They’re working me too hard… blame the man! Seriously, this is crappy of me, I’ll get better, but I do promise you the lack of posting is pretty warranted; I didn’t get home until 10pm last night, and that isn’t too unusual lately.

Vegas [pics – there were a lot more, but some of the guys have ridiculous girlfriends so pictures of us having fun were not made public]
Vegas turned out to be a great time. Gamblingwise, I left with an extra $150 thanks to some lucky penny slots and blackjack play. Unfortunately, the entire trip cost A LOT of money so it was a net loss monetarily, but we did have one of the best weekends of all-time, so that makes up for it.

We got tables at Pure and Tabu, which might be my new thing for going out; drinks are roughly the same price at the end of the night (you’re forced to buy a few $350 fifths, which are normally like $15 at the store), but you get a freaking couch to sit on all night… I like couches.

We typically just ate crappy casino food, but one night we did go to Social House, which turned out to be an absolutely stellar meal. We went with the “tell your server how much you want to spend and the foods you don’t like, and he’ll bring you random dishes.” For $65/ea before tax and tip, we had a really great meal. Highly recommended.

Sean, the bachelor, rented a Viper with his brothers and gave me a chance to drive it. Sadly, the S2000 (240hp) was the fastest thing I had driven previously. I think this thing has 500? It was fast and sexy looking, but build quality was actually worse than pretty much any other American car I had ever been in. It’s amazing that after making this car for like 15 years now, they still have yet to figure out how to not burn your legs while sitting in it… Incredible. The thing that irked me the most was the fact it had the same stereo as a Caravan. No $90k car should have the same equipment ANYWHERE as a cheap and crappy kid hauler.

I ran about 15 miles while I was there. I think it was only about 90 degrees, but the lack of humidity was really hard on my lungs. I did most of my running through UNLV campus because it had water fountains.

North Carolina
The Lamkens have moved! I drove down with preggers and baby a couple weeks back and flew back a few days later. Made a few stops along the way, baby stayed pretty cool until the last hour or so.

Their house is quite lovely and I’m sure it’ll suit their little family very well in the future. I’m not one for holding anything back so I’ll publicly admit I’m not much of a fan of the area, but I’m not the one that moved there so no worries

Running
Ran the Hugh Jascourt Memorial 4-Miler nearly a month ago now. I was aiming to go under 25 minutes, but it wasn’t the day. I ended up running 25:29, which is a PR by approximately 20 seconds so I can’t complain too much. It was really hot, really humid, and my hip was really acting up; I was actually unable to cool down after the race because it hurt so bad. I ended up taking a week off (biked 100 miles instead) following that and it did wonders for healing the injury. It’s still lingering, but I was able to run a 20-miler this weekend with the final four miles at a bit faster than marathon pace (in a “race” [I wasn’t really racing, just getting good miles in and grabbing some championship points]) so not only is my confidence boosted in my running ability, but I’m pretty certain I’ll make it through the marathon.

We’re at less than three weeks until the big day! What that means is it’s now taper mode! After many months of really hard miles, we’re starting to take it easier! Can you tell the excitement in my writing? Yes, many exclamation points. I’m mentally drained. I think it’s a combination of the injuries and the heat… I’m really looking forward to taking a solid month “off” (running 25 miles a week) following the race.

As the training program comes to an end, I feel I’ve really given it my all. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of miles due to the injuries… Fortunately, I feel A LOT stronger right now than I was last year (I ran this last 20-miler ten minutes faster than ever before). As long as I heal up well in the next few weeks, I think my goal is very much within reach. EXCITING!

On the Caitlin side, she has not been doing too well. An injury from years past has cropped up and kept her from running for quite a few days now. She went to a running/sports doctor only to be told he deals with the lower leg… She then tried deep tissue massage and that seems to have gone well. Later in the week she’ll be heading to my chiropractor/sports doc. When I told him of her issue he got really excited since he thinks it’ll be an easy fix and that she’ll absolutely love him.

Work
Has only gotten more hectic. I bit off a bit more than I could chew with this latest feature and our target date, but I’m not one to not meet my dates. This has resulted in a bunch of late nights, weekend work, and holiday work. Oh well, keeps me out of trouble Things will begin to calm down at the end of next week. Another not-so-bad thing about this extra work is it’s 100% voluntary; if we needed to push the date, we could, but I don’t like that stuff. In previous jobs, management would often ask for weekend work, but have no basis for requesting it… they just felt that it’d be the right thing given an impending deadline. God… That job sucked… So many morons.

Video Games
My Lord of the Rings Online play has dwindled, Rock Band 2 play has gotten out of hand, I started messing around with Eve Online, beat Red Faction, and have been doing a lot of iPhone gaming on the toilet and from bed.

I think it arrived last month, but I failed to mention it. I picked up another arcade cabinet! It’s a Neo-Geo MVU-4 (yes, it’s small enough to fit in my cube), a candy cab. It’s metal construction, very lightweight, very portable, in great shape, and YOU SIT DOWN TO PLAY AT IT! It rules. As soon as I can get a 2nd motherboard, I’m going to have the other machine back up and running (I only have one and both systems use the same one so I moved it over to the new cabinet when it arrived) and I’ll likely sell it for what I originally paid.

General
I have yet to touch the Civic. It still sits undriveable. Now that I’m in taper, I’ll have a bit of extra time to put in to it. Yeah… right.