Saturday, March 17, 2012

Off to Neverland

Hard to believe that it's only been two months since my last trip to WDW and I'm heading back down again so soon. In fact we leave this afternoon for nearly a ful week. Our daughter's school choir is attending a Disney Music workshop at Saratoga and then on Tuesday they perform at Downtown Disney. Should be a fun and quite busy trip. Staying at Animal Kingdom for the first time on this trip. No car rental. Just Disney buses and spring break crowds. Ahh such is the life...

Training has been nill this past week. It's all on me but here is a partial excuse. (and I hate to make excuses) My office hours have been switched up and now every four weeks instead of working 1pm-10pm I go into the office at 10am-7pm and then have to carry the phones overnight. So in short the company is taking three more hours out of my day. So if I get up at 8am there is no time to workout, shower and get to the office. I know, I know, I can here the comments now. Get up earlier. Well yes I could work on that. My trouble there is I'm a freaking night owl and have always had a difficult time getting myself in bed before 12-1am. I've also caught myself stress eating again. I'm looking forward to the structure of this Disney trip. I always do very well with a set number of meals and if we have a snack its just one and done. Registration for DAM sould be open when I return. Now THAT, will be some motivation.

In other news I'm still working on documenting my family tree. A few months ago my dad found some additional loose photos that he gave to me. Evidently others in my family history were fans of Mickey and Minnie as evidence in this picture of a home curio cabinet.


Now I can't really be certain who this belonged to. My best guess is that Mickey and Minnie belonged to my great grandparents Augustus and Dora Robbins.


My only clue is that my grandfather indexed all of his photos and this picture is in the same group.

It would be fun if I could confirm this somehow but I most likely never will.

Speaking of antiques here are a few pics of some I took during my last trip to the Brass Armadillo.








In this last picture I'm not sure I like the way BIG BOY is looking at Minnie.

Have a good week everyone!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Checking In


Yes my friends I'm still around. I will confess right up front that the past few weeks have not been good in regard to training and diet. As I told a few of you earlier this week in an email I'm up 5lbs. The reason is very simple. I have not been faithfully tracking my calories and exercise has dropped to near nothing. I managed to carve out a 1 mile walk yesterday which really does nothing for me if I'm not going to be consistent. My last long run was a 6 miler two weeks ago. It was a good run and I managed to keep a pace per mile in the 10's. Still I know that I really need to get back to the good habits I had going into last marathon weekend. The big DAM to DAM race is coming up in June and this year my niece and her 11 year old son are planning to run. That will certainly help with my motivation.



Warm weather is finally rolling in and I look forward to getting outdoors more often and shaking of this cabin fever.



Other things going on out here on the Tundra include geneology. My Grandfather did tons of research years ago I've been putting it up on ancestry.com. Years ago I did a bunch of this using family tree maker but using ancestry is more fun. One interesting thing is the hints it gives you. Here's a little cheat for you. On the main website it offers hints and to view those hints you have to subscribe. But... if you sync up the free ipod app the hints show more details and you can even preview documents once for free.

Interesting fact about my ancestry is that William Penn the founder of Pennsylvania, is my 1st cousin 11 times removed. His grandfather is my 11 great grandfather.



My wife and I are heading back to WDW on the 17th. I'm hoping for an in flight green beer special. If that fails perhaps a trip to Ragland Road is in order. Our daughter is singing at downtown Disney hence the reason for the trip. New this trip will be a DVC stay at Animal Kingdom lodge. Should be a fun time but I'm not looking forward to the spring break crowds. Can you say rope drop? Can you say rope drop is a must?



We also have plans to visit the world in July. The resorts are booked (Vero and Bay Lake) but we are holding off on airfare with the hope it will drop.



Hope all the rest of you are doing well with weight and milage!