Happy New Year!

Well it's almost here...2009.  2008 has been a wild year for me and definitely a year to remember.  I haven't blah blah blogged in awhile because I didn't have anything really to talk about.  My couch potato life has taken on new heights as the only places I've gone in the last weeks have been Elena's house and LA Fitness.  The rest of the time I'm sitting on my couch watching The Office, Weeds, miscellaneous movies, and X-Files Season 2.

The last two days I've been at Elena's house babysitting while she's on Xmas break.  Basically my work from home office has moved to her house.  Amber and Joe have been at work and Elena basically just plays on her computer all day while watching TV.  A sprout off the old couch potato..

The Beavers play their bowl game today at 2pm but I'll miss the live watch.  I'm DVRing it so I can watch it when I get home.  Yeah New Year's Eve party for me.  I'll be on internet blackout from 2pm til I get home.

My swimming is complete crap again.  I've lost that fast stroke I found.  It always happens I keep tweaking until I can't remember the fast stroke and then I seem to start all over again.  It sucks but happens.   I keep thinking if I can just get a little higher in the water I could go faster.  With a wetsuit, I feel lightening fast because there is less drag from my body sitting low in the water.

After this morning's workout, I almost stopped at Starbucks on the way to Elena's houes for the last Egg Nog Latte of the 2008 Holiday season.  I stopped myself because well I'm fat.  I don't need those 600 calories.  I opted for a 140 calorie cereal bar.  I'm slowly running out of junk food at my house as well so my weight is coming back down.  I'm under 150 again.  Yeah weight loss starvation.  I just need to make it through the college bowl season and NFL playoffs.

This is the last day of slacking on my workouts.  Come tomorrow, I will start doing swimming intervals at least once a week as well as incorporate hill repeats and fartleks into my running training.  My cycling will still just be spin class unless the weather is good then I'll hit the road bike.  I figure by February to start putting some road miles on the tri-bike.  Last year because of my partial lung collapse, I wasn't able to train during most of January.

I'm excited about the 4 day weekend considering Xmas holiday was a 5 day weekend.  I can't believe how short the 5 days off felt.  I think if I took a whole month off I would swear it was just a couple of days.  Either way this is the last days off from work until Memorial day.  Oh joy!

Happy New Year everyone..

Twas the day before Xmas

Okay that's original. lol.  There's probably only a billion blogs with that title or some variation today.  I'm officially taking an FTO(flex time off) day today from work.  Woohoo...I slept in til 8:30am and I'm going to go for over 6 miles at lunch today.  The weather has finally turned around and it's even supposed to be in the 40s tomorrow, the big day.

I have to be over at the house at 7:30am to watch Elena open gifts.  Elena will be running around crazy by then as she will easily have been up since 6am.  We'll open gifts and eat some breakfast.  It will be a good time.  She tell me about how Santa ate some cookies and drank the milk.  I think she was 4 when she first put out cookies that she made for Santa.  I still remember her basically screaming at me when I showed up that Santa ate her cookies.  It was a classic moment in her Xmas experience.  She's still excited each year but soon enough she'll stop doing it and stop caring about Santa.  Well one less gift for her, hah!

Usually during the holiday season, I'm the master bah-humbugger but not this year.  It's pretty easy just ignore the holiday season when you stay in your condo 24/7.  This is positive for me and positive for Elena since it was always tough for me to match her Xmas excitement every year.  I'm not much for Xmas even though as a kid we had great Xmas's for being as poor as we were.  We always had a tree with decorations and I got gifts from Santa and Mom.  I usually got some cool stuff.  I don't know why I don't like Xmas but I don't.  Maybe I'm just weird.

Welp I'm off to start my epic 5 days of sitting on the couch watching movies.  I'll interrupt that every so often for a workout but that's it.

Merry Xmas!

