these days - various and sundry

I worked out pretty well all this past week, going to the gym every day but Friday. On Friday, I played basketball with the ward team. After playing the game, I refereed the following game and put in a little more running there as well. The workouts were alternatively great, filled with energy or hard, filled with work and a lot of effort. Both kinds of workouts were useful though in telling me where I stood physically.

In the coming week, I plan on putting a little more time into running, building on last week's. I will have 2-3 easy runs of 3-4 miles, 1 interval day (1/4 miles with 1/4 rests), a tempo run and a longer distance run on Saturday. I hope to play a little basketball with the ward on Friday.

Good news for me with respect to one of my goals; I stepped on the scale during the week and was down 2 pounds. Some of that could be fluid loss right after the run that day (I was pretty sweatty) but I'm going to claim it as progress. That would mean that I have 10 pounds to go and 10 and 1/2 months to get there (very do-able). I think part of the progress in the first month and week of the year is also due to not eating as many sweet things when I see them. The other part is the exercise starting to kick in (metabolism making a slow change)

I finished a book I had checked out at Christmas, Invisible Armies. The tense in which it was written was unusual (present and inconsistent) but the story moved well and there were many twists and turns to keep me interested to the very end (really, the last page). It is written by Jon Evans. When I originally checked it out, my oldest daughter read it, liked it and recommended that I read it. I'm glad I did. I'm now reading Act of Treason by Vince Flynn. I read another book by Flynn, Consent to Kill and really liked it. I recommend it to anyone who likes relatively fast paced, spy/international thriller kinds of books.

On Saturday, I also had the chance to work on a writing project and made some really good progress, getting closer to my goal there.

Over the past week and one half I have also gone through a large challenge and change in my work life that was almost a complete surprise. It was a shock to my system (and unfortunately added to the stress that my lovely wife had to deal with) and there were several moments of self doubt, worry and plenty of prayer. Over the last few days, however, I have had several successes in the new situation and I can see where I can find many, many more similar successes. I have had more than one colleague whom I respect tell me privately that they thought I should have made the change a long time ago (they thought I had a lot more talent than I was able to offer in the previous role). Through it all, my lovely wife has been 100% supportive as have my daughters and my relatives who knew about the change. My thanks to them and to my Heavenly Father for knowing who I am, what I can do, where I need to improve (everywhere; okay, maybe not in playing marbles).

Interestingly, and in a slightly parallel universe, a few months ago, I was called and accepted a Stake Music calling. Before that I was the Ward choir director and music chair. I loved choir practice and putting together songs to sing; at Christmas, Easter, July 4th. After receiving the Stake calling, I kind of forgot about being released from the ward role and then it happened (~November). It was a hard thing to give up seeing the choir's smiling faces each Sunday and putting together musical numbers for Sacrament meeting. It was heartwarming that several members of the ward and members of the choir stopped me in the hall and told me how much they appreciated what I had done.

The two events above are examples of change in my life (one small and one a little bigger and immediately impactful). But, in both cases, with the change, I will be able to look at things from a different perspective and use talents that I haven't used for a while or develop new ones. Further, relating them back to progress made in any field but particularly in physical development, if you continue to do the exercises over and over, you will get the same results over and over (see definition of crazy - Albert Einstein). It is only when we change our focus and efforts that we can make a change of direction, to new strengths, new abilities and new levels of endurance.

I am a lucky man to have the opportunities I have had in the past and the opportunities I have now.

May you and yours have a good change in your life, and have a good one. KipK

I like my team

I am an unabashed Duke basketball fan. It started in grad school when I attended Duke's Fuqua School of Business. We (my wife, my young daughter and I) attended many games and had a blast cheering the Blue Devils on to victory (usually). Since then, I have watched them play well for many, many years (championships in '91, '92 and '01), with a few lesser years (still going to the tourney but not getting very far).


This year's team has me thinking they will do well through the regular season, in the ACC tournament and in the NCAA tournament. They play defense as well as I have seen them play since 2001 (when they won and Shane Battier was the team leader). They just lost to Wake Forest in a close one at Wake. They battled the whole game through and tied the game with seconds to play. Wake made a shot at the end and nipped them.

(photos by Chuck Burton)

Go Duke!

And, have a good one. KipK

I like the cold

Every day in the office, I hear people complain about the cold, the snow, the wind chill, the ice and so on. Actually, I like the cold (and the snow, the wind chill and the ice). In my opinion, snow makes almost everything more beautiful. It covers up the browns and dark colors of fall and shines brightly white when the sun is out. There are a multitude of fun things you can do when it snows and after. You can sled, ski, make a snow man(or a snow elephant, should you feel ambitious), have a snow ball fight, make a snow angel, keep your drinks cold, shovel your driveway and sidewalk and the sidewalk of your neighbor. And, when it snows, there are hundreds of things you can do indoors: play games, read, check everyone's blog, cook, do laundry, iron, run on a treadmill while watching your favorite team play, take a yoga class. If you like hot chocolate, cold weather is a perfect excuse to make it and enjoy.

I like the snow because it has good karma, at least for me. Whenever it snows, I have an increased optimistic outlook on just about everything.

Beyond the snow, the sub freezing temps also produce some of the coolest looking scenes in nature. When there is freezing rain, all the branches of the trees are coated with crystal. When it frosts, the lawn looks like it has been coated in beautiful white powder. When the cold combines with a bit of humidity, the morning fog in the fields evokes the feelings of the mists of time.

I like the cold and freezing temps for a couple of other, more practical reasons. I was told once that peach trees, to produce a crop, need the freeze to initiate the fruit's germination cycle. I'm sure it is similar in many non tropical fruits. I also feel like a good freeze keeps the bug population down (though I am not sure there is any scientific backing to that thought).

Yes, the cold sometimes creates obstacles and delays that we have to deal with. The good thing about that is that the cold is fair and treats everyone the same way, providing the same experiences for all.

Cold weather is not great for one of my favorite activities, golf. But, even when it is cold, there are options. I can practice putting inside. I can also visit my favorite golf range and hit practice shots from their heated stalls. And, when I go to the range and hit shots, I feel like I am making progress on my game that others, who are not at the range, are not making (a little oblique and competitive, but, I'm okay with that).

I like all four seasons, including winter - what's not to like?

Have a good one. KipK

two stories

The whole time we lived on the base at Lakenheath, we were in a two story apartment quadraplex. In San Antonio (where we moved from), we lived in a one story ranch, so having a second story was pretty cool for us kids. And, above the front door, there was an outcropping plank-like cement cover. It extended about two or three feet out and protected anyone on the porch from weather coming straight down. Above the porch cover was a window. Naturally, one of the first things my brothers and I learned how to do was climb out the top window and drop down a couple of inches onto the porch cover. Above the porch was a great place to look at the world (the key part was the tangible danger of falling off and possibly breaking a limb of some sort).

Getting back in from the porch cover was not quite as easy as getting out. The several inch drop from the window meant that to get back in, it required (for an eight year old boy) a leap (of both faith and real vertical) and a steely grab with both hands, followed by a pull and then a leg over. If you have seen any number of sheer rock climbing scenes in movies, that's exactly what it felt like.

Our apartment was on the end of the quadraplex. Our building and the next closest were located diagonally from each other, separated by about 100 feet and a sidewalk (the one we rode or walked to school on). Being on the end, and being a budding baseball super athlete, I spent many hours throwing a baseball against the wall of my family's apartment. I don't remember either of my parents telling me to stop throwing the ball against the wall. It either didn't bother them or was like a baseball GPS - they knew exactly where I was as long as they heard the ball bouncing off the wall.

