My grandmother is going to haunt us among other things.

Well to start off with the first part of the title I will not be surprised if my parents phone rings and mysteriously hangs up ..constantly...in the middle of the night... My father buried a phone with our beloved Memere. To understand the joke one would have to understand the lady she was, she'd get home at 5PM put on comfortable clothes and her slippers, grab a pack of cigarettes ( hey it was the 60's -70's) and make her rounds of phone calls to her friends, family, you name it. If they had AIM she'd have a buddy list as big as de Nile ( yes the river in Egypt.) well anyway on day in 1970 something my father made the sly comment that he was going to bury her a damn telephone, and sure enough yesterday, her tossed a cheap-o phone that served me through my two years at Fordham into the casket. All I know is I'm not answering any phone calls from Valhalla, Heaven, Hell, Hades,Purgatory, Paradise, or Beyond for a while, or at least not without a chuckle.

Next order of business, last night I worked out with some of the girls on CCSU's Swim team ( the men's program went the way of the dodo about a decade ago...afterall America loves their swimmers unless the men's program interferes with the football, and basketball budgets.) Needless to say I'm fast for a triathlete but put me in the water with the real deals and I'm usually hanging on for dear life. Needless to say we didn't do much, and I felt kind of awkward because I live with the assumption most female swimmers ( except for my Fordham team mates, and a couple of the girls who dabble in tri ) hate my guts and find me annoying, but having to push for a little bit felt good.

I got in touch with Catherine and found out the Times is undergoing job cuts, she was on the chopping block, and will know today whether or not she'll be staying in Taupo or heading back to New Plymouth, regardless she said she'll be up for the Ironman and would try to help me find a home stay, regardless I'm keeping Ken Glah's number close at hand. But hopefully she'll keep her gig, otherwise, she's looking at going into police training. But still I wonder if she'd be interested in coming Stateside?

Classes are going ok, I showed up 5 min. late for a lab and the professor was packing up, it seems like it's going to be a straight forward no bull class and the less bull the better. My assignments for the weekend are pretty simple read a lot of John Locke, read some stuff on Ethnic groups, and top it off with the preface to how Colonial New Englanders viewed themselves as British subjects and London, not Hartford, not Boston, not even NYC was the center or shall I say centre of the universe.

Well that's it for me. Time to get home so I can get back to the grind.
R.D.

Life and Death

"get busy living, or get busy dying." - Shawshank Redemption

Well Today was supposed to hold on tap a long ride and a long day of tracking friends and fellow bloggers racing IM KY. ( As of right now Tony L is still running.) John Hirsch finished 11th overall 10th inthe pro men with a time of 9:37.02.

Bree Wee managed to avenge her DNF in Canada last weekend with a stellar preformance, including the day's fastest bike split. She finished 9th among the pro women with a time of 10:48.25 good enough for 92nd overall.

I will post an edit on Tony's status as I recieve splits.

Sadly this day has been overshadowed by the passing of my Memere ( Grandmother )@ rougly 4:00AM this morning. While part of me is a little sad at her passing, it is a welcome relief that her 3 year battle with Alzheimer's is finally over, and somewhere on the other side she is whole again. ( although she will probably haunt us for some of the pictures we chose to show at the wake. If metal spoons ( yes metal, she broke the wooden one on my dad.) start flying across the room, we'll know it was because we chose to show the picture of her grade school graduation, or her pic from the convent, ( yes my Pepere ( Grandfather) had cajones he pulled a girl out of the convent back in the 50's. Angry, possible strategy?) The next few days are going to be a little hectic, with work, school and a funeral in the mix, but I'll get through. So all in all there was no training today, but with everything going into hurry up offense at 4AM I won't really hold it against myself.

It's been a hell of a day.
R.D.

Edit: Tony L finished in 13:00.35 looking at the run split, it looks like the heat took its toll on him, but a hell of an effort to finish.