finally. I wont say much on this front since I’m sure he wouldn’t want stories of his potty training out on the internet. Suffice it to say that he’s a smart kid and he’s doing great. That’s about all I can remember for now. Hopefully Amy will jump in with anything I may have (probably did) forget. I really think Amy should start posting some of her own entries… ;) [...] 2 months ago I wrote about being out of commission due to a stomach virus of some sort. Since there, there has been lots going on that I just haven’t bothered to blog about. I’ll attempt to do a quick write up of what I’ve been up to since then. Amy and the kids went back east to visit with her parents and some of my family in early May. She was gone for 2 weeks, leaving on a Sunday afternoon and returning two weeks later, late on a Sunday night. While she was gone, I was tasked with “finishing the deck.” This is kind of funny when you consider I hadn’t even started the deck. Bad weather and a bunch of other excuses prevented me from finishing the deck, but I did get a good start on it. Grant helped me tear down the old deck, and Steve, Dave, Darcy and JK all helped me get the substructure done while Amy and the kids were away. Thanks guys! Since then, I’ve managed to install the deck boards and am in the process of getting the old stairs put back on and installing the railings. JK was a huge help with the decking – thanks dude! You can check out the set on Flickr if you’re interested. Race weekend has come and gone since I last wrote as well. I had hoped to finish the 1/2 marathon in and hour and forty minutes, but sadly that was not to be. In the end, I finished in 1:48:54 and I guess I can’t complain too much. I think the problem was a real lack of a training schedule and general laziness on my part. I was also not feeling great on the days leading up to and including race day, but I’m not sure that actually played a part in what happened. My strategy of not taking anything in during the race was a poor one – next time I’ll consume *something*, if only just water. :) A couple weeks after race weekend, it was time for the Rideau Lakes Cycling Tour, which is a weekend event where 1800+ riders cycle down to Kingston and back. This was my first year participating in the event and I really enjoyed it. I had done a lot of my training rides with Grant and Bonnie, so I was used to riding with them. They took the tandem down, and I pretty much followed them the whole way there and back. There were some brief periods where I was either out in front of them or alone, but generally speaking I stuck to their back wheel a lot of the time. Steve and Jody also participated in the ride, but due to an unfortunate accident, Jody wasn’t really feeling up to making the return ride on Sunday. I was super impressed that she soldiered on after the accident on Saturday and made it all the way to Kingston. The accident happened before the half way point on Saturday, so she rode for a good 90+ kms with her scrapes and bruises! You’re a machine Jody! I was very happy with how the whole weekend went, especially with how I felt after getting to Kingston on Saturday. Up to that point, I was not being very responsible in terms of refueling my body during training rides. I would basically take a gel or two with me and by the time I got back home, I was pretty much completely spent and useless for the rest of the day. This was not the case for this tour – Grant filled me in on what I should be eating and when and when I followed his advice, I felt great! I felt really good on Sunday too, but of course was a bit sore on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the following week. Weather-wise, it was a decent weekend. Saturday was sunny and fairly warm for the whole day, and Sunday was pretty much cloudy the whole time. We got rained on for a very short time (maybe an hour total) but it wasn’t too cold or anything. Nothing like what I experienced during a training ride the weekend before when I swear I was the coldest I have ever been! That’s about it in terms of the big events for me. Trying to get back into the active living after taking the past week off. I think I’m going to start cycling into work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – at least until Amy goes back to work. EDIT: Forgot that Darcy was here one day helping with the deck. Sorry Darce! Thanks for coming. :) [...] It’s been just over 2 years since I last got hit with a nasty stomach virus – that time it happened the night after I ran the hypothermic half marathon. I had been exposed to the virus when a friend who was staying with us got it, and I guess my body got sufficiently worn down during the race that my immune system just couldn’t win the battle. I went through probably 12 hours of agony, including lot of vomiting and diahriaha, followed by a few days of recuperation. I lost somewhere around 11.5 lbs in that first 12 hours. It was not fun, and I certainly NEVER wanted to go through that again. Unfortunately history seems to have repeated itself. Easter Sunday this year was my day of agony, which is perhaps somewhat ironic. Similar to the last time, we had someone in the house who was suffering from some sort of stomach virus – this time it was Liam, and he had been sick since Wednesday. Also similar to the last time, I had gone out for a ‘long’ run on Saturday afternoon, although this time it was only just over 16 km at a slower pace. Different from the last time – it took a while longer for things to happen. I was fine all Saturday night, and the bad stuff didn’t start until Sunday morning – after Liam’s Easter egg hunt. I’m thankful I got to watch that before I was really taken out of commission. This time, it was more like 10 lbs lost, but the recovery has been significantly longer. It’s now Wednesday and I’m just starting to feel a bit better. Really hoping this is the last one I ever get – I don’t handle these things very well. I’m no Jesse James – that’s for sure! (You’ll have to be a fan of the Celebrity Apprentice to get that reference I think) [...]  Seems I’m constantly in a state of jealously over some of the plug-ins that are available and being created for WordPress. I’d love to see similar modules created for Drupal of course. The latest plug-in I was coveting was the Earth Hour plug-in created by Duane and Dale of BraveNewCode. Not long after I saw it, I put a tweet out on Twitter asking if something similar existed for Drupal. I didn’t hear anything back, and to be honest, I didn’t really expect to. Well as it turns out, @mgifford saw my tweet and actually set to work on porting the WP plug-in that BraveNewCode wrote to Drupal! Once he had it running, he posted about it and let me know via twitter that it was available. I’ve now got it installed, and I’ve been watching the counter for the number of sites grow steadily! It’s pretty sweet, so if you’ve got a drupal site, why not install the module? [...]  