Swimming at Claiborne

Had a lovely swim here this morning so I brought the girls back for some fun
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Catherine is satisfied

. . . with the color of their new room. (Lucky thing, because it was a single mis-mixed gallon that I picked up at a huge discount). Just finished painting this today - one room and 2 bathrooms to go! Plus miles of trim to get the white semi-gloss treatment.

Before and after, interior painting

Definitely a work in progress, but here are some photos of the interior painting I've been doing. All the carpet is going to be replaced in a week or so, so I haven't done the baseboards yet either because they'll probably get torn up in the process.

Before and after, from upstairs hall:

Before and after, upstairs bathroom:

Before and after, living room (looking toward front door and through to dining room on left):

Bring on the new carpet!

Ironman branding FAIL

I took this photo in our local Target today. I think it's conclusive evidence that Ironman has jumped the shark.

Zoo day

Today I took a break from the house and training and had a fun day with the kindergarteners and pre-K kids at the zoo. We all had a great time! They took much more interest in the various animals than they did on our field trip there last year.

The cutest part was when we came up to the American Bison on display and Catherine exclaimed, "MOM! It has an EGG!"

Cycling and sheetrocking

Started out today very early with a great 48-mile bike ride. I was pleased with the pace, 16.9 mph average, and to crack 100 miles for this week. That's a good start to the long haul to Beach to Battleship iron-distance triathlon in six months from now! Time to start cranking up that volume!

Things at the new house are coming along, very gradually. Here's one of the upstairs bedrooms that I just finished painting - except for touchups (the trim needs a second coat), baseboard, and doors. We just had the whole house measured for new carpeting - that's still the old nasty stuff on the floor. Hopefully we'll have the new stuff installed within a week to 10 days, but I have a lot of painting to finish first.

"Before" with dingy old flat white paint (one coat over the wallboard and trim will do ya):

"After" with fresh warm tan paint (Kilz Casual Colors Dusty Orange), new bright white flat paint on the ceiling, and white semigloss on the trim (and begone with the fake removeable plastic window mullions):

The big remodeling project is coming along! They're right in the middle of doing the sheetrocking and plastering now. When they complete that, we move on to painting, flooring, and installation of cabinets and appliances! Then it's moving day!

Ariel bathroom done

One room down, many to go!!! (Thanks for your shopping help, Shawn!)
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Early ride on Mothers Day

My training buddy Dave at a pitstop at Claiborne landing on a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Never criticize Ironman management

For if you do, you may be summarily booted out of their WTC race.

http://smaryka.blogspot.com/2009/05/ive-been-kicked-out-of-ironman-uk.html

Because they can. Anything is possible!

Sheesh!

Makeup

One never knows how Catherine is going to emerge from the bathroom.
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Drying the sails

Another dreary gray day, but at least no rain yet. This is my harbor view along my standard running route.

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Poison ivy

I spent a while this morning chopping out poison ivy at the rear of our new property.

Some of the vines were thicker than my wrist.

See all those luxuriant leaves up in the tree? Uhhh, it's a pine tree. Those are ALL poison ivy leaves.

Ahhh, much better. I only chopped out the vines and leaves to head-height, the rest of it is going to have to die on the tree because it's too high to pull down. Notice I also chopped through some miserable stinking English ivy on the shed in the background too.

Rainbow cupcakes

Inspired by the rainbow cake made at Omnomicon, we attempted to make rainbow cupcakes today by the same method - just to see if it would work. The hardest part was finding the concentrated gel food colorings, but I finally located them at the largest grocery store in our area. Then the fun began with 6 bowls of colored cake batter (just using a standard cake mix):


Dropped in rainbow order into the center of cupcake thingies:


The final batter appearance:


The view after baking:


And much to our surprise, slicing one open revealed a perfect inverted rainbow! Hurrah! (Now I wonder how it would look with uncolored batter to start and end the rainbow so it would have white in the middle instead of the solid purple center):

The most important part of cleanup is having an assistant standing by to lick the frosting off the beaters: