So we made it through April, and I managed to get in my first run of 2013. The weather was terrible, and the run wasn’t too great either. I felt really sluggish and not at all in shape, probably because I am totally not in shape! I am still not getting very many training runs in, and seem to be generally lacking the overall discipline and desire that I usually have. My left leg has been a little wonky since last fall, and that has definitely had an impact. Perhaps some crappy race times will get the old engines revved again, as I hate turning in mediocre performances when I know I can do much better.

So Iron Man 3 is on the horizon, and that is pretty exciting. It has had some major numbers in the international box office, and I expect it to do no less once it hits North America. This summer is looking great for movies with the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness and The Man of Steel. I can’t seem to find the time to go see as many movies in the theatres as I used to, but I am definitely hitting the big screen for those three flicks. Marvel has done such an awesome job with their characters that anything touched by Marvel Studios is must-see in my books. Now if we can only get DC/Warner Bros to make a decent Superman film, then maybe we can finally pave the way for something related to the Justice League. Here’s hoping!

The other activity that seems to be lacking this spring/summer is the creation of any new artwork. I had high hopes for a few larger pieces this year, but in the end haven’t gotten my butt in gear to get them done. Seems to be a trend so far! One of my friends recently re-started a Sketchjam group on Facebook, so that’s nice to see going again. I am going to try and keep on top of the weekly themes over there, as I more drawing keeps your skills sharp. I did a few of the weekly sketches on Sunday afternoons while Samantha and Luke also drew with me, so maybe that is a new activity to make a regular thing.

Tammie and I recently got away to see Leonard Cohen at the Halifax Metro Centre. I will admit that I am not much of a fan of Cohen, but I will say he puts on a very professional show. And it was just nice for Tammie and I to spend some time on our own in a city we don’t visit all that often. The rainy weather didn’t dampen our spirits as we wandered around the downtown core, and we almost got to sleep late one morning! The only major disappointment was that the hotel restaurant couldn’t make pancakes for our breakfast on our departing morning (even though it was on the menu). How could you run out of stuff to make pancakes?

Only the universe (and possibly the hotel chef) knows for sure.

Randy

Winter still has a firm grasp on the weather so far, with Spring feeling a long way off. There continues to be snow, cold temperatures, and general crappiness whereas last year we had warm temperatures and sun. The weather definitely has impacted my desire to get out and run, although with the sun setting later in the day, I will soon be able to get in my outdoor evening runs again. I don’t like running outside in the dark because I find it treacherous for footing, especially if there is still ice on the ground. In more positive news, the flu that was hanging around our house has finally departed. So at least everyone is sleeping again and not quite as grumpy!

The big entertainment news this month was that Startcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm was released. What an awesome game! The single player story was excellent, and I was disappointed to see it end. Unlike Diablo 3, which was a disappointment, Blizzard really delivered with this expansion. I have been playing some multiplayer as well, although haven’t mastered many of the new units yet. The craziest addition to the game is leveling of each faction as you play competitive games. You can actually unlock new sprites for your army, permanently changing their look-and-feel.  That is awesome! The only downside is that I will have to wait another two years for the next expansion. Come on Blizzard, work faster!

We have become quite the Lego family after Christmas, which I think is great. Luke loves Lego City, with all the trucks and car sets. Samantha loves Lego Friends, and saved up for four months to buy one of the larger sets with her allowance. I was so proud of her for sticking with it! Tammie has to reign me in sometimes because Lego truly is the one thing for which I have no discipline. I would buy every Lego set ever made if I could, because they are so awesome. And no, there is no such thing as too much Lego. Such a notion is completely illogical. Luke is still a little young to build many of the sets on his own, but he loves to play with the finished models and puts together his own simple vehicles. Samantha is a Lego whiz and can put together any set she has placed in front of her. I still have all the Lego I had when I was a kid, so our overall collection is getting pretty big. I’d be lying if I didn’t fly my Lego Avengers Quinjet around my office when the kids are in bed.

Randy

It’s been a cold and snowy month in the Great White North recently, with winter getting in a few last blows before we start to think about Spring.  I haven’t gotten my running legs back under me yet, and the one day I decided to get out for a 5k, the -20C windchill made me regret that decision! My running motivation remains low, despite the fact that I’d normally be picking my mileage up by now. I think the combination of the cold weather and late nights with the kids have left me a little drained when it comes to lacing up the runners. It seems like everyone in my household has had a cold for weeks now. The nights are rough because someone always has a bad cough that keeps everyone else awake. It doesn’t seem to slow the kids down too much during the day, but it certainly has made me tired after a few weeks of it. Ah well, these things are only temporary and are bound to run their course eventually.

