Seasonal Sickness...

I'm shaky and sweating, getting chills frequently, prone to massive mood swings, and find it hard to focus on important things. It's an epidemic more pervasive than swine flu, bird flu, mad cow, or other animal related ailments, although this one is closely tied to Cougars, Longhorns, Eagles, Ravens, and other awe inspiring creatures. Nope, I'm not really sick (unless you consider my head...), it's FOOTBALL SEASON!!!!

This is the last weekend in which the DVR will not be fully loaded and cranked up to high gear, the last weekend of blissful anticipation before your team really has to show how good (or not) they are, the last Saturday night of aimlessly flipping through channels when everyone else has gone to bed. Yep, I'm all set. I got my DirecTV dish in, the channels cataloged and indexed for quickest large-scale viewing, the entire season schedule printed and highlighted for each week's must see games, my teams' games in the calendar and purring in idle until they get closer, my fantasy football team selected and researched, and of course I'm up to speed on all the latest news, chats, speculation, smack talk, and otherwise for my favorite teams. Come to think of it, maybe I am really sick...



Game ON!

Happy Monday ... oh, wait

OK, so it's already nearly the end of the Tuesday work day and my intentions of a Monday post are a day late. Oh well...

So what's going on? Well, let's call it uncertainty squared. Work and Church... So work we are still in the midst of a large reorganization, that has left me without much of an idea on what my role or team will be going forward. That sounds bad - no, I'm not in danger of losing my job; no, I haven't been underperforming and am being reshuffled; and no, Google isn't a horrible place to work. The fact is, that I'm super excited about the reorg, it's just that I don't really know how to channel that excitement yet because my new manager has been on vacation and unexpected personal emergency leave for about 5 weeks now - all in the critical time during which he and I would have been having strategy and tactics discussions about our group going forward. Not to fear though, it's still going to be great when he does get back ... whenever that is.

So uncertainty number two is with my church calling. As you probably know, I've been 1st counselor in our bishopric for a year and a half, and before that was 2nd counselor under the previous bishop. Two Sunday ago, we were stunned to hear our bishop's name called as a member of the newly reorganized Stake Presidency. So now, Bishop/President Wheatley (or Bishedent as I call him) is doing double duty until a new calling can be made, and as you can guess, I'm getting a lot of "hey Bishop" jokes. So my thinking is that the new bishop will hopefully retain me as a counselor, but if not, I'll also be fine with a little break. But bottom line, there's uncertainty...

I'll keep you posted.

Top 2%

This was Micah's weekend homework - see how many of you can do this:

A quiz written by Albert Einstein at the end of the last century. It has been translated and updated since he first presented it, but the logic is still the same. Einstein believed that 98% of the people in the world could not solve the quiz. There are no tricks involved in determining the correct answer. It's up to you to develop a scientific method for analyzing all the facts. Are you among the 2% who can answer the question, WHO PLAYS CHESS?

HERE ARE THE MAIN FACTS:

1. There are five houses in five different colors
2. In each house lives a person of different nationality
3. No two owners play the same game, listen to the same music, or drink the same beverage

HERE ARE THE ADDITIONAL DETAILS:

1. The Brit lives in a red house
2. The Swede plays Scrabble
3. The Dane drinks tea
4. The green house is immediately left of the white house
5. The owner of the green house drinks coffee
6. The person who listens to jazz plays Dominoes
7. The owner of the yellow house listens to rock
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house to the left
10. The man who listens to country lives next to the man that plays Checkers
11. The man who plays Bridge lives next to the man who listens to rock
12. The owner who listens to show tunes drinks beer
13. The German listens to opera
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
15. The man who listens to country has a neighbor who drinks water

Now tell us WHO PLAYS CHESS?

..........................................................

Just so you know, Micah figured this out in about 1/2 hour. Anyone up to the challenge?

First Day of School

The girls all bundled off to school just now with high energy, big smiles, and lots of expectations. They are all super excited to start off the new school year - Micah starting 7th grade, Kennan going into 4th, and Morgan a big 2nd grader. Brig starts preschool tomorrow and he's feeling the excitement too, even though he wishes he could start today with the girls. They've all been organizing big bags full of required school supplies, they met their teachers and saw their classrooms, and Micah walked the halls of her new school - finding her classes and checking out her locker. They're wearing new shoes and fun outfits, and it feels great to all of us that this is a fun and exciting day.

