Kym will probably get mad at me for posting this, but whatever.

A few months ago Kym started having blackouts. She'd lose vision for a few seconds, then be ok. After seeing the doctors a few times they ordered a cat scan. They found clogged sinuses, which is most likely the cause when combined with low blood pressure. But they also found pollups on her parotid gland. They ordered an MRI on that, where they found a tumor on her thyroid. The tumor has calcification, and with the help of google, we found some wonderful studies that told us that means there is an 80% chance the tumor is cancer. On Monday she had all three lumps biopsied. The results were released to the doctor yesterday and after about 10 calls and 24 brutal hours of waiting they called back, and we found all results are benign. One of the pollups showed benign results, but there was a limited sample so they want to do it again. Which sucks, but it's a thousand million times better than the way we felt a few days ago.

The fatality rate of thyroid cancer is really low, but we had to prepare for the worst. Imagine how you'd feel losing your spouse. Imagine a doucebag like me trying to raise two manical kids alone. It hasn't been a fun few weeks. But things are looking up. We have several appointments next week. She may still need sugery, or she may still need radioactive treatment. She still needs to get the sinus issues resolved. But, it's not cancer, and I can sleep now.

aka, the best 5K ever. I did my best time ever, got 3rd in my division, and blah blah blah.

Here's the good part. Free beer and food. Bud, bud light, bud light lime. Beamish and Magners Irish Cider. Bluberry Vodka/sprite/lemonade drinks. Buffalo and BBQ wings, pasta, brownies, flank steak, Q-Doba tacos, pizza, more pasta, duck, bruschetta, fruit smoothies, fruit on a stick, cookies on a stick, ice cream.

And I ate and drank it all just to support a good cause. Damn, I'm good person.

I bought a new pair of sneakers today that just hit the market. I got home and googled them and found nothing about them, almost no one even sells them yet, so I figured I'd write a review to help people out.




The Puma Vectana is a blue and grey sneaker. Blueish. And Grey. Grey, or Gray? Or is that Silver? I'm not sure.



As you can see, the Vectana has a webby looking thing in the front, so maybe they were made for spiders? I only got two in my shoebox, so that sucks that spiders would have to buy four pairs of them at $99.99 a pair.




But, wait, I just turned it around, and there's a tiger on the other side. Or, is that a cheetah? Hang on a sec while I google the cheetah girls to see if this is what they look like... nope, that's not a cheetah. Probably a jaguar. Definitely an animal that can run fast, because that's what these sneakers do. When I was little I could always run faster and jump higher when I got new sneakers and the same holds true here. In fact, these should be called Segways, not sneakers because they actually did all the running for me. I put them on, and they just go. I fell asleep halfway through my run tonight and they just kept on going and eventually brought me home. Not to my home because they don't know my neighborhood yet, but they brought me to a home. I can't complain about a sneaker that treats me that well.

But for real, if any runners do find this, I've never done a shoe review, so I wouldn't know where to begin. I've had 5 pairs of Puma Tenos in the past 3 years, so that's what I'm used to. These seem to be more cushioned in the heel, and I feel like there's less room in the toebox. I only ran 2 miles tonight, so I really won't be able to tell how much I like them until I get out for a few more runs.

My brothers and dad met my cousin and uncle in Jersey City the other day and we hopped a train to NYC, then a subway to Yankee Stadium to watch the Phillies put on a clinic for the Yankees (in 11 innings). I planned to document the trip in pictures culminating in pictures of my bros and me and my dad in front of the field, but then didn't feel like taking those pics. So I'm left with these.







My uncle works on Wall Street, but the address they use is the side alley behind his building because he sells Catholic School Books and the nuns and priests wouldn't approve. Shhh, don't tell.










A-Rod striking out I'm sure.


The amount of tourists taking pictures of and looking at ground zero is absurd. There's tarps around 95% of it and people take pictures of the tarps. I don't get it.

On Thursday after 40 days and 40 nights of rain we finally got a break in the weather and I was able to mow the lawn. As I was mowing it, I grew more and more angry at my non-English speaking neighbor. He got a delivery of mulch in his driveway and it was the shittiest smelling mulch I've ever been a witness to. Add that to the fact that the grass I was cutting was about 7 feet high, and it was not a happy night for me. As I was finishing up my front lawn he started approaching me. We've lived there for 4 years and he's never crossed the street. I felt a fight coming on. He must have sensed my anger. I stopped my mower and prepared for some sort of ninja attack. He made a strange motion and said something I didn't understand. I got in the karate kid crane position when I realized he was offering me his mulch. "too much, too much" he said. I relaxed and spent the next hour wheeling mulch from his house to mine. I couldn't pass up free shit.

This weekend I ran the Broad Street Run. 10 miles through Philly. My goal was to do it under 70 minutes (under 7 minutes per mile). I crushed that time by 6 seconds. My original plan was to go out hard for the first 5 miles then try to hang on. I only made up to mile 3 hard, but I was still able to hold on and accomplish my goal.

To note:
It was raining most of the race and not ideal weather, but better than the previous Sunday's 90 degrees.
I'm still sore, and have one black toenail from the pressure of running hard in wet shoes, but mostly ok.
A certain local female weatherwoman who I wrote about 2 years ago (and still get 2-3 daily hits so I won't write her name) also ran the race. I was able to beat her 2 years ago (nevermind she was 6 months pregnant). This year she beat me by 5 minutes and was the 38th fastest female overall.
I finished in 1005th place out of 23,172.
Yesterday I was in 983rd place, but somehow 22 more people beat me a day later.
The governor of PA stands on the street 6 miles in giving high fives and I was 2 feet past him before realizing I missed getting a high five for the 3rd year in a row.
I've run 267 miles so far in 2009. I ran 265 in all of 2008.

My current favorite thing with my daughter is when I do something and she says "You're the best daddy!" and I say "No, you're the best!", "no, daddy, YOU'RE the best." repeat, repeat, repeat. If I do it enough she gets angry at me because she wants me to be the best.

For the past 16 weeks I've been training to run the Broad Street Run which is this weekend. It's a 10 mile run through philly and will be my 3rd year running it. A few weeks ago my training runs magically started getting faster and faster and I'm really excited to see just how fast I can run the 10 miles. When I have to walk after 4 miles I'll know I went too hard.

Approximately once a day I think of something I should write about then forget what it is 5 minutes later.

I always told myself I'd never offically quit blogging, but a few more shitty posts like this and I think my blogger card will be revoked.