Brick's Busy Day

We take a break from our regularly scheduled triathlon posts to hear from another very naughty family member who would like to share their story.

Man, it's 5:45 am?! I'm not ready to get up. Geez mom, go back to bed. Come back in an hour. Wait, wait, wait. I changed my mind. I'm up and I have to potty NOW. Let me go up the stairs first. Door, door, door, bell, ring the bell, outside, brrrrrr, phew, that's better.

I got up today, just like any other day. I had major bed head all over my body and I didn't care. I looked gooooood. I went outside in the cold, did my business and headed upstairs to crawl into bed and rub my face against my dad's back. Back to sleep for at least another hour or so. My stupid sister stayed downstairs on the couch. Good more room for me. I love her but I like to have my people all to myself.

Up at the usual time, breakfast as usual. Same old, same old... dog food. Mmmmmmm.

Back outside in the cold and then back up to the bed while my dad gets ready for work. So high maintenance. All I have to do is jump in the car, he has to shave, and shower, and put on a bunch of clothes, and find his keys, and find his shoes, and find his wallet, and pack up his bag, and GEEZ, is it time yet!?

Off to work. This is awesome. We go to work with dad some days. He has this great office with a Foosball table and sometimes if I stand under there long enough I find this little red shiny thing on the floor. Dad calls it a laser. I don't care what it is called, I think it will taste like bacon, if I can ever catch it. It only comes out to play when my human is around and it moves quick! I just can't seem to catch it. It doesn't come out every day but sometimes when I am lucky I see it. And there is this new thing they keep talking about. I think they call it a Wii? Well, my dad has been working on it for lots of days. He stands there and swings an imaginary bat. I'm a little annoyed there is no ball. And today he was sweating while he was hitting nothing in the air. He called it "boxing". And they think I am a dope. Geez. Anywho, there is this little white glove thing that swirls around on the wall. I think it may be related to the red flashy thing that keeps showing up when I hide under the Foosball table. I chase it and chase it. My people would be so proud if I could show them what I caught. One of these days that little white hand will be mine.

Then it is time to go home. My sister and I get really excited because, guess what!? At the top of the stairs at work, there is a rabbit! Yeah, a really fast, smells good rabbit with a fluffy white tail and a little pink nose. My sister always shoves her head under all the bushes looking for it but I am much more patient. I always see it and point. My silly people never do their part though. I find the animals and then they let them run off. Really!? Shoot it or something!

Today, we rode home in the back of the Neon. I love to watch the world go by. We got home and my dad opened the door to get us. We always wait like we should until he says we can get out. Today, when we headed up to the house, dad and I realized at the same time that he didn't have a hold of Kona's leash! He lunged for her right as I made a break for it. And we were off! Freedom! My sister and I have had this planned for ages. Today just happened to be our lucky day. We ran and ran and ran. He chased us on foot for a bit. That was a really fun game. Then he was gone. I was headed for my favorite thing ever. MUD! Lots of mud at the construction site about 2/3 of a mile down the road. I played for quite a bit and then I heard my dad call for me. I was so happy to see him. I ran over and jumped into the car. We drove for a bit and then my sister, Koni, jumped out of the field. He called and she bounced over to see him. Man, he was glad to see us but I could tell he was mad too! He left us outside when we got back. It wasn't cold but I like to be in with my people. He took us around and left us in our inside kennel when he left again. Damn. I was hoping for a couch.

Then guess what?! Both my mom and dad came home and I got sent straight to the bathtub. :( I hate the bathtub. My dad said it looked like I was wearing brown pants. What in the heck are pants? Apparently, I also had some giant stickers on my tummy. My dad had to trim them out of my fur. That is definitely gonna mess up my sweet bed head.

Anyway, I got my bath, had my dinner, and I am now currently working on a bone in the basement while I dictate this story to my mom. The funniest part is... shhhhh, don't tell but my sister is going to get put in the shower with her tonight. Ahahaha. She's gonna hate that. Oh well. We both think it was TOTALLY worth it. All in a day's work. And now, I can't keep my eyes open and am going to crash. Good night.

UGH!

