Weekend Trip

I had an opportunity to take a little weekend trip to Illinois.  For those who aren't aware, my "weekend" is Thursday & Friday.  Depending on how my sleep schedule works out, I can sometimes turn my weekends in to three-day weekends without taking extra time off work.  I get off work Thursday morning and, if I'm not working overtime, don't have to be back to work until Saturday evening.

This schedule worked out well for me this past weekend, allowing me to take an out of state trip, add state #17 to my goal of running a race in all 50 states, and get in a little site-seeing.  I was then able to make it back home on Saturday in enough time to get a few hour sleep before heading back to work Saturday evening.

On Thursday, after getting off work I headed home and was able to get a short nap.  I got my suitcase packed and got on the road just before noon.  Even though it was a little early, I couldn't help but notice that the Ohio State Highway Patrol was very active Thursday, with more troopers patrolling the roadways than I've ever noticed before.  I got to Bloomington, Illinois Thursday afternoon and located the running store where I needed to pick up my race packet.  As I made my way to the hotel I realized that there didn't seem to be much to do in Bloomington, and started to wonder if I'd be heading back to Columbus after my race on Friday morning.

I found the hotel easily and got checked in with no problems.  The Hampton Inn was nice, quick to get checked in to and well maintained.  Given my travel experiences this past year, I was happy to see this Hampton Inn was more to the quality I had been accustomed to from Hampton Inn.

On Independence Day I woke up in time to grab a quick breakfast at the hotel and head to the Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington for the start of the Park 2 Park 5 Miler.  The weather was great running weather.  Not too hot, which can obviously be an issue when running in July.  The race went from Miller Park in Bloomington to The Corn Crib, a minor league ball park, in Normal, Illinois.  It was a nice route, the rolling hills along the route made it just challenging enough to push you without being completely ridiculous with hills.  I was happy with my finish, grabbed a couple snacks then took the bus back to the start area and headed back to the hotel.

Even though I was back early I was happy to see that housekeeping had already been to my room.  I hate never knowing when they're going to come through in case I want to take a nap or just relax for a while.  I got cleaned up and tried to decide if I wanted to go ahead and check out a day early to head home.  I went to the front desk and asked the clerk what things there were to do in the area.  You know it's bad when the hotel clerk can't come up with much.  She did have a visitor's guide though, and I was able to find some things that looked interesting.  Not in Bloomington, but not so far away that I would be on the road too much.  

Realizing at that point how close I was to Springfield, Illinois, I made a call and found out that the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library was open, even on the holiday.  I made the trip down to Springfield and was not disappointed with my choice.  A display was set up across the street from the museum featuring items from the Steven Spielberg movie "Lincoln".  Several of the costumes worn by the actors and some of the props and sets were in the display.  It was interesting to see and hear how much preparation was made by the actors, costume designers and set designers to try and make everything as authentic as possible for the movie.  

I then went across to the museum. They had several displays and presentations set up in museum, and for someone who enjoys history as much as I do, it made for a very enjoyable visit.  

I also made my way over to the Old Capital Building.  Now a museum, it used to be the home to all the state offices for the State of Illinois.  A presentation by an actor portraying Civil War General John A. Logan was taking place while I was there, and I was able to catch most of that and hear some very interesting stories about his life, his role in the war and his political life after the war.

Overall a very successful trip, and the fact that I could do it in a weekend was a bonus.  

For now my next running trip is scheduled for late August when I head to Virginia Beach for another Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon and state number #18.

A Little Vacation Before a Long Week

Well, after about a week and a half off work, I'm back for one of my longer weeks.  So far I'm scheduled to work 35 hours of overtime this week and expect to get at least another 4 hours.  Believe it or not, this will not be the most hours I've worked in a single week....close...but not the most.

Fortunately the week was preceded by some time away from the Communications Center.  I worked my "second job" for a week, teaching a dispatcher class at the state police academy.  I usually have a good time teaching the class and this week was no exception.  I had another good group of students who stayed engaged in the class and brought their experiences from their agencies with them to help everyone else in the class.  This class also provides me with some good networking opportunities, allowing me to meet telecommunicators from all over the State of Ohio.

