Black Hole

It's a black hole up here, I swear. I'm writing posts, hit "publish" and then, BAM, they're gone.

Because clearly, it can't be that I'm neglecting The Anticipated Best Summer Ever.

Here's what I'm going to do for this post. Instead of my favorite posts, which pick on something that happened and make fun of it or espouse on it or whatever.

Instead, I'm going to write this like an e-mail catching up with an old friend. Because there is lots going on, and here's what it all is!

I've mentioned it a few times, but I'm in training for the American Odyssey Relay Race at the end of April. Here's the deal with it: teams of 12 (two vans, holding six runners each) will cover 200 miles from Gettysburg to Washington, D.C., in about 30 hours. One person from the team will always be running, including straight through the night.

Melissa has been doing an incredible job of getting this all together and organizing everyone. Twelve people is a lot to keep track of! I have the second-easiest leg, and it sounds like it'll be easy - I run 4 miles, then 4 miles, then 4.9 miles.

Piece of cake. Except for the whole, sitting in a van for 9 hours in between each run. Cramping up. Not eating. Not sleeping. But most definitely smelling, and smelling the others around me.

So I'm confident it'll be incredibly physically (and mentally) challenging!

I'm also gearing up for Lasik surgery soon. The above-mentioned race is throwing a kink in the scheduling of the surgery because I have to wear my glasses for two weeks before the surgery and then can't do strenuous exercise (like running) for two weeks after. I don't really want to wear my glasses for the race, but I also can't take off two weeks in April with no running as I'm prepping for the relay.

I'm doing a bunch of pre-op screenings next week (and therefore have been wearing my glasses for the past two weeks and I have re-discovered anew why I so desperately want to have Lasik!), but then it looks like the actual surgery won't be until mid-May. And it's all my fault. I've been talking about doing this for a long time, Mike finally agreed that in 2009 I could do it (with our left-over HSA money from 2008), and it took me until the end of February to get going. If I'd just started these screenings in January, I'd be 20/20 by now!

Further scheduling difficulties for the surgery are that I'm out of town for the last half of March. I start the tax seminar travel. Nine seminars in nine cities in two weeks. So if you're in Raleigh, Boston, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Arlington, Oakland, Denver, Vegas, or San Marcos, please join us! Drop me a line and I'll get you registered for free. Pass the information on to friends - please!!!

I'm extending the tax seminar travel by a few days and going from San Marcos to Austin, Texas, for a 10K race with some colleagues and their families. I've never been to Austin, although heard lots of stories from said colleagues and I'm really looking forward to that!

Meanwhile, the move at work is getting closer. We now have a moving date, which just happens to be... the day before I start the two weeks of travel. I'm sure that'll go smoothly.

Of course, I'm not planning on taking it easy in April. We are in the middle of scheduling a trip to Miami over Easter weekend for a friend's 30th birthday. Then back to Raleigh for a charity gala with Terry and Sara. Then the relay race...

Oh, this is fun! Because of all this travel, Patricia is giving me a stuffed animal to take on the trips and take photos of to send her at school. As part of her lessons for the kids. Yay! I'm so excited. In fact, it's kind of silly how excited I am. I just think this'll be fun!

Ok, that's the big stuff! Trying to lay low this weekend, catch up on some work, and head into the office to pack before the move. I'm scheduled to fly to Dallas on Monday morning, but now they are calling for a big snow storm Sunday night to Monday morning. I need to be in Dallas for Tuesday morning, but wanted to be there early on Monday because Keith (you all know him from comments on this blog!) is doing a Washington Post chat live at 10 a.m. Central, 11 a.m. Eastern. I'd love to be in the office when he does that. Otherwise, I'll refuse to get on a flight until after the chat is over so I can check it out online!

So, Barb, and anyone else with small biz tax questions, go submit a question!)

Might get sidetracked a bit this weekend, though. Mike's really not feeling well (he does horrible with drastic temperature changes, like how this week it went from 30 to 60 and today back down to 30). I feel bad because he took the second part of the CPA exam yesterday and slept horribly the night before and was all cough-y during it. He was up at 5:30 a.m. this morning coughing (so guess who else got up at 5:30 a.m.?). I made him some tea and honey, put on Ratatouille, and he's back asleep now.

Me? I'm off to the gym! I hope this post was minimally interesting!