Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Ok we had to do it. I am seeing these links everywhere and curiosity got the best of me. Go to the link, it's hilarious:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1847136791

I think anyone with a blog would understand the feeling of sitting down to write an entry and not knowing exactly what to write about. So I thought I would just start with the events from our lives as well as the holiday season and we'll go from there.

New Job for Liz:
In early December, Liz started a new job. I would say the company but I don't know if that's an appropriate thing to say on a blog, besides, I think most everyone who reads this blog knows what it is. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a huge step forward for her in career growth, personal growth, and personal happiness in general. Her job title is the administrative assistant to the Senior Vice President. There are tons of reasons why this job is much better than the last one but I think there are two pros that trump all the rest. The first reason is that she is just a happier person for it. She is working with reasonable people and is working in a quiet atmosphere. You'd think in most jobs you'd take those characteristics for granted but we know now that you shouldn't. She is no longer in an office in which her clients have the opportunity to yell at her. When she comes home from work she may still be tired but she is anything but unhappy. The other glaring reason is that she is seeing how her work makes a difference and that it's appreciated. At her old job, no matter what she did or how good of a job she did, it was never recognized or appreciated. The clients still treated her like crap when she tried hard to make them happy and her superior gave her no respect when she worked so hard to deserve it. But I think it's nice for her to see exactly how she is making a difference and that what she is doing is benefiting the company in a way for it to prosper. I hope all these good things won't change because it looks like she is setup to have a fantastic year in 2008.

Our Pups, Daisy:
Daisy has had a rough December and it is not going to get any easier. At the end of November she had a bout of diarrhea that she got from my cousin's dog Yoshi. She got over it pretty quick but then in the middle of December it came back with a vengeance and we had to take her to the Vet where she got some good canned food as well as some medicine. She is finally over it and back to normal which is fantastic. Then this past weekend we went down to Hilton Head where we stayed in a resort where they don't allow dogs. She being so small and quiet, we figured we'd have no problem taking her. For the most part we didn't have any problems but it also meant we had to be conspicuous and take her out after dark in the woods and take her out in the morning before the sun came up. Since it was winter, it was much more manageable since the sun came up at 7 and went down around 5. So this meant we had to make one trip out during the day with her so we took her to the beach during those times. It was impressive she did so well in a new place but it was rough on her when you consider the 5 hour drive both ways. This coming weekend we are going down to Atlanta but we aren't able to bring her so she is staying with our friends Matt and Meg. This is awfully generous of them since they have two cats who aren't exactly friendly. We visited once and one of them liked her and the other one slapped her in the face, so we'll make one more visit tonight and see what happens.

After having Daisy for 4 months now, Liz and I both agree that getting her was a fantastic decision. It was a lot more work than we anticipated but she has just been a dream. I don't think we could have asked for a more well behaved dog and while she still has her annoying habits, they aren't things we can't work on with her.

Happy Holidays:
Like I said we went to Hilton Head this past weekend and that was a lot of fun. We went down with Mama and Papa D (Liz's Parents) and Scott, Hillary, Brynn, and Callie. Her parents drove almost 1200 miles from Michigan and Scott and Hilary flew all the way from Colorado to be there. We arrived on Sunday night and on Monday we went for a very long bike ride all over the island. I mapped it and it was just about a 19 mile bike ride, and for a group of 6 bikes, I'd say that is pretty good. I have to give a little recognition to the seafood place we stopped at for lunch on Monday, I think it was called Captain Seafood (creative). I had the best tilapia or fish for that matter, I've ever tasted. It was awesome. Then on Monday night we went in the hot tub and enjoyed the night together playing Mexican Train. While we couldn't stay past Christmas because we both had to work, we spent the morning opening presents and down by the pool swimming and playing shuffleboard. I'm sad we couldn't stay longer but it was a great time.

This coming weekend we will be driving to Atlanta to see my family and it will again be a shortened weekend, we will only be there from Friday night through Sunday.

Biggest Loser:
Just to give an update on the competition, it looks like as a group we have lost about 60 pounds so far. For 20 people after a month, that's a little disappointing, but 60 is better than 0 and that's the point. I personally am down about 5 pounds but I think that will be changing very soon since I've been biking and lifting so much.

Also in case anyone wants to know, on Tuesday the greatest show in the world starts back up, The Biggest Loser season 5. Liz and I are super excited.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not obsessed with television, but there are 3 relatively unknown TV shows that I have to advertise for because they are the epitome of awesome.