After class ended on Friday I headed back to Columbus, then packed for a weekend out of  town to visit some family and get in a couple of out of state races.  Friday the 13th may not have been the best day to start a trip though.  Although the day started off good, it started going down hill.  As I was driving home I was eating a Starburst fruit chew and felt a crown come off in my mouth....then another...then another.  Yes, that's right, I had three crowns all come off at the same time.  Not to worry though, I was in Dublin when it happened, and the dentist office was right down the street.  I would make a quick stop and get them cemented back on.  Easy right?  Not so much.  I went to the dentist office, which was closed.  The receptionist was inside and she tried to help me get in to one of their other offices, but all the other offices were already double-booked and couldn't guarantee they'd be able to get me in and taken care of before I had to catch my flight out of town that afternoon.  She did give me some cement to use, which I was able to mix myself and use to get me through the weekend.

I got home and got my stuff packed for the trip.  I was at the airport with plenty of time to spare, but storms in the south were delaying flights all over the rest of the country, and my flight was delayed.  I got in to St. Paul, MN about 3 hours later than planned, but no worries.  The late night arrival did mean that I didn't have to wait in line at the rental car counter, got my car pretty quickly and got to my hotel.  Checked in with no problem....well, almost no problem.  I got the key card to my room, got to my room, but the door would not open.  So I went to the front desk and got the keycard reprogrammed, then got back to my room.  Success!!  Well...almost...I settled in for the evening turned on the TV, which wasn't working.  So I called the front desk and after trying a couple of things to "fix" the TV, finally got moved to another room.  The keycard for the new room worked and the TV worked.  All good right?  Well, pretty much.  After a long day of crowded airports and a couple of minor issues at the hotel, I was finally settled in.  I set the alarm so I would be up in time to head to my first 5K of the weekend.

I didn't get much sleep, but enough to get up, dressed and head out to the Lederhosenlauf 5K on Saturday morning.  The run was a small local 5K held in conjunction with the German American Festival.  I ran the 5K, had my free bratwurst, and after hanging around for a little while, headed back to the hotel.  I got ahold of my nephew and made arrangements to meet up with him and his daughters.  We headed over to the Mall of America.  My (almost) 4 year old great-niece rode some of the rides, we got some lunch at Burger King.

The next morning I made the two hour drive over to La Crosse, WI to run another 5K.  Another small, local 5K event, this was their first year of running it.  The way you can tell how small these events were, is that I placed 3rd in my age group on Saturday and first in my age group on Sunday.  Which usually means that their were very few people in my age group.  But that's ok.  The small local events are sometimes just as fun, if not more fun, to participate in than the larger, nationally known events.

My "bump in the road" on the trip home was when my luggage didn't show up at the airport when I did.  Not a huge problem, except that my car keys were in my luggage, so had it not shown up on the next flight, an hour later, I'd have been stuck at the airport for a while.  But, all ended well.  I got home just fine.  It was a good opportunity to get away and get some time off before working a long week.

Small Worlds and Facebook Friends

Gee....two blog entries in two days!!

During my first stint on Facebook I came across something I found interesting.  Facebook will suggest friends for you; people you may know based on the fact that they are friends with people you are also friends with.  I found it interesting when these suggested friends would be friends with people who I knew through completely different circumstances.  What I mean is, usually the mutual friends you have with this suggested person are all part of the same group.  Five mutual friends, all of whom you went to high school with, usually means you also went to high school with this suggested friend.  Three of your friends from work know this person, then it's probably someone they knew through work.

Every once in a while though, people will have mutual friends who you happen to know through completely different circumstances.  For example, the first time I was on Facebook I was friends with an individual I had been stationed with when I was in the Army.  We were stationed together in Germany and he lives no where close to me here in the States.  That person, Jason Becker, was facebook friends with an individual named Mike Banks.  Mike was someone I knew from his job in public safety communications in Wadsworth, OH.  My paths with these two individuals had crossed years apart and in two very different ways, yet somehow they knew each other and both knew me.

Today something very similar happened.  As I was looking through people that facebook was saying I might know, I came across the name Melissa Albert.  I don't know Melissa, but it said that three of my friends did know her.  I checked out who those three people were, expecting them to maybe be a cousin, his wife and his kid.  However, it was not.  Two of the friends, my sister and her son, made sense that they would both know Melissa, but the third was a co-worker of mine, Justin Chappelear.  To the best of my knowledge Justin has never crossed paths with my sister or her son, but somehow they both know and are friends with the same person.  Small world, nice coincidence, but hardly earth shattering.

