The last run I did, which was 4.35 miles, really put my poor feet close to some large blisters. The shoes I was using worked very well for me up until lately once I started running again. Now that I’m running more, the age and mileage on the shoes began to chafe a bit.

So, I bought a new pair today. I’ve got to break them in, so I think I’ll be doing a few short runs during the week next week before I hit the 4 mile mark next Saturday.

Go, shoes, go!

I’ll post more later, but I wanted to get this one up.

She got it home and I see this bottle sitting on the counter. “What’s that?” I say. “Oh. It’s a new high-pH water I saw. I want to try it out.” Great. I pick it up to look at it. The bottle is so dark, you can’t see anything through it… until I look closer. Seems it’s not the bottle that’s dark, but the water. It’s actually BLACK WATER. For real. See?

It’s been sitting on the counter for two months after I noticed that the actual water was black. Tonight, it bothered me enough that it was just sitting there, so I popped it open and poured it over some ice. It’s not bad. It has a very minerally taste. Like there’s sand in the water. But, it’s healthy. Right?

If you’re curious, go to their site and read more.

In the first case, most seem to be old enough or sedentary enough to have spent 30 years in the same home – enough time to pay off the main residence to allow them to afford a second property and the mortgage that goes with it. That’s a great idea, and if I can accelerate the payoff of our main residence [which I’m now doing by paying above the payment amount] to be done in around 15 years, then we can focus our full “housing” budget on a new vacation home. That will take quite a bit of patience.

In the second case, I’ve seen friends buy an income-generating vacation rental property that they use to either pay off their existing house or pay off the vacation property with the net gain. Such a thing really doesn’t make sense unless there’s a net gain. I mean – why buy a property that you can’t stay in but a few week per year if it’s still going to cost you a big chunk to keep, right? Of course, doing it this way allows more than one vacation home location since there is a net gain. But then again, the downside would be that we couldn’t just show up at any time since there might be paying customers on site.

With these things in mind, and my initial dream location of a cabin/house/condo in the mountains of Colorado [subject to change upon spousal notification ], I’ve decided to both accelerate paying off my existing loans [house & car] and begin saving for another house down-payment. This might take years and our goals may change, but saving at any time is a good idea.

So: in 15 years or so when I have many thousands of dollars in the bank and the current house paid off, there may be a ski chalet in our future… or a beach house… or even something else.

Last month, we rented a Blu-Ray disk from Red Box and it wouldn’t play on our stand-alone Sony Blu-Ray player. We thought it was the disk and sent it back. Then, I got a copy of the latest Narnia movie on Blu-Ray… which also didn’t play. Hmm. That was frustrating, but the package included a DVD version which we watched. I thought a system update might correct whatever problem there was. We talked to technical support and they were most unhelpful

We then tried it gain earlier this week with yet another movie, which we didn’t have a DVD version for. It failed. Hmm. I thought I’d try to re-flash it. It wouldn’t work. I tried an old Blu-Ray that used to play and has played before on that player. It didn’t work. Very bad.

Now, I had justification to invest in a Blu-Ray player for the Media Center. I bought a cheap player, installed it and the included PowerDVD software and it worked. Mostly.

I wasn’t happy with the way that the stripped-down OEM version of PowerDVD worked, especially when it came to sound. The sound was supposed to be Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. Instead, it was simple 2-channel stereo and that was way uncool. So, I tried the latest and greatest version of PowerDVD. Funny thing, though: it did the exact same thing. I then downloaded an evaluation copy of Arcsoft Total Medea Theatre 5, which worked WONDERFULLY and was fully integrated as a plug-in into Windows Media Center instead of a pop-up stand-alone program. All the sound was now channeled digitally though my system.

I had thought to save some money by using the included software, but that doesn’t look possible anymore – especially since the full version of PowerDVD is the same price as Total Media Theatre with much fewer features.

All this took place a week after I had a hard drive failure on the machine which meant I had to replace the data storage drives with new ones. I now have 1.5TB of DVR storage.

So: barring a RAM upgrade which may happen in the future, maybe this time I really am done with the system.

I’ve gone and done it again – bought a BMW M Roadster.

This one is a 2006 Z4-based one, and I have to say that it is even more fun to drive than the older ones I had earlier. The rear end is much more stable and it has all the convenience factors that I’ve become used to: auto-on headlights, rain-sensing wiper, and Bluetooth integration to name a few.

The ride is firm, but not hard and it has enough power to really move when it needs to.

We drive down to a dealer, Godspeed Motors [who by the way are very nice and helpful people], just south of Charlotte, NC to pick it up. We showed up at the dealer’s at 9:30AM, test drove, check it out, bought it, sold the old 330xi to them, and hit the road by 11:00AM. We ended up driving back through Greensboro and then Richmond.

My overall impression of the car is that while it doesn’t have the retro appeal of the Z3-based M Roadster, the quality is greater and the ride is much improved. Which means that I’m quite happy with my purchase.

So, this afternoon, we made a decision to find a café and just do a few directories of pictures each. Laura replicated some of the folders from the server, and I have them ALL on my laptop [thanks to a 500GB second hard drive]. We started at lunch, but felt we had to leave the restaurant after a couple of hours. Now, we’re at a nice coffee shop in Reston which has good WiFi connectivity.

Laura is halfway through her directory, I’m halfway through my planned files and I got sidetracked and did more that weren’t on the list.

Here’s to finally moving out those pictures in the 2007 timeframe! Maybe…

As for my other trips, we went to Belize at the end of November, and I almost immediately went to England and Germany, only to hop on a plane to Fayetteville, NC the very next week. After a short break, Laura and I headed to Laramie, WY for Christmas. Laura then went to Texas for a few days to visit with her family and her grandmother. We then went straight to Hawaii for another business trip, followed by another trip to Texas for Laura’s grandmother’s funeral.

At least I had two weeks at home before coming out here to Seattle.

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As you can see, it’s up and running and we will be posting pictures soon of our vacations. In the mean time, here is a teaser shot of our trip to Wyoming:

See you soon!