Just 4 votes away

I just need 4 votes to put Missionary Talks in the top 25 podcasts in the Religion and Spirituality category at Podcast Alley for the month of January. You don’t have to register with them to vote, but you do need to give them your email address. They will send you a confirmation email which has a link inside that you must click to confirm your vote. I have never yet received spam as a result. So I think it is safe.

When voting there you are given the option to leave a comment. Comments are not required, but appreciated.

Also, if you have nice things to say and you have an iTunes account, go over to my show and place a comment.

Finally, the new podcast directory at digg.com has generated quite a bit of traffic to my podcast. If you are a digg member you can digg the show and push me back onto page 2 of the religion category.

Running again

Whew! I have not run in about 10 days. This is not a good pattern to keep my mileage up. Last month I had to take several days off too. Fortunately none of this was caused by injury. I should be back into the grind for a while now.

I ran a 5K in over 31 minutes today. It ended up being a 10+ minute per mile pace which is actually good for me right now. I did not want to push it too fast today, so I just enjoyed the run. I will work on speeding up over the next couple of weeks.

I plan 3 more miles tomorrow and then a 6 mile run on Saturday. That will get my miles up to 25 (or so) for the year. This should have been closer to 50 or 60 miles, but at least I am going forward.

My brother recently commented to my mom that he thought I had joined a running cult. Well, to put his mind at rest, the cult leaders around here won’t let me in until I start logging 80 to 100 miles a month. So I still have a ways to go to get through the initiation process.

What have you learned from Dora the Explorer?

This morning our son got on a plane to head back to Mexico after being with my brother and his family for the last 2 weeks. After the lady at the counter escorted my son into the plane and handed him off to his escort for the trip (unaccompanied minors have an adult escort assigned by the airline), she came back out to talk with my brother. She said that our son and his escort were getting to know one another and suddenly they were both speaking Spanish instead of English.

The counter lady said to my brother, “He did not learn that just from watching Dora the Explorer did he?”

Get lost!

I read this post over at Run to Win. Blaine talks about getting lost on a run. It reminded me of my first hour and a half run. It did not matter the distance, what was important was the time. I did not have a good way to measure distance at the time.

I took off into new territory and quickly got lost. 30 minutes into the run I was completely confused. I was new to the neighborhood, which did not help. I figured if I kept running I would eventually find myself. I did. A little after the hour mark I saw something familiar and knew how to proceed from there. It was a good thing too. I was so lost that even if I had called my wife, I would not have known how to tell her to find me.

When I did find myself, I stopped in a convenience store and grabbed a Gatorade and kept running. I got home in 1 hour and 35 minutes.

Missionary Talks 13: Emily and Vickie Smith

This is the final of the interviews that I have planned with Missionary Kids (MKs) for the time being. It was fun talking with them and they are certainly much easier to schedule than their parents. We will be going back to interviews with missionary adults next week.

This episode was a challenge in the production quality department. There was apparently some static getting into the microphone. That is the only thing that I can figure that caused the crackling sound that you hear. It does not interfere with what is said, but is very distracting. I apologize.

The next interview is already recorded. I happen to have a missionary to Cuba in my house with me this week. I think you will really enjoy the episode.