But check this one out.  Another friend suggestion was a girl named Laurie Johnston.  Laurie is friends with two people who are Facebook friends of mine.  One, Steven Daniel, is my second cousin who lives in Chicago.  Steven's mother and my grandmother were sisters, but not raised together for a variety of reasons, some which are still unknown to the family.  The other mutual friend is Brian Evak, someone I went to high school with in Pickerington.  I don't know of any situation when Brian and Steve would have had any reason to cross paths, yet somehow they both crossed paths with Laurie Johnston and have crossed paths with me in very different ways.

Again, none of this is earth shattering, but it is, at least to me, very interesting.  It shows that the world is indeed small and that we are all connected much more closely than we may realize.

Been A While

Well, it has been a while since I last added to my blog, so I thought I'd "check-in".

I started off May by running the Cap City Half Marathon.  My fitness level, which dropped after running the Columbus Marathon last fall, does not seem to have fully recovered.  I'm not real discouraged by that though.  I was able to run the entire Half Marathon without walking, and with a respectable time.  I've still got a full marathon training schedule planned for the summer in preparation for the Virginia Beach Half Marathon at the end of August, the Nationwide Children's Hospital Half Marathon in October and the Big Sur and Space Coast Half Marathons in November.  Along the way I've got a few more out of state races that I'm scheduled to do and am looking forward to the traveling that will come with them.

This past weekend the Burkhardt Family had their annual reunion/cookout.  As always, it was a good time.  A time to see family that we usually only see once or twice a year, and catch up.  One thing you can be sure of at ANY gathering of Burkhardt's is that the food will be plentiful and it will be good.  This year was no exception.

I remember as a kid, the highlight of every summer was the family reunion.  We would head to the location early and secure the shelter house.  There were a lot more family and extended family there then, but the Burkhardt's always knew out to put out a spread.  The cookout now is an extension of one of those traditions that you hate to ever see go away.

This week at work is one that we tend to look forward to coming and look forward to ending both at the same time.  It's Memorial Tournament week in Dublin, Ohio.  The Memorial is an event on the PGA tour.  It's interesting how each year we tend to get complaints from residents about the traffic and parking in the area.  Even long-time residents seem to complain, as if this hasn't been going on for over 30 years.  But overall the week usually goes smoothly and we get through it unscathed.  It's almost down to a science now.  Early in the week, it's still pretty tame.  It'll be later this week, when play actually begins, that our activity level will pick up.  We'll get the inevitable loud noise complaints, parking complaints and dealing with those who overestimate the amount of alcohol their bodies can handle.  

Then in a couple of weeks I'll spend a week at my second job teaching a class at the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy in London, OH.  The following weekend is a trip up to Minnesota and Wisconsin for a couple 5K runs, visit some family, attend a German-American festival and do some quick site seeing around the area.  Those two runs will move me up to 16 states completed in my quest to run a race in every state.  In July I'll add #17 with a 4th of July race in Bloomington, IL.  In August I'll tack on #18 when I head to Virginia Beach and #19 will come in November when I head to California for the Big Sur Half Marathon (which, interestingly, is not run in Big Sur).

Runcation and Warranties

Well, for the most part, April ended pretty well.  I got my second runcation in for the year.  I headed down to Nashville for the Rock 'n' Roll Country Music Half Marathon.  I'm not sure if this course had more hills than any other course I've run, or if the hills on this course were steeper than any other course I've run, or if it just happened to be the most recent hilly course and therefore I perceived it to be hillier and steeper.  Whatever the case, the first 9 miles of the course was a rough course when it came to the hills.  There was pretty good crowd support however, and I have to say that the Competitor Group, who owns the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon Series, put on yet another great event.

While in Nashville I made it a point to look around the area, take a couple tours, catch a couple shows.  My first day there I took a tour of the Ryman Auditorium and toured the Johnny Cash Museum.  Later that evening I went back to the Ryman for the Opry Country Classics show where they were doing a tribute to George Jones as it neared the one year anniversary of his death.

After the run on Saturday I got some dinner, then went to the Grand Ole Opry for their Saturday evening show.  After the show I stuck around for the back stage tour.

Because of some storms that were supposed to blow through the are Sunday night in to Monday, I decided to leave a day early and head home Sunday.