There will be thick blood

Yep, my blood must be like molasses right now after running outside the past two days.  It was 14 yesterday with a wind chill of about zero and I ran to the gym this morning in 14 degree weather and no wind.  These are the coldest running days I've ever done.  It wasn't too bad either.  I think I'm getting used to the cold.  As I was freezing my way back to the condo this morning, I started to think of how much harder my heart must be working to push the molasses through the veins.  It hit me maybe it's good to be training outside in the winter putting in those base miles.  The heart is working extra hard but you're not going as far or as fast.  Once spring and summer roll around the blood thins back out and the heart doesn't have to work as hard.  Therefore, you get free speed.  Instead of "train low, sleep high" my mantra is "train cold, race hot".  Catchy!

I watched my DVR recording of the Ironman World Championships in Kona finally.  It got me thinking about doing another Ironman just to see if I could really kill the run.  Seeing Normann Stadler hamstring cramp up in the marathon hit home.  I was worried about my hamstring which is why I didn't push extra hard during the tough time of the marathon.  I'm getting close in my training where I can feel like if I just go my body will respond.  My early running days were always based on just going no matter what.  Recently though my body keeps letting me down so I've been running tentative which hurts not only in racing but training as well.  I can't push myself to exhaustion on tough training days because I'm worried about injury.  I keep just cruising this winter in hopes of being able to unleash some great training this spring and not get injured.

3 days til Xmas and I can tell.  I ran by Best Buy yesterday and the parking lot was pretty packed for a Monday afternoon.  I still need to walk over there and get some batteries for Elena's Xmas keyboard.  I'm hoping I can get them into her stocking Xmas morning without her noticing although at the age of 7 she's getting wiser to me being sneaky.  Every time I mention Elena's age to someone it shocks me that she's 7.  I almost always goof it up and say 6.  6 is such a perfect age not too young but not old enough to make me look ancient.

Happy Holidays!

It's ALIVE

at least right now, my computer has come back to life.  My old home windows box which is going to be retired soon, Imac here I come, is back alive.  The video card was having all kinds of troubles this weekend so I thought it was pretty much dead.  Somehow it came back to life today as I was going to start backing up the hard drive onto an external for the move after MacWorld in January.

It's amazingly cold right now.  It's a whopping 12 degrees with a wind chill of ZERO.  I might have to try out my condo's fitness center's treadmill today.  I'm not sure running in this weather is good for the old lungs.  Since it got so cold last night I had the head on...I know SHOCKING!  The weird thing or maybe the cool thing about my heater is it rarely runs the heat element.  Most of the time it just recirculates the air which keeps the thermostat right at the desired temperature.  I guess probably all home heat does this but sometimes it pisses me off because it just seems like it's blowing cold air around.  I guess it probably wouldn't be so bad if I actually put the temperature at like 70 rather than 62. lol

I found out this weekend that Maryland is more of a dry state than Oregon.  It seems that you can't buy beer or wine at most grocery stores if not all grocery stores.  I guess Whole Foods has an exception or a special license but Safeway and Giant don't.  I had to walk to a liquor store to get a bottle of wine.  Lame...that's the best part of California is you can buy all liquor, beer, and wine at a grocery store.  However, this tells you how sad I am as I hadn't attempted to buy such things since I moved here last year.  The wine was for a little condo association get together.  I met some more neighbors so that was good.

I watched quite a few DVDs this weekend as Elena was at her house nursing her cold/cough.  I saw Tropic Thunder and it was way out there.  Funny but so wrong.  Tom Cruise dancing was hilarious and probably the best part of the movie.  I saw Fred Claus and it was a pretty good movie but not enough humor.  I think the Santa chase was the best part of the movie.

It's only 3 work days til Xmas...JOY!

Man V Food RAGE!!

Okay, a friend of mine mentioned that there's this new show on the Travel channel call Man v. Food. She said it was about a guy who goes around the country taking on those food challenges.  WTF!!!  I was robbed!!  This was my idea.  Damn you Travel Channel!!  I should be the host of this show.  Some of his food stops are already on my list that I've been researching for the past year.  You can read one of my past blogs about it here.  Are you kidding me?  There's an actual show.  I'm steaming...

I guess I have to watch it to see how pathetic the host really is and I hate him already.  I wonder when they came up with it.  It better be pretty dang close to when they televised the top 10 pig out places.  Still though....I guess I'm not the only one with good ideas.

Well now that I'm on the blog I might as well talk about some other stuff.  It seems a bunch of companies are forcing 2 weeks of vacation at the end of the year.  Sometimes I wish Mentor would do this as my vacation is just sitting there but nope.  I could always take it but then I wouldn't be able to dish out some good ribbin on all the slackers taking theirs.  Its not like I have anything to do.  I'd just get up later and watch crap loads of TV.  Sure I could do chores but really why?  I'm such a bum.  I'd never see the outdoors during the winter if I didn't go out and train daily.

I finally got Maryland auto insurance and it's cheaper than my Oregon insurance would've been.  Woohoo...probably has a little to do with only driving like 6000 miles or less a year.  So I'm totally Maryland legal with a registered car and auto insurance.  Since I'm such a good Maryland citzen the county decided to send me my first jury duty letter.  Crap.  I haven't been here even a year and I got to deal with jury duty.  I'll make sure to answer all questions like a whack job to make sure I don't make it past the first phase.  Hopefully, I won't even make it past the initial selection phase.

Alright back to work and fuming about the Travel channel.

Winter is back.

Well the brief stint of spring ended this morning.  It's getting colder as the day goes on and we're supposed to get hit with some freezing rain late today.  Joy!  With my body being pudgy, I forced myself out of bed early this morning from my patented run, swim, spin, run workout at the gym.

I did my first sortof swim workout since the Ironman training.  I did 100 yard intervals and was having some decent times so that was good.  I've swam 3 times since Saturday and will swim on Thursday morning and one weekend day.  So at least I'm getting a little consistency in the pool.  I think I've figured out the right stroke now I just need to get strong enough to keep pulling big water and fast to maintain my top slow er speed.

Since it was so warm yesterday, I went for a nice 6 mile run and clicked off some decent miles.  I'll start doing some hill repeats and little fartleks after the New Year.  Maybe I can find that 1:25 half marathon pace after all.  The cool thing is I know the Florida course so I can definitely be prepared for the tough mental sections.

Xmas is only 9 days away...and I still haven't taken Elena to Santa yet.  I'm such a slacker.  So the 6 year Santa Xmas card streak is in jeopardy, but maybe I can pull it out.

All-time fat

Yes, it's happened as predicted.  I've hit an all-time fat of 155 lbs at the gym this morning.  My swim sucked big time as I felt lethargic and now I know why.  God how far I've fallen.  13 lbs and it's not like I haven't been working out at least some all the time.  Maybe I need this... If I was a teenager I could get this.  I guess people just have trouble feeling full so they keep eating.  Although if you just fill 3/4ths of your stomach with ho-hos, twinkies and Doritos it probably won't matter that it's only 3/4ths.  It's almost exactly 6 months til the Half Ironman and I feel even less motivated now.  At least I finished my Doritos this weekend so I don't have to worry about eating those for awhile.

Elena and I saw Bolt yesterday.  Rhino was hilarious and made the movie in my opinion.  We also saw the preview for the next Pixar movie, Up.  It looks odd to say the least and I'm not sure.  It looks even worse than the first Wall-E previews.  We saw the movie at the new restaurant/pub style theaters that's just down the street from my condo.  Elena loved the whole concept and kept saying "Awesome" the whole time.  I'm not sure how it's going to survive because it was just us and 2 other people in the entire theater and there was 3 movies going on at the same time, Day the Earth Stood Still, Transporter 3 and Bolt.  It's cheaper for admission than the big megaplex but the screens are smaller.  We ordered pizza and watched the movie.  I'll probably try to go see a few more movies over there and hope it stays in business.