American Gladiators:
I am probably far too obsessed with certain television shows but American Gladiators was a childhood favorite of mine and it is coming back on TV on January 6th. I've never been so excited and it looks better than ever. Why am I excited? Because when I was a kid this show is what I lived for. I had to watch it. I lived for the action and competition. I wanted so badly to be on it. There were two things when I was a kid that I thought, "that is something that I want to eventually achieve". The two things were be on American Gladiators and run a marathon. Well with 2 marathons under my belt and a 3rd looking more and more likely, American Gladiators looks about as unlikely a reality as sliced bread, or something like that. Well all I can do is watch and live for the nights that it is on. This might be a group watching type show, because I have a bunch of friends who are excited for it as well.

Lost:
Lost is another show that Liz and I love and it is coming back for something like 20 straight episodes beginning on January 31st. We might need to get the last few episodes from Netflix because I am not quite sure I remember everything that was going on. It was such an awesome show when it started out because while it had a ton of mystery and secrets, it didn't feel like it was dragging it's feet on the action. There were always things going on and information being handed to you as vague is it might have been. But into Season 2 and 3 it fizzled out because it got to the point where you stopped caring about the secrets because the show would go so slow and your attention span was just lost (ha! pun intended) every episode. But with the ending of Season 3, it looks like it's heading in the right direction. We'll see what Season 4 has in store.

Battlestar Galactica (BSG):
This is another "Lost" type situation where it stopped early last year and hasn't had a new episode since. It will be starting back up in March 2008 and I am frakking excited!! I think a lot people look at this show as a geeky show and just write it off, unwilling to watch it. Well it's on the Sci-fi channel and the premise is that humans created robots (on the show they call them cylons (sigh-lons) also referred to as toasters) and the robots turned on the humans. They created the capability to think on their own and realized humans used them but they wanted representation (sounds familiar based on US History). Well humans wouldn't give it to them so the cylons retreated to another part of the galaxy. In BSG, they could travel through space very quickly. After many many years of hiding the cylons came back and attacked the humans in what was almost a complete obliteration of human life. Only a few survived and they are traveling in a fleet of ships fleeing from the cylons. The leader of that fleet is the Galactica, which is a ship from the Battlestar class, just like we use the words USS for the Navy. What the humans find out is during the time, the cylons were able to duplicate the human form and now the humans don't know who is a cylon and who isnt and there is only a certain blood test that can determine it. There are 13 cylons that look like humans and we are just now finding out who they are as we move into a new season. So this whole time we could have been watching our favorite characters assuming they were on the human side but really they were cylons in disguise.

That is just a rough description of what the show is about. There is such a dumb stigma that comes along with Sci-fi, that you have to be a dork or a geek to enjoy it. BSG is just an action drama staged in a different environment. And it's one of the best shows I've ever watched.

Well that concludes an awfully bland blog posting, just informational information, imagine that. I will try and come up with something more interesting soon.

I have to give picture credits to Hillary for posting them to her album. Here's a link

So I realize this blog is reserved for the lives of Liz and I and what we do on a daily basis. But I have taken on another project at work that I just couldn't resist sharing. I personally don't think it falls into the scope of the blog but oh well...

So I'm sure most people don't know what I do and while everyone has their main job role at work, they also understand that they are constantly thrown other projects that keep you very busy. Well one outside project of mine is that I manage the websites for our department and a few others. And recently I took on another project that is somewhat related to the website but has nothing to do with work. Let me explain:

A week before Thanksgiving I was talking to a friend of mine at work named Charlie and he was telling me about how he just started his own weight loss program. He was really excited about it and said he would really love to work out with me because he knows I am really into exercise (not so much into the eating healthy though). I told him since we were members at different gyms it couldn't happen but I offered him some motivation. I told him that in order to do any more marathons, I would have to drop 20 pounds because this recent marathon would have gone better if I was lighter. So I made a bet with him, the first person to drop 20 pounds wins. The loser would pay for the movie tickets on a double date between Liz and I and him and his fiance. Or at least that was the origin of this story.

So we tell my boss and a few other people in our department about it and we very soon are getting a lot of interest from them to participate. After some braintstorming we came up with a biggest loser competition that involved around 6 or so departments in our area. So far we have about 20 people participating with people trying to lose anywhere from 20 pounds to 150 pounds. There are no winners or losers, we are just equal motivation for each other to make changes. It's an amazing thing what we've started and even though we are just a week into it, it has been crazy enjoyable.

