Saturdays At Lowe's

Its become a semi-routine at our house to take the boys once or twice a month to the Lowe's kiddie project thing.  


This month the boys were ready early.  Preston even remembered his cowboy hat.

It was the first of four-- repeat, FOUR-- trips to Lowe's that day, thanks to the basement project I've been working on for almost 9 months now.  I'm just glad that Lowe's is nearly in our backyard... we could walk it in about 15 minutes.

New Kind Of Torture

No one ever mentioned Spinning as an enhanced interrogation technique.  You know, like waterboarding.  But, I know it will produce similar results.  And, since many people do it voluntarily, it cannot be considered inhumane.

Well, that may be incorrect.  It IS inhumane.  I know... I'm doing it.

I realize I'm already a heap of masculine fitness and muscle (joke), but I took the brave initiative to sign up for the spinning classes provided as part of my gym membership at work.  Yeah, we are lucky enough to have a brand new gym in the basement of our building.  In my effort to train-up for some upcoming events that I hope to be a part of, one of the trainers convinced me that the spinning class would really take me "leaps and strides" ahead of where I would be otherwise.

So, I signed up.  What the heck, right?  Looking back, I'll bet anyone a hundred bucks that he was laughing behind my back after I accepted his spinning suggestion and was leaving his office.  He forewarned me: "Cade, this is the hardest class we offer."

This class is 45 minutes of sprinting on an exercise bike, which could easily be mistaken for a medieval torture device .  First you sprint on simulated flat ground.  Then you sprint uphill by turning up the resistance.  Then you sprint uphill while not sitting on your bike seat.  Then you alternate between sitting and not sitting on your bike seat while sprinting uphill.  I'll bet during the course of the session, I burned over 78,000 calories and lost enough water via sweat to refill Lake Tahoe.

Ey... it hurts.  My last class was 2 days ago, and I still have trouble stretching out my legs... from the first class I took.

The other people in the class are spinning veterans, at least compared to me.  But, here is how a part of the 45 minute torture session went:

****

Lindsay (instructor): "C'mon guys, 30 more seconds!!  ... 20 more seconds!!  ... 10 more seconds!!  Nine, eight, seven.... two, one-- 30 more seconds!!"

Me: "Say, WHAT?  You're a LIAR!!  Can't count?  You must work for Westinghouse!"

Lindsay:  "Cade, you're doing great!  Only 30 minutes to go!"

Me: "Shoot me.  Now."

****

Lindsay:  "Get ready to sprint!!  GO!!!"

Me: "But, my knees are locked!  I can't move!"

Lindsay:  "Someone unlock Cade's knees!"

****

Lindsay:  "Last mile, c'mon!  C'mon!"

Me: "Nope, my exit is RIGHT HERE.  See ya later."

Lindsay:  "Cade, stay with us!"

Me:  "Alright... can't feel my legs anyway...."

****

At least I got some good laughs.  All kidding stopped when I couldn't walk back up the stairs to get out of the building.  I had to take the elevator.  Then, it took me nearly 4 times longer just to walk to my car.

Two days later (today), I still walk like I'm constipated, sit like I've got the "runs"... I can't stand, sit, or lay down without it pulling every fiber out of my leg muscles.  Yeee-ouch.

Great "workout", sure, but torture nonetheless.

I ran into Lindsay today when I returned to the gym for my normal routine.  She told me I did great... I called her a terrorist.  She laughed.  "See you next Wednesday, then?" she asked.  "Uh, OK," I replied.

Not So Swift

Last January, I got the hair-brained idea to incentivize Chrissa's school performance with two tickets to the June 18th Taylor Swift concert at Heinz Field in Pitt.  Cost: ~$100 per ticket.  Given my cheapness, I only bought 2 tickets... one for me and one for her.  Or, if grades failed, it would be one ticket for me and another ticket for whomever I could convince to go with me.

It should suffice you to know that I'm typing this while sitting in the van on the 8th story of a parking garage trying to get home from said concert.  So, yeah, Chrissa did well on her grades... and here we sit at exactly midnight as I type this out on my Blackberry.  We've been sitting here since 11:15.

So, we joined the 52,000 member mob of Swift fans this afternoon and made our way to the stadium.   Its roughly 20 miles from our home to Heinz Field.  The first 17 miles took us about 15 minutes... The last 3 miles took us nearly 2 hours.