I've been watching that new show Secret Millionaire.  It's so interesting seeing how rich these people are and then how they see how really poor people live.  It's also interesting to see how much they actual give.  The current leader in that department was the self-made chicken finger franchise couple.  I'm not sure how much he's worth but he doled out a good chunk of his money as compared to the saddest was the self-made internet millionaire in San Fran.  He was probably the richest of them all as he just sold a company to Yahoo for 300 million but yet he didn't meet the show's minimum rules which says they have to give at least $100K.  He only gave $90K.  Percentage wise it was pathetic.  It be like me giving $25 to charity.  I'm figuring as the show progresses maybe the millionaires will figure it out but right now some of them haven't.  They seem willing to give but then cheap out.  It's better than zero but still paltry compared to what they could give.  Overall, it's a good show for the holidays.  Way to go Fox Reality.

Not much else going except it's going to be 60 here today...woohoo!!  I'm going for a long run in shorts and a shirt.  I'm just going to bask in the warmth.

Horror Fashion

Yes, it's time for horror fashion but before I get the fun started(lol) let's discuss how I'm such a bum.  I had gotten all my workout stuff together last night with the plans of waking up early and heading to the gym.  I even figured I'd just drive to the pool, swim and take the spin class rather than run.  I looked at my clock around 4am and said to myself okay I just get up at 4:40am and I'm set.  At about 4:20am, I looked at the clock again and proceeded to bag my workout.  I decided to sleep in again.  How lame is that.  The half ironman is 5 months away and I'm sleeping in.  I think I'm going to have to bust out some serious New Year's resolutions.  I'll run at lunch time today since it's suppose to be at least 40 something degrees unlike yesterday where the high was 32 and around lunch it was only 25 degrees.

So let's talk fashion specifically horror fashion.  Again as I mentioned yesterday, I saw the Texax Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning this weekend. As I saw the last victim trying to run in cowboy boots and jean skirt, I started thinking what would be the ideal attire you'd want to be have if you happened to be caught up in a horror movie.

Shoes: My first thought here is a good running shoe since if you start running you don't want to be caught.  If that's a simple jaunt down the driveway to your car or if it requires miles and miles of running until you're completely out of the current city/town/county and at quite a large metropolitan city's police station.  Side rant:  Why is it horror victims always run for awhile then immediately head up to the road or the first house they come to?  Bad idea.  I'd be running for a hella-long time before even attempting to go anywhere near a road.  I wouldn't even stop for that's city's or county's police station.  No way and I'm not taking the chance that whole town/county is on the gruesome deaths.  Okay back to shoes so running shoes seem like a good choice and probably a trail running shoe would even be better.  Less chance of slipping in the muck which surrounds most of these horror houses.  But I was thinking about close quarters escape and this almost always requires kicking at your killer while scrambling on the floor, under a bed, or through a window opening.  Running shoes really wouldn't pack much punch.  Combat boots!  I mean the armed forces run in these all the time and they can definitely put some hurt on a killer if you kick him in the face, groin or even stomp on his toe. These would also work in muddy cold water.  It always seems you have to traipse through a massive puddle in some dark basement which soaks you up the knees.  On top of that, you're protected against an achilles slash ala Hostel.

And the winner is...

Combat boots

Pants: I think this one is a no-brainer.  I think jeans are an easy choice.  They're durable and yet comfortable.  You might want to say shorts but man I'm thinking exposed legs could be bad plus with our previous shoe choice it just wouldn't be stylin.  How about fatigues?  Well these would match our combat boot but they would signal to the killer, bad ass.  The bad ass always gets taken out early in the movie so don't get too cocky.  Sweats or running pants just are good when trying to protect you against a killer's death grip.  The killer is going to be able to ball up a nice chunk of your sweats. Now you can't be wearing these type of jeans:

Baggy jeans are a major problem.  You can't really run fast because they're falling down.  I even own some relaxed fit jeans that just wouldn't work.  They'd get caught on that nail in the window as you were trying to squeeze out with the killer groping at your feet.
And the winner is...