This is interesting, but I’m not sure how much truth there is to it. Saw this posted on twitter by AskAroundOttawa and so I had to try it. As it turns out, I can hear the sound just fine, and I’m well over 25 so… I sent it to Dave to see if he could hear it, and he said he couldn’t. Then he turned up the volume and was able to hear it too. So – what about the rest of you out there – can you hear this sound? I remember doing hearing tests in school at different times, the last time was when I was in high school. Might be fun to go for one now, although I’m not sure where I’d go for something like that. Maybe I’ll ask my doctor about it next time I’m in to see her. [...]  Back at the end of January I flew back to Fredericton (my hometown) to participate in the “Curl for Cancer” event at the Fredericton Curling Club. Curl for Cancer has been going on for quite a while I’m told, but it was only brought to the Fredericton Curling Club starting last year. My understanding is that my dad did a lot last year to get it going, and I know for a fact that he worked very hard for the event this year. Last year my brothers and sister, along with my dad put in a team but sadly I wasn’t able to attend. This year it was all of us kids on a team while my dad played with some of his grandkids. With respect to curling, our team (Team Haggerty) did as well as I expected us to do – we lost all 4 of our games. That is what happens when you put 4 people who have never curled on a team together. In our defense though, we did show improvement in all of our games. I’m sure we would have won a fifth game if there had been one. :) Regardless of our success on the ice, in my opinion our team definitely came out as the winners. As I mentioned, I didn’t get a chance to participate last year, but was still very happy to hear that Team Haggerty were the top team fundraisers for the event. I was pretty determined that we’d retain that title this year and so, despite the fact they they didn’t have online sponsor sheets set up for participants this year, I set about hitting up all my friends for donations – just like I said I’d do in my post last year. Thankfully I have very generous friends (thanks again to all those that donated) and not only did our team win top fundraising team again this year (bringing in nearly $3K) – I got the top individual fundraiser title, after bringing in $1230! With that, I realized my ultimate goal for the event, which was beating my brother Mike. I bitched about not having online sponsor sheets – saying I’d be able to raise more if they had them – so next year I’m going to have to find a way to top that number. That could be challenging, but given that I did all my fundraising 2 weeks before the event, perhaps if I start earlier I’ll manage. As for the final amount that was raised by the event – it was somewhere around $19K, which is just slightly higher than last year, but when you consider there were more teams entered last year, that’s pretty good! The event itself was well run and things went very smoothly throughout the day. There were certainly some things done differently than if I had been running things, but that’s just my opinion. The biggest criticism I had of the event is that the ‘best’ prizes were given out to the ‘winners’ of the curling event and prizes for top fundraisers seemed to be an afterthought. In fact, one of the largest prizes given out was a door prize that anyone was eligible for – you didn’t have to raise one cent for the Canadian Cancer Society in order to get a ticket for the door prize. Don’t get me wrong, this is not me bitching about the prize that I got for being the top individual fundraiser – this is me thinking that in an event like this, if you are going to give out prizes at all, they should go to the people who busted their asses raising money for the charity in question rather than those who happen to be good curlers – it IS a fundraising event afterall. Again, just my opinion and likely not shared by everyone. I’m looking forward to attending the event next year and winning the top individual fundraiser title again. I think Amy, Liam and Grace will be joining me for the trip next year though – I certainly missed having them there. If you’re wondering what my prize was – it was a $20 bouquet of flowers, redeemable only at a local flower shop that wouldn’t deliver to Ottawa. Amy will be getting some flowers next time we’re in Fredericton. :) [...] I got this through Facebook, from a good friend of mine that I don’t see or talk to nearly enough. I probably normally wouldn’t even attempt this – 25 things?! – but I’ll give it a shot since it came from Erica. Rules below apply to Facebook, and since my posts gets sucked into Facebook, I’ll have to decide then if I want to actually ‘tag’ anybody or not. :) Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. (To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.) 01. I hate chain letters. They immediately get deleted. 02. I have two older brothers and one older sister. 03. I’ve run a marathon (twice actually) and hope to do an Ironman Tri someday. 04. I take a lot of inspiration from my dad, and aspire to be more like him everyday. 05. I believe in God and go to church regularly. 06. I hate shopping, unless it’s the online variety. 07. Large crowds of people annoy the f*@k out of me and generally make me grumpy. 08. I’ve got my pilots license, but haven’t flown since my first child was born. 09. I wouldn’t mind living in a warmer climate, but don’t want to leave Canada. 10. I like the movie “The Sound of Music” and generally watch it once a year. 11. I watch a lot of TV, shows like: Heroes, LOST, Prison Break, Flashpoint and Survivor. 12. I have little patience, and it seems to have diminished even further since having kids. 13. My favourite movie is probably “The Princess Bride”. 14. I would love to be a commercial actor – an actor for commercials (ads on TV) 15. I fall asleep really easily, but rarely wake up feeling refreshed. 16. I am a procrastinator, especially when it comes to housework. 17. I’m not a worrier, or at least I don’t think I am. 18. I’m a big fan of gadgets and technology in general. 19. I have incredible friends, and I can’t imagine my life without them. 20. I’m learning how to play the fiddle, finally! (Thanks Anna!) 21. I don’t drink coffee, and never have – I get enough caffeine from coke. 22. I’m a bit pedantic when it comes to grammar and spelling – a lot is two words! 23. I love free stuff! In the immortal words of my brother Sean, “Boys, there’s nothing better than free shit!” 24. Given the choice, I’d definitely choose money over fame. 25. I think this list was way too long. :) [...] |
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