Don't laugh... I'm not joking.  In fact, we were passed by two people who had entirely given up and abandoned their car in the emergency lane, deciding that walking would be a faster alternative.  They passed us and we never saw them again.

Things got surprisingly better once we got to the stadium, however.  After paying the $35.00 parking fee, and after wandering around for a half hour trying to find our seats, I asked a worker where we could find Section 230, and we were escorted to PRIVATE elevators to the box sections.  Ha!  We left the riff-raff behind.  I had no idea that the section I bought our tickets in were in the more illustrious part of Heinz Field set aside for the glitterati.  How and why they let two rednecks into the section is beyond me.  Our section even had leather furniture and carpeting out in the food sections.  We were happy.

Despite showing up at 8:15 for a show that was supposed to begin at 7, the show hadn't started yet... some wannabe was playing.  So we gassed up on 2 slices of pizza and 2 Cokes for $22 (gulp!) and waited for the show.


While waiting, we did note some strange characters in the audience.  This couple in particular caught our eye.  Apparently, they were spending their wedding night at the concert.

As I started to realize just how many teen-aged and pre-teen-aged girls were in the audience, I knew that at any moment the place would erupt into a huge fireball of screams and frantic behavior.  I only had one reaction, which I carried on my face-- I was in serious trouble:

As the stadium started to fill up, and nighttime started to fall, I realized that the capacity of Heinz Field would hold the entire population of Idaho Falls-- our former home town.  So, for affect, I took a panorama of the stadium from our seats.  You'll need to click the photo below for full affect.

As nighttime fell, the show started with a dizzying, deafening blast of teen-aged girl screams, just as I had earlier feared.  It was like sticking your head directly into the tail cone of an F-18.  I was, in reality, in the ninth circle of Dante's hell.  And, for the next 2:45, we heard Taylor Swift belt out her greatest hits.  

Sadly, however, the ride to the stadium ruined the experience for me.  As we sat in traffic moving at the blinding speed of 10 feet per minute, all stations in the Pittsburgh area were playing Taylor Swift songs.  Thus, before the concert even started, we had listened to each song she had ever sang at least 3 times.  


All in all, the concert was fun.  Now, if we can just get home.  Time is now 12:20AM, and the cars on the 8th story of this stinking garage are just started to move out.

Bigfoot Is Real

While I was back in Utah trying to convince the Gentiles to move east, Ethan and the family were here in PA catching a rare glimpse at a real-life Bigfoot.

Ethan's only comment: "I thought it would be bigger."  Go figure...

School's Out For Summer

As Alice Cooper so eloquently stated:

School's out for summer
School's out forever
School's been blown to pieces

No more pencils
No more books
No more teacher's dirty looks

Out for summer
Out till fall
We might not go back at all

School's out forever
School's out for summer
School's out with fever
School's out completely 

So what has the evil mom and pop done to combat this belief?  Well... HOMEWORK, of course.

This summer, the kids will be spending a couple hours each day working in math and science workbooks that we bought for them.  BWAAA-HAHAHAH!

As for me, I'll be working extra hours this summer.  I don't want to intrude on Michelle's homeschooling efforts, after all.

Memory-al Day 2011

I decided at the last minute to take my family to Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC for Memorial Day.  I was feeling a bit patriotic and wanted my kids to see the cemetery during its most decorated holiday.  I was also in need of a weekend off of the honey-do list.  Since it was Memorial Day, I also wanted the typical Memorial Day picnic—fried chicken, macaroni salad, etc.

Was I really asking too much?

Well, that was the plan.  Now, the reality…

We did leave as scheduled on Sunday, and even left church early to make it in good time (gasp!!  But, it was Michelle's idea...).  The drive is about 4 hours, but we hadn’t been down that stretch of the highway for a while and I wanted to get another glimpse of the beautiful Maryland countryside.  Its where I want to retire some day.

Travel on the east coast during summer months requires a thorough review of the weather forecast.  It is going to be one of 2 options… either blazing hot with no wind/rain, or rain.  Rarely does the weather fall somewhere in between.  Thankfully, Pittsburgh usually falls somewhere between.

The forecast called for a clear, hot day with temps in the lower 90s.  Considering my personal melting point of 85 degrees, I knew this forecast was pushing the envelope for all of us. 

But, I insisted, and we went anyhow. 

