I was reading a blog the other day and the author was tagged by another blogger with creating a “top 4 things of Los Angles” list. One of the subcatagories was “Four LA-Themed Shows I Love(d) To Watch” and number four on the list was “Emergency!” Ah, the childhood memories came flowing back, this was one of my all time favourite shows when I was a kid.

With just about every show ever created popping up in DVD I tried to find it about a year ago but came up empty. After reading that post I was all inspired to give it another shot and did a quick search on Netflix and….(queue heavonly music) ahhhhhhh (end heavonly music) the first two seasons have been released! I couldn’t contain myself and added all 11 DVDs to my netflix queue.

There is just no denying Emergency!

Ride along as paramedics Roy DeSoto (Kevin Tighe) and John Gage (Randolph Mantooth) and their colleagues from Squad 51 coast through the streets of Los Angeles saving lives. Far from being glamorous, however, their jobs are stressful as they race against the clock, rushing patients to Rampart Hospital and taking action on the spot. But these emergency workers soon learn that humor is the best salve for wounded spirits, if not for injured bodies.

I’m just sitting in front of the tv watching the academy awards so I thought it would be as good as time as any to post an update. I haven’t exactly been keeping this up to date lately since I just haven’t been able to find the time.

The last couple of times I’ve sat down at the computer the only thing I’ve been doing is trying to get the New Orleans pictures together which hasn’t been exactly going smoothly. The original pictures from our camera are really big, 3456 x 2304 pixels and they have incredible detail. They obviously need to be sized down to fit on the web site and I’ve been reducing them to 425 x 283 pixels and the quality of the resulting resized image is absolute crap. It’s really bothering me, so much so that I’ve been obsessing over it for the last three days. So far all my research and articles I can find on the web have pretty much said yup, picture quality is going to suffer when reducing pixel size, nothing you can do about it. So if anyone out there has any brilliant ideas on how to resize images for the web without sacrificing quality let me know because I haven’t been able to figure it out.

Anyway, I haven’t posted a half marathon training update in a while. Since we were out of town last week there wasn’t much to update since I took that time off. After coming back I still didn’t manage to do anything since I was a bit lazy then on Thursday morning when I planned on going in for a swim I ended up getting paged at ten to four in the morning and had to work the issue right through until about six so I didn’t get to do anything.

The last time I went to the doctor he said I would be ok to start running last week so today I went out for an easy run. Well it stunk. Besides being out of running shape so in the first couple of minutes I was huffing and puffing and felt like I was going to bust a lung but by the end my ankle was on fire. It honestly hurt just as bad as it did three weeks ago when I stopped running. I have another appointment with the doctor this Friday so we’ll have to see what he has to say.

Jen ran well this weekend. Yesterday she went 7.98 miles (in 1 hour and 27 minutes she adds) so she is well on her way to having a strong race. As for me, I’ll have to see but things don’t look so good now.

Happy Mardi Gras! We just returned from our trip to New Orleans to visit Jen’s parents and celebrate Mardi Gras. Even though we weren’t there for actual Mardi Gras day we still managed to get in two nights of parades and I think Alex managed to see six or seven of them. He really got into the spirit of it and loved trying to catch the beads. We ended up coming home with two bags of beads plus some assorted cups and a couple of small stuffed animals. I took a bunch of pictures which I’ll have to sort through and post this weekend.

We also took a number of pictures from Hurricane Katrina damaged areas which I’ll work on putting a write up together and posting the pictures as well.

Yesterday’s post was titled “Running Update” but I ended up going on about Andrew and how he was doing so I thought I would give a quick update today. Yesterday and today he has eaten pretty well and he has managed to keep all of his food down. He was up quite a bit last night and had a really hard time getting back to sleep so I’m going to cross my fingers again tonight and hope that he has a better night.

Alex was invited to a birthday party for one of his friends from school today. They had the party at a place called “EncouraGYM.” It’s very similar to Gymboree where they have play equipment set up for the kids to play on and this particular one also had a number of different bound houses.