501 Levi jeans

Top:  This is probably the hardest horror attire choice.  Now you could go with a T-shirt.  Not bad and even one of those funny T-shirts like "I'm with stupid" or "Have a nice day!" which shows the standard happy face with an ax sticking out of it's forehead in with the horror movie spirit.  Of course us guys love the white T-shirt on the hot co-eds because that is a 100% forecast for rain.  Nope a T-shirt isn't going to cut it when it gets cold as it seems there is always some serious shivering going on.  How about a stylin dress shirt?  Now that's a little warmer but just too easy to grab or get caught on stuff.  You jump into a closet to hide and lose a button as you shut the door.  The killer walks in looks around and just is about to leave when he spots button by the closet door.  Not good my friends.  A sweater has similar problems by snagging on stuff and the killer being able to get a good grip.  Sweatshirt has similar problems.  A long sleeve t-shirt is a pretty good choice.  It keeps you warm and isn't as easy to grab. Here's the ideal top though...

 

Under Armour long sleeve form fitting shirt.  I mean this is made for horror movies and well performance outdoor sports.  No extra material for the killer to grab.  It will keep you pretty warm.  It's a pretty smooth fabric so it slides through tight spots easy and be less likely to snag.

And the winner is...a cool sweatshirt with the above Under Armour underneath.  You get into trouble and shed the sweatshirt.  Throw it into the face of the oncoming killer to slow him down.

So if I'm going camping I'll have my combat boots, 501 jeans and Under Armour ready to go.  Feel free to comment on what you would wear.

Horror Fitness

Okay some might think this will be one of my typical rants about how I suck and I'm god awful slow out of shape 150lb behemoth but no.  Although all those previous adjectives are true.  This is about movie horror fitness.  I was watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning on Friday and thought of this little topic.

I watch tons of horror films as seen by my previous statement.  I've seen all the Chainsaw Massacres.  This one was pretty good and really put things together nicely with the previous franchise redo, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It had all the same faces from that one including R. Lee Ermey who is quite good in both of the movies.  Not Full Metal Jacket great but good.. I've seen all the Friday the 13th and even noticed there's a new one coming out this spring.  I suffered through all of the Nightmare on Elm Streets including the later ones.  I made it through all of the Halloweens even Rob Zombie's reboot and he's doing part 2 soon I hear.

So as I was watching Leatherface running after a victim in the movie, I thought I wonder how fast he can run.  It looked like he was doing 8s.  Then I started to compile a list of horror killers, the requirements must've be an actual person(sortof) and have at least 3 movies.  This rules out Candyman with just 2 movies for instance and Chucky from Child's Play doesn't count because he was a doll.  Here's my list: the aforementioned Leatherface, Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers, Jigsaw(he was in 3 1/2 of the 5 movies), Pinhead, The Tall Man, and maybe Ghost Face from Scream.  The problem with the Scream killer was he/she was different in all 3 movies so I'm not sure it counts.

So let's break it down..

Leatherface:  He's quite a big fella and was moving pretty good in this last movie and not so fast in some of the others.  I'm still thinking he's about 8 minute pace guy.  He makes up for that pace by being able to wield a large chainsaw while running that pace.

Jason:  He really seems to be able to do some serious trail running.  I'm not going to count we he was revived in the future with nanobots and became bionic Jason.  He ran mostly with a machette and sometimes an ax.  I'm thinking he ability to catch co-eds in the forest quickly puts him about 7:30s on the open road.  Speaking of running co-eds here's a great Nike commercial:




Now Jason's build would make him a decent triathlon athlete but he can't swim and water is his kryptonite.  So no triathlon for him.