Samantha and Luke have been taking skating lessons since the late fall, and those are soon coming to a close. Samantha is a better skater at 5 years old than I am in my mid 30s. Luke is getting to the point where he can shuffle around the ice without too much problem, although he lacks speed and the ability to turn and stop very quickly. Neither one of them seem to love skating at this point, so I am not sure we’ve discovered a passion for either child, but we’ll see in the coming years. Samantha really enjoys tennis right now, and we’ve kept her in tennis lessons all winter. Whether or not she continues to play into the future or not, I really enjoy seeing how excited she is when she gets on the court with her racket. And she’s not too bad either, with a very natural swing.

Next month is finally the release of Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm! I am very excited to play it, and can’t wait for launch day. I have been playing lots of Diablo 3 and some original Starcraft 2 to pass the time until the new stuff launches. Maybe I can get myself to the “not terrible” level on Starcraft 2 before the expansion goes live!

Randy

January has come and gone, with some more winter weather than we’d had before Christmas. There were some really cold temperatures, down to -20C (colder than -30C with the windchill). I didn’t do any running in January, but my goals are still to start up again in February. Despite not having run in November or December, I was not far below 800k for my mileage in 2012. In 2013, I want to focus a little less on mileage and more on speed. So there probably won’t be any 20+ kilometre runs, just shorter faster ones that will prepare me for the 5k and 10k races.

Tammie and I got out to see a couple of movies at the theatre in January, which was a nice treat. The first was Les Miserables, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. Hugh Jackman made the film for me, and I am not sure I could have watched it without him as the lead. I don’t understand how all the fuss was made about Anne Hathaway being in the film; her character dies at the 15 minute mark! The other movie we saw was The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I really enjoyed that film, saying it was comparable to the first Lord of the Rings film. I am a little concerned that Peter Jackson is looking to drag this story out a little too long, but I’ll wait and see what the next film is like. The next must-see movie is definitely Iron Man 3. The trailer looks great, so I am expecting another stellar film.

With the approach of Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, I have begun to play through the first Starcraft 2 storyline again. I am very excited about the continuation of the Starcraft mythology in the expansion. I don’t play very much Starcraft multiplayer (mainly because I suck), but the campaign play is something I really look forward to. And who knows, I may summon up enough courage to go play a few strangers online sometime.

Well, short update this month, so I best be off. Until next time!

Randy

We managed to end 2012 without too much winter arriving. The Christmas holidays were busy with visiting and the usual hustle that accompanies that time of year. The kids made out like bandits, despite everyone’s promise to “cut back”. Ah well, they are only little once, I suppose. Luke has been getting a healthy stockpile of Lego, and it was fun to set up a little Lego city in his bedroom. We have to put away some of his larger sets when the daycare kids are over, so I feel a little bad about that. But its only a few more months before we are getting out of the daycare business and we can all re-adopt our home. I think 2013 is going to be another radical transition year for us as a family, but only time will tell!

So through some crazy chain of events, we ended up buying a minivan on Christmas Eve. That was one of those Tammie-driven experiences that I was just along for the ride on, but that’s one of the reasons I love her. Her spontaneity balances my need to plan everything to the last detail. It’s a used vehicle that is in pretty good shape, and we feel like we got a pretty good price on it. With the kids and all their stuff, we have outgrown the car that we have had to this point. I’ll keep using the car to go to work and puttering around, but the van will become our primary waggon to carting the kids around.

I didn’t run at all in December, but started my strength training program recently. I am hoping that will help prevent any further leg issues this year. It is amazing how much stronger my right leg is than my left. I have always read about leg dominance, but it’s pretty spectacular how much difference there can be when you have a metric to measure it. I’ll probably clear more of January without any running, and then head back into some low mileage runs in February.

I got a bunch of art books for Christmas, and I really want to start working on some other art projects. Tammie has a book idea in mind that she wants me to illustrate, so I will start working on some concepts for that soon. It’s going to fully-painted, so each piece may take a while. There are services online that will print your books in softcover or hardcover formats, so I am excited to get all the pieces together and see what our final product would look like.

I finally finished Diablo 3 on Inferno difficulty level (the highest level of difficulty in the game). As much as I love Blizzard and the Diablo series, I really have to say that Diablo 3 has been very underwhelming. That’s not to say that it is a terrible game, but it certainly is not, but it is a far cry from most of the titles that Blizzard has released over the years. I played Diablo 2 more than any other game before World of Warcraft hit, and I won’t spend a fraction of that time with Diablo 3. And I don’t think it is because I have changed as a gamer, I think Blizzard just missed the mark with this one. Ah well, you can’t hit it out of the park every time!

Randy

November continues to bring fairly nice weather, with warm temperatures. We seem to be getting a lot more rain than we have gotten previously in the year, but I’ll take that over snow! My running mileage has dropped to almost zero this month, with me sneaking in one last race for the season.  I expect to take off a month or two while my knee stitches up, and then I’ll start some rehab training. Even though it has only been a few weeks since I stopped running, I miss it already. I couldn’t image being in a cast for several months, like my Dad was after his knee and ankle surgeries!