On Monday I found a leak in my water heater.  Getting that fixed has turned out to be more of an adventure than my trip to Nashville.  After finding the leak, I pulled out my paperwork for the heater.  Knowing that the water heater was not that old I thought it may be possible that it was still under warranty, so I checked the paperwork and, as luck would have it, the paperwork showed that I spent a little extra on an extended warranty to cover the tank until 2017.  GREAT!  So I called the phone number on the contract to set up a service appointment and was told that the contract expired in 2012.  Now my paperwork clearly said 2017, but they refused to send a tech out unless I sent them the paperwork.  In the mean time they suggested I shut off the water to my hot water heater.  So I was supposed to go without hot water until I proved to them that they made a mistake.  They also informed me that it would take 3 business days to look at the contract and determine if it was a mistake.  Why it would take 3 days to look at a contract that says "Expiration Date 7/12/2017" was beyond me, and the company couldn't seem to be able to explain it to me either.
The next day I went to Home Depot and spoke to a manager there.  I showed her my contract, she made a couple of phone calls and put me on the line with someone in Atlanta.  Phillip assured me that if I could email a copy of the contract to him, he would be sure to accelerate this issue and get resolved with the company who sells the extended warranties.  Sure enough, the next morning I got a phone call from Assurant telling me that they had gotten the information from Home Depot that I did have a good warranty and they would be sending out a tech that day.
Well, the tech came out and, at first, it appeared to be a simple fix.  Replace the valve.  So, after getting approval by the warranty company he replaced the valve...however the leak didn't go away.  It turned out not to be a leak in the valve, but a crack in the tank at the base of the valve.
So another phone call to the warranty company who now told the tech that he had to call the manufacturer and get approval first.  Of course, the manufacturer's warranty was expired (the purpose of buying an "extended" warranty).  After another 30-45 minutes of phone calls, with yet another customer service rep telling me that my extended warranty was expired, and refusing to listen to me, I was finally able to get ahold of someone who understood English enough to understand what was going on and get the work approved.
That is now supposed to happen this morning after I get home from work.  Fortunately I'm going in to my weekend.  This SHOULD all be resolved this morning.

It's my firm belief that when this company sells someone an extended warranty that they make it so difficult and time consuming for the customer to make a claim on the warranty that most just give up and pay for the repairs out of pocket.  Overall I'm happy with the way Home Depot responded to my issues.  But I'm not happy with their affiliation with Assurant to cover the extended warranties that are sold in the name of Home Depot.  In most cases customer service is poor because we as consumers allow it to be.  Mistakes are going to be made, but customer service as horrendous as what I've dealt with the last few days is inexcusable and should be responded to that way.

On a better note, I'll also be heading downtown today or tomorrow to pick up my race packet for this weekend's Cap City Half Marathon.  This is the fourth time I will run this particular race.  It is enjoyable and I'm interested to see how my legs hold up, as this will be the first time I've ever run two half marathons on back to back weekends.  Usually I've had at least 4-5 weeks between Half's.

My race in Nashville was the 14th State that I've run a race in.  In June I will be doing two out of state races.  The Lederhosenlauf 5K in St. Paul, MN, and the Run for the Stars 5K the next morning in La Crosse, WI.  

A Time To Play That Shot and A Time to Leave It In The Bag

In between naps yesterday I was watching a movie on the Golf Channel.  The Legend of Bagger Vance starring Will Smith and Matt Damon.  Although many would consider this a movie about golf, it is much deeper than that.  Bagger Vance is a movie about God and a man's relationship to him.

For those who haven't seen the movie, I'll try to sum up the basic premise.  Rannulph Junuh is a promising young golfer, poised to become one of the best to play the game.  When WWI starts, Junuh enlists and, while at war, sees the horrific things that soldiers see in war.  He comes back a broken man.  As the Great Depression sweeps the country Junuh is put in a position to play in a golf tournament with two other great golfers in an effort to save the country club left to his former fiancee when her father succumbs to the effects of the depression and takes his own life.

Junuh hasn't picked up a club in years, but while practicing his drives one night, out of the darkness emerges a caddy, Bagger Vance.  Junuh is reluctant to accept the help from Bagger, but slowly starts to see the advantage of following the caddy's advice.  As the movie goes on, Junuh becomes more and more confident in his abilities, but in doing so feels less and less reliant on Bagger Vance.  Then, instead of laying up on a hole, decides he's going to "go for the win".  Bagger tries to tell Junuh that, "There's a time to play that shot, and a time to leave it in the bag."

