Updates

June has been a busy month for me. My fishing trip to Lac Seul was outstanding. Over the four day trip to Lac Seul Outposts, we caught hundreds of walleyes and several northern pike. Among the 7 guys in the group, I had the biggest walleye of the trip, at 27.5", about 8 pounds. It was a beast. I caught it on a barbless crank-bait, trolling just outside the Chamberlain Narrows area of Lac Seul. I can't say enough good things about the resort, from the amenities (indoor plumbing, full kitchen, etc.) to the staff, and obviously the fishing was incredible. Everyone came back with their limit of walleye, and we had a couple shore lunch dinners that were incredible.

I got back home in time for my youngest daughter's third birthday, which was lots of fun. She's very imaginative right now, and she has been insisting for several weeks now that she is the Blue Power Ranger. It's adorable.

We've been getting lots of rain this June in East Grand Forks, over 6 inches so far just in June. Well, all that rain has pushed the water table up, and it started filling our sump pit in the basement. Unfortunately, our sump pump float rod had corroded (Thanks Wayne Pumps!) and the float came up sideways instead of vertically, which didn't trigger the pump, and the result was a flooded basement. We caught it in time to prevent any damage to furniture or the walls, but all the carpet was soaked. So this past weekend was spent moving everything around the basement to remove all the carpet pad and allow us to prop up all the carpet to dry. What a mess. I bought a new sump pump to replace the Wayne pump, and I'll probably be buying a back-up pump as well. A colleague of mine has the Pit Boss alert system, which he highly recommends, so I may end up with one of those as well. Basically I just don't want to flood my basement again.

No running for me in the past couple weeks, but a good friend of mine just had a solid performance at Grandma's Marathon in Duluth. 2:44 probably isn't what he was aiming for, but pretty good nonetheless. A former teammate of mine at UND, Kyle Downs, finished in 2:29, a really nice run.

Shaving

I've been shaving daily (well, almost daily...call it 5-6 days a week) for many years now, and since they sent me a razor when I turned 18, I have always used the Gillette Mach 3 cartridges. A couple days ago, I realized I needed to buy some new cartridges. So I go to the store, and just like every other time, I shake my head at the obscene price of the replacement cartridges. $18 for 5 cartridges. Just disgusting.

I bought some, but I'm going to be bringing them back to the store soon. I decided to make the switch to wet shaving with a double edge (DE) safety razor. An initial investment of about $60 including the razor, a stand and a badger brush, along with about $40 in creams and blades (starter pack of various types of blades, pre-shave lotion and shaving cream) and I'll be set for a long time. All indications are that the shaving cream will last much longer than the canned stuff I've been buying (which I've never liked anyway) and once I find a blade that works for me, a pack of 100 blades will be around $10.

The package on the Gillette cartridges I bought claims each one should last about a month. Shaving every day, that's about $0.12 per shave. In my experience they last about half that long before the razors start to dull and give a "less than optimum" result. So lets say about $0.20 per shave. A good DE blade should give about 5-7 shaves, and at around $10 for 100 DE blades, will be way cheaper, almost 10 times cheaper. Plus, the razor handle should last me the rest of my life, and looks awesome.

Planting the garden

Well, no runs over the weekend, but yard work at home was in full swing. In the backyard of our new house, there were two strips of dirt the previous owner had used for their garden. We modified one of the strips to make it a bit wider and planted our vegetable garden. This year we hope to have pumpkin, three varieties of tomato, cucumber, carrot, green beans and peas. The kids are super excited about it. We also managed to plant a bunch of flowers, but held off on staining the deck because the forecast was for rain all day Saturday and rain on Sunday. Whaddya know, no rain either day.

I'm leaving for a week-long fishing trip this upcoming Sunday to Lac Seul, Ontario with my dad, two uncles, a cousin and a couple of my uncle's friends. Starting to get all my fishing gear ready, and I'll start packing tomorrow night I think. I probably won't run much while we're there, so I'll need to get a few runs in this week.

Morning run, etc.

I woke up early this morning and went for a 2 mile run down to the Greenway and back. Ran at about 9 min/mile pace on the way out, about 8:40 on the way back, which makes me feel like an old man.

Maybe a few months of solid training will make me look at that pace differently. If I can stick with it and run consistently, I'd like to enter another marathon, and I'd really like to go under 3 hours. That's a long way out right now.

In non-running events, I'll be staining my deck tonight. We moved to a new home in October last year, and after a long winter and wet spring we are finally taking on some outdoor projects. The deck was rehabbed last week with sanding and washing, along with some new top rails and balusters. Overall, a huge improvement. Maybe I should put some pictures up here...

The garden should finally get planted soon as well. Better late than never, I guess!

Re-start

I started this blog about 6 years ago to log my running, and I made 10 posts before completely losing track of it. Those posts have been deleted, and I'm giving it a second try.

I've been needing a place to collect thoughts and ideas, document home improvement projects, track my running, discuss college hockey, etc. over the past year or so. This will be that place. Hopefully for more than the 15 days it lasted last time.

Here's to new beginning!