Marshmallow wars

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Mike stopped by tonight with the girls. He was in the area on errands, just had dinner with the girls and wanted to pick up seasons two and three of the Wire. Apparently, Mike hates me and Kris, because he loves the show. Too addicting. Chalk another victim up to Jason's DVD recommendation prowess: I originally purchased the first set after he recommended it in some post. Kris was hooked, as were Heidi and John and anyone else we lent the DVDs to.

Too bad I never really enjoyed the show. I watched enough, however, to know the characters and some of the references (especially the episode where like 20 minutes of dialog consists of one word, and that word begins with f). I might some day actually want to watch them. Until then, eh.

Kris and I were eating dinner when they showed up, but Liza was not to be stopped. She bounced around for a little bit, before asking me, in a quiet, unassuming, deceptively shy way, did I know where the marshmallow guns were?

Oh, boy, did I know where the marshmallow guns were!

I pulled them out, as Kris tucked the dogs into their crates. Liza and I spent a few minutes loading each of the two guns full of marshmallows before the firing frenzy began.

Liza and Mike/Maeryn shot the first round, with marshmallows flying everywhere. "Yeah, the dogs are going to love this," Kris commented. They'll be looking for those for a few days, to be sure.

After the first round was done, Liza picked up a bunch of the marshmallows to refill her launcher. Mike too that opportunity to fire marshmallows at me. He had to shoot a number of times before we were able to time the shot with the camera. Note Mike's evil red eye:

I did manage to capture a shot from Liza a few moments later, without trying:

Though, I later discovered I had caught a near hit very early in the first round:

When we were done, and the dogs has managed to clean up the "mess," Mike asked how six kids with marshmallow launchers would do over Christmas. I said we had four, and it was totally awesome. The best idea is to plant marshmallow ammo all around the field, so that you don't have to travel far to reload.

Here's hoping they capture some video of the event.

You can't cram for fitness

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I've been running my sprint workouts at an aggressive pace. Instead of running two workouts a week, I've been running them every other day. I missed Friday's workout, though, as I spent most of the day at a client's site, and the rest of the day working full-tilt to complete tasks by the weekend. You can probably guess I failed to complete all of those tasks.

So, I decided to make up the workout from Friday today. Yes, yes, I know, I know. You can't cram for fitness. Doesn't mean I'm not going to try.

Okay, not really. The workouts target different fitness areas: the straight line sprints are for building speed, the shuttles are for building sprinting endurance. Kris suggested I run the shuttles first, and then the straight line sprints. I'm not sure why he recommended doing it that way, but I trust his instincts in these things (now, anyways. Didn't always, but that was to my chagrin, so now I listen to him in these things - have I always been so stubborn?).

So, after the Bella fiasco, I started my sprints. The shuttle sprints went along okay. I wore cleats today, in contrast to the last time, when I didn't, and had to work not to slip on the turns.

The workout was the same as last week, with the appropriate rest times:

1 stinker, 2 stinkettes, 3 suicides

What I found interesting about the second sprint workout, which was (also with the the appropriate rest times):

7x20, 5x40, 4x50, 4x90

was that my pace and strength varied considerably with the music that was playing on my iPod. Starry Eyed Surprise actually seemed to have the best pace for my sprints. I tried to start the sprint when the chorus began, as it was a great hard acceleration moment, using the rest of the chorus to just cruise near my top speed. I hadn't really used music as a pacer before, so noticing the increase or decrease in effort depending on the song playing was interesting.

The only lapse I had during the workout was after the second of my four 50m sprints. I jogged back and, when the 45 seconds lapsed, just stood at the starting cone. I ended up resting until 1:15 had passed, then started the final four sprints on time. I'm not sure why I had that lapse, but it was definitely the mental toughness moment of the workout.

Finished everything in 42:08.

Bella breaks again

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Kris and I went up to the school to walk the dogs. Well, that's why Kris went. I went to run today's sprint workout. I took a bit of time to set up my cones, put on my cleats, and generally gather myself, so Kris and the girls were off in the distance the field by the time I was ready to run.

I jogged over to Kris to give him a kiss and run a little warmup before I started. On my way back to the starting point, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and realized the dogs ran back with me to the starting cone. So, I turned back around to run them back to Kris. They came along, though Bella not so willingly. She seemed to want some play time, so I turned to chase her.

She juked one way, and I chased her. She zoomed another way, so I chased her that way. After less than a minute, she seemed done, so I went back to pick up a few things I dropped before chasing her. Kris called out, "What's wrong with her?" I looked back.

Bella was eating grass, where she was just sitting a moment before. When she stood up, she was limping, her front right foot clearly giving her problems. She could walk, but was walking with a pronounced limp.

Great. Just great. We had just witnessed the return of Broken Bella Beagle. Just what this house needs: TWO broken dogs.

Me and Kris

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Tofu House

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Yeah, so, Doyle invited Kris and I out to dinner. Since we closed the office, I haven't seen him much. Which sucks, actually, as he's a really good companion, coworker and friend. He's been inviting us to events, we just haven't been going.

So, when he invited us out, even if I didn't want to go to the main event, I still wanted to go to dinner with Doyle and Shwu.

The plan was go to the Tofu House. When we arrived, Kris was immediately suspicious. We had eaten here years ago. The food was both awful and potentially very dangerous for Kris, as the soup items were made with fish broth. I vaguely recall being unable to eat my dish as the first bite burned my tongue, both with fire heat and fire hot.

After confirming the broth wasn't fish broth (plain water!), we decided to stay.

All I can say is that it was a REALLY good thing we had Shirley, Steffi, Jimmy and that Asian half of Doyle with us. Kris and I were some of the few non-Asian people in the restaurant and BY FAR the whitest. You know, the white people who can't eat spice? Yeah, that's me.

I thought about trying the "no spice" option, but I did want SOME flavor in my tofu, since I wasn't ordering a meat dish. I was entertained by the menu somewhat by still being able to sound out the Korean letters and words, even if I don't know what the hell I'm saying.

Note to self: really learn a language, okay? This half-ass knowledge of German, Korean and Spanish really sucks. Learn more than English already.

The meal ended up being just simply delicious. I'm not sure that Steffi and Jimmy knew about my current picture taking habits, but at least Doyle and Shirley were nonplussed (which, used here in the colloquial way, means "unperturbed," which is the exact opposite of the original "so surprised they don't know how to react" definition of the word - ah languages, always evolving).

I doubt Kris and I will seek the restaurant out again, but I'll definitely stop by with other friends.

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