Is there anything more incredibly boring than riding on the trainer!? Oh my gosh. I'm gonna go with NO!

A week in review...

What a great week! It snowed three times!

Last Saturday was so nice I went trail running in shorts! 58 plus degrees.

Sunday was really really cold with no snow. About a 65 degree drop overnight.

Monday was really cold too. So cold that when I was walking the 5 blocks to my car from the hospital in the dark at about 6:30 at night, some lady slowed way way down in the middle of a fairly busy street to ask if I needed a ride. LOL. Only in Nebraska would a complete stranger ask if I could use a ride. I guess either that says I look like a trust worthy soul or really gullible. I politely refused and finished the walk. It was cold but I was bundled up and it wasn't that far. Monday night we went to the wall to boulder. I was trying to finish off a problem that I had pieced together the time before and was successful until I jumped off the wall and got my right arm hung up in a rope (that I obviously wasn't using). Yeah. Ow. Sweet rope burn. Now, the question is, do you put on deodorant with an owie that close to your arm pit and risk the burn or do you make all others in your immediate space suffer? I chose to go with the deodorant.

Tuesday it snowed all morning. It was slushy and slick and awesome. After work, Kona and I bundled up and headed out for a run. As we were crossing a really busy street with the light, I was watching a truck slide down the hill towards us with all four wheels locked up. He was sliding and Kona and I were side stepping on packed down slick snow in the street trying to avoid an accident. He was going really slow, which was good cause I couldn't move very fast. This is how I felt when he finally came to a stop...


a slight exaggeration but you get it.

Wednesday was a quick run in the morning and then a crazy day at work.

Thursday another trail run with Kona in the snow. Much less efficient with no traction but still fun. Then Thursday night it started to sleet. And it just kept coming down. There was thunder and lightening and sleet and it was cold, so it just froze to whatever it landed on. And then it turned to snow. It was so awesome.

Friday morning I woke up to enough snow to ski on. I got up really early cause I was so excited and went to ski the golf course before work. It was decent skiing except I was working pretty hard to get my poles into the ground. There was nobody else out that early and it was beautiful. All of a sudden I heard a super loud noise that sounded like a gunshot way off to the North. I looked around but couldn't see anyone. I skied the other way and heard another one that seemed pretty far away. I considered going back to my car but it dawned on me that maybe it was the ice under foot. I heard a more quiet pop closer to my skis and it was just like the noise you hear on a frozen lake when the ice pops and cracks. It was a little disconcerting and I was using all my memories of the golf course to remember if there were any water hazards in the vicinity (there weren't).

Anywho, finished up skiing



and saw absolutely no one else, no prints or anything other than this little guy...



whose prints led to a big old tree stump. Hope it was warm in there.

This morning I ran with Bricko before work and we were both loving it as the snow was swirling. It didn't look windy when I was getting ready to go but that changed quickly. Brick just pranced through the snow with his eyes all squinty and had a great old time.

Cookie Day!

Last weekend was the 4th (give or take a couple years) annual Goossen Cookie Day. My aunt and uncle host and their kids, my mom and dad, and Mr KT and I all participate. The trend seems to be that all the gals make two or three kinds of cookies and all the gentlemen frost, usually there is football on but this year, cookie day just happened to land on the same day as the airing of the 2008 Ironman World Championships!

My aunt bought several pounds of butter, flour, and sugar, and lots of vanilla and then each person brings the "unusual" ingredients for their recipes. I made cornflake cookies (kinda like rice krispie bars but with cornflakes and green food coloring) then you put red hots on the top and they look like holly. My mom made lemon cornmeal bars and a traditional chocolate cut out cookie with chocolate frosting and peppermint. My aunt made almond paste bars (super yummy) and sugar cookies, and molasses cutouts. I am probably forgetting some but they were sooo good.

Mr KT on frosting duty.


Daddy KT


Sisters in the kitchen


Momma KT making chocolate cookies.


My aunt made me some very special "non-Christmas" M-Dot cookies in honor of the World Championships on NBC! I frosted them. Yum yum.






All in all, a very warm, fun, Saturday with family and lots of sugar and butter.

