For those of you who know my wife, you know that she has always had a heart for missions and always wants to use her time and energy for others. If you know her well, you probably know that she has been considering a trip to somewhere in Asia to serve in whatever way she can. Well, everything has fallen into place and she is officially signed up to go to Vietnam!

The trip starts at the end of August and goes through the first couple of weeks in September. It’s with Shoes For Orphans through Buckner International. The team she will be with is going to minister to orphans by taking them aid, spending time with them, teaching a VBS, teaching ESL, and pray walking. You can see the lead up to this event from her blog at http://theidealisticgirl.blogspot.com/.

What will I be doing during this time you ask–I’ll be staying at home taking care of Brandon! I’m out of vacation days (ski trip to Colorado in March…totally worth it), so I still have to go to work, so my mom will come up to help out during the day. Actually both grandmas are very excited to get some quality Brandon time in while Mandy is gone. He’s going to be so spoiled…

We would really appreciate your prayers during this time. For both of us! The trip is very organized and planned out, but there are always risks with an international trip like this. It will also be the longest time for Mandy and Brandon to be apart, so pray for Brandon too! If you want to help out in other ways you can visit her sponsor page or email me for more specific things. They will be taking an entire extra suitcase of supplies for the orphanages, so if anyone would like to help provide some of these, it would be greatly appreciated! You can reach me at georgedejohn (at) gmail (dot) com.

In other news, you may notice in my wife’s blog that there are pictures of Brandon with some new shoes that are a little big for him. These are my new kicks courtesy of his outstanding performance in the diaper dash! I’ll be doing a post about them soon.

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So you may not know this, but I pretttty much have a direct connection to the Fray. And by that I mean that my boss’ - daughter’s – husband went to high school with the drummer. See what I mean? Direct.

Sooo, when I got a text last week that said “Do you  guys still like the Fray?”. My response was “Uh…yeah!”. A few texts later, my wife and I are going to see the Fray with some backstage access. w00t!

It helps that I’m a huge fan of theirs. Dare I say they are my favorite band. Their second CD came out 2 days before my birthday which I like to think that they intentionally planned on me behalf…thanks guys! Needless to say, my wife got the special edition for me that came with background videos, etc. We also went to see them when they came to Dallas a couple of years ago.  We had the same ‘direct connection’ hookup for that as well.

This time around was a little different in that there were a lot more people backstage. Mostly high schoolers with their parents scrambling around for autographs and pictures. Truth be told, we wanted to act like that, but had to play it cool since we were supposedly a part of the inside crew. Also, the whole band wasn’t back there. Particularly Isaac (the lead singer). We caught him at the last minute as we were leaving, but only Chris (the guy that actually knows them) stopped to chat with him real quick. We did get to sit with Ben (the drummer) for a few minutes and chat with him about his wife and their dog. He showed us some pictures on his iPhone…that’s right…I use the same phone as the Fray. Oh yeah, and I heard him say at one point that his wife is a runner. A runner!? Sweet! At that point I wanted to go superfan on him and ask him more questions about that, but I refrained.  

So yes,  the concert was awesome. I thought I’d be sneaky too and record some audio with the handy voice recorder app on my phone, and then looked around to see about a dozen other people doing the same thing. So from all the concert goers out there to Apple, we send you a collective Thank You. If nothing else the wife and I got a chance to go out with friends while Brandon was at the babysitter. That in itself was golden. Here are some pictures… 

Mandy and I before the start of the concert.

We opted for the lawn seats. Definitely the way to go to just chill at a good concert.

During the concert.

The crowd and very bright lights.

Ben, the drummer and I after the show. I’m not sure what he’s looking at…

Chris (the hookup) is the only one that talked to Isaac (the lead singer) because he was in a hurry to leave. He’s a real nice guy though. He took the time to sign something for a friend of mine.

Also, in case I’ve now piqued your interest–The Fray is going to be on Conan tonight on NBC!

Ok. So I’m a do-it-yourself kind of guy. Not awesome like Ty Pennington, but I sure like to pretend that I am. So when looking for a house we searched for a foreclosure that we could fix up on our own. We found a great deal on a house that only needed a minimal amount of work. We put in new floors, painted, redid the kitchen cabinets, added some molding…you know, the usual stuff.

However, my usual procrastination set in when it came to do some landscaping in the front yard. The real issue was that I didn’t want to pay for brick or stone to put in. I have a fairly strict policy about not paying for rocks. So after days months of sifting through craigslist posts, I finally struck brick. A guy tore down a wall in his house and offered them to anyone willing to take them. Done…sign me up for that!

