San Diego

I'm finally getting around to posting some pictures of our trip to San Diego. I went a little crazy with the camera at San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld so I thought it might be a little easier to put all the pictures on a slideshow and then just talk about a few of my favorites:

Here is a picture of our rental car...Clint's dream car. He was in heaven for the whole trip!

Clint and I saw a lot of animals that looked a lot like our little furballs at home. This pot belly big looks a lot like our fat little Molly...

...and this sea lion looks so much like Tess!

I'm a sucker for sunsets. This is a view just outside our hotel.

On the tram at San Diego Zoo. This park is HUGE! It was nice to be able to take a little rest and get from one side of the park to the other.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to enjoy Hogle Zoo again. The animals at the San Diego Zoo are so much more active and their habitats are so great! Hard to believe only a piece of glass separated me from this hippo!

Just waiting at the dock before we go out on the boat behind us for dinner and a cruise around the harbor. Just an FYI...I was FREEZING on the boat! It was so cold that my server found me a table cloth to wrap up in!

Our "taxi" driver to the dinner cruise was quite interesting. The music you hear on this video is actually coming from his bike. He had gold teeth and he smiled and rang his little bell at all the passersby. Then he gave us his business card. It said his name was "Lance Legstrong!"

The Shamu show at Sea World was so cool!

Here is Clint waiting for the dolphin show to begin. We waited for quite a while but he was happy because he got his frozen lemonade.

Petting the bay rays was BY FAR my favorite part of the trip. They swam right up to us and put their squishy little heads right under our hands. I loved it!

The sea lions were pretty fun to watch too! These things even whine for food like Tess does!

What the...?

Isn't it interesting that dogs can have very distinct personalities? It has been fun to learn the habits and mannerisms of my two dogs. And even though I know they are odd little balls of black and white fur, I am still continually surprised at the weird things they do!

Clint sent me this picture yesterday of Tess relaxing in the red chair in his office.

(To get the full effect of this picture, you should open it full screen.)

I am VERY curious to know what she was dreaming about when Clint took this picture. She is such a weird little creature!

Jane Eyre

This year I decided I was going to read a lot more since I have become a little bit of a reality-TV-loving couch potato. But you will probably notice that a lot of the books I have read this year have been murder mysteries or fantasy-based novels. I thought it might be good to try reading something a little more "classic" so I bought Jane Eyre a month ago.

I have to say....I'm a little disappointed! Once I got used to the Old English flowery language, I found that Charlotte Bronte writes about love incredibly well! But the story just didn't quite end the way I would've liked.

I think I'll stick with my Twilight-type books from now on! I'd rather read about handsome, romantic vampires instead!

Julie and Julia

My wife loves Meryl Streep (what woman doesnt?) She has some sort of appeal for women, similar to Glenn Close and Sarah Jessica Parker. All 3 women do not embody what I would consider to be good looks (or even female looks) but are thought of by other women to be attractive. I don't understand it, but it helps explain why I ended up at a showing of Julie & Julia last Saturday with our good friends Jon and Bri.

In all fairness, the movie was okay. It was hardly action packed or suspenseful but it still had its moments. I did have a few issues with the film that distracted me. I will list them below, so that you can be aware of them before watching it.

Meryl Streep is meant to portray a 37 to roughly 45 year old woman, with a husband who is 10 years her senior. This bothered me the entire movie because Meryl Streep looked 60 years old, while her husband looked 10 years younger than her. I realize there needs to be some artistic flexibility given to movies but this is pretty distracting. I felt extremely uncomfortable during every sexually suggestive scene. This could have also been caused by the fact that the husband was more feminine than Streep.

Another annoying distraction was the 2002 Julie's haircut. What the...??? I realize the real life Julie has that haircut, but did they really need to insert it into the movie for "realism"? I doubt everything else was perfectly portrayed in the movie, so why stick to making your leading actress look like a mop? I never understood the practice of making attractive people "ugly" by giving them glasses or a bad haircut.

One other noticable flaw, was the fact that the characters (in their late 20s and early 30s) ate french food nonstop over the course of a year and did not put on a single pound. I don't know about most people in my age demographic, but by the end of month 3 I would be bulging out of my clothes and as lethargic as a sloth.