I know I've been guilty of that myself, probably more often than I care to admit.  When I should be "leaving it in the bag" and trusting in God to show me the right direction, I "play the shot".  I don't mean to say that I take unnecessary risks, as most who know me would probably not think of me as one who takes too many risks.  What I mean though is that I don't do what is right for me or best for me at that moment in my life.  I want what I want and when I want it.  I get impatient so, instead of laying up on the shot, I end up hitting the shot in to the bunker.

I guess the hard part for me is knowing when it's time to play the shot, and when it's time to leave it in the bag.  When do we take our stance and just knock the living crap out of the ball and when do we lay up?  We've got to trust God to let us know when what we want may not be what is best for us.  We've got to be ok with the answer we get to be "no".

I'll keep striving to achieve that balance.  I'll keep listening for God to let me know when it's time to hit the shot, and when it's time to leave it in the bag.

It's Routine

I haven't been quite as good about keeping up with my blog as I used to be.  Or maybe I "keep up" just fine, there's just not a lot I have to say.

On the running front, I'm preparing for two back-to-back half marathons.  This will be the first time I've attempted to run half marathons on consecutive weekends.  It seems that my running workouts have gotten to be little more difficult.  But after looking back at my running logs, they seem to be right on track with where they've been in the past, so maybe it's just all in my head.  I can definitely say that I haven't really improved any.  I knew that I would hit that point eventually where I would plateau.  I am hoping that I will get better as the year goes on, but if this is where I'm meant to be, then that's ok too.

Working third shift has been a little bit of an adjustment.  I've adjusted fairly well to the hours, and have yet to find myself struggling to stay awake during the shift.  But this is where I struggle a little with running.  I have, on a couple of occasions, considered going out for a run after getting off work in the morning, but have been a little tired and decided to wait until the evening.  The difficult part there is that, even though I get plenty of sleep during the day, it is normally sporadic.  I'll sleep a few hours when I get home, then be up for an hour or two, then sleep a few more hours.  Because of that, it makes it a little more difficult for me to motivate myself to get out of bed a couple of hours early to go run before work, when normally I'd be settling in for that last little bit of sleep.

Or maybe all of that is just an excuse.  On day shift I developed a routine.  My sleep wasn't so broken though, so I could just go to bed a little early, wake up a little early and I was fine.  I've only got a couple of weeks before I run the Country Music Half Marathon and the Cap City Half Marathon.  After that I've got my summer training session, and if I haven't developed my routine before then, I should be able to get in the swing of things over the summer.  This will hopefully make it so that my training is more efficient, and I start to see some improvements again in my running.

Things at the Northwest Regional Emergency Communications Center are going well.  We're still short staffed, and I imagine it will be that way for a little while longer.  We did just bring two new dispatchers on board, but they will be in training for at least 5-6 months before they are able to contribute to staffing.  It's still not what I would consider to be a "critical" staffing shortage.  There is a lot of overtime being posted, but overall I'm still going to maintain my opinion that it has been worse than it is right now.  I still haven't worked an 80 hour week and everyone still has their sanity (well, as much as they had before we started this venture anyway).

Which brings me to my April Fool's joke.  On April 1 I posted my status on Facebook saying "Things are moving ALOT faster than expected. Don't want to make things more difficult on anyone than they already are, but got to do what's best for me."  Now to be honest, I expected that I might draw in one of the Communications Supervisors, and I did.  However, there were a couple of bonuses in my little joke.  See, when the center is short staffed and one infers from a Facebook posting of a current employee at that center that said Facebook posting means he has found another job and may be causing even more of a staffing issue...well...that's when the fun begins.  Honestly, it didn't last very long, but long enough.  The best part, for me anyway, was that I didn't have to lie or make up a story.  I just had to throw out a few general comments and let people's imaginations take it from there.  So, to those who were taken in... "April Fools" :-)

That is something that, in the past, has been a source of irritation for me though.  I have said something, or blogged something, and someone or some, have read in to what said.  That was a big reason why I left Facebook a few years back, and even when I told people exactly why I had left Facebook, there were those who speculated as to the "real reasons" or the "real meaning".  So I will take this opportunity to say again, what I have said before.  Don't try to read my mind, you're not very good at it.
I was saddened to hear of the death of comedian John Pinette, as well as actor Mickey Rooney.  Mickey Rooney is someone I'll remember most as the voice of Santa Claus in those Rankin & Bass Christmas specials.  John Pinette was the funniest comedian I had ever seen or listened too. It's sad to see anyone pass who can bring so much joy and laughter to so many people.