So why do I mention the website I manage? Well I have set up individual pages for everyone participating that only they can see. This keeps their weight secret in case weight privacy is a big issue for someone. That is the place where they log their starting weight, weight loss and weight goals. I then created a common page that everyone can see where it has a table that shows the percent that everyone wishes to lose and the current percent that they've lost. This common page is dynamic too so anytime anyone joins the competition or anytime someone updates their individual pages, the common page shows the update immediately. I have to be honest, I'm very proud of the pages I've created in order to track the competition. I have gotten a lot of great comments about it, how everyone enjoys seeing the goals and status of the other participants.

Another feature of the competition is that the first Tuesday of every month, everyone participating is going to go to lunch together to talk and discuss strategy and accomplishments. We are also setting up daily lunch walks in small groups to keep exercise motivation up.

Every Tuesday Liz and I sit in front of the TV and with cold and sweaty palms we squirm over the stress and anticipation of what is going to happen on our favorite show, The Biggest Loser. There are a ton of narrow-minded people who hate reality TV and would refuse to watch it for that reason. But this is not a drama-filled popularity contest, these are real people changing their lives right in front of your eyes while advertising a healthy lifestyle of eating right and exercising hard. What more could an American want out of a TV show? And hey, if it rubs off a little motivation, then fantastic. I always thought it would be cool to be a part of it, from the perspective that your life revolves around being healthy and exercising with a trainer. If my full time job would be to lift weights, run, and exercise, I'd be the happiest person on earth. So even though we don't have a Bob or Jillian or an awesome biggety scale, it would be cool to see some people at work change their lives and I can only hope I played a part in it.

So it's about time that you blogged, I mean jeez, come on Michael, you even put a date on when you would blog next and you didn't do it. Or at least that's what I'm thinking anyone who read the last blog would say. So the experiment I would say was a tremendous success relative to where she was before the experiment.

Results:
Daisy is a much better walker now. I followed the advice from Jon Chase and put some food in my pocket on walks and whenever Daisy would lag behind, I would say "Daisy Come" with some food and she would start to run so that's fantastic. She is not lagging behind as much. She knows the amount of time she has at each mailbox now so whenever I pass her and tug slightly and say "Daisy Come", she starts running again. She still isn't great about running ahead, she runs as far as we let her though so whether the leash is long or short, she tugs the same so I guess that's good. If we keep the leash short she is always walking with us. One thing we are doing now is anytime she is running out ahead, we'll stop and she'll sit immediately (which has become voluntary now) and then we'll make her come so she runs back to us. It's working really well. I think the next goal is teaching her to "heel", which I realize will be a bear of a task. So overall Daisy is a much better walker. One thing she loves to do is just run in the grass between the sidewalk and the street with her nose down smelling everything. That way she gets to smell and we're not held up. It's great.

As far as waking up early, it's totally not happening, or at least all the time. I still have trouble getting out of bed. I do think I will take Daisy on walks more often then she had been before but I am just far too tired to be hopping out of bed like I'm happy about it.

Conclusions:
This dog is smarter than we give her credit for. After not taking her on walks in the morning for a few days now she is starting to beg for it. She'll get to our driveway and tug and then turn around and look at us like "let's go". And if I start walking towards her, she'll start walking away with her head slightly turned to make sure we're following. I don't think there is a trick we can't teach her or an action we can't get her to stop, it just takes patience and time, something we are willing to give.

Well this week should be fantastic because we are driving to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving. We are really anxious for my parents to meet her and for her to get a lot of attention throughout the week. But for now I'm gonna take her to the dog park so she's all tired out for the trip!

Marathon:

So I wanted to update everyone on how my marathon went this past weekend. I don't know if everyone knew, but I ran the City of Oaks Marathon here in Raleigh this past Sunday. I ran it with one of my groomsmen named John. We had been training all year although within the last few months we've somewhat fallen off. I can honestly say that I didn't prepare for this one as well as I did for my first one back in 2005 but going into it, I still felt like I could do it. This race however was much more difficult than my first one. It was much more hilly and part of the race was on a gravel/dirt trail so that made it tough as well. For anyone interested in seeing the course, here it is:

http://cityofoaksmarathon.com/course_info/

We started off rocky. John has had knee problems in the last few months and within the first .5 mile he said it started to hurt. Although as we went on, it didn't get worse so he continued. We made it through the first half in 2:08 which is a great pace and exactly where we wanted to be. Around mile 15 we started to alternate between walking and running. And somewhere between there and the finish line my left foot started hurting. It's known as plantar fasciitis. It's basically pain in the ligament or tendon that connects to your heel from the balls of your feet. We finally hobbled in, finishing the race in 4 hours and 47 minutes (27 minutes slower than my first marathon).