The party was at three in the afternoon which as it turns out isn’t the greatest time for Alex. On the way there he fell asleep in the car so when we got there we had to wake him up, (obviously), and he just hates being woken up from a nap. I don’t know what it is but it takes him a long time for him to return to his normal self. For the first twenty minutes or so of the party he refused to leave our side or go out in the gym and play with the other kids. Jen had planned on leaving Alex and I there so she could go to the store to return some stuff but with Alex clinging to her side she couldn’t leave.

He really reminds me of myself when I was a kid. When he was finally ok with leaving Jen’s side he still didn’t get out there and start playing. Instead he sat off to the side just watching what everyone else was doing, taking it all in before he finally decided that he would get out there and join everyone else. Once he was out there he had a great time but it took a while for him to warm up to it.

I had a flashback to when I was kid about his age and was in a YMCA program. One of the activities that we did was swimming and I refused to get in the water. It was a daily ritual. Put on my bathing suit, sit on deck in the corner and refuse to get in while everyone else had a great time, then get dressed again. I remember on the very last day I finally mustered up the courage to give it a try and it was so much fun and I was disappointed that I had missed out on all this fun.

It’s still cold here. It hovered around the freezing point most of the day and I had to scrap the window on the car this afternoon before we could head off to the birthday party. I think our house must use a whopping inch or so of insulation since it is absolutely freezing in our house too. Jen and I are currently sitting upstairs in the computer/train/office/play room which is the by far the coldest room in the house freezing our you know what’s off. No, I’m not just hanging out here and then complaining it, Jen has some school work she needs to get done and I’m braving the artic temperatures to provide a little moral support and occasionally supply some computer support.

Being so cold I’m really not too keen on the fact that tomorrow morning is my day to swim so I’ll be up nice and early heading off to the pool. I always swore the moment I had a choice in the matter there was no way I was going to get up early to swim, especially in the cold…..

Went to the foot doctor yesterday and the verdict is at least one more week with no running. My ankle is feeling a lot better but when he started poking around he was able to find a tender spot. Two weeks ago during the original appointment he prescribed some anti-inflammatory medicine but left the dosing information off the prescription. So for the last two weeks the pharmacy and doctor have been back and forth trying to work it out and yesterday I was finally able to pick it up.

Andrew hasn’t been feeling too hot lately and we’re really not sure what’s going on. For the last couple of days he just hasn’t been able to keep much of anything down like he has some kind of stomach thing going on. We’ve been to the doctor two or three times recently to have him checked out and each time they haven’t been able to find anything. On the most recent trip we thought that he might strep throat since he refused to eat anything but the test came back negative. Since that visit we’ve had to cut back his food intake so on Thursday we only gave him non-milk liquids, yesterday we started with a little rice cereal, and then today we continued with the rice cereal and added some carrots and sweet potatoes.

He’s managed to keep his food down since we started the reduced food diet. Even though he has been keeping it down he’s still not a happy kid. Last night he was up at least three times and each time it took about an hour to get him back down to sleep. Jen’s been the one staying up with him during the long night sessions so she’s getting pretty worn out. When he woke up this morning around 5:00 I tried to put him back down without much success so I took him down to breakfast with me and gave him some rice cereal and then managed to get him down to bed before I left for work.

I’m crossing my fingers and hope that tonight will be a better night. Tonight Alex was complaining that his stomach was hurting so we are really hoping that he doesn’t have the same thing.

In unrelated news the weather here has been kind of crazy around here the last couple of days. On Thursday we had a low temperature of 40 F (4 C) and a high of 83 F (28 C). 83! It’s the middle of February for crying out loud. Then today, not two days later, the low was 22 F (-5 C) and the high was about 28 F (-2 C ) and we are under a winter weather advisory.

Week number two with no running. I don’t think it’s a good sign but I haven’t really missed the running. Last week I stepped up the swimming a little bit and went four practices instead of the usual three. On Wednesday I swam in the morning and went a 4000 and then I came in for a lunch workout and did another 2300. For the week I went 13000 yards.

