The Hobbit Hole

Wow. Another year, about come and gone. It’s been a good year, but I won’t bore you with a retrospective. However, Christmas was nice. This year has been good to us, and we were able to share some of that with others, which always makes the holidays a little more enjoyable.

The big present for me was the MacBook Pro. That was a combination birthday/Christmas present, so I’ve actually had it open for a few days, doing some work on it (to try and catch up on my behind schedule project).

The kids were well treated by their grandmothers and uncles. Lots of books. That’s the norm for our house though, so the kids were very excited. Also, my daughter got an EZ bake oven, which has a surprising amount of recipes for it on the internet.

Well, here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

My birthday has come and gone. I am now middle aged.

However, I am not melancholy. The celebration was fantabulous. The gifts were ginormous. All had a fun time, and the weekend was absolutely wonderful. This is the first of a series of posts about my birthday and the good times we had.

The celebration really started the night before. My wife, the undisputed champion of good in my life, made one of my favorite dinners, double bacon quiche. You know if the night has bacon, it’s going to be good.

The she sprung her present on me:

This present is actually 10+ years in the making. She bought the ceramic pieces for our first anniversary. For our entire marriage (over a decade), the pieces sat there because we couldn’t find a board big enough. She got tired of waiting and made one. Then she painted the pieces. This is tied as the best present I’ve ever received. (That Lord of the Rings quilt will be awfully hard to top.)

The Flikr photostream.

More about the actual birthday party to come.

Last night we had our church Christmas party, and I was asked to give a small skit or humor piece. I decided to do Santa Clause in the Bible. These are the verses and some of the explanation of how they can be interpreted. Enjoy.

Zechariah 1:7 – The fourth and 20th day of the 11th month – Thanksgiving, the opening of the Christmas season
Zechariah 1:8-11 – a man on a red horse, and the red horses are speckled with white. So are reindeer. They go through around the earth while everyone is asleep to deliver the presents
Zechariah 1:18, 20 – he saw the horns of the reindeer in the sky, and the elves building toys
Zechariah 2:1 – a man with a ruler (to measure the toys)
Zechariah 2:6 – Who says ‘Ho ho ho’? Comes from the north pole, and goes all over the world

Just some Christmas humor to pass along.

I’ve posted my woes regarding the Vibrams. I like them, but I’ve had all sorts of problems with pain ever since I started using them seriously in late July.

I really want to like them, since I kind of view them as my hope for pain free running. However, it would seem to me that I’m the only one having pain after running in the Vibrams, what from all the testimonials I read online about them relieving pain, not causing it. I figured I must be doing something wrong.

Well, I think I was. I was a dedicated forefoot runner, landing on the ball of my foot. I think my ankles had to overwork to prevent my heels from hitting the ground, and consequently became very sore.

After watching some videos of midfoot strikes in Vibrams and other shoes, I think I see what I was doing wrong, at least for me. The comments in that post are interesting as well, especially the one from Newton shoes (another specialty minimalist shoe maker) that says that joggers running barefoot show a preference for midfoot strikes instead of forefoot strikes.

So I ran this morning, only 2 miles, on the treadmill, using the midfoot strike, and suffered absolutely no pain. Not conclusive by any stretch (no pun intended), but it’s a good start. Next step (again, no pun intended) is to run outdoors, though I’m going to have to wait a few more days for it to warm up. The PacNorthWest is going through a major cold front right now.

As I go longer distances, I’ll update my status here.