Random nothingness

It has been a while since I posted just a bunch of stuff that is floating aCurlersround in my head. Probably none of it is long enough to make a full post on its own.

We put our daughter’s hair in curls. She had a scowl on her face after she saw herself in the mirror. It took quite a bit of work to get her to smile for this picture.

My wife was complaining that her hammock was lumpy the other day. I am not sure how that happens, but I have fallen victim to that ailment sometimes too.

Local elections were held here in Mexico yesterday. Apparently the PRI party swept this area. We are in a very strongly PAN area. PAN was the incumbent party and is the party of President Calderón (elected last year). I was a bit surprised to hear that PRI made a come back. None of this stuff actually makes sense to me anyway. Both main parties have their advantages and disadvantages. As a missionary, PRI is a bit better for us.

Missionary Talks is well over 8000 total downloads now.

I have my first real arena football scrimmage game against another team tomorrow. I heard that the oldest player on the other team is younger than our youngest player. I fall in the middle to lower end of our age bracket at 37. They will probably be faster than us, but maybe we can make it up by actually having brains and using them.Swinging

A few weeks ago we took our deaf church to the zoo. This other picture is me swinging. With the exception of the other missionary family, I am the old guy in the church. We are made up of a group of teens and a couple slightly older people. So when we get together for stuff like this, the kid in me comes out. He is not too far below the surface anyway.

Last week my wife and I went out for Mother’s Day (on Monday) and hit the magazine rack. There are a couple of stores which sell US magazines–at a premium. My wife picked up a couple and I picked up a Runner’s World. I have really been enjoying it. Cover price in the US is $4.50 while I had to pay over $6 for it here. Not horrible, but I still can’t afford to do it all the time. I did find Runner’s World Mexico one time. It was around $4, but I have never seen it again.

How is that for an eclectic mix of randomness?

Nice easy run

This morning I went out for my run. Normally on Saturday I do a long run (for me that means more than 6 miles). I am not entirely sure why I save it until Saturday. My work is mostly in the afternoon/evenings. I pretty much have total control of my mornings and can run for 2 hours just about any morning that I wish. But, I save it for Saturday none the less. There is considerably less traffic on Saturdays

Since I knew I would have a football scrimmage game today, I decided to make my run a short easy one. 5K at a slow pace should be around 10:20 for me. This one was 11:06. That was certainly slow.

Though it never really gets cold here, we still have a fairly dramatic Spring. This morning there were lots of trees in bloom. I have read several runners who state that their sense of smell is heightened while running. This is true for me as well. The trees smelled very nice.

Since it was 83 degrees on my run this morning, that also means that the dog “stuff” that was baking on the asphalt had a very strong smell.

One of the smells that I have come to enjoy while running is the smell put off by tortilla factories. We don’t have many on my current route. Only one. On the other side of town where we lived before, I could not do a run without running by 3 or more. They were plentiful over there. That is a nice smell. But, you can always feel the temp rise when running by one. The heat the machinery gives off is amazing. I can’t understand how people work in those places.

Active weekend

Yesterday I had my first scrimmage game for my arena football team. We did not have enough equipment to go around, so we ended up playing flag football. That is the type of ball I played in Jr. high and high school. I felt totally comfortable with the rules. We had some modifications though. Where we were able to incorporate arena rules with flag rules we did so.

My team lost by a couple of touchdowns.

Though I am in pretty good shape, the body still hurts and gets sore from hitting the ground. Twenty years ago when I was playing ball all the time, I don’t remember being so sore the next day.

This morning I had a 10K race that I wanted to run. I had planned the race before I knew that I was to have the game yesterday. When I went to bed last night I had decided that my running of the race was dependent on how I felt this morning. I guess I felt alright since I woke up and motivated myself out the door.

I ran the first half in 29:22 and the second half in 30:38. Almost even splits. According to my watch, my time was 1:00:00. Official time was 1:00:05. Since my goal was 1 hour or less, I took my watch time. (BTW, this is the first race that I have run here that was actually the advertised distance.)

I was still sore and stiff through the first kilometer and was still considering turning around early. Somewhere between Km. 1 and 2 I decided to stay in the race.

It was a smaller race. Probably only 150 people. I took 26th for my division (30-39 year olds). I don’t know how many were in my age group. But, there were some people who came in after me.

I got a fairly nice T-Shirt from the race. But it is XL in size. I used to wear XL and don’t want any more shirts that size in my life. So, it will become a grungy football shirt. Why, oh why, do they give out L and XL shirts at races? Don’t they know the majority of people will be average to thin?

After all was said and done this weekend, I was glad I skipped the 8 mile long run I had planned for Saturday morning.

First football practice

I have been really interested in playing football this year, but kept getting conflicting information about when and where to meet for practice. I finally decided to give up on the hope of playing. That was until I went to a couple of games this weekend. I found out that there was a league for old guys like me. It is an arena league.Football

A friend of mine talked with his kid’s coach and got all the info for me. I was to show up at 8:00 tonight ready to practice. As always, no one else showed up until 15 minutes late and then the majority of people weren’t there until 8:30. But such is life here.

Everyone asked me what position I played when I last did play (20 years ago in high school). Since I was always the heaviest kid in school, I played both offensive and defensive lines. I am definitely not the heaviest person on this team. In fact, there were probably only 2 smaller than me. They stuck me in the defensive backfield as the safety. That is a position I have never played based on my size and lack of speed.

I don’t know that I will stay at safety, but it was fun playing there tonight. I have always enjoyed defense and this is a position that, though you don’t get to bang heads every play, is very important. Maybe I can hone my skills at it and make it my position.

Next practice is Friday.