Time to get motivated

So Bobby and I have decided (again) that it is time to take better care of ourselves. It seems like we say this weekly but I hope this time we are motivated to stick with it. We have both noticed a change in attitudes and frequently feel...blah.

A few weeks ago my girlfriend Kristi began posting a blog about the marathon she is training for and she inspired me to go for a run when I read her post. About two years ago we would run together several times a week and had such a great time. For several years I have wanted to run a marathon (secretly I would like to do a sprint triathlon) and a few years ago I was running 7-9 miles for my long run and it felt good. But then I went on vacation and somehow, 13 days at the lake (and then meeting and spending time with that wonderful man in my life) were all things that kept me from running. It's so hard to get started and once it becomes a habit it feels good to complete the weekly runs. But it can be really easy to "just take a day off" and then pretty soon a full week goes by without a run and the motivation has been lost.

So this morning in the spirit of better health, I woke up at 4:30 and went to the gym for a pre-work workout. It felt really good to do something for me and I used to get up every weekday morning before work to go to the gym. Hopefully since Sarah is testing for Mishawaka in a few months, she can help me get motivated and we can train together.

Bobby and I go on vacation in a few days and I hope that we can stay motivated while we are at the lake. Wish us luck!

BOAT: Bust Out Another Thousand

The other day Bobby and I finally fulfilled my- I mean OUR dream, of buying a boat. I've been on the lake all my life and have always wanted a speedboat so after almost a month of looking and one failed deal, we finally found a boat in Portage, MI, and well, the price was right. :-) So we went up Tuesday night and met the people about 5:45. The plan was to get it back to the lake and get it in the water that night. Well, it was not on the trailer, so we had to go to the marina, pick up the trailer then go to the boat launch where the wife met us with the boat. We got the boat on the trailer and were headed home when Bobby asked me to grab the owner's manual for the truck and check out the instructions for towing with his truck. An here's where things started to go downhill. We realized that his truck is only capable of towing 2,000# from the bumper. Guess how much the boat and trailer weighed: 3,500# so we were putting a lot of stress on the truck and it was SUCKING down the gas!

By the time we got the boat (may I interject that her name is "Shagadelic," named by the wife) back to the cottage it was 8:30 and we decided to clean her up a bit and so we could get her in the water tomorrow. I started working on the outside and Bobby began working on the inside. (Wow, Magic Erasers really are magic! They worked great!) When he began wiping the vinyl in the bow, part of the backing to the seat came off and we realized that this boat was not as great as we thought. All the seat backs in the bow were rotten as well as the back part over the engine and sides of the boat. At this point we were frustrated and decided to call it a night.

The next morning we got up and thought, "New day, new attitude." We took her down to the launch, got the trailer in the water, the boat unhooked and... She wouldn't start! We knew she ran yesterday, the battery was working and there was gas in the tank so we couldn't figure out what was going on. While we were messing with her another gentleman arrived at the launch and tried to give us advise but he wasn't very helpful and by this time, we've drained the battery trying to start her so many times. This was when I took my first ride in our "new" boat- when Bobby pulled it out of the water on the trailer. We messed with it for a bit and finally decided to take it to The Boat Shop, on County Line Road, about a mile away. When we got there Dave, the owner, took a quick look at it and told us to come back in half-an-hour so he could charge the battery.

When we got back he gave us a quick lesson on how to properly start the boat and he even tuned the engine to make her run better. We talked about the rotten seats and they said that over the winter we could have the boards and vinyl replaced. They were great, so we paid them and were out, but our story does not end here, oh no.

We got back to the launch, Bobby unhooked the boat from the trailer and while he was standing on the trailer, he slipped and his feet crashed into the cement on the launch. He was in A LOT of pain and had a hard time walking. I took the boat and drove it home and he hobbled out to the end of the pier to go for a ride. After taking it around the lake a few times, I sent him in the house to get off his feet because now I thought he might have broken bones in both of his feet. So I spent the next hour figuring the best way to secure the boat so she is still there when we go up next time.

Needless to say, it was a rough weekend with the boat and hopefully next time we get up there things will be better.

Oh, p.s. Bobby refuses to get an X-Ray of his feet so he is limping around and still in pain.

School Days

Last week I met with my advisor at IUSB and received some GREAT news: I only have 7 classes to take and I can graduate with my Bachelors! While this might not seem special to many people, my graduation has been 10 years in the making. Five schools (excluding paramedic school) and countless majors later I will have a degree in History with a minor in Anthropology. Now, many people have asked, "So, what are you going to do with that?" Well, that's a great question. I would really like to get my Masters or PhD but there are few schools in the area that have a history program. And there's Notre Dame but they have made it very clear that NO IUSB student would be accepted into a graduate program. So, it's a wait and see thing but I am super excited at the thought of walking in the Spring!