Happy Birthday

Today is my wifes birthday. Yes she was born on Halloween (Samhain) and that is one of the many things that has always made her special. She's 39 years young and the reason I post it without any concern for my well being is because she definately looks younger than her age. She is one of those people who has always manage to bring a smile to anyones face regardless of the situation. She has also helped me to learn and realize allot about myself which in turn has made me a better person. So Happy Birthday to my Honey Bun, I am so glad to be part of it and part of her life. ;o)

Poland Spring 5 Miler

Today was the Poland Spring 5 miler Race. It's the kickoff to the week prior to the NYC Marathon. I plan on doing one more 2o mile workout and then taper until the Marathon. All the experts say one should taper the last week but I know my body. If I take the whole week I'm just going to not run as well. Todays race went well; I averaged a 7:48 mile and felt good at the end (that's what counts). But the really different part about the race and today (and the better part)was that only my wife was with me. All three of my kids slept over their friends houses. This is the first time this has happened to my wife and I since we had our offspring. Initially I was nervous being the protective parent that I am. But then I let go of the worry and my wife and I had a really good time. It almost felt like we were in our twenty's again (almost!!!!). As they are becoming more independant (the kids) I think my wife and I can look forward to more times like this.
The pic above I took it during one of our walks (wife and I). My middle daughter and I really like to take pics and of course we never take enough pics. We're mostly concentrating on scenic stuff now but ya never know.

Chakra Test

I found this really nice site that describes chakras and their meaning. One of the really nice things about this site is that it offers a Chakra test so you can see what state your chakras are at as a result of this test. The results from mine are above, it's hard to tell because the picture isn't really relaying the true results but my root chakra is under active. If you want to take the test the link is

http://www.eclecticenergies.com/chakras/chakraevaltest.php. Enjoy and learn.

Purple Meditation

I've been really busy lately getting things done around the house and handling my new responsibilities as keeper of the house and family needs (House Dad). One of the things I have been working is improving my meditation skills. I've been practicing meditaion for about two months. I haven't been as dedicated to the process I have wanted to but I'm learning to make time for it. When I started meditating I was actually pretty impressed and happy with the whole process. Unfortunately, daily life has a way of intruding on things like this. As the stress of my current situation started building I started to try and force the meditative experience. I would start the process and try to force myself to relax to achieve the results I had earlier. I now realize how silly this was.

I found this book titled "Twelve Positive Habits of Spiritually Centered People" that was really interesting and I learned allot from it. There is a section on meditation and this sectin explained that we shouldn't treat meditation like we treat our goals in our daily lives. The authors explained that when one meditates that they are opening themselves up to the creator. Being the take charge person that I am I found this difficult. Until recently.

I I've learned that I can meditate easier with music. Soooo I bought this really nice meditation CD and gave it a shot. I started my session today and I went through my breathing routine. As I started the music was playing and I didn't really concentrate on anything intense. I just let myself go to the music and thought about openness and peace. A couple of really nice things happened but I'm only going to go into one. As I was meditating I felt very very lite and I started feeling myself in the color purple. It was really strange just feeling myself in this purple color feeling really relaxed. Before I got too carried away my cell phone rang and brought me out of the whole experience (crap!). Feeling very curoise about the experience I looked up the color purple and discovered it is related to the crown chakra (which I also read on today). Funny enough I discovered purple is a good color for meditation. Cool huh?

As you could tell I'm excited about my new discovery and want to learn as much as I can about it. It was a great experienc and one I wanted to share

Good Morning

Good Morning!!! I'm sorry that I haven't been publishing anything lately. I continue to be among the unemployed and the little nest egg I had saved has been depleted. My wife has been super supportive but I know she's starting to worry even though she tries to hide it from me. She's a trooper and I love her all the more for it. Both her and I have become more spiritual in the past year and we both strive to keep ourselves centered and open. As you can imagine, it becomes increasingly difficult when an event like this occurs and bill collectors are constantly hastlying you. The voice of doubt starts to creep in and you start questioning all of your actions and wonder if you've done the right thing. I've gone through that phase and I'm confident that things will turn around when it is time. Even though I feel confident there are times when I have great difficulty worrying about my wife and children. I don't want her (or them) to worry so I push myself in all directions, like a headless chicken, to try to find some sort of solution. So there in lies my inner struggle the one side of me that knows to be patient and things will turn around and the other side of me that feels guilty about putting my family through this and looking for an immediate solution regardless of the direction. It's at time like this when I don't feel much like writing.