After work one day I dropped by and loaded up the civic with as much as my poor little car could handle. And then, to make the trip worth it, I went ahead and loaded up the floorboards with some brick as well. My car was riding pretttty low when I took off. And by that, I mean that the neighbors were gawking. And by that, I mean that one old guy taking a walk actually stopped to advise me against whatever it was that I was doing. I thanked him and carried on. I’m surprised there’s not a picture of me on failblog trying to load up my mini-me-mobile with a few hundred bricks. But hey, I made it, right?

So then after days weeks of bricks sitting in my garage, I finally got to work. I drew up a design in CAD (not that I needed to, but because I could), and laid out the bricks based on that pattern.

For the first couple of days months, I just used a manual dirt-digger-upper to tear up the grass. Not fun. There’s my parsimoniousness again. We had to rush at the end to get ready for Brandon’s birthday party though, so I traded in the manual dirt-digger-upper and rented an actual tiller. Um…not sure why I didn’t do this in the first place. This thing was awesome! The tiller tore through our yard like my 1 year old tears through a plate of spaghetti o’s. I kind of expected to have push it around (like a lawnmower), but this beast was pulling me around the yard.  Maybe it’s a guy thing, but man it sure is fun to be in control of a piece of machinery like that. One that can seriously do some damage. I even managed to only tear up one sprinkler head. So, yes, not only do we have landscaping, we also have a geyser in our front yard. Try getting that from a professional.

So yeah, my cross training for this week was definitely working in the yard. It sure is pretty though. All I have for now is mid-pictures. No before, and no after pictures, but I’ll try to post some at some point. Enjoy!

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So here’s the deal. I’m poor. Now, that’s a very relative term, I know. And a word which (depending on who you ask) has very different meanings. So I’m going on the definition based on the most two recent financial books I’ve read which use net worth as an indicator of wealth rather than income. And right now, my net worth is broke a** po’. Thank you college student loans. So, why do I share all this? Simply to say that I find great joy in finding things that are FREE!  Or even things that are FREE* (*with advertising).

Enough buildup already…my new favorite running tool is the PODRUNNER podcast.  I’m sure this is old news to most people, but I’m a rookie. I’m also not a huge fan of running with music. Well, I am, but I find it gets in the way more than helps. Not to mention that running is a great time to get some quality prayer time in. HOWEVER…my inner self-pacing mechanism has never quite worked properly. Or at all. If I run 3 miles, my splits are usually 8:12, 9:36, 11:07, or something spectacular like that. The first time I used the podrunner podcast I used the 151 BPM track. And the results? Ten minute miles EXACTLY. Oh yes.

So the next time, I upped the ante to the 155 track and hit 9:00 miles almost exactly. I’m digging this. Now don’t get me wrong, you can still cheat. You can still take smaller steps or bigger steps. For instance, using the 155 podcast I went 3.64 feet per step versus 3.38 with the 151 podcast. (Yes, I used excel to figure all this out because I’m a super geek). Now I could have just run a bit up tempo because the beginning beat had a spanish vibe that I was digging. Maybe it’s that I had just watched the bachelorette where they were in Spain and was just in the La España spirit.  (uh, that is to say that my wife was watching la bacheloretté, and I just happened to walk through at a couple of parts).

Anywho, for those of us to po’ for a fancy garminator or an ironman(ator?), a free podcast will have to do.

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So, in case I haven’t mentioned it before, I do website design on the side. I’ve done a few here and there for various people and companies. And one of my FAVORITE things from google (besides everything), is google analytics for keeping track of web stats. Of course, since it’s Google, it’s a little above average. Let’s use some SAT style analogies to show what I’m talking about:
TYPICAL WEB STATS : ME ::
GOOGLE ANALYTICS : LANCE ARMSTRONG

Bueno?

So I use analytics for this very blog you’re reading, and one of the tools I like is a Keyword Source. AKA, what people searched for before landing on the site. Some of these are pretty funny:

• handy mandy
• bob harper yelling
• but you don’t have to take my word for it
• how to write achievement to my boss
• list of no caffeine
• run after the wind
• nodentures.com

I’m particularly concerned for the person writing achievements to their boss….good luck to you, my friend. BTW, you can also see how long the people stayed on the site from said keywords. Most of these are less than 1 second. Sorry nodentures.com searcher. I’m afraid I cannot help you.
Another tool is the Map Overlay. This is stinkin’ awesome! It shows you all the places people visited your site from. Some of the surprising ones for this blog:

• Sydney, Australia
• Colombo, Sri Lanka
• Putian, China
• Tai-Chung, Taiwan
• Bologna, Italy
• Chennai, India

To my international friends, Hello! and Hola! (that’s all I got). As for the US, so far 19 states have stopped by. Hmm, maybe I can hit up some of the others like Alaska and Hawaii if I use some more keywords like, idk…Sarah Palin runs, or LOST characters who run while on set.
We’ll see.