Running poem

Came across this poem on the facebook page of a friend. Just spoke to me today.

The Song of the Ungirt Runners

We swing ungirded hips,
And lightened are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
Through the great wide air.

The waters of the seas
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause
'Neath the big bare sky.

The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it
Through the broad bright land.

Charles Hamilton Sorley

This is pretty freaking cool

Anyone else <3 Keens? If you are a Keen wearer check out this sweet contest.

Pretty fun idea, huh?

Alright. Time for a run. Gonna go try and get about an hour in. It looks cold outside but rumor was it was gonna get a little warmer today. Sigh. Where is the snow?

Day 2-5

Catching up.

Day 2: Rest day due to working a trillion hours at the holiday party the rehab department has for our little patients at the hospital.

Day 3: Ran about 4 miles with Kona early, the dark/cold.
Swam 2150 yds in the afternoon. It was a crazy day and I totally crashed after I made dinner.

Day 4: Did a trail run with Bricko in the afternoon. It was beautiful out. Ran in tights, a t shirt with a fleece over it and a hat and gloves. Loved it. Needed it, bad.
Then climbed and had a pretty good day of it. Finished out three bouldering problems I had been working on. Makes me feel hard core.

Day 5: Walked the dogs over to the field and ran them around for a half an hour and walked them home. Would really like for Mr KT to be able to run again but his foot is still bugging him. Looking forward to healing that up. Seriously.

Tomorrow... longish run. Trainer ride? I have season one of Dexter to be watching. :)

Day 1:

Ran this morning with Koni-baby. Did about 4.5 miles or so? I was totally overdressed which is kinda nice for this time of year. Not a single solitary snowflake but I'm crossing my fingers for tonight.

Lifted tonight. Did squats, straight leg dead lifts, calf raises, lunges, and ab leg ups. 3 sets of each 12, 10, 8 reps with increasing weight except for calf raises - (25 bilateral, 10 each unilateral, repeat with no rest 4 times) and lunges (one lap of walking lunges around the double basketball courts). For those lunges it really is best if you can do it while lots of college guys are shooting hoops. Mainly because they look at you with a goofy look on their faces while they try and figure out why in the world someone might want to do something like that when they can be bouncing a brownish orange ball around and trying to throw it through a little red metal ring. I'm just saying, it's amusing to watch them puzzle over that.

So, one run down and one day of lifting. Woot woot.

Just a little accountability

This week has a plan. It looks like this...

Climbs - 2
Swims 1-2
Trainer rides - 2
Runs - 4
Weights or CrossFit - 1

I know, need to up the ante a bit if I am going to be doing any trail races in the next couple of months. At this point I am just doing what I can fit in and trying to be home to see my husband as well at some point. Ohhhh! I have an idea, maybe we just need another trainer so that we can ride our bikes inside together. I like it, I like it. :)

Just a little Sunday stroll

I've been trail running more this year than in years past and I really love it. Here is the thing about trails though... they are much more secluded. This is a good thing and a bad thing all at once. I have never minded being alone. I like the quiet. (Just ask Mr KT. He turns the volume up, I turn it down, he turns it up again.) I love being outside. I love to be moving and active and I adore my dogs. I mean really, how could trail running be better!?

Last Sunday (a week ago) Koni and I headed out to meet a small group to do a run at a local trail. We were headed for more of a Nature Center type place with lots of trails. Apparently it is a pretty sweet place to run but they don't allow dogs. We asked the guy who was so politely telling us to get lost where he would recommend and he aimed us down the road about a 1/2 mile or so. Hummel Park. I knew very little about this park. Just that it had been in the news a little in the last couple of years.

I texted my husband before I got out of the car so that he would knew where we would be. I tucked my cell phone in one pocket and my work pager in the other since I was on-call and we took off. It was a really fun run. About an hour and a half uphill and down dale. We ran 190 steps, twice. We carefully forged a few of our own trails and just generally had a fun, dirty time. One of the dogs even got really lucky and dug out a bloody deer leg from the underbrush. Mmmmm. The trails were a little muddy and completely buried in leaves. The leaves had a little snow on top of them making for some slippery spots. The weather was pretty much perfect for this time of year. There were a couple of spots during the run that were a little eerie and made me glad that I had others with me. There were two or three places where there were crosses or wreaths marking a specific spot in the trees.