The beautiful part about this experience though is that we both have meditated together and taken long walks together to help us. In short we have spent more time together than we have in a long time. And we have become closer. Even my gang has commented on how I'm smiling again. And being a house dad is pretty nice; I get to see them off in the morning and see them when they first get off the bus. I cook dinner (I really enjoy cooking). Just gotta learn how to make money from it. Maybe I should start my own cable show and call it "House Dad". I'm sure there are other fathers that are in similair situations. I could be the Martha Stewart of Men!!!!

OOOOFFFF!!! That's scary!

Anyway, I'm writing now because for me this is great therapy to put my thoughts down. I write on the blog because I don't want to remain close, I think it's important for me to open myself to others. Hopefully someone reading this can gain insight that will help them. Or they can offer some advice that will help.

Good Morning

:o)

Staten Island 1/2 Marathon

Today I ran the SI 1/2 Marathon. We caught another great day weather wise and the run turned out to be one of my best ever!! Seems to be allot of that lately. My friend Tom showed up to run and he bought a couple of buddies also; Ed his brother (who also ran the Steamtown Marathon) Mark and Jeff. With the exception of Jeff, who told us he was going to run a slow pace, We stuck together through most of the run. We were running about and 8:30 Pace which is truly amazing for me because I have never run an 8:30 mile pace for a whole half marathon.

I lived on Staten Island from age 13 until my wife and I decided to move the family at my ripe old age of 30(I'm 41 now by the way). I truly enjoy going back and showing my kids were I grew up and where their Mom and I went on our first date etc.... One funny thing about going back though; as much as I like going back, If I stay longer than a day, I find myself impatient to get back to home in PA.

We finished the run and I met my gang at the finish. We listened to the band, who really weren't that good but they were trying really hard so we cheered them on. We waited for Jeff so we could cheer him on his last 100 yards which was really cool. All in all it was a really nice day with friends and family. To me it was one of those days that helps me keep things in perspective as to what is really important in my life. Here's hoping your Sunday was a nice, or better, than mine.

:o)

Dream Thief?

Here's a dream I had a couple of days ago and I'm having a hard time tryint to make sense of it.

I'm on my street in the northeast PA mountains and I'm running around with someone (I think this person is female). We see and are chasing deer but I cannot recall why. I know we aren't hunting them, it feels like we're trying to warn them about something. We weren't succesful with the deer so I start making my way home. Walking down my street I look ahead and we're attacked by three female lions. I try to fight them off with branches made into wips but I realize it's a losing battle. Someone comes and scares them away but I realize he's not a friend.
I am told by this other person to beware and stay away from him. I run to my home at the end of the street but I know he's coming back.
In my home he arrives while I'm with this other person. We try to protect ourselves. He mocks us as we try to keep him at bay. He comes to me reaches into my torso and pulls out three glowing trinkets. They look like small (about 1 to 2 inches) stained glass ornaments with the metal edging that they have. These had a little metal tail to hold them with and they glowed white. I realize these are my dreams!!! As he takes these, he gets stronger and I get weaker. He's smiling.
I figure out that I can do this also and I am able to reach into his torso and get some dreams from him. As we're jockying I feel that I might lose this encounter. I discover that along with getting the power of these dreams I also get their weaknesses. I wake up.

OOOF! Intense dream..I'm curiose about the number 3 that popped up. I'm also curiouse about my feeling of losing. I've always been a fighter and the fear of losing just made me fight even more. But I never accepted the fact that I might lose. Maybe I been watching too much of the Matrix? ;o)

Well... I did it..The Steamtown Marathon is history. It was a fantastic day fall day in gods country! The people were wonderful and the scenary was breathtaking. And to top it all I ran my best marathon ever. (Yippeeeeeee!!) Maybe I should do this professionally?! NOT!!!!

It was a great experience the people were cheering you on and offering encouragement throughout the whole run. I always get a huge kick from the children on the side of the street waiting to slap you a high five and you run by them. Nothing means as much to a runner as someone telling them "you look good, keep it going" Especially when you're in pain and digging deep to find the motivation to keep going. My sinuses are acting up just thinking about it :o)

As I said before the day was beautiful and the fall foliage in the Scranton Area Mountains was a blend of reds, golds, yellows, oranges and greens.

