On the run

This weekend Dawn spent most of it studying for her exams on Monday. However, to make sure that her brain did not turn to mush from all of the studying, we did take a couple of breaks.

Saturday night we went to the Light Boat Parade at Tempe Town Lake and Tempe Beach Park. They had some booths, food, and stuff at the park. However the main attraction was the piles of “snow” setup for kids. Rule number one for these areas was “no throwing snowballs”, so all of the kids (and adults) were throwing snowballs. Then we walked along the lake to watch the fifty or so boats that were decorated for the parade. There were a lot of different boats, but some of the more interesting ones were the kayaks that were decorated with lights. The parade was capped off by fireworks. I have added some pictures to the photo album of the parade.

Then Sunday morning we ran in the Fiesta Bowl 5K. In our quest to get in shape, we picked this race about two months ago as a motivator to keep going. First off, today was cold. It has been the coldest day of the “winter” and race temps were in the upper 40s. I had promised to stay with Dawn no matter what during the race and she promised that we would not finish last. I am happy to say that both promises were kept. We are planning to do some more events like this in the future as milestones to our long term goals.

Thanksgiving... and catching up

Finally getting caught up with the blog. We had planned to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner outside; however, it actually rained for the first time since before Labor Day. So we had to settle for eating inside.

Things have been going along pretty well. I still bike to and from work everyday and Dawn is finishing up her classes for the semester. The girls are busy with school and holiday concerts and we have the tree up in the living room. We fortunate that our tree just barely fit in there.

Ironman Weekend

The Ironman Triathlon was held in Arizona on Sunday, November 23. The Ironman Arizona is one of six races in the US that is a qualifier for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. Dawn and I decided it would be fun to volunteer to help with the race as a way to meet folks here in the valley.

Lindsey had been sick that week so when we went to the volunteer’s meeting on Saturday, she was not able to go with us. Because of that, she did not go with us to hike to the top of “A” Mountain at ASU after the meeting, but Lexi joined us at the top.

Fortunately Lindsey was feeling better and was able join us on Sunday. We were part of Run Aid Station 5, one of the food and water stations on the marathon course. The runners had already completed a 2.4 mile swim and a 112 mile bike ride by the time they got to us. They had 17 hours to complete the course, but the winner took not quite eight and a half hours.

We had a good time and will probable help again next year. I have added some pictures to the ASU and AZ Fun photo albums.

ASU Homecoming

This past weekend was the ASU Homecoming. This year’s theme was Maroon and Golden Anniversary, celebrating 50 years of Arizona State University. I emphasized University because it was 50 years ago that the voters of Arizona approved the name change from Arizona State Teacher’s College to ASU. We are the only University to gain university status through a voter referendum.

There had been activities going on all week, but we took part in the Homecoming Block Party and football game. I was part of the planning committee that designed and ran the ASU Online & Extended Campus booth. It was a lot of fun to see such a huge party with lots of activities, food, freebies, and of course a parade.

Then there was the game. ASU opened a new “bubble” as a practice facility for the football team this year. Everything was fine until a monsoon burst the bubble and ASU dropped six straight games. Ironically, when the bubble was repaired and re-inflated, they started winning again.

Historic Sun Devil Stadium was the home to the Phoenix and Arizona Cardinals (name changed in 2004), Super Bowl XXX (1996), the Fiesta Bowl (1976-2006), and the BCS Championship Game (1999 & 2003). The stadium can seat over 73,379 and they said 61,490 attended a game that at kickoff was 81 degrees.

Washington State is one of the worst teams in the Pac-10 and ASU took advantage of the situation. It was a great game and a lot of fun to watch. We were sitting halfway up the upper level and was in the sun for the first half, but the shadow of the press box fell across us and cooled us off some. The game was a lot of fun, after each time ASU scored, they set off fireworks. Since ASU won 31-0, there were a lot of fireworks.

Hopefully ASU will beat UCLA and our arch rival The University of Arizona, if that happens we will be bowl eligible. Next year we will hopefully have Jack Elway as quarterback. You may have heard of his dad, John.

There are more pictures of the day in the AZ Fun album.

DST ends for you

We hope you enjoyed changing your clocks last weekend. Arizona does not observe daylight saving time because we already have enough sunlight. What this really means is that we are now two hours behind the east coast. The major impact is than NFL football now starts at 11am, instead of 10am.

We had to adjust our DVR recording schedule since some HD channels are scheduled for the east coast, meaning that when you are watching Mythbusters at 9pm, we now get it at 7pm (which is when prime time starts for us).. Before the clocks changed, we were recording it at 6pm.

Trick or Treat

Halloween is big here. There are a ton of haunted houses set up all over the valley and everyone dresses up. A major plus is that there is not an age limit to trick or treating like in Virginia, nor is there a curfew.

Many houses are decorated for Halloween and it seems like at least one family on every street has pulled their back yard fire pit out onto the driveway. There were a lot of little neighborhood parties out on the driveways and streets of the neighborhood. After we got tired of trick or treating, we ended up down the street hanging out and eating with a bunch of our neighbors.

This year we have been near record heat during October. On Halloween the high was 91, but it dropped to the low 80s after sunset. Most of the chocolate candy was a little gooey and had to be put in the fridge so it could be eaten.

For those of you wondering, it did not rain at all here during the months of September and October. This follows the third wettest August on record here.

AZ State Fair

This past Saturday we decided to go to the Arizona State Fair in Phoenix. We began the day with the Tour of Texas booth where you were able to take a virtual tour of Texas from a kayak. We did this to kill time before the first show of CSI: Live. The show begins with a magic act and in the very beginning I am called up on stage. I hold a “lightning” stick for the act while the assistant inside the box has an “accident”. So I go back and to sit with the family and the CSIers show up and recruited Lexi (among others) to help find clues to solve the case. I ended up having a couple of small parts in the show and had to sit with the other “suspects”. Of course, I did look for opportunities to blame the other suspects whenever I could. Too bad the story had me as the perpetrator who committed the crime.

We strolled around the fair that had your normal 4H and animal stuff, petting zoo, rides, and really bad food. I decided that this was a great time to try a deep fried s’more on a stick. Basically it was your regular s’more that was wrapped in dough and then deep fried.

There was also a lot of displays from the cooking, art, and sewing competitions. One group was offering these little ceramic figurines for free for kids to paint to get them involved in art.

Now it was time for racing and we started with the Banana Derby. The Banana Derby is basically monkeys serving as jockeys on dogs running around a track. Lexi got chosen to be a cheerleader and as such was able to get her picture made with the winning “jockey” for free.

We picked this past weekend for a reason, we wanted to end the night with figure eight racing. We are not “race fans” but who can ignore a great crash (safely of course). By the end of the night we had our crashes. There were six races and while you had some nice little spinouts and bumps during first several races, the last race featured a guy getting boxed in as they entered the crossing traffic and surviving only to get driven into a concrete barrier.

Thus ended a nice quiet Saturday. See the pictures in the photo album.