The sidewalk that led to school also led to the American Post Office (APO) and the British Post Office (BPO - again, BEE-poh for those who wish to use the corrent pronunciation). The APO and the BPO were close to each other physically, but miles apart in coolness. The APO had stamps and post office boxes and would mail your letters; that was it. The BPO was an entire store which just happened to sell stamps and mail letters if you wanted them. The really cool thing about the BPO was that it sold candy of all sorts (by the bag, by the scoop, American, British, really every kind of candy), magazines of every type, comic books (Spiderman, Superman, Flash, the Justice League, the Fantastic Four, Sgt. Rock - one of my all time favorites - the reading of which helped me develop a pretty good vocabulary), soda, cookies (including scottish shortbread - really good) and newspapers and the little lady who ran the store spoke with a lovely English accent.

It was at the BPO that I found the best candy in all the world, sherbet UFOs. They are a UFO shaped set of two tiny saucer wafers, sealed together, with a sugary, tart powder in side. There are multiple ways of eating them, but the best way was to put the whole thing in your mouth, let the wafers dissolve and then let the powder hit your tongue like a sweet explosion (as I learned in science class, a powder is the state of any element which has the maximum surface area and so gets the maximum bang for whatever properties it exibits).

I loved sherbet UFOs while we lived there and then never saw them again, until, 35+ years later when I had a work assignment in England and asked some of my colleagues about them. They took me straight to a BPO and I bought a very large bag of my favorite candy (and then took that bag home and shared it with my family - who I think were not as excited as I was about them, but they smiled and acted enthusiastic - which I appreciated).

Have a good one. KipK

bike riding in England

When I was between the ages of 7 -9, my family lived on Lakenheath Air Force Base in England. For me, England was a great place to live. I loved everything about it: the fish and chips; the schools in Quonset huts; jamming all of us (5 children and 2 parents) into my dad's MG and going places; the round abouts; the accents, which I tried to imitate; going to the movie theatre on base (saw the very first Batman movie there) and following the episodic saga of either the Lone Ranger or some other cowboy. I loved going to the barbershop; going to Wales once and the beach there (I'm pretty sure I got burnt to a red roasted crisp that day); going to Stone Henge and running around the huge blocks of rock, coming round the corner and bopping heads with my younger brother. It was all fun.

Going to school there was a lot of fun too, for various reasons. I was good at everything in school, even recess and the games that went on there: tether ball, marbles, monkey bars and tag. My older brother loaned me three marbles at the beginning of third grade. I got pretty good at marbles, both the game of chase and shooting marbles from the circle. By the time we left England, I had hundreds of marbles earned in competition. My shooting style was palm down, different than most of the other players who shot with their palm up (see picture above) or at a right angle to the ground. With my palm down, I had good accuracy and could make the marble stick in the circle after it had hit another marble out (which continued my turn).

The route to school was from our apartment, past the American Post Office (the APO), past the British Post Office (the BPO or more accurately pronounced Bee-poh, more on this in a later post), along a sidewalk beside a second set of apartments and then to the Quonset hut where my class was. Going to school and coming home on my bike was a lot of fun and my friends and I usually raced both ways.

During one of the school years, there was construction going on near the APO and because of that, there appeared several large piles of dirt. Most were quickly removed and cleaned up but one remained for several weeks. My friends and I, who also watched British motocross on TV, took full advantage of the situation, the dirt pile becoming our own personal launch ramp. We all became quite good at getting up a head of steam, pedaling as fast as we could, zipping up one side of the ramp, catching "big" air, landing on the other side of the pile and riding down. Coming home from school became a competition to see who would be the first to get to the ramp and get the biggest air.

