Pocket Pigs

asthma

I haven't been writing about triathlon training since the Hawk Island Triathlon because there hasn't been any training since the race. When I finished the race I was wheezing and coughing quite a bit, but I didn't think much of it since I've felt like that after running in the past. I figured it was just more of the same and it would pass pretty quickly. Wrong. The day after the race I was still having a hard time breathing, so I called my dad's allergy/asthma doctor to see if I could get in. They were able to squeeze me in that afternoon, so I hopped in the car and headed down to Ann Arbor to find out what was going on. When the doctor listened to my breathing she asked how I was able to go to work that day. Not a good sign. She had me do a breathing treatment while I was there, but I was still wheezing after that. She gave me some steroids and an inhaler to take home. She said I should avoid exercise for a few days until the steroids could get my breathing under control. Unfortunately the steroids and inhaler didn't do the trick. Sunday night I laid in bed until after 2:00 am feeling like I couldn't breathe. I finally fell asleep, but I didn't sleep well. I called the doctor Monday morning and they said I should come in to get checked out again. I didn't want to drive to Ann Arbor again, so I went to the urgent care in Lansing. The doctor said I had a slight wheeze and she gave me another breathing treatment. She also wanted to do a chest x-ray just to make sure there wasn't anything else going on. The x-ray was clear, so she gave me a new steroid inhaler. This one seems to be doing the trick. I haven't had any problems since then and I'm feeling pretty good again. I'm scheduled to go back to the doctor in Ann Arbor for a breathing test to officially diagnose my asthma and to get a full allergy test (skin pricks and all). I'm hoping that I'll be able to get this under control so I can start training again. I was thinking about running a 5k later this month, but I don't see that happening since I haven't been able to run for almost 2 weeks. Mandi's dad is bringing her bike over tomorrow so we'll be able to start riding together and I think I'm going to try to join the Playmakers team ride on Sunday.

june 12, 2010

Mandi and I took the afternoon off to meet with the priest at the church we want to get married in and get the official tour of our reception site. We decided awhile ago that we want to get married in Grand Rapids because there is more stuff to do there for our out of town guests and we don't really like the wedding options in Lansing. On Sunday we drove around looking at all of the Catholic churches and checking out our reception site. The stars aligned and both our top church and the reception site were available on June 12. We were worried that we would lose the date at the church since we couldn't officially book it until we met with the priest, so Mandi made a bunch of calls and we were able to set up a meeting for this afternoon. We're super excited about the church. Imagine a cathedral and then scale it down a little, but not much. We chose St. Alphonsus (www.stalphonsusgr.org) for the ceremony and the Grand Rapids Public Museum (www.grmuseum.org). So mark your calendars for 2:00 pm on June 12, 2010 cuz we're getting married!!!

the engagement

I asked Mandi to marry me on May 21, 2009. And of course she said yes (the first question my parents asked was if she said yes). Here's how it happened: I started shopping for rings back in January and finally found the perfect ring in April. That's when I started putting the planning wheels in motion. I knew that Mandi really missed her friends in Atlanta and that she would want to tell them in person, so I emailed her friend Priscilla to figure out a weekend when we could come visit. The best weekend turned out to be Memorial Day weekend, so I booked a flight and we kept it a secret from Mandi. I told Mandi that she would need to get Friday of Memorial Day weekend off so we could go out of town, but I didn't tell her where we were going. Mandi had bought me tickets to the Billy Joel and Elton John concert on Thursday for Valentine's Day, so I figured we would just get a hotel after the concert and fly out Friday morning. A couple days before the trip I told Mandi that we were going to Atlanta for the weekend so that she would know what to pack. On Thursday I took the day off so I could pick up the ring and get things ready for the big moment. When Mandi got home from work she was rushing around gathering the last few items to pack in her bag. I told her that she got a new magazine in the mail and handed her a special edition of "Mandi & Kevin." You see, Mandi has a thing for celebrity gossip magazines so I made a mock magazine cover based on her favorite one, "Life & Style." I used pictures from our trip to Cape Cod, a wedding we went to in May, a concert in February, and a picture of Chester. Each picture had a witty caption. The main caption/headline read: "Will she say yes? Kevin asks the big question." When I handed Mandi the magazine it took her a moment to realize what was going on. It finally sank in when I pulled out the ring. At that moment I think I stood there with a dumb look on my face and said something like, "Well, will you?" She responded that I better get down on one knee and ask, so I did. We spent the next few minutes hugging, kissing, laughing, hitting me, and generally being happy. Then we had to rush out the door to get to the concert. We both called our parents and Mandi called a couple friends as we drove to the concert, but otherwise we kept it a secret until Priscilla picked us up from the airport. We spent the rest of the weekend celebrating with Mandi's Atlanta peeps. Since then we've been trying to figure out where and when to have the wedding. We're looking at spring of 2010 and we have a tentative hold on a reception location while we figure out the church piece. Hopefully I'll have more info about that soon.

the veggies are coming, the veggies are coming

Ever since the front porch started falling off the house I've been working on ripping out the raised planters in the front of the house. One of the byproducts of the project is a lot of dirt with nowhere to put it. Mandi and I decided we would put the dirt to work by putting in a vegetable garden in the backyard. So a few weeks ago I took a day off and my parents came over to help me put together a garden box. We ended up going with a 10' x 12' box. I used most of the extra dirt to fill the box and I'll use the rest of the dirt when we finish the front of the house. We ended up planting a mix of seeds and plants. Plants: 2 tomato plants, 2 cucumber bushes, 2 green pepper plants, 2 red pepper plants, and 2 rows of lettuce plants. Seeds: green beans, wax beans, lettuce, spinach, and green onions. The plants didn't seem to be doing so hot at first and the seeds didn't seem intent on popping up. I watered every night and we waited. It probably didn't help that we had a frost the night after we planted. But our patience paid off. When we got back from Atlanta the lettuce plants had spruced up and some of the seeds started to pop up. Now we have seedlings for all of the seed varieties, we have peppers on all four plants, and the lettuce is looking great. Tonight we harvested our first batch of lettuce to make taco salad. Yum.