Jen was giving me a hard time last week that I haven’t been posting any updates on how her training program has been going. I suggested that she should post an update herself but she wasn’t too interested in doing that. Jen has been running very well. She has been following the training program really closely and doing all the runs. For the runs doing the week she has to wait until I get home from work which means she doesn’t get to start until almost six o’clock which means she is usually running into the dark. She has been running a number of the same routes through the neighbourhood and each time she gets a little faster. (Heck I better watch out, if I don’t start running again soon she might be passing me up.)

Alex is still into his dinosaurs. Jen took him to the library the other day and they got out a bunch of new dinosaur books. His favourite dinosaur is definitely the T. Rex but he still likes to tell us all about Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Triceratops, Seismosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Giganotosaurus, and Compsognatus just to name a few. I work up the other day still singing dinosaur songs.

I haven’t had a chance to make any updates to the web site in a while. I have a bunch of random pictures we’ve taken over the last couple of weeks that I need to sift through and post but I just haven’t had enough time. Maybe this weekend I’ll make some time and make some updates.

Like we don’t already eh!!

I’m a huge fan of worth1000.com, a site devoted to photoshopping. They just completed a contest on if Canadians Ruled the World. Some fantastic entries.

Alex has started what I will call the Dinosaur phase. I think every kid on the planet goes through a phase where they are interested in learning about Dinosaurs, playing with Dinosaurs, and generally talking non stop about Dinosaurs. It all started in music class at school where they started singing about Dinosaurs. Jen dug out all the old Dinosaur stuff we had in the garage much of it Ryan’s stuff from when he was a kid. We even had a record of Dinosaur music but since we don’t own a record player there isn’t much we can do with it.

You don’t have to feel bad for very long since Jen bought him a CD with Dino music which he loves. I think we’ve listened to it about five, six, a million times just yesterday. It’s got about fifteen songs about various different types of Dinosaurs and by the sounds of it every species got their own musically themed song. One is set to gypsy folk music and another particularly catchy tune about the Ornithomimus is set to the Mexian Hat Dance song. It’s one of those songs that just totally gets stuck in your head and I woke up this morning still singing it. Ahh..

(You think I could use the word Dinosaur any more times in a single post?)

We’re all pretty excited that the Olympics have finally started. Alex is especially excited about Bobsled, Luge, Skeleton, and Hockey but to be honest I don’t think there will be any sport he doesn’t want to watch. Actually right now we are sitting in front of the TV and watching the first runs of the Luge.

With eight weeks to go this was the first full week without any running at all. I know, kind of an unorthodox training program for a running race but hey, what can I say. Since there’s no running I swam three times and managed to go just over 11 000 yards for the week and they were all good workouts too. Monday morning I went 4000 yards which is pretty good since I typically only have about an hour and twenty minutes or so to get it all in.

My ankle is starting to feel a little better. I’ve been wearing the insoles since last Friday and I’ve been wearing my shoes around the house as much as I can and I have to say I can’t stand wearing shoes around the house. It makes me feel like I’m just about to head out the door or I have someplace to go at any minute.

Hopefully my ankle will continue to get better and a I’ll have to see what the doctor says in a week and a half. Until then it’s going to be more swim workouts.

After a visit to the wrong office, don’t ask, I finally managed to get to see the doctor. The official diagnosis for my ankle pain is “Retrocalcaneal bursitis” which this web site does much better job describing then I would be able to do so you can read it for all the details.

I have to take two weeks off running, which by the time I go back to the doctor will actually be three weeks since I’ve already taken this week off, and he prescribed some anti-inflammatory medication. I also had to go and get some special heel insoles for my shoes that I’m supposed to wear all the time. In two weeks I go back and he is going to take a look and see how things are progressing.

I’m not sure what this is going to do for the half marathon but I figure three weeks off isn’t going to be the end of it. Once I start back running I’ll see how it feels before deciding what to do about the race.