Now 3 days later the pain in my foot is still there but it's healing up. The marathon is a funny race. I realize this is going to sound ridiculous because not everyone can run 26, 13 or even 3 miles, so stick with me when I say this. The first 13 miles feel fantastic... I don't feel tired and I don't feel winded. If I stopped, my muscles would be sore but it wouldn't be a big deal. But that second half is when the muscle pain really comes. It's a feeling you just won't forget. It's a feeling you never want but you have to have in order to finish such a grueling race. I can't imagine ever being in good enough shape to ever not feel tired during the second half of the race. Although I trained really hard for my first race, around mile 20 I completely hit the wall. My muscles would not function and running was an impossibility. This race however I never hit "the wall" however my muscles still were in pain but not enough that I couldn't easily keep going. So it's interesting to me that even though I didn't train as hard, I never hit the wall. So will I do another one? Probably but whether that's sooner or later, I don't know. It's such a commitment to train for that I don't know if that's something I want to put myself through again anytime soon.

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Dog Experiment:

So there are a few behaviors in our family that have become readily apparent to me in the past few days and I am on a mission to fix them, or at least run an experiment for one full week to see if I can fix them. These few things are as follows:

• I do not like getting out of bed in the morning.
• Liz does not like getting out of bed in the morning.
• Daisy loves getting out of her crate in the morning.
• Because of our work schedules, Daisy only spends an hour or two between getting up and getting in her crate for the day, so she's understandably wound up when we get home.
  
• Daisy is not great on walks. She smells things too much, will not keep walking when I tug on her, and she also likes to run ahead, pulling on the leash.
• I do not eat any breakfast in the morning.
  

So because of these things I have decided to run an experiment with Daisy. Here it is, and probably far too structured for a blog:

Purpose:
To change my view of getting up in the morning from being tired to being awake and ready for the day. This is also to see how Daisy's behavior changes not only towards me as her Dad but also towards Liz and the day in general as she gets a little more exercise in the morning. It is also to change her behavior on our walks. See procedure below.

Hypothesis:
Daisy will not be as wild and wound up when we get home from work. She will also become very pleasant to go for a walk with. I will have a reason for getting up in the morning and getting a small breakfast and it will not be as hard to start the day. Liz will be happier to not have to get out of bed on the mornings she usually takes Daisy out.

Materials:
Ms. Daisington and her leash as well as very warm cloths.

Procedure:
Every morning at 6:30AM I will get up and take Daisy downstairs. I will get a glass of water and a snack before doing anything. I will then take Daisy out on a leash and walk at least the small loop around our neighborhood with her. Whenever she starts to sniff or smell I'll try using our "Daisy come" command and when she does, I'll praise her. Whenever she runs out ahead I will stop in my tracks and will not keep going until she sits, stays and stops tugging. When we get back, I will not get back in bed.

So that is the extent of my experiment. In exactly one week, that being next Wednesday night, I will let everyone know how this experiment goes. I will include the Results, Conclusions and Acknowledgments.

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By the way, during this post, Daisy wanted to help, so she laid her head on my laptop. Check it out(too cute, Liz came over and said, "I had to take a picture"):

So it has been about two months now since we got Daisy and while she has always been kind and nice to us, lately we feel like she is finally loving on us as if we have always been her owners, and as if she always wants us to be.

Today I went to see the Bengals game at a local bar and when I came home Liz was napping on the couch and Daisy met me at the door. I picked Daisy up and sat on the couch and she immediately went into hibernate mode and just closed her eyes and went limp on my chest with the occasional kiss here and there. After about 10 minutes I put her on the ground and opened the sliding glass door to let her out. She ran out and then turned to see if I would follow. I closed the door to stay inside and she ran up to it and starting scratching. I opened it up and she just stood in the doorway waiting for me(see Exhibit A above). I made my way out and she wagged her tail and led me down the stairs into the yard. We played fetch for a bit and when I got bored and went inside she came right in after me. I sat on the couch to check some fantasy football scores and Daisy climbed up to the couch and slowly walked over to Liz, walked all the way up her legs and plopped right on Liz's stomach into a ball to go back to sleep(see Exhibit B, Daisy tried to get up when I got the camera, so she was no longer in "ball" form). This of course woke up Liz but it's without a doubt the greatest way to wake up, let me tell you. And while this is not the first time this has happened, it has been much more frequent and we feel like she is finally 100% comfortable with us.