I have been really busy with work this month, so that has been monopolizing a lot of my time. I am also missing getting some artwork done, and haven’t been able to do very much this month. I want to do a bigger piece, and have a few ideas in mind. However the time never seems to materialize for those projects, once you get all the required aspects of your day out of the way. And then you need to sneak in a few hours for sleep as well!

The rush to Christmas has begun, with the kids assembling their Christmas lists and the decorating starting. Tammie wants to put up lights outside this year, but we have never done that before. I am not scared of heights, but ladders are not one of my favourite things. I do not trust them. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I do not trust myself on a ladder!

I picked up Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 off of Steam recently, as it was marked down quite a bit. It is a pretty fun game, and I use it kind of as my Solitaire when I want to kill 15 minutes. All the rules of Magic are crazy, and I can’t believe people can keep track of all the variations at tournaments and such. And I thought Dungeons and Dragons was bad!

Well, not much else to report this month. Back to some more work!

Randy

October has finished up and we are still having really nice weather here. The temperatures are warm, and although there has been more rain, we still have some sunny days as well. That’s been nice for Samantha at school, since that allows her class to do more outdoors things. Waiting outside the school to pick her up has been great with little rain and warm temperatures as well. Samantha and Luke are both in skating classes, at different times and different rinks. After being there a few weeks, I think Luke is actually too young to be on the ice, as he struggles to understand and get around. But he is excited to be there and loves being on the ice, so I’ll keep taking him. Samantha is more advanced because of her age, and is beginning to skate really well. Tammie has started mentioning ski season, so I am sure that will be the next winter activity on the docket.

I ran the half-marathon event in mid-October, setting a personal best in the process.  My time was 1:38:28, which was a little bit faster than my time four years ago. I felt strange walking up to the start line because I wasn’t as nervous as I usually am. But once we got rolling, I kept my pace steady and tried to hold my position in the field right up until the end. The weather was a little cooler that day than it had been the previous few weeks, but with little wind and no rain, I won’t complain about cool temperatures. I finished 39 out of 614, which I am pretty happy with. My left knee has been bugging me all year, and I am pretty sure I have IT Band Syndrome. I have one more race this year to complete, and then I will likely have to take a few weeks off with no activity at all. As an overuse injury, rest is the best course of action, followed by some leg strengthening programs. So that means I likely won’t meet my mileage goals for this year, but I’d rather be healthy for years to come than try to make up those extra kilometers.

Work isn’t as busy as it was last year, but I still have lots to do. We have been working a lot on an internal project for apartments rental management. My employer has several businesses, and one of them is a rentals company that has over a hundred units. We built out a piece of web-based software that helps manages clients, rental agreements, buildings, units, etc.  It is a pretty slick tool and I am quite happy with how it is turning out. The staff seem to find it very helpful thus far, which is always a good measure for success.

I am tearing through the highest level of difficulty in Diablo 3, and it’s pretty fun. I think this is how the game should have been right from the beginning. Too many people didn’t stick with it long enough to get to this portion of the game, and they are losing out. I here rumblings about the next expansion for Starcraft 2 nearing release, and I hope that the reports are true. The expansion has taken way too long to develop.

Well, I have some contract work to move onto tonight, so I best get cracking. No rest for the wicked!

Randy

September is never my favourite month. There are a lot of reasons for that, but generally I just wish that September would skip us by. But this year we had a big September because it contained Samantha’s first day of school. Tammie struggled with the approach of the school year because she has stayed home to look after Luke and Samantha. They really have never been out of her sight for very long. Samantha on the other hand, was super-excited to be attending school, and eager to experience all the new things that awaited her. I had mixed feelings about the whole thing, because I enjoy watching my children grow up and become their own people, but at the same time you can’t help but lament the passing of those early childhood days. Having children means that you can be a kid again. You get to be stupid and silly, and for brief moments you can shed the responsibilities of adulthood. It’s a beautiful experience, and truly meant to be cherished while you have the chance. Anyways, it was difficult to drop Samantha off on her first day of classes, entrusting her to people you do not know. Both my parents are teachers, so I know that 99.9% of teachers are fabulous people that only want to do the best for their students, but it was still hard. But she was fine, and I was fine, and we are into the routine now. Some days I feel sad that I cannot experience these parts of her days; I always feel like I am missing something important. I suppose I am.

October brings up the half-marathon race, which will be my last major race of the year. It won’t be the last race that I run, but it will likely be the last balls-to-the-wall race that I’ll be in. Last year the wind was terrible for this event, and I am not hoping for a repeat of that this year. I am well-trained and motivated though, so I’ll give race day everything I have. Normally I’d be confident that I could set a good time, but the pain of the 25k in August lingers on. I was sure I was prepared for that race as well, but the last portion of that event really drained my tank. So we’ll see on race day.

