Michael & Liz are Bloggable

I came home from softball last night and Liz had dinner ready to go. She made caesar salad, pork chops, rice, and some rolls. I finished my salad, and then started eating the rest of it and Liz says this:

Liz: "How was the salad?"
Me: "Good... normal, you've made caesar salad before."
Liz: "Well I just wanted to say congratulations, you just had your first item from the garden."
Me: "... That was butter crunch lettuce?!? It tasted the same as romaine!"

She didn't want to tell me beforehand because she knows I was nervous about just how much dirt was caked all over the lettuce and all the vegetables for that matter. She reassured me that she washed it thoroughly before cutting it up.

It was a devious plan, but it totally worked. I can't wait for the peppers!! There are a TON of banana peppers very close to being ready for picking.

I'm trying to blog more frequently and make the blogs smaller. I'm always long winded with blogs and emails so it'll be nearly impossible.

Not too long ago I hung a piece of paper in my cube at work that has really been a big help with motivation and keeping my "eyes on the prize" so to speak when it comes to things I want to accomplish. They are quotes from a book I read recently:

Dewey is Daisy and Gryffin's friend that moved out of the country for a few years. Jon, his Dad, just sent me this picture this morning and it made me realize how much we miss Dewey. As Daisy and Gryffin would say, he is our "best fwend".


I guess we miss Jon & Julie too ;).

Two Saturdays ago I started obedience classes with Gryffin. I know everyone is thinking, he's a perfect dog, why obedience class? Well believe it or not he has flaws. He's supposed to be Gryffindor, but sometimes he's a little Slytherin.

His main behavior issue is that he gets CRAZY around other dogs in the neighborhood. When we take him for walks, and he sees another dog, he goes absolutely ballistic. He runs his feet like a sled dog, and squeals, growls, and barks at the other dog. It is flat out EMBARRASSING. He doesn't do it as much around just people, but we need to teach him that this isn't acceptable behavior.

This is a secondary issue, but he goes nuts when people come in the house. He doesn't get aggressive, but he jumps up and just becomes generally unruly.

So the first class was just a meet and greet with the owners. The teacher lectured for an hour about dog behavior, training philosophies, and things we should work on during the first week. The exercises for week 1 were pretty straight forward:

• Solidify his own name. Say his name, if he turns, give him a treat. You'd be surprised at the number of dogs who don't know their own name the first class.
  
• A marker word. Whenever you give him a treat say a marker word. We started out trying to use "Yes!", since that was the teacher's suggestion, but he didn't learn it that quickly. We switched before week 2 to using "Good Boy!" and since he hears it so much already, it was a smooth transition. He knows exactly what "Good Boy" means now.
  
• Sit. This is self explanatory.
  

The second class was much more entertaining since the dogs were now invited to attend. 6 dogs were signed up for the class, only 4 came during week 2. All the dogs had concentration issues with everyone there. We needed barriers set up between them. After those were set up, Gryffin become one of the best dogs in the class. We spent a good 15 minutes practicing week 1 skills and just nailing them easy. Then the rest of the time trying to incorporate week 2 skills. Week 2 skills are:

• Continue to work on sit.
  
• Watch. Hold a treat to your face, repeat "watch" many times while they stare at you, then reward them. Teaches the dog to focus on you when you say "watch".
  
• Come. This is self explanatory.
• A release word. When you ask him to sit, he can get up if you say the release word. Ours is "OK!"
• Down. Teaching him to lay down. Gryffin is not great at this command. He actually thinks he needs to gravel at my feet when I say "down" and point to the ground. Because every time I say it, he crawls forward to my feet and then hunches down. It's cute but not correct.
  

So I feel like Gryffin is well on his way for week 2. He knows the commands pretty well already.

The downside of the week 2 class was that I got into an argument with the teacher. At one point I said "Gryffin" and he didn't turn to me because he was pulling to try and go over to another dog. I said "Gryffin!" again louder and he still didn't turn. Gryffin is the kind of dog that just turns everything off when he sees another dog. It's like his blinders go on and nothing else matters.

The teacher saw me doing this and said "Don't say his name more than once. If you say it more than once and he doesn't turn, it means he doesn't know his name." I was a little offended she just outright said that because part of the reason we loved the name Gryffin was because he immediately ran to us when we said it 2 YEARS AGO! I said "Oh no, I know he knows his name, he just gets distracted and isn't listening." She then responded, "He's listening, he just doesn't know his name." I got frustrated and said "I promise you, he knows his name, he just doesn't care right now cuz he's more intrigued with that boxer." She continued on and asserted her authority as teacher and I relented since I'm supposed to be the student. I hate to say she's wrong, but I just said "Gryffin", guess who came running into the room? Ok, I'll say it, she's wrong.

