[3/4: 4 miles in DeSoto National Forest; 3/6: 3.25; 3/8: 3.6; 3/11: 6.1 miles in Starkville]
The weather forecast says we will have freezing temperatures after midnight on Monday (tomorrow night).
Last weekend we were down in Laurel, Mississippi for the Carl Touchstone 50 miler (they added a 100 mile event this year too). I did a quick run on the forest service road while wife was out doing the 20k. It had been a hard weekend so she was happy to finish. And she actually did pretty well.
She’s been wearing a heart monitor again. She was out running this week and the cardiologist called her on her cell phone. So the monitor thing actually caught an event! That’s good news. They put her on some medications and I expect there will be more follow up in one form or another.
On the way down and on the way back we stopped in at #1 son’s house and enjoyed his company for a bit. He took care of the dog while we were doing the run thing.
I went to get the mower ready for the first mow of the season this past week and it was running terribly. That was very disappointing because I had just put 1200 bucks into getting it ready. So back to the shop it went and the lawn is still growing. I always have trouble knowing when it is good to repair and when a guy should just go buy a new mower. The place we bought it from has a repair department (which is where I spent the money), but the results for us have been mixed. It only has 600 hours on it. Maybe that’s all I can expect?
I hope to hear from them this week about what they want to do. And we may still go buy another mower anyway. I don’t know.
Stay tuned for either success or some massive spending or possibly both!
I wore some new shoes on my run yesterday in Starkville. I’m not sure if I like them or not. They change my stride quite a bit.
For the last few years I’ve been running in mostly-flat shoes. These new shoes are more of the old style with a lot of heal lift in them, I think.
I guess all I really know is that they make me take a smaller stride and a quicker turnover. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad. I’ll try them a few times and see.
What got me to change was that the shoes I was wearing are getting to be more expensive and these others came up cheap and I’m just kind of “over” spending $120 on running shoes. I had some Altra shoes that I really liked. Then I most recently was wearing Topo shoes. And these cheapies are Reebok. Running shoes are wildly over priced, in my opinion. They spend a lot of time on subtle differences and color schemes and keep the shoppers churning and unsure. The actual benefit for someone like me who runs 15 miles a week (or less) is just nil.
This weekend was more relaxing. I did dive into the file cabinet and got all of my tax documents sorted out. I will mail them off to the tax man this week and hope to see a refund of some kind… or at least not a big bill to pay.
One of our income sources (with direct deposit) didn’t change our home address, so all of the state taxes were paid to Iowa instead of Mississippi. So we went back to the Iowa tax guy to carry us another year with multi-state work like he did last year.
One other thing: I put in a bid at the Mississippi Sec of State on a tax lien property down near where #1 son lives. It would require some work. I’m offering a fair but low price (given the unknowns and state of the place as seen in a drive-by).
I’ve done that before. I don’t remember if I wrote about it on the blog. In that case, by the time my bid came up in the queue and the Sec of State’s office sent us a counter offer, we were already thinking of moving and we passed on the opportunity. Someone else picked up that one.
Anyway, I don’t expect to hear anything back for a few months. And the people who have ownership now can clear up the taxes if they want to… and other people’s bids are processed in the order they arrive.