Anyway, we finished up and I got back in my car. As I was pulling out I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and realized that Mr KT had never received my text message. I had no cell phone service back in there. When I got home, I looked up the park and its trails online. I felt like we ran all over and I was curious to see what it looked like from above. This are the tidbits of info/here say I found from the P.R.I.S.M. website among others.

Hummel Park, which is said to be one of the most haunted places in Omaha, NE and rumored to be an ancient Native American burial ground, was once the site of a fur trading post run by Jean Pierre Cabanne in 1823. It was later named in tribute to J.B. Hummel, a long time superintendent of the Omaha Parks and Recreation Department.

Notes:

The park has a very eerie feel to it. Spread over 200 acres, it is filled with steep hills and winding, dirt roads. An area at the eastern edge of the park is known as "Devil's Slide" because of the many suicides that have taken place there. Erosion has washed the area free from trees and resulted in steep cliffs and sharp drop-offs.

One of Hummel Park’s most mysterious characteristics is the trees that bow over the road entering the park. It is believed that many black men and women were hanged from these trees in the early 1900’s by local racist lynch mobs …and their souls still dangle from the trees. Park visitors claim to hear screams and cries coming from this park late at night.

Another of Hummel Park’s well known mysteries is the “Morphing Stairs,” a long, stone staircase located at the top of the park. These stairs are said to “morph” because nobody knows the exact number of stairs in the staircase. Each time a person counts the number going up or down, a different number is counted on the return trip.
(Editors note: they say 188, we counted 190. Close enough.)

The “Morphing Stairs” lead down a large hill into a valley containing a decrepit pit area with a deteriorating shelter house. Spray-painted markings in this area, such as inverted pentagrams and swastikas, along with the presence of dead animal carcasses, indicate that Hummel Park is a place where occult rituals and devil worship have taken place.

In addition to these satanic rituals, numerous murders have been committed in the park. One of these murders involved an Omaha prostitute named Laura LaPointe, who, in 1983, was sexually assaulted and then robbed of $25 by four other prostitutes. She was beaten to death with a 6 foot tree limb and a softball bat, and later discovered in a roadside ditch located in a heavily-wooded area of the park.

The screams and cries heard by park visitors, coupled with local ghost hunters’ claims of unexplained electro-magnetic readings and sightings of various ghostly apparitions, indicate a high level of paranormal activity at Hummel Park.

Recent Hummel Park Murders:

Twelve-year-old Amber Marie Harris disappeared on November 29, 2005. She was last seen on a video tape from her school bus getting off the bus at 5:41 p.m approximately four blocks from her house. On February 14, 2006 Amber's backpack was found about a mile and a half from where Amber was last seen. On May 11, 2006, human remains were found in a shallow grave in Hummel Park. On May 19, 2006, the skeletal remains were identified as Amber's. Omaha Police did not say whether Amber Harris was killed in the park or elsewhere, and they have still not found a suspect.


Christopher Masters and his accomplice, Jeremy Herman, murdered Jeremy Drake in the Fall of 1992. The official story is that they had a fight over a pair of stereo speakers, that is when Masters and Herman kidnapped Drake. Later Masters shot and killed Drake. Herman said he just wanted to scare Drake. Drake's body was found in Hummel Park. Drake was 15-years-old. Both Herman and Masters were sentenced to life in prison without parole.


To be honest, running there with a group and our dogs, during the day is probably just fine. Stories about burial grounds and spirits don't bother me. It's the alive people who are scary. Due to the area and the crap that goes on there, I can guarantee we won't be going back (don't worry mom). It was a little eerie, it was a bit disconcerting to see the crosses in the middle of the woods but anywhere we trail run or road run could have potential mishaps. I guess my take is that if it feels wrong, get out but don't let fear keep you from doing the things that you love. Be vigilant, be smart but enjoy life. (And maybe always take a friend!)