This weekend there is no class since it's a holiday weekend. That means we get two weeks to practice. I'm going to try and make sure my boy is the best one there next week.

Seriously. When I decided to take on this little project this summer, I wasn't sure how I'd do. Sure, I was excited about eating things from the backyard, but that's about it. But now I realize it is so much more than that. It's AWESOME to see things grow! Things that were just little plants, or even seeds are now showing signs of food! How cool is that? I go out to see the garden multiple times a day...just to check in. I'll put on my gardening shoes and head out the back door and Michael will say, "tell them I say hi".

Remember this picture? It was taken at the beginning of my gardening adventure:


Now look! This is about 6 weeks apart and there is so much progress!


In fact, I have been meaning to blog about the garden this past weekend. So friday night I went out to take pictures and then lazily kept them on my camera and spent time doing non-blogging things. When I went to post this today I realized I had to go back out and take new pictures because everything got bigger since Friday.

This little banana pepper was just sprouting out of it's flower on Friday:


And now look at it! It even has a friend.


Just a few other highlights...check out the zucchini plants. These were the seeds that popped out the ground first a few weeks ago and they are almost ready to blossom with flowers...I can see them coming!



All of the tomato plants are doing wonderfully, but the front runner is definitely the Sweet 100 Cherries. I am yelling at them to turn red already so I can eat them!



And the roma tomatoes:


And the Big Boys...which aren't big at all compared to the other two types:


Doesn't this cute little curl on the pumpkin plants remind you of Cinderella?

Hmm...maybe that's just me?

I went for a run today and started thinking about how much of my life is reliant upon numbers. Most everything I set out to accomplish relies on something calculable or quantifiable. And if it wasn't quantifiable, at least you could see, touch, smell, taste, or feel the results. I think that's why sometimes I struggle with faith because most of it is intangible. I'm just not designed to believe what I can't see. But I do my best anyway, and if God is God, then he understands that. But I digress.

What I'm trying to say is that between running, losing weight, my job, anything, numbers are everything. Have I gotten faster? How many miles have I run this year? (261 so far) Have I lost weight? How many sodas have I had this year? (0 by the way). How many beers have I had since April 15th? (0 also). It's not too often that I'd make a goal that didn't have a big fat red line of success. Cross it and you succeeded, fall short of it and you failed.

That's the way I like it though. Is it nice to feel more in shape? ...sure. Is that enough to say I accomplished something? ...not a chance. Every time I go out for a run, I say to Liz, "Not looking to break any records today". And yet my mind set whenever I start is "How fast have I done this run before? Can I go faster? Was my first mile on pace with my best first mile in the past?" I just find myself rarely accepting of an average run.

So when I'm running I'm constantly thinking numbers. If I stay on this pace, I'll finish in... If I want to finish in 1 hour exactly, I have to run the last 3 miles in... I've run for 17 minutes now, my average quarter mile pace was... I would probably drive running partners nuts if I spoke everything I thought during a run... in fact, I've been known to drive them nuts despite my restraint.

I'm super thrilled today because my running goals and my weight goals are really going well, numbers wise. Yesterday I ran 5 miles in 41:33 and when I finished I was ecstatic because 40 minutes is probably one of my fastest 5 mile runs. So to get so close means I'm improving. Today I went for an 8 mile run and ironically enough, I passed the 5 mile mark right exactly at 41:33. I laughed a little when I glanced at my watch and decided to speed up the last 3 miles finishing in 1:04:39. I can't exclaim enough how excited I am about running right now.

Weight wise, I started the year weighing 196 looking to drop 26 pounds as my New Year's Resolution. Yesterday morning (granted I weighed myself after my 5 mile run) I weighed 177. 19 pounds! This morning I was back at 180 seeing as I chugged water the rest of the day. But I really feel like the 20 pound point is going to be hit this week and I'm hoping to get to under 170 by my birthday. At least that's the goal, but without the numbers, I feel like I'd have no goal. Would I have tried to lose weight without having weighed myself to begin with? Probably not.

What's nice is that Liz is not only supportive of the goals, but encouraging of them, despite my moments of insanity with silly statistics.

"Success is the pile of failures you're standing on."

[I apologize for the constant barrage of rhetorical questions. Can you tell I like using them?]

The map for the "Home Run" was finally generated by one of the runners with a Garmin. For anyone who didn't read the post, it was a 16 mile run we made from work to someone's house. Check it out:


Here's a link to all the data:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/33266309?sms_ss=gmail

As most of you know, Liz and I follow the financial advice of Dave Ramsey. I can't claim that we follow it as closely as he'd advise us to, but for the most part, we follow a lot of what he says. We "officially" started his plan back in November 2008 and we are close to claiming "we are debt free(except the house)" by the end of June. In fact, we are planning on our celebration dinner being the same date as our anniversary, July 7th. This post isn't meant to convince you to follow same plan, but I'll get to my point in a bit.