Out With The Old, In With The New

I would estimate Angela spends approximately two hours a day in front of the computer, sometimes less, sometimes more. She's been particularly busy lately with all the school stuff she does. That's why when our computer died on Monday evening, it was a serious calamity. We do have my old school laptop that is suitable for smallish tasks, but not having a good computer was just not going to fly. Problem is, you actually have to pay for these newfangled computer thingies, and thanks to this being very unexpected, it's not the ideal time to have to drop a big chunk of change.

So I started doing the research that night, including market research and polling of Mac users vs. PC users, and I was blown away at how many people A) use Macs now, and B) absolutely love them with nothing bad to say at all. Before long it was looking like the iMac was making a serious bid to supplant the long-reigning PC in our home. By Tuesday afternoon, we had decided to radically change our computing habits, and thanks to a very kind friend who works at Apple (and his friends & family discount!), we ordered ourselves a very sleek and amazing new computer.

Shockingly, it was delivered the very next day, and now the kids have proceeded to set each of us up with our own login and preferences, and we are loving the huge new screen that is our new computer. The only remaining problem (other than the credit card bill) is that we would like to recover some of the stuff from off the old computer. I have an external hard drive plugged into it, which has a lot of the pictures and music, but unfortunately it's been a while since I thought to do a backup... So we're hoping we can resurrect old bessie for just one more short stint in order to complete one more backup, and then we'll let her go in peace.

Exciting times!

An Epic Century and 50' Free Fall

Two highlights for me of our Utah trip were the 108 mile bike ride I did with Dave and MattMax, and cliff jumping at Flaming Gorge. Both were scary, fun, and very manly, all rolled into one giant ball of fun-ness.

The Century started at Thanksgiving Point, went around Utah Lake, and then ended up where it started. Dave, Matt and I went out with one of the first groups, and quickly settled into an excellent bunch of riders who not only pulled well themselves at a good speed, but were knowledgeable enough to thank us for our good pulls when we took a turn on the front. I happened to be on the front at one point when I looked around and noticed nobody was behind me - this wasn't good because Dave and Matt had been right on my wheel, followed by the rest of the group. I slowed up, let the group go by, and noting no Richards' anywhere, rode back to find Matt standing on the side of the road with his crank/pedal in his hand. Not a good sign when you're only 22 miles into a long day of riding...

Fortunately, he was able to get his bike all put back together (and good enough that he had no more bike problems the rest of the day), and we were off, trying to get into another good group. We took advantage of the early aid stations to refuel, but our first real stop was at mile 50 for a relatively early lunch. Unfortunately for us, this was the first great deception of the day. It seemed as if this was roughly the halfway point, so the logical assumption was that we were halfway done. Not so fast, my friend...

We left the lunch stop feeling great. Before long we made a big sweeping right hand turn, and here is the second great deception of the day - We were just turning along the south side of the lake, but it appeared to me as if we were now heading up the other side. So I thought we were making great time, and I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of wind on the "backside" of the lake. Then we made the actual turn up the backside of the lake, and I realized just how wrong I'd been.

The next 50+ miles were straight into a headwind that reportedly reached 30 mph for much

of the day. And to make matters worse, the third great deception of the day was that it was a flat, fast course ... those darn rolling hills on the backside not only broke our legs, but broke our spirits too (ok, that's a little dramatic, but H, it was hard!). Dave and I had taken turns doing most of the pulling on the front to make sure MattMax, in his first century ride, was able to

finish. Thank goodness we did, because he had a lot more left in the tank toward the end

than we did, and he did some heroic work to pull us home. All in all

a great team effort. But there's one thing MattMax needs to learn about riding with me... when we're within the last 20 miles, dead wasted, and riding on sheer will alone - and I ask how many miles we've gone... either refuse to tell me, or flat out lie that we're further along than we really are. I asked for a mileage update at what I thought should have been about mile 99 (and hence a much-needed aid station just around the corner), but Matt so cruelly informed me that we were at 93 ... that was the low point of the whole day for me. I will call that the last great deception, and I fully blame MattMax for perpetrating it!