Above there's a picture of me and my baby cakes after the run. I want to take this chance to recognize and thank my wife and kids for the love, support and encouragement. I love them so much and without them I wouldn't achieve the success that I have. In fact, one of my thoughts motivating me during the run was the fact that I would get a great hug and kiss from everyone when I was done.

Love & Patience

This is my middle child Yappee (nickname) above with her favorite horse. Awhile ago I wrote about how my daughter went on-line and starting looking for places she could volunteer and how she found this particular place. I was super proud of her and the fact that she took initiative and followed through with everything. On this visit she begged my wife and I to stay and watch her work so we couldn't say no. This little place is run by a woman who takes horses that are no longer wanted and rehabilitates them for adoption. This one horse, from what I understand, is a race horse that had an infection of one of his legs. The woman is very nice and soft spoken.

My wife and I watched as they went through their activities I was struck with something I noticed. My daughter had volunteered to help her and she did everything she could. I could tell that my daughter was very excited and not paying attention the way she should be. I was totally amazed by the care and patience this lady had with my daughter. I quickly realized that even though my daughter volunteered to help , this woman was taking her precious time to work and teach my daughter. I watched as she patiently spoke to my daughter and offered encouragement when they worked the horses. This had such a profound affect on me. How wonderful it is for this person , whom hardly knew us, to take her time and offer such wonderful insight to my daughter.

We left the farm after about and hour and my daughter was overflowing with joy. During the ride home I spoke to my wife and informed her how this woman and her actions had touched me so. I wondered if she knew just how profound her actions were. I definately consider her an angel on earth and hope that I can offer to others the love, understanding and patience, that she offered us and our duaghter. :o)

Living in the now

I wanted to write a little about Living in the now. I feel that we are headed for major changes. I think these changes are going to be on a grand scale and similair to the apocolyptice prophecies of some of our religions and prophets. This used to scare the crap out of me and I used to worry immensely about it. Even though I feel these things are going to happen, I don't know when which compounded my worrying.

Then I spoke with someone about living in the now. He told me that we shouldn't spend our lives worrying about the future. We should live in the now and appreciate everything around us. He said that as we live in the now we should work to spread love and to make sure that our experiences have positive effect on others. I thought about this for a long time. As I did I realized that I had spent most of my life living in the future and not truly appreciating what was around me at the moment. I was always worrying about my next pacheck, bills, kids events, races, etc... I realized that I took for granted what was around me at the moment thinking that my planning for the future was for the good of all. I now realize that this wasn't true.

Now when I wake up every morning I make it a point to appreciate everything in front of me that day and pray that I have a positive loving impact on someone. Sometimes it's difficult with some of the challenges we face. But as I tell my kids, you can always find something good when things happen, even if it's not immediately apparent to you. Regardless of whether you share my belief of major changes or not, I think that if we lived our lives more in the present and appreciate what is in our lives now, we would all make our world around us a better place.

:o)

Wonderful Wet Realxing Weekend

It's weekends like the one my family and I just had that teach me to truly appreciate life and it's wonders. We started with a beautiful Saturday. My youngest went to her soccer game and the rest of us went back to NYC. My wife and I dropped of our other two at a birthday party and we went to central park for the 5th avenue mile race. I always love going back to New York and love bringing my family. My wife and I took the Staten Island Ferry and I just sat there looking at the diversity of people and taking in all the familair sites and smells. I always preach to my gang how important diversity and understanding for each other are. We made our way to Central Park and I ran the mile in 6:33 which I was very pleased with. It was allot of fun and I found myself wanting to run more mile races. Afterwards her and I enjoyed a very romantic walk through the park. (really nice). We picked up the gang and made our way home.

Sunday came and we found ourselves going back to central park in the pouring rain. This days race was greta's half marathon. The New york road runners has a norwegain festival every year in honor of Greta Weitz the marathon champion. The picture for today were taken by my middle child (Yappee). Unfortunately we didn't take a whole family pick with all of us cause she was holding the camera. The race went really well and I had lots of fun running it. It poured the race but I love running in the rain. My wife and the kids enjoyed the festival while I was running and had a great time eating waffles and other free offerings at the festival. It was really really nice. It's times like this that I truly cherish my family.