When we were planning on starting his plan, around October 2008, we cancelled our 3 credit cards leaving us with only a debit card. We had no balances on them, but Dave's plan was to not have any debt, and credit cards create debt, so we went ahead with it. I honestly was not all for doing this and I don't think Liz was either. We just were told this is what you should do, I couldn't find a strong reason why we needed them, so we did it. The main claim for keeping credit cards was that it builds your credit and your FICO score. My feelings now? That's total bologna and not worth it at all. The logic behind using credit cards is just so incredibly backwards to me now.

In February of this year we decided to refinance the house to a 15 year mortgage instead of keeping our current 30 year mortgage. The math behind the decision was so solid I could fill an entire post with it. All things considered, we'd save $3500 within the first year and almost $30,000 in 5 years. I was nervous though: "We have no credit cards, what will our credit score be? What if it's super low because we have no credit cards and we can't get a good rate? We've never missed a payment on anything though so maybe we'll be OK?" What did our scores come out to be and did it effect our refinance? I'm not going to say what our scores were, but I don't think it's possible for us to get them any higher. So yes it did effect the refinance... positively. Dave 1 - Us 0. In my opinion, the main claim for having a credit card was completely debunked by our refinance.

While his plan has been a huge blessing on our life, one way in which we did not follow Dave's plan was by immediately going cash on everything. I started out saying "oh please, we have a debit card, it's the same thing as having cash". After 12 months of using our debit card and only hitting our food budget 2 of those months, we got fed up (pun intended) and in December 2009 we went to ALL CASH on food. $700 a month on food. It's not a huge sacrifice, but there were previous months where we spent a good $1000 or more with ease! So we started on the cash plan for food and since then we have never gone over on the food budget. We've hit it EVERY single month since. Dave was right, paying with cash hurts sometimes and knowing you only have $100 and you have 10 days left in the month, really makes you think about your budgetting. Dave 2 - Us 0.

But we're stupid, we were not on cash for anything else in our budget. How'd that go? Not well... we then got fed up at the beginning of May this year and went to cash for EVERYTHING else. Our personal spending budgets were the number 1 target. I can't remember the last time we did well with our personal budgets, we constantly went over and April was the worst, which is why we put our foot down. How are we doing this month? It actually has been a huge sigh of relief. We have no chance to miss our budget. I have the cash in my wallet and when it runs out on the toys I want to buy or fun I want to participate in, I have to wait until next month. We are right on track for the budget this month because honestly, we have no choice. You can't spend next month's cash if you don't have it on hand. Dave 3 - Us 0.

Now my main point of this post wasn't to promote the Dave Ramsey plan, it's really to say that this month I feel like Liz and I have truly, finally understood the definition of "No". Often times Dave Ramsey says "children do what feels good now, adults are able to delay pleasure". Every other month we'd swipe our card, get what we wanted, and slightly ruin our financial plan for the month. When you think about it, it's really a child's reaction to toys. "MOM I WANT IT NOW!" I kind of feel that's why people (me) gain weight. Eat, eat, eat, and then think about what you did. But in order to reap the fruits of your budget, we've had to learn how to say "No" to ourself.

There has been SOOO many things this month that I've wanted to pay for or do, but I have my precious cash and it's important to me that I spend it wisely. Lets see... things I've passed on this month that I don't think I normally would have:

• $100 - Demarini Rayzr softball bat online. That's a pretty low price for it, and in my church league, this bat is RIDONKULOUS! Home runs galore. I have 3 other bats in my bag though.
• $45 - 2 25 pound dumbbells. I started the P90x workout program again and my elastic bands broke during workout #3. I can run for a few months instead, I don't need the bar bells right now.
• $20 - Seeing Pat McGee in downtown Raleigh this Saturday. I'm not a big fan of concerts or standing in crowds of people.
• $40 - Inside-Out Sports Classic Half Marathon this weekend. This was tempting, but I'm still getting over a pulled calf muscle, and I don't want to push it.
• $40 - Skirt Chasers 5K in downtown Raleigh - This was also tempting, didn't really feel strongly enough to want to do it.
• $20 - 3 classes for a fitness bootcamp in Raleigh. I've always wanted to do a bootcamp of some kind, but we have a gym membership for a reason.
• $20 - Durham Bulls visor at the game last night. I have 2 visors I currently wear that are perfectly good visors.