So we finally made it. Incredibly tired, sticky, salty, but happy. It felt like a great accomplishment, and I couldn't have asked for two better compadres to have done it with (except for the rest of the bros!). I have to say that Dave was The Man! - he was so strong and consistent, and his pure joy in riding helped us see the fun in it even as we struggled.

Which brings me to the other great highlight... cliff jumping at Flaming Gorge. I had never been to FG before, but just this one trip was enough to sell me on that wonderful place! We did a lot of fun things there, but as the pictures attest, it doesn't get much better than

hurling myself off a 50' cliff, counting the seconds as I hurtle toward my sure death, and at the last second squeeze my legs together. The whole family had a great time jumping off ledges of various heights, and I enjoyed throwing some fun flips and dives off of shorter 20' cliffs. But when Cameron and I followed these teenagers up to the GrandDaddy ledge, I knew we had met our match, found our refiners' fire, and encountered the true test of manhood. The five of us stood gazing off the gargantuan cliff, and then I realized there was an opportunity in front of me. You don't want to be the last to go off, and you don't want a couple of teenage boys to show the adults what's up - no, I realized there's only one person who can step back, say something freaking cool, and then be the first to hurl himself into orbit while the others stand there with open

mouths. Yep, that's how I think of these things. And that's what I did. While the rest of the group pondered the eternities, I stepped back, said something cool and funny, and let 'er rip. And how was it? In the immortal words of Chris Farley in Tommy Boy, "Thaaat ... was ... AWWWWWEsome!!!" Cameron followed me, still in a position of great honor because he beat the young'uns down, and we ended up doing it again with all the family gathered in the water below to bask in our awesomeness.

So there you have it. By no means should anyone construe the choice of these two highlights to mean that I didn't enjoy, love, cherish, and treasure all the other fun activities and associations we had while in Utah.

These just happened to be the most memorable to me as a 37 year old guy who fancies himself as still being young and vigorous... Good times for sure!

The Prodigal Blogger Returns

It seems like weeks and weeks since my last blog update. Probably because it has been... A big part of that was the fact that I was mostly offline for the past couple of weeks on vacation in Utah. No, it's not that they don't have the Internet there, it's just that we were either entrenched in the mountains, or not in front of a computer by choice.

The theme of this year's vacation was definitely family. I'm sure our few remaining Utah friends will send us dirty looks and virtual daggers for not stopping by when we were in town, but literally, we were wall to wall family time this trip. My entire family was in town for a big reunion and it the first time we'd all been together in ages. We gathered from California, Pennsylvania, Washington, Oregon, and Utah. We also had good times with Angela's family as everyone was gathered on that side too.

It's tough to list all of the fun things we did, but my style is usually to just make a big old list of all the highlights:

• -plenty of swimming at the local pool
• -hanging out with family on both sides
• -great food the entire two weeks
• -fishing trip with the young sons into the Uintas, and actually catching a bunch of fish
• -movie night for the kids with a projection screen in the back yard
• -fitting our whole family in the cabin
• -lots of bike rides with brothers
• -temple sealings with the adults
• -Ice Age II with Grandpa and Grandma
• -golf with Dad and Nate, and then again with all the brothers and Dad
• -tennis with the kids
• -camping at Flaming Gorge
• -river rafting the Green River, including numerous water fights and "accidental" push-ins
• -cliff jumping! (this was perhaps my personal highlight - 50 ft was my best jump)
• -our own little family's fun vacation dinner at Magleby's
• -the shower after camping
• -finally sleeping in a bed on the 10th night of our trip
• -Seven Peaks water park with the kids and cousins
• -another personal highlight - the ULCER 108 mile bike ride with Dave and MattMax (Anne and Brandon too, but we missed each other)

I've probably missed some fun and important things, but you get the picture - lots of fun, lots of family, and a great vacation.

I'll try to post more often now that things are relatively back to normal now. We're looking forward to finishing off summer of the next week or so, and I'll tell you what else is on the horizon soon.