It’s been another busy month. Busy on the home front (seems like there’s something going on every day)  and busy on the work front (I think we’ve finally settled in, but the business never sleeps). Sometimes I wish I didn’t need sleep. And believe me I’ve tried to get by with nothing. For awhile I actually slept every other night (that was a bad idea). Time is just so hard to come by. That’s been on my mind a lot lately- lack of time. Maybe I just manage my time poorly. I could be exercising instead of doing this blog post!

Speaking of exercising… Rachel organized a relay marathon a few weeks ago. Each of the five members on the relay team runs a 5K section.  Fran trained for it blazed through her section in about 47 mins.  That’s basically five ten minute miles. Not bad! Makes me want to train for a race.

Speaking of races… A couple weeks back Jim, Justin and I hit the Rocky Mountain Raceway for some midnight drags. Anyone who hasn’t gone should check it out- $5 to go watch people dual it out in the quarter mile. And a mighty dual it was. Corvette vs. Corvette vs. Camaro I  ran a 12.1 at 131mph, Jim ran a 12.2 at 121 and Justin ran a 12.3 at 117mph! It was a super close race between Jim and I- he had me until about 90mph. You can check out one of our races and some pictures on Jim & Cindy’s blog. We were all hoping for 11 second runs, but we’ll have to get a little faster.

Speaking of a little faster… That’s what I plan to be shortly. I recently picked up a copy of HP Tuners. This nifty little software package gives the user control over every aspect of the car’s engine computer (yes, this can be very dangerous) . I need to pick up a few more things before I’m ready to start seriously tweaking, but I predict a predict a lot of fun… or tears.

Speaking of tears… I’m guessing people who shelled out 4K or 5K for a Dell color laptop ten years ago have shed a few. In the past couple of weeks I’ve gotten two laptops and I can’t believe all the computer you get for the money these days. The little guy above to the right was $279. It’s an HP Mini Notebook from Best Buy (I think this model might only be available though them). I got it to use with HP Tuners and it stays in my car- fits perfectly in my glove box. It has a 16 gig solid state drive (important to me since it will get bumped around in the car) a gig of ram, a 9″ 1024 x 600 screen, high speed wireless, USB outs, – everything that would have cost thousands of dollars a few years ago. The other laptop was a Dell Studio XPS. Again- an amazing bang for the buck.

Speaking of bang and bucks… A couple of nights ago we went to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus!  I haven’t been to a circus in years and I have some really good memories from when I was a kid. Aside from trapeze performers they had all the good stuff I was expecting. We got to see magic acts, a ton of awesome acrobatics, people shooting out of a cannon (bang), clowns, tigers, elephants, tightrope walkers and more. I have admit it wasn’t always easy to follow everything- at  times there was so much going on that the ring seemed chaotic. And it didn’t help that our kids seemed to have an endless queue of needs.

It may seem terrible to say, but if we were to go to the circus again soon we might leave some (or all) of the kids home. We willingly bought $10 cotton candy and a $9 lemonade (bucks) to appease their ceaseless demands for food, but Mike wanted popcorn as well ($12). We said “no” so he folded his arms, arranged a giant frown on his face and announced that he was wasn’t happy. He managed to sulk all the way home. That kind of put a damper on festivities. Gabriel was also a handful, but he’s 2- we can cut him some slack. Hopefully Mike will remember that we went to the circus and not that we refused to buy him Popcorn. I guess it’s hard to be a kid.

I always get confused when I post- I can’t remember if the pictures go first and then I blab. Or if I blab first and then put a picture. Ah well- I’ll let people figure out which blab goes with which pic. Until next time.