We didn’t begin our fried chicken feast until we hit Leesburg VA, which is just outside the Garden of Eden (in my opinion).  The James Madison Highway has the most beautiful farmland I have ever seen.  As luck would have it, we saw a few locations for sale that kinda peaked our interests... what do you think?

The local Wal-Mart, though, did not live up to the “Garden of Eden” expectations.  The fried chicken STUNK… not literally.  It was dried-up and greasy and tasteless and the chicken lady even admitted that she didn't know how long it had been sitting there.  We should have walked away, but we didn't.  We also got boneless wings, macaroni and cheese, and some other stuff.  The other stuff was OK… the rest would have been turned down by a pack of dogs.

We stayed at the Hyatt Hotel near Dulles Airport.  Now, this is where the fun started.  Picture the scenario… we (I) parked the van under the little overhang that covers the entrance to the hotel.  Two cars in front of us is a light blue Toyota Sienna minivan, identical to ours.  As Michelle goes in to “check-in”, she tells me to pull the car into a nearby parking spot so I would be out-of-the-way of other cars coming in.  So I did.  We all exit the van waiting for her to come out of the hotel, and when she does, I notice that she is looking at the look-alike van with the belief that it was ours.  So I tell the kids, “Watch mom… she thinks that van is ours,” and sure enough, she walks up to the driver’s side window and knocks on it, expecting to see me to remind me to move the van because a car behind it was blocked in by “my” apparently bad parking skills.  The lady inside the van, who was busy putting on make-up, was caught by surprise—as was Michelle, who then noticed all of us laying in the parking lot holding our guts with laughter.  It was really funny! 

Turns out that the hotel was the wrong one anyhow.  Our Hyatt was the cheaper one a few blocks away. 

So we went there, got checked in, and went swimming.  Yes… I went swimming with the kids in the hotel pool.  I was grossed out for the entire hour we were there.  I felt everything touching me as I was in the water… hair, poopie-particles, toe fungus, kiddie boogers, etc.  It was a vain attempt to cure my phobia, so I’m still sickened by public pools.  The kids had a great time, though.  It took Amberlee about 30 minutes to go from dangling her feet in the water to full body splashing.  She loved it.  We had to leave when her diaper bloated to the size of a beach ball and a group of Middle Eastern men decided to go swimming.  Ambie is now known as Aunt Jamima thanks to her diaper absorbing half the pool.

The next day, we left for Arlington, but first, Michelle wanted to go to the DC temple to do her temple work.  I dropped her off there, we got some photos of the kids on the temple grounds, I took them to McDonald’s for breakfast, etc.  We even ran into a family that was in our old ward in Idaho Falls there… they had moved to Virginia last January. 

Arlington was a zoo.  I knew it would be.  Obama was there just an hour before to place the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers before he ran off to play golf, so the line of cars getting into the cemetery was a mile long.  It took us over an hour to get from one side of the Potomac to the other side and into a parking spot… a drive that would normally take about 3 minutes.

Proof of the heat... this was in the car parked in the shade.

We (I) had 3 goals in mind (my family's goal was just to bear my ridiculous plan for hiking around in the heat): find the headstone for Allen Lee Jensen (yes, my dad's name, but not my dad... to my knowledge), the headstone for George Westinghouse (to thank him for my job), and Audie Murphy… just because.  Allen’s headstone was on the far end of the cemetery, and despite our valiant efforts to reach it, the heat/humidity won, and we took the nearest detour to Headstone #2: George Westinghouse.  Once again, despite finding the plot, we never did find the headstone.  So, off we eventually went to Headstone #3: Audie Murphy.  His was actually very easy to find… just look for the flags and flowers.

We did get some great photos while we were there...

I also wanted to watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with Ethan and Preston, which, to me, is fascinating.  The heat kept most people out of the way (Michelle, Chrissa, and Ambie included), so we had a front row seat.  The granite seats where heated to 150 degree, I swear, so we stood there with sweat dripping off of our faces while we watched the soldiers (all dressed in their heavy uniforms) do their job.  It was great.

I wanted to go to the Vietnam and WWII Memorials, too, but once we got to the car and turned the AC on, we were convinced that our tour was not going to be extended.  After all, I have eternity to spend in the heat, so why start now?  Instead, we headed for ice cream and frozen lemonades, then headed back home.

Photo slideshow, to the right...