Thursday, August 17, 2017

Finish the Paragraph I Started

I sent the following to my family:

Ben, I expect a response from you too.

I'm going to start a paragraph. Please finish it and send it back to me. I'm excited to see how your paragraphs differ from each others.

The whole family was awake super early for the race. Jolie thought she'd keep things interesting and...[please finish and email back to me :) ]


My family :)


Here are there responses (And Jpeg & Comet are the names of one of my sister and bro-in-law's dogs just fyi.):

Dad
The whole family was awake super early for the race. Jolie thought she'd keep things interesting and..Strapped one foot to the back of Jpeg and the other foot to the back of Comet and figured no one would notice her eight legged booster as she approached the starting line.

Mom
The whole family was awake super early for the race. Jolie thought she'd keep things interesting and... singing the national anthem in baby talk while eating Eggo waffles. 

Jolie (sister)
The whole family was awake super early for the race. Jolie thought she'd keep things interesting and... opened up a suitcase and pulled out the world's most powerful, fast-acting performance enhancing drugs. 

Ben (brother-in-law, married to Christy):
The whole family was awake super early for the race. Jolie thought she'd keep things interesting and... decided to test the fire alarm that was so temptingly located in the hallway of the Air BnB home that we were all congregating in.  Now, let me be clear here, when I say everyone was up for the race, keep in mind that this is about 2:30 am and awake is a relative term.  It means that we are all just rolling out of bed with only a few hours of sleep and Jo thought it a hilarious way to help get Dallin his fat butt moving a little faster.  What Jo failed to notice was that the alarm was connected to the sprinkler system.  So, when she tripped it, not only was there an ear splitting siren, but cold water began to rain down over the entire house.

They say that it only takes about 3 minutes for a fire engine to show up if you have a fire, and well, they were right in this case.  The engine came rolling up with its lights on and siren blaring, adding to the chaos of noise and water, which was exacerbated by Christy yelling at the top of her voice to "shut off the alarm, you retards".  Interestingly enough, 3 minutes is also roughly about the time it takes to soak an entire second floor enough that all of the drywall fell from the first floor ceiling, sadly crushing James.  

At this point, the ceiling falling in was only a minor issue, because everything was already basically ruined, except for the one last donut that had escaped saturation, but was quickly being smashed as Emily and Spencer were in an all-out brawl over it.  Who knew that Emily could be so vicious?  And by everything being ruined, I mean just the stuff in the house, like Ben's super fly new jazzercise spandex shorty shorts that were supposed to lend their awesomeness to a new PR in the race that day.   And James was ok, he just flexed his man muscles and tore through the soggy drywall, which was no problem for him as there were a lot of firemen around by now.

I assume that at this point you are thinking to yourself, ‘I bet Matt was eyeing that donut too’ and if you were, you would be right.  But by now, Spencer has a broken nose, Emily has some hair ripped out and the donut is not what you would call desirable.  But Matt being crafty as he is, caught wind of the donuts that were in the dashboard of the fire truck and is on about number 3 by the time that Jo is halfway through the basic first discussion with the firemen.  Dallin and his oversized head seem to be fully awake by now and he is sipping monster on the sidelines while snapping selfies.  I look over and see that Christy has found her shoes and watch and is on the street out front, warming up for the race. 

One other thing that became relevant at about this time was the smell of gas.  Now, James says it was the falling debris and not this king kong exit that did it, but somehow the mainline gas pipe was broken during the commotion.  Should not have been an issue, but then I remember that Jpeg has a sensitive nose and can only sleep with his favorite type of aroma therapy candles burning.  Crazy how well they build those doggy cages these days, apparently they are completely waterproof.


You would probably be surprised how large a fireball a 2400 square foot air bnb home came make when filled with gas and then lit off with a smelly good candle.  Being about 2:39 am and the darkest part of the morning helps too.  Lucky that the firemen were already here.  Water is one thing, but fire is another and I look around to see that everyone is safe and ok.  There is Spencer getting first aid on his nose and cracking jokes at the same time, James, just standing there flexing like anyone cares at this point.  Matt, chilling, donuts, devoured.  Dallin and his big nose is fawning over his wife, chocolate frosting only partially covering the satisfied smile on her face.  Focused and ready, not to be deterred, Christy is stretching and still on schedule for 26 miles of torture.  Jpeg must have roused in time to get out of his mobile doggy condo and is pooping the neighbor’s yard.  Last, I see Jo.  She is standing there, looking around with a half-smile on her face, and I can almost see the thought in her mind, “well, that was interesting”.  I just smile to myself, I sure do love this family.