Finally, the ending sucked. This was meant to be a feel-good movie but the entire high created by the movie was destroyed by the last 10 minutes. Again, accuracy doesn't always have to be prominant in an big screen adaption. Why would they bother saying that Julia Childs thought her blog was disrespectful and rude? It completely undermines Julie's view of Julia and destroys the protrayal of Julia Child's character!!

It was still an enjoyable enough watch, something that most people could feel good about paying $1 to see. To be honest, watching Meryl Streep on a smaller TV screen would be preferable than on a big movie screen. This ranks in my top 10 worst movies to possibly see in IMAX.

HobbleCreek Half Marathon

So you all probably thought Clint would be STRESS FREE after he received news that he had officially graduated from the U of U. Unfortunately, he did have one more BIG event on the horizon. Several months ago he allowed my dad to convince him that running a half marathon would be a great idea! So he signed up for the HobbleCreek Half Marathon on August 22nd. Now for those of you who cannot wrap your head around the distance of a half marathon, let me help you out...

13.1 Miles

or
21,097.5 Meters

or
69,168 Feet

or
23,056 Yards

or
230.56 Football Fields

Whew!

That's a lot of RUNNING!

So the night before the race we stayed at my grandparents house in Provo. I was so nervous for Clint that I tossed and turned all night! Clint will add his comments in green so you know his thoughts compared to mine!

Here are the runners ready to go! It's 5:30 am! (This photo was actually closer to 4:50)

I don't know why I got a kick out this sign but I did! I guess because I was proud that Clint was considered one of these "runners on the road!"

And here comes my Dad! He finished at about 2 hours even!

David is over 50 years old and he beat me. I feel no shame in this, however, because he is a fairly big runner and was training for the St. George Marathon. I actually kept pace with him until about 9 1/2 miles, when I hit my runner's wall. It probably didn't help that I ran only 2 times in July and 4 times in August. My final school semester occupied WAY too much of my time.

And here comes Clint not far behind David! (He's smiling here because I was screaming and yelling and shouting for him as he ran by!)

I was actually smiling because I had been trying to conserve my energy by dragging ass the previous 1/2 mile so that I could jog at a decent pace past Em. She never suspected a thing!

Then I did a mad dash across the park and got to the finish line just in time to take a few more pictures of my man! He looks good, doesn't he?

I am glad to know she did some running. That standing around with a camera must have been exhausting!

Here he is just passing the finish line. His actual time was closer to 2:07:00 because he did not cross the starting line right as the time clock started.

Quick story. There were roughly 1100 people waiting at the starting line for the race to begin. When the gun finally sounded 40 minutes late, everyone cheered and pushed forward about 10 feet when everything came to a complete halt. Turns out the serious runners in the very front were trying to space themselves out a bit, causing everything to hit a wall of flesh 10 seconds in. This is also why I was 30-45 seconds late crossing the starting line.

And here comes my Mom! She is hilarious when she runs to the finish line. She was blowing kisses to the crowd and teasing some guy running next to her. When I made the mad dash back to the to the finish line she was coming around the corner with her arms out like she was an airplane coming in for a landing! She's so weird!

As hard as it was for me to run this race, I have no idea how Lisa did it. Lisa's bladder is famously the size of a small pea. She made a bathroom break (or shrub break) 4 times before the race but none during! Very impressive.

My Dad is so sweet! He jumped in to run the last little leg of the race with my mom!

It would have been sweet if my spouse had run the last leg with me..........

And here they all are after the race is over!

I am so proud of Clint for running this race! He wants to run it again next year and I think I just might join him. We are thinking about getting a whole bunch of people to run it with us! Let us know if you want to join in!

Here are some final notes

Having actual running clothes made a huge difference. When I was wearing normal sports clothing to run, I was losing 4 or 5 pounds in sweat every long run I did. After getting actual running clothes, my body temp. stayed much cooler and I was able to stay hydrated.

I had a great time running, even though I couldn't walk right for a week after. I need to train better next year but look forward to doing it. Hopefully I can get some friends to join me.

Sun Valley Trip

Here are a few pictures from a little overnight trip Clint and I did in May with the rest of my client services department at FirstWest. We had a "farewell dinner/trip" for my boss Ken. (He resigned to explore new opportunities. :(

Here is Clint's and my room for the night!

Hanging out before dinner!

Aw Clint!

At dinner with the rest of the CSR's: Holly and her husband Dave...

Kym and her son...

My boss, Ken, receiving the goodbye presents we put together for him...

Taking a ride on the ski lifts the next morning...