On a day very much like many that had gone before, we ran out of the classroom at the bell, jumped on our bikes and raced for the jump. We all worked hard and pedaled as fast as we could. That day, I was the fastest, saw the jump and pushed even harder to get a really high jump. I zoomed up the front of the dirt pile, ready for a great jump. As I reached the top and pushed off, I looked below to see that the other half of the pile had been removed while we were in school. I hung on in amazement as my bike and I went upside down (picture below is how it felt - for a second), landing on my back on what was left of the far side of the dirt pile. All the other bikers had seen my ascent and disappearance and came around the pile quickly but cautiously to see if I was okay. I think I cut my hand but I was okay. The best part of it all was the great story my friends all told the rest of the class the next day.

Until the next one, have a good one. KipK

Maybe, he's fat

So, everyone has goals at the beginning of the new year, right?

I love setting and working for and reaching goals. Here are a couple of my physical goals for 2009.

This year, I want to train for and run in a couple of half marathons. The first half will be in May. I have my training program outlined and, holidays excluded, I have begun to run in earnest. I am and will continue to work on building my endurance and my speed. If I do well in the May half, (per my own expectations), I will consider training for and running a full marathon, in which I will attempt to qualify for a fifth go around in Boston.

The other main physical goal I have is to practice and play better, good, improving golf. In my summer golf league, I want to produce multiple sub 40 scores (we play nine each week). In the full 18-hole games I play in, I would like to go under 80 1/4 of the time I play (or more). This will take practice, which I enjoy, and increased focus on the parts of the game where scoring is done, short game and putting (which I also enjoy-the practice of and those parts of the game). During my pursuit of these goals, I promise myself that I will enjoy the game, being outside, playing a game with friends and the privilege of having a body that allows me to play golf.

I also want to train for and swim/bike/run in a mini triathlon. There are several local mini triathlons I can choose. The key aspect of this goal is the swimming. While I was once a Red Cross certified swimmer at life guard level (in my teens), my talents in the water now are negligible. So, to reach this goal, I will need to build up my endurance and speed in the water, lap by lap.

During the course of the year and while in pursuit of the above physical goals, I plan on losing 12 pounds of the personal food storage I have around my middle. I figure a pound a month should almost naturally follow while I am running, swimming, biking, walking and swinging a club. I'll help myself in this goal by eating more good things and not so much of the "c" foods: chocolate, chips, candy. There you have them (at least a couple of them). I'll let you know how it goes. Check back in December for a full report. Have a good one. KipK

and now

This morning, my youngest daughter got into her packed up SUV and she and Lucy, the dog she is taking care of for a friend, began to make her way back to school in the south. The trip takes about 14 hours in normal, no rain/sleet/snow conditions. Today's conditions included the aforementioned rain/sleet/snow and the going will take patience and endurance on her part.

With their departure, the house is back to its pre-holiday condition, that is, quiet and dog-less; maybe a little too quiet, and a little too dog-less. I keep expecting to see my daughter downstairs, working on her computer, or reading a guide to graduate schools, or to hear the clinking of dog license and ID as a certain young dog comes up to see what I or my wife are doing.
Over the last few days, I have enjoyed having my daughters home, my in-laws in and the dog (just over a year old, Labrador retriever/rottweiler mix) running around and up and down the stairs.

And now, I miss them all. I also have come to a conclusion that many people reach a lot sooner. My daughters may come home from time to time, during the holidays, perhaps for a moment this summer; but, barring unforeseen circumstances, they are truly out on their own, making they way through this wonderful thing called life. While that thought (and multiple variations of it) had crossed my mind several times over the past few years, this year's end of the holiday season brought it home. And, the fact that we all had such a great time this year perhaps just contributes to the sense of loss.

Now, what do I (we, my wife and I) do? Sweep, vacuum, put away the decorations, prepare a lesson for Sunday School, go work out (if the roads clear up a bit), write a little bit on my project, read, watch a little TV, send a note to my girls, think about all the fun things I/we can do this year, en fin, get on with it, get going, get off my duff, go after my goals and paddle at full speed underneath the water while keeping a calm, cool above the water demeanor.

And, until the next one, have a good one. KipK.