{"id":8657,"date":"2013-01-26T01:45:56","date_gmt":"2013-01-26T07:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=8657"},"modified":"2013-01-26T01:51:43","modified_gmt":"2013-01-26T07:51:43","slug":"blog-soup-1262013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=8657","title":{"rendered":"Blog Soup 1\/26\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the first Blog Soup of the new year! <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m on <strong>shift 12 of 14 in a row at work<\/strong>. Don&#8217;t feel too bad for me, though. I did it to myself. We normally work six shifts in a row followed by a three-day or six-day break. I picked up a trade and a couple of overtime days last weekend, which is why I&#8217;m on such a long stretch. It also includes five shifts training a new guy. I am looking forward to some time off next week.<\/li>\n<li>Next Thursday I&#8217;ll hit my <strong>nine-year anniversary in Dispatch<\/strong>. Before I know it, I&#8217;ll be having a retirement party and taking my grandchildren to Disney World.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve been working on our spring season race calendar. Right now I only have two big events planned, but I might add some smaller events in between. First up is a return to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cowtownmarathon.org\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Cowtown half marathon<\/strong><\/a> on Feb 24. As you might recall, Cowtown was my first half marathon last February. I barely missed my goal of finishing under two hours. After a more leisurely and fun half at Disney World earlier this month, I am training hard to break 2:00 next month. I know my body is capable of it. The only question is whether everything will come together to make it happen that day.<\/li>\n<li>Our other event is a <strong>100K bike rally<\/strong> near our first house, the <a href=\"http:\/\/cross-timbers.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Cross Timbers Classic Bike Rally<\/a>. It starts with a lap on the track at Texas Motor Speedway in north Fort Worth and does a loop through the surrounding area. Jenny and I both signed up for the 100K ride (62 miles). So far our longest ride was 50 miles at Hotter&#8217;N Hell back in August, so this one will be a new challenge. <\/li>\n<li>I used some Amazon gift cards to get a cool new toy, an <strong>iHome rechargeable speaker dock for my iPhone<\/strong>. Why is that cool, you ask? It lets me carry the speaker to any room in the house and listen to my music or Pandora. I&#8217;ll mainly use it for listening during a soak in the bathtub (no outlets in the bathtub room) or in the kitchen while hanging out with the kids. It&#8217;s maybe a foot wide and has a built-in dock for my iPhone or iPad. For such a small unit, the sound is surprisingly good.<\/li>\n<li>Aussie tennis star Samantha Stosur has <a href=\"http:\/\/images.google.com\/search?num=10&#038;hl=zh-CN&#038;site=&#038;tbm=isch&#038;source=hp&#038;q=sam+stosur&#038;oq=sam+stosur&#038;gs_l=img.3...2144.5237.0.6026.10.5.0.5.5.0.181.623.2j3.5.0...0.0...1ac.1.s6ujBWQCCqc&#038;biw=1024&#038;bih=644&#038;sei=93sDUffzKtHTqQGL3oGoDg\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>better arms than I do<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I was thrilled by the deep run that young American <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sloane_Stephens\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Sloane Stephens<\/strong><\/a> enjoyed at this year&#8217;s Australian Open, especially her huge win over Serena Williams. Stephens is developing into a phenomenal player and also seems like a very warm and good-natured person. If she can stay healthy and handle all the pressure, she seems poised to take over as queen of American women&#8217;s tennis. <\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t really understand the <strong>drama over gun control<\/strong>. The pro-gun people are all worked up because they think the government is trying to take all their guns, which is untrue. The anti-gun people think that tighter gun control laws will keep us safe, which is also untrue. Based on what little I&#8217;ve read, the measures being proposed would not have stopped most of the mass shootings from the last 10-20 years. Even if these new measures pass, I doubt they will have much impact. The only way to completely eliminate gun violence in America is to wave a magic wand and make all guns worldwide disappear. Even I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a good idea, even if it were possible.<\/li>\n<li>An acquaintance of mine decided to take out <strong>$50,000 in student loans to get a master&#8217;s in film from a private school in California<\/strong>. Now she can&#8217;t find a job but owes nearly $700\/month in student loan payments. She set up a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiegogo.com\/privateloandebt\" target=\"_blank\">crowdfunding site<\/a> to raise money to pay her loan. Part of me wants to help, but the other part thinks she was unwise to borrow that kind of money to pursue a degree with such questionable marketability. Just thinking that makes me feel old. <\/li>\n<li>Screw my man card. I wish I had <strong>Lady Gaga tickets<\/strong> for Tuesday.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jonathan had his three-year-old checkup<\/strong> this week. He was very healthy as expected. He measured 90th percentile for both weight (37 lbs) and height (39.5 inches). His language and motor skills are normal. We&#8217;re working hard on potty training this weekend. It still amazes me to watch these two grow up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the first Blog Soup of the new year! I&#8217;m on shift 12 of 14 in a row at work. Don&#8217;t feel too bad for me, though. I did it to myself. We normally work six shifts in a &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=8657\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,45,43,15,16,32,12,34,39,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8657"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8671,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657\/revisions\/8671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}