I must say there are times when this love waivers, and that is any time we put her in the car to go anywhere. Up until 2 months ago, car=bad. It was either to go to the Vet to get spayed or even worse, to be taken to a new home and will not come back to where ever she was. But we are beginning to change that because everyone at the Vet loves her, and by loves her I mean I'm lucky to walk out of there with her in my arms, and any other car ride is to fun places where she can run around. We think she is beginning to know what the words "go to the vet" or "going to see cousin Dewey" mean.

It has just been nice to see her transform the way she has and I'm sure she will continue to do so. After all the reading I have done about dogs and dog training, people always say that a dog won't obey you and won't want to do tricks for you unless it loves, respects, and trusts you. So now with that being said, it seems like lately she has been a lot more well behaved. Whenever we say "no bite" she actually stops, she hasn't gone to the bathroom in the house in at least a month, and she has very quickly picked up on the tricks we are trying to teach her. She has mastered, "sit", "stay", "come", "no bite", and "go to the ramp". And now we are working on "shake", "stand up", and "lay down". She will willingly do these tricks but we have to show her. We'll see how long it takes her to do them herself. Luckily for us, dog training has been a ton of fun so I see no reason why she can't learn English by at least next September.

Tonight she has another full night of fun. We are going over to Jon, Julie, and Cousin Dewey's house for dinner, pumpkin carving, and some scary movie fun. Probably going to watch "The Thing" and another scary movie like "The Shining" or something. She'll of course be preoccupied by the Deweymeister.

Here is one more picture of Daisy sleeping on us:
I also want to include one more thing. Liz came home a few days ago with a surprise. The back story is that on our honeymoon the cruise ship sailed by the Na Pali Coast on the western side of Kauai. When we were sailing by I took the camera and took as many high resolution pictures as I could and there was one clear and overwhelming favorite of the bunch. For a long time I had it as my background on my computer and just love it. Well Liz took that picture, and with the help of Stacy, they got it blown up and framed and Liz brought it home the other day. It is absolutely amazing and is a perfect picture to put above the mantle. I really love having meaningful things hung up around the house rather than just a generic picture we buy at the store, so that picture will be a reminder of the awesome time we had on the trip to Hawaii. Here are 2 pictures of the picture:


PS - I love the Bengals, but they depress me. Fire Bresnahan and draft 7 players for the defense.

After coming home from the hardest day of work I have had since working at IBM, I must blog about how awesome life is. I realize that this blog is about Liz and my lives and what we do and where we go, but I want to take a second to say just how awesome life is when you have a wife like Liz. I realize we only have 4 months experience in the marriage department, but I feel like our lives flow like peanut butter and jelly. Whenever she falls off the side of the sandwich, as that tends to happen in PB&J's, I flow right off the side with her. And the bite of a PB&J isn't as delicious without a little bit of peanut butter and a little bit of jelly. Metaphors and jokes aside, we just don't have arguments, I feel like we communicate a lot about life and the daily events, and we always know how the other will react in most situations which makes it very easy to live with each other. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that this paragraph is just about as long as a reader wants it to be so I will leave it at, life is great with Liz.

So as far as the events in the past month or so. Momma D came to visit and that was a lot of fun. She came with her sleeves rolled up and boy did she change this house around. She painted one of our guest bedrooms royal blue, our master bathroom a dark cappuccino color, and kick started my deck project. She also got to meet Daisy for the first time and I know that they both loved that. We are so appreciative of her visiting and helping us out around the house. We look forward to more of that in the future :).
The weekend after Momma D was here, we went to the beach with Jon and Julie and Cousin Dewey. It was a great time and we will remember it most by our lack of preparation. Liz and I didn't even pack enough for a night of sleeping on the couch, let alone camping near the beach. A full change of clothes, a bathing suit, sandals, flashlight, matches or fire starters; these are all items that make sense at a camp site near the beach, apparently not to us. But regardless we had a fantastic time. We'd like to do again sometime soon and possibly make it a tradition. Here are a few pictures from the trip(you might have to click on them to see them better):