When it rains, it pours (onto my husband at 4 in the morning)

We got the first good rain in months very early this morning. All in all, that is a wonderful thing, except for the fact that we have a damned roof leak that the three different fixer-folks we have called out have failed to fix. A water stain on the ceiling does not try my patience nearly as much as the water dripping on Derek this morning did. Why is this so difficult?

So after the non-fixes by Kirstan, Chimney Dude, and Susie's boss, I called the roofers we use here at work for our buildings. No deal -they don't repair unless it is a roof that they installed. I hate to just call someone out of the yellow pages, but my list of trusted repair-people has been exhausted, and you can see where that trust has gotten us - an ineffective job by two companies and one that the third company refused to complete, even though they at least think they know what is wrong...

So much for customer service.

Vacation Photos

We now have our vacation photos posted to the Flickr site. To see them, click here.

I think I may go out and get a reflective vest. I am going to sit and think on it a while to determine if it is overkill. I have reflective stripes on my shoes, a reflective armband that I carry my ID and key in, and a blinky LED that I wear on my iPod armband.

This morning, somebody wasn't paying attention and very nearly ran me down. He was speeding and turned in to the wrong lane. He was being lazy - it was 6 in the morning and dark. He just didn't expect anyone to be there, I am sure. I was less than 10 feet away from the sidewalk on the left side of the street. He stopped 3 feet short of me and I had nowhere to go. He was in the wrong, clearly, but when you're roadkill, it doesn't really matter who was right.

What scared me was that I wasn't as visible as I could have been. Todd the iPod wasn't with me so I didn't have my flashy LED. Instead of a white t-shirt, I was wearing grey. My shorts have white stripes down the side, but the shirt sleeve was covering up the reflective armband.

Am I overreacting by adding more to what I am already doing? Maybe if I go back to white shirts only and make sure that all of my other precautions are in place...

At least if he had smooshed me, I had my ID and they would have known who I was and who to call...

We're back from vacation, and hopefully back into the routine. Ethan tolerated the travel and time away pretty well, although he was fussy the last couple of days there. I think he was suffering from a lack of sleep, as he perked up after a full day and night of sleep on the way home. I wouldn't sleep well in a pack-and-play either, even if I was that small. We saw dolphins, walked on the beach, swam, visited with family, and had a great relaxing time. It is good to be back home to our bed and the lonely cats.

Ethan now has his second tooth and does a couple of new tricks. He plays peekaboo by himself now and will also make a kissyface. He doesn't always do them on demand, but he clearly does them intentionally. Too cute.

Running just didn't happen while we were gone. The beach wasn't runnable, and I was just plain lazy. We were active every day - walking, swimming, exploring the area, just no running. I should still be fine for the half mary in October. Long runs start back up this weekend. In the meantime, I have made the mental switch from running to eat to eating to run. It is the state of mind I have been trying to get to for months!

Pics to come once we get them moved around and consolidated.

Cute Ethan pic of the day - this is him in the hat that his oldest cousin Brian got him in Boston last month. Not only is it cute, it is apparently tasty too. He has learned to take it off to chew on it.

Today's run was a failure - I completed 1.5 of 5.25 miles planned, and then the legs just gave up on me. I'll make it up on the beach Sat and/or Sun. Tomorrow I have my long(ish) run of 7 miles planned for before we leave.

I am now in week 2 of training for the louisville half marathon. I am still poky, but I am also looking at my second week in a row of 20+ miles. That is very good news for me. I feel better in so many ways when I am over that bump. Since we're leaving Friday morning on vacation, that means that I am squeezing 17 of those miles into 3 consecutive days, but I figure it will be worth it for 2 reasons. First, hell- it is vacation! Second, I'll be running on the beach next week, hopefully at sunrise if the tide allows, so a little PITA now will be repaid by the candy runs next week.

I am looking forward to taking Ethan to the beach. Seeing his cousin Jonah's (that is Jonah in the pic above with Ethan) beach pics from last month makes me feel pretty confident that he won't eat too much sand or get too crispy burned. He travels well, and will have 2 of us there to trade him off as needed, so it will be a good vacation. His second tooth has been struggling to come in. It has been this big grody and painful looking blood blister for a couple weeks.

We took him to the zoo last Friday and he had a good time. He didn't notice the non-human critters there, but really loved watching all of the kids. he really loved the cement turtle, as you can see.