Oh and btw, you can also see what kind of computer systems visitors used to get to your site. I can see that nearly 10% of my visitors used iPhones to view the site. How tech savvy of you all!

-george

Last week a buddy of mine emailed me about a 4th of July 5k.  My initial thought was that there was no way I would want to do a race in the middle of summer. Especially after my last race where I was not-feeling-so-up-for-it (aka, my stomach kinda hurt, so it made for a wonderful excuse for running pitifully). But I’m easily persuaded, and BJ is a better runner than I am, so I figured some of his mad skills might rub off on me. (Hint: they did)

So, the weather wasn’t that bad, and there was nice breeze that was just enough to cool us off without slowing us down. Not to mention the plethora of neighbors who stood at the end of their driveways with garden hoses to spray runners as they went by. Brilliant! Running with a friend really helped…he pushed the pace for the first couple of miles which were definitely faster than I would have normally run. Then at mile two he said “alright, let’s finish in 24″, and took off. I had an initial burst of speed to keep up to which my legs kindly replied, “uh…no.”  I kept my pace and finished in 26:51. Not my best, but certainly better then the race which shall not be named from a month ago. I then participated in my favorite post-race activity of all time: napping.

The rest of the day was filled with eating at Babes Chicken with the fam, getting some frozen custard, and watching fireworks with the other 100,000 people in Frisco from the back of the 4Runner in a not-so-paved parking lot.  Brandon (who’s first birthday is July 21…get excited) got to see fireworks for the first time. His expression was his same serious, yet curious that it always is. It was way past his bedtime but he hung in there.  He was OUT by the time we got home.

On Sunday I went to Run-On to use my gift certificate for Saucony shoes thanks to Brandon’s awesome performance in the Diaper Dash.  They were out of my shoes, but they’re on order, so in the meantime, I shall simply enjoy admiring the shoes with the handy zoom-in feature from their website.  Fancy.

As we enter into the second half of the year I figured it would be a good time to reflect back on my list and see how things are going. I actually wanted to do a post about my awesome new route and new playlist from last night complete with cows, rebellious teenagers, oddly polite drivers, and crossing a semi-major intersection. But that will have to wait.

As for my list of 26 achievements for 2009, one would assume that since we’re half-way through the year, then I must be half-way through my list right?? Well…let’s just say that if this was the Family Feud you’d be hearing an obnoxious buzzer and seeing one of these guys…[X]

However, I have managed to wrangle in a few.

So, in the interest of half-full glasses out there, let’s start with the check marks:

• Weight loss goals: Of the seven, I get three check marks. I’ve lost 30 pounds (which now that I can actually see it, really sounds like a lot!), but I’ve kind of hit a plateau, but I have to admit it’s very much because of a similar plateau in my level of effort.
• 5k and 10k Races: Double check! And I’m saving the ever so daunting marathon for the end of the year.
• Start a job as a project manager: Check! Oh btw, for those that don’t know me I’m an architect who works on schools.
• 40 day achievements of no caffeine and flossing: Double Check! The biggest thing I learned? How to correctly spell caffeine without spell-check mocking me endlessly.

So, now the things left (aka, the things I have been strategically procrastinating against for 6 months).

• Doing 100 pushups in a row and bench press 200 pounds: As our office secretary would say, “Oy vey!” Most people I know that have started this hit a wall at some point in the training. As of now my wall and I are BFFs.
• Save for year end property taxes and read 12 books: On track…it’s just gonna take month by month to get there.
• Run a marathon: Training towards running in either November or December. So far my long run is 10 miles.  Hmm…it’d sure be a lot cooler if that number was half of 26.2.
• Learn a song on electric guitar and build a workbench: Ok for these two, I’m just straight up lazy. I have all the supplies and a plan for a bench but just haven’t got started. For the guitar, I have a list of songs, but I have a hard time finding time to play. When I get home it’s play with Brandon time…and when he goes to bed probably isn’t the best time to turn up the amp and jam out. As you can see I’m and excuse monger with these two.
• Memorize a chapter of scripture. Ok, if I can be honest for a minute, this is a tough one. Not because of the physical/mental act of it. That part is just doing it (Nike reference unintended, though applicable). What really gets me is that I always feel a bit boastful/proud/selfish when memorizing scripture. As if my motives were untrue. My obvious reason for wanting to do it is to hide God’s Word in my heart, to be prepared in season and out, and just to spend time with God daily. But I’m always afraid I’ll get to the end and just have a chunk of scripture just for regurgitation. Nonetheless, I realize that this too is just an excuse and I need to get after it.

So there you go. Nothing stopping me but my own excuses. So watch out remaining list…I’ve still got six months on you.

I hope everyone else’s goals are on track. And if they’re not…who cares! Even little kids know that you can always call a do over.