Luke has discovered Lego, mainly because of my insistence. He loves it, which bodes not well for our financial future. I love Lego and would every set in existence, given the chance. He is a bit too little to make the sets on his own, so I help him along and then we play with them afterwards. We are heavy into the Lego City theme, since Luke loves trucks, cars, and motorcycles. Samantha also has a few of the Lego Friends sets, and she enjoys those as well. Not quite as much as Luke, but we probably have quite the Lego collection beginning!

Tammie is taking a creative writing class at UPEI this fall. It is fun to watch her write more regularly, because she really enjoys it and is a very good writer. She has a real knack for creating believable characters. She has to submit a piece every two weeks, which I think is a nice amount of writing for her to knock off. Practice makes perfect, and sometimes it is hard to find the motivation to be creative after a hard day with the kids. The class helps keep her motivated and I really hope she gets what she needs out of it.

I am trying to get through Diablo 3, and am close to the highest difficulty level. So I think I’ll squeeze in a few minutes of dungeon crawling before I head to bed. Til next time!

Randy

August has been very hot and humid, which I don’t really mind at all. Some people complain about the warm weather, but I think I should have been born somewhere much warmer than I was. I relish the warm temperatures for the most part, even on my runs. I was not sure I would be able to run a 25k race in late August, but I ended up giving it a whirl. The day was very hot and the hills were challenging, making for a difficult race. I finished in 2:07:00, and Tammie said she has never seen me looking so exhausted when I hit the finish line. It took the better part of the day to get re-hydrated and back to feeling normal, but overall I faired not too badly. I wish the last 5k of the race had felt a little better, but it’s been a few years since I put that kind of distance on my legs at one time. I am definitely ready for the half-marathon in October. I now just need to keep myself in tip-tip shape.

My Dad recently had ankle surgery in Halifax, so that meant I drove over with him. We were expecting to be there up to six days, but ended up being able to go home after four. I really missed the kids and Tammie while I was gone, so it was nice to be back. I am probably not really cut out for travel that would keep me from my family for a long time. I have never really had the chance to spend much time in Halifax during the summer; I always seem to end up there in the winter. With the new semester approaching, there were a large number of Dalhousie University students milling around, and moving vans on every corner. Made me miss my university days.

Samantha is starting school this month, which is amazing because it doesn’t seem that long ago from her baby days. She is a very bright and social little girl, so I expect that she will fit into school very well. Luke will get some more quality time with Tammie, which I think he will enjoy. He is developing into a very independent little guy, which makes reigning in his enthusiasm difficult sometimes!

And speaking of enthusiasm, I am beat. So I’m off to get a few more errands completed around the house and then off the bed!

Randy

So we are wrapping up a beautiful July, filled with lots of warm weather.  I was able to get back into the running saddle pretty well, topping 100k for the month.  I also set a new personal best in a 10k race a few weeks ago, so I am getting my racing legs back under me.  I am trying to stretch out my running distances a bit as well, although I am not sure I will be ready to run a 25k race in mid-August as I had planned.  Regardless, I am going to try and stick with the running schedule I have laid out and we’ll see where I end up.

So we had our first real family camping trip over the Canada Day weekend, where we took the kids out to tent at a local campground.  It was pretty fun, with lots of hikes, pool time, campfires, and such.  My favourite part was the drunk guy slung across my car at 2am in the morning.  I expected some partying, but the people next to us were ridiculous.  And they weren’t snot-nosed teens that don’t know any better; they were middle-aged adults that you would expect to be more mature.  Ah well, it made for a rough nights sleep, but it didn’t spoil the rest of our time.  And since we headed home a little early on the last day, we got to see the Canada Day fireworks that night!

I went to see both Amazing Spider-Man and Dark Knight Rises, which rounds out the comic book movie summer.  I did not like Spider-Man, and felt like the entire movie was badly cast and poorly written.  It is a movie that I’d expect to play better to general audiences than geeks, so I can’t completely write it off.  The Lizard was a lame villain to use, and Peter Parker just didn’t feel right.  And the ending to the movie is terrible, which always leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.  Contrast that to the Dark Knight Rises, which was terrific.  It served as a really nice bookend to the trilogy, providing a satisfying conclusion to this particular version of the Batman story.  Bane was a great bad-guy, and I didn’t expect the twist with the League of Shadows towards the end.  I did not like Anne Hatheway as Catwoman, but thankfully her role was small and almost inconsequential to the overall action.  I hope they leave that series closed with that film, and look to explore the Batman mythos with a new direction after a few more years.

Well, that’s it for now. Going to try and slip in some Terraria before bed!

Randy