Freddy: He's one of the leanest and wimpiest looking of all the horror killers.  This makes him the perfect distance runner.  Of course, he's in the dream world and can basically do anything even outrun Gebrselassie.  Before being whisked off to nightmare land to terrorize folks, he probably was able to run pretty good.  He did have to catch kids to bring them back to that warehouse.  I'm thinking he's one of the most natural runners based on his body composition.  On top of that he's smart and would be able to execute a race plan, push the pace early, cover the moves, let someone else lead. Now for my time estimate, I'm thinking sub 7s without training.

Michael Myers:  He can move as seen by him jumping onto the station wagon in the first movie.  I'm thinking he's a little faster than Jason but not much maybe 7:15 mile pace.  Still not lightening fast.  He's got a similar build as Jason but not the fear of water so he could probably excel in triathlons.

Jigsaw(killer in the Saw movies): He's tall and in the first movie was able to outrun that young detective after being shot in the leg.  I'm thinking he's pretty fast at 7 minute pace.  He probably competed in local runs as a cancer patient to help raise money for cancer.  Think about it, he needs some relief from building all those elaborate death traps.

Pinhead: Another lean and mean guy who could probably bust out some decent mile times.  He was in the war so he probably was able to move fairly fast carrying a full pack and gun.  He mostly glides/floats as Pinhead except in Hellraiser 2 where he's walking down the street.  Unlike Freddy, I think he's uncoachable.  He's too arrogant to take any direction.  I'm thinking he's a 8 minute guy just not able to live up to his potential.

The Tall Man: He's one of the main killers in the Phantasm franchise.  I don't remember much of the movies but I don't think he ran at all.  He had these metallic death balls do his bidding.  However, he is tall and based on such a long stride length it wouldn't take much for him to move.  He's the oldest in our list at what I would estimate 60s.  I'm saying 8:30s.

Ghost Face(Scream franchise): Again technically not really in the same league as the previous killers because there were different people under the mask each movie and even multiple people in the same movie.  These killers seem to be the fastest in our list though as they were moving in full sprints at some points.  Interval training at its best.  I'm guessing sub 7s were doable for most of these killers.

I really hope I haven't missed any key killers for the list.  I'm going to have to give Freddy the nod here as the fastest of the bunch.  You definitely want to be trained up if you came up against Freddy in a horror movie.

Tomorrow more horror fun...fashion!

Loafing

That's one of the many terms Thesaurus.com gave me as a synonym for lazy. I bagged getting up early to run, swim, spin and run back from the gym.  I was actually sortof awake and ready but just blew it off and decided just to run at lunch time.  How far I've fallen in such a short time.  My sleeping-in training is improving greatly though and I should be able to conquer the sleep til noon before too long.

I guess people get fat because well they don't want to work out but still eat like they did when they used to work out.  I'm heading down that path.  At least I'm getting faster at my running.  My pace has been slowly coming back around to a nice smooth 7:15ish which doesn't feel too bad at all.  I tried to push the pace a little yesterday for about a mile trying to reel someone in on the trail and boy that was hard.  I have no speed at all.  I definitely miss the days when in the middle of a workout I could throw down a 5:30 if I needed to.  Who knows if I can keep my legs healthy maybe by spring I'll be able to get back to that?

Elena told me she wanted a Wii or DS for Xmas.  I told her that she could "want" all she wanted but it wasn't going to happen.  I asked her why and she said because she wanted to play Pokemon on the DS.  My daughter likes Pokemon.  That's been around forever and I thought by the time she was old enough it would've disappeared..no such luck.  I told her to be happy that she has a computer and not to get too greedy.  She agreed but said she still wanted one.

I'm trying my hardest to make sure she doesn't turn into one of those kids who always bragged about what they had or flaunted their cool stuff.  I definitely want to give her all the things I never got to have when I was a kid but I don't want her to brag about it.  She goes to school with a bunch of kids less fortunate and I still remember how it hurt to see someone bragging about the cool toy they got for Xmas.  I think is starting to understand as she is very compassionate for other people's feelings.  She always has been and its one of her great qualities that I never and still really don't have.