Obviously we could afford these things, but that's $285 of stuff I really wanted but it wasn't important enough to spend from my personal budget. That money right there is a car payment! There is no doubt in my mind we'd over spend this month if it wasn't for going all cash. Without being able to say "no", the month would drive us crazy. I'd have been done with my cash by May 3rd, but it's starting to come pretty easy. And the best part about it is that we might even fall under budget this month.

This is probably obnoxious to those of you who rolled your eyes a bunch during this blog post, but here are a few more awesome Dave Ramsey quotes:

"On paper, on purpose, before the month begins."
"Take control of your money or your money will take control of you."
"You tell your money where to go instead of wondering where it went."

One more thing, we're totally getting rid of satellite in June. Going back to bunny ears. Amen for simplicity.

Every now and then I hear or see quotes that are awesome. Being a big goal setter, I really enjoyed seeing this one:

When you do what you need to do and when you need to do it, then someday you can do what you want to do and when you want to do it.

That is all for today :)

As most of you know, I am involved in a production called "Kidstuf" at church, where we act and do skits for kids on Sunday. Well they asked a few of us to participate in the "tithe rap", put on for the 9AM congregation service, to promote tithing and giving to the church. It's a fairly popular "youtube" phenomenon, so if you do a search on it, you'll see many versions from different churches. Here is our version done this morning. This definitely goes without saying, but I'm in the Bengals jersey. Enjoy!

Here's the link to the Vimeo video: Asbury UMC Tithe Rap

Have I ever mentioned that I am deathly afraid of snakes? I actually mean that literally. I will never understand how slithering gets anything anywhere. Living on land + legs = OK. Living on land + no legs = not OK. As creatures, they just don't make any sense to me, and it's natural to fear what you don't understand.

This afternoon I was mowing the lawn and going along the side of the house, the side opposite of the deck stairs. When all of a sudden a snake about 2 feet long and probably the diameter of a penny, jumped up where it was sitting at my feet and slithered along the house foundation. That might not sound like a massive snake, but any snake is too big for me. I know the snake I accidentally killed with the lawn mower two years ago was harmless based on my post-death research, but this snake was slightly different. It was all black but had some very light gray diamond designs on it's back that made me very wary to mess with it.

This is the deathly afraid part. I screamed/moaned/yelled "AAAHHH!" when I saw it, stopped the lawn mower, and ran in the other direction. I am to snakes what Matt is to spiders. Although the difference is, when they are within the vicinity of our house and dogs, I do not think they should be alive.

Liz then comes running out on the deck with wet hair and wearing a towel. Just a towel, that's it, and says:

Liz: "I was in the bathroom and heard you scream! Are you OK? Did you hurt yourself?"
Me: "NO! THERE'S A SNAKE!"
Liz: "Oh, it sounded like you ran over yourself with the lawn mower or something."

And in my scrambling to find the snake I said:

Me: "Just keep the dogs inside."

Liz then went in and I continued to hunt the snake. I picked up small stones and lured it over to the patio where I smashed a rock down to kill it. I totally missed and it quickly slithered back under the deck where I lost it. I spent a good 15 minutes looking(slowly and steadily I might add) but to no avail.

Honestly, I wanted the snake dead but I figured my chances of finding it and successfully killing it were slim, so option 2 was to just try and scare it away and hope it goes away for good. But unfortunately I lost it so even option 2 was out of reach at this point.

I went inside and calmed down a little, and then went back out to start mowing the lawn again. I slowly walked through the grass, watching each one of my steps and slowly made my way to the mower. As I pulled the mower back to reach the rip cord, the snake then popped up right in front of one of the front wheels. I don't feel as though I am a vicious person, but when we have 10 to 15 pound dogs running around the yard, I don't want a snake of any kind anywhere near them.

So in my knee-jerk reaction, I immediately ripped the cord to get the mower running, shoved it forward on top of the snake and turned my head until I heard the inevitable thump, thud, whack. Mr. Snake was thrown out the side into 3 pieces.

I can watch 'Kill Bill' and 'Saving Private Ryan' with little or no emotional reactions but I can't watch live snake guts fly out of the mower. I was actually shaking a little bit after the incident. I guess it's good that after the many war movies I've seen, that I'm still not emotionally separated from what real live gore is. I feel terrible that I did what I did, but I keep thinking that if it were just Liz and I living here with no dogs, I'd have left it alone. It's probably one of those awesome snakes that eats bugs and rodents for us. But I can't imagine the mayhem that would have ensued had Daisy or Gryffin found it. I'd rather do the dirty deed and remove the possibility, then to roll the dice and hope they never come across it.

So I carefully scooped the snake remains onto a shovel and tossed it over the fence for a lucky bird or animal to take advantage of. Circle of life right? Hopefully the kill wasn't for nothing.