I'm Going To Run A Half-Marathon

David and his Dad arrived safely in Minnesota this afternoon. As for the weather...it's pretty bad up there. Lots of snow and a ton of cars off the road. They are now at the game and as usual, hoping for a win. As of this moment it's not looking too good. I just hope they have a good time together and arrive home safely.

This afternoon was our big extended family gathering. This year it was held at our local Elks Lodge and was great. It's always good to see everyone and catch up. With a lot of people having blogs you can actually carry on conversations with people instead of having the problem of not knowing what to talk about, or trying to spit out all you've done since you've last seen them. Much better than it used to be. I've already posted pictures from the gathering so be sure to check out our Flickr account.

While at the gathering Erika came over to see me and told me she had a proposition for me....she asked if I'd run the Cleveland Half-Marathon, that's in May. When it came out of her mouth I'm not sure what the look was on my face. More than likely the, "Oh Jesus, I don't know if I can do that. Do you realize that's 13.1 miles...of course you realize that's 13.1 miles...you've run 26.2 miles!" look. I let the thought settle in my brain and realized, "I can do that!" I told her I'd be up for it but she's going to have to walk me through the training schedule, when to start, etc. While posting pictures on Flickr I took a jaunt over to the Cleveland Marathon/Half-Marathon site and got kind of pumped up. 13.1 miles. Yes. I'm going to do it. I know I can do it. Now what do I do? I guess I better mark it in the calendar and get registered here soon. Oh yeah, by the way, David doesn't know about this. I thought I'd hit him with it when he comes home. I'm thinking he's not going to do it, but we shall see.

After the family gathering we all convened at the 'rents house for Cassidy to open gifts and to open Grandma and Grandpa Quirie's gifts. Since I had all of my siblings present I thought it'd be the best time to present them with their joint gift from me. (They should all be present on Christmas too, but timing may not be on my side). I made a slideshow of all of us through the years. It's 12 minutes long so I'm not sure how I'll be able to get it on YouTube. The only thing I can think is to compress the file, but if I do that it will have to be done at a later date. As I've stated in previous posts, I prefer my gift giving to be thoughtful, which isn't always a high dollar item. I hope it's something that everyone can look at throughout the years, and I hope to add on to the movie in the future.

It's time for me to go to bed but I must post one more thing. It's a post that requires it's own title....