Ahh Cyber Monday

Hopefully everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I ate so much that I gave back all the losses in the lb department I had worked on the past week. It was massive on the old scale at the gym this morning. I had to move the big balance onto the 150 for a whopping 152. Ouch...considering after my killer workout Thanksgiving morning, the same scale said 142. I was dehydrated though as I did the killer spinning class, went for about a 5 mile run and then swam for 45 minutes. I bonked big time in the pool but that was okay as it really wasn't about going fast but more about fasting. Heh!

I was eating T-day dinner with some friends of Amber and Joe. They live in this suburb of DC called Bowie. I arrived just before 1pm and there were snacks a plenty. I proceeded to slowly consume snacks but tried to limit the intake in order to consume mass quantities of turkey and mash potatoes. They were deep frying their turkey. This is a really cool method to cook a turkey but it's quite dangerous I guess due to the fact you have a big pot of 350 degree oil. I guess that's why castles back in the day used to use it for defense because it would not be fun to have it dumped on your head.

Just the plain oil heating up which takes awhile.

Turkey is in cooking...I heard on a radio show that it only takes 3 minutes per pound to cook the turkey with this method as opposed to 20 minutes per when you put in the oven.

And the final product...the skin was nice and crunchy plus the turkey was quite juicy. Just as everything was finishing up I was having a massive hunger pain. Basically I was bonking just by sitting in a chair...good times. I got a small plate of turkey to tide me over before the true feast begun. Phew...crisis averted.

I had 3 massive plates of turkey, potatoes, and stuffing. Plus some corn, rolls and green beans. I could barely move afterwards as we all let things settle before starting on the 3 pies, and 2 big massive buckets of homemade ice cream.

By the time everyone left at 8 something I was in a full turkey coma. I got home and went to bed but I woke up about 1am all hot and full. I couldn't sleep at all. I think my system was in overdrive converting all my stomach contents into FAT!! I rolled out of bed at 7am and hit up the internet to see what sales were going on.

I live about a block from a Best Buy, Circuit City and Target. I had planned to start looking for Elena's Xmas present an electronic keyboard. It was on sale at Best Buy but was sold out online but Target also had one on sale. I got dressed and decided to walk over to see about picking one up. It was pure bedlam at Best Buy. The parking lot was packed and people were parking on the street. I had to stop in just to see it first hand. There were people everywhere. I strolled through some aisles and they had the keyboard in stock so I figured why not save my walk over to Target and just pick it up. I waited in line for about 30 minutes just to check out. They were saying that doorbuster people had arrived at 11pm the night before and camped out in line for the 5am opening. Definitely crazy and I might have to see this door opening first hand next year.

I watched DVDs all day Friday and just tried to recover from the turkey. On Saturday, it was time to starting thinking about the chance of the Beavers to go to the Rose Bowl. I watched the game and it was so sad. Our defense played horrible which I really blame on the defensive coordinator for not preparing them to defend Oregon's spread offense. They had a chance to go to the Rose Bowl and just blew it. I guess it's for the best since I can save all that money I would spend on that mini-vacation and use it elsewhere. Typical Beaver let down. Plus I think I may have to travel already twice in December for business so a third time would be hard.

On Sunday, Elena and I watched a bunch of HGTV. She likes those shows because Amber and Joe are in the process of getting a house. They had been renting but now they are going to buy. It interesting watching because they show various markets in certain cities. Like they had one couple looking at houses in the Bay Area where a 3 bedroom 1 bath is 700k while this other lady in Dallas was looking at a 3 bedroom 2 bath for 130k. Wowzer!! Of course another show was about log cabin homes and those were just crazy. It's just amazing at how many people just have tons of money. I mean these things were monstrous and had crazy stuff. I just wonder how people can even heat such a massive house. One log cabin was out in the middle of nowhere and had to provide all its own energy with generators and solar power. Wild stuff...I wonder how these HGTV shows are going to be after a few months when they actually were taping during the current environment.

Hope everyone has fun shopping online today...