Christy (sister)
The whole family was awake super early for the race. Jolie thought she'd keep things interesting and accidentally sleep through her alarm.  Stupid freaking hell piss.

Dallin (brother)
The whole family was awake super early for the race. Jolie thought she'd keep things interesting and decided to wear her clothes backwards and, during the race, scream as many random animal NAMES as possible. Christy’s contractions slowed her down. Ben’s old brain couldn’t remember how to run. “ARCTIC FOX!” said Jolie. James and Matt did the worm the entire race, but thereafter had shaved down all of their hard-earned muscles from road rash. “BOTTLENOSE DOLPHIN!!” exclaimed Jolie for no reason. Dallin and Emily ran ahead to get more pictures in front of Temples and were never seen again. Spencer’s afro-hair turned into tarantulas and attacked everyone giving him an advantage. “HOUSE CAT!!” Jolie says unexplainably. Jolie, because of her backwards clothes, has the worse rash Disneyland had ever seen! Frustrated, Jolie yells, “CRESTED PENGUIN!” Everyone concluded we were all crazy….awesome.

Emily (sister-in-law, married to Dallin)
The whole family was awake super early for the race. Jolie thought she'd keep things interesting and slightly changed her running outfit. As everyone was rubbing their eyes and cramming down caffeine to prepare for the race Jolie emerged dressed in her old Jesse costume from Disneyland that they let her keep for some reason...Inspired by her karizma Dallin began to prime now costumes for everyone based on their personality because of course amazon delivers at 2am in the morning. The costumes came remarkably fast allowing everyone to get into character. Jolie is spunky like Jesse the cowgirl, Spencer bounced around in his new Tigger costume, Dallin and Emily dressed up as Snow White and Prince Charming to uphold their lovey dovey reputation, James and Matt insisted on both being Maui from Moana so they could take turn drawing designs in sharpie all over their biceps and run shirtless, Christy ran as Jasmine pushing Little Bentley in a stroller dressed as Abu. Lastly, Ben decided to top things off by dressing in a Whinnie The Pooh costume to show off his masculinity and passion for Poo-h. This family event got the most memorable and bizzare pictures of the year.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Moving On and Into 2017

My life currently:


I've been playing with a new fitness device.

Ok, so this is cool. 

Fitbits are stupid. Ok, maybe that's harsh. If you're a runner they're fun, but if you hit the gym, a Fitbit will tell you you've only taken 1,000 steps and will completely overlook your 3 hour workout.

My fun Mio Slice device is a heartbeat monitor. It's so insightful and fun!



With a Mio you want to maintain a Pai score of 100. Your score is a rolling sum of the past 7 days.

Seven days of Pai points. My heartbeat was 59 when I captured this.
I exercise a lot so I've set a Pai score goal of 200. :)

After wearing the device it calculates your resting heart rate and your max heart rate. You're supposed to wear it when you sleep so it can track your sleeping. Though my max heart rate is higher than it says, but whatever.

Here's the data from four of my past few days. First of all, I wake up in the middle of the night to pee, so you can guess when that happens by looking at the interrupt in the sleep cycle(s).

The graph near the top of the columns shows an entire day. The spike shown each day is where my workout happens. You'll see other small spikes that occur when I go up stairs, walk for a long time, cleaning, dancing in my apartment, etc. etc.. The first column shows a day I went running and as you can see get's my heart going faster than days when I just workout at the gym.

I forgot to wear my Mio one night.


Below you see the above workout graphs after zooming in.


Anywho, this is what else I've been up to.

Kelly Clarkson's version of It's Quiet Uptown from Hamilton is incredible, and incredibly sad. I'm super stoked for her upcoming soul album. You should listen to it.





Visiting my sister, brother in law, and cute nephew Bentley is a favorite thing to do. Here we are getting some ice cream in my fun little Mini Cooper.

 I'm jumping on the 23andMe train and I'm super stoked. I can't wait to see what incites the service has to offer once my kit is finished being processed.

I don't run nearly as much as I used to, but since I have the Phoenix half marathon next week I've been running quite a bit. I'm excited for the race to be over so I can work on bulking my legs up. They pretty much look like runner's legs right now.

I love crab. Oh my goodness.

Finding new restaurants we've never been to in downtown Phoenix is a favorite thing to do. Here we are at SoSoBa eating ramen.

I love working out in the middle of downtown.

My work allows dogs, and it's the cutest thing. It seriously makes the work environment less robotic and rigid.

I took this one day after work. It was a good day.