Garden Time

Ended up being a pretty productive day.  Picked up the frost cover at the Post Office.  Got some chicken fertilizer and even managed to stop at the hardware store for some other items.  Then got the rear porch lights working with new motion sensors.  Repaired the handles of the third floor bathroom. 

Then on to the garden.  We may be a little behind starting some of the garden items, but we did plant two small rows of peas. Even got the fencing up to support the vines as the grow. Since my frost cover came in for my 3 x 3 driveway planter I decided to take a chance and plant some lettuce and peppers. A bit early for them, but I figure I can always cover them.  If things got bad enough, run a cord with a light bulb out to the container to keep it warm enough so I don't lose anything. Of course if it snows next week, I just won't worry about it. Starry as usual loves any reason to play in the dirt. 

And I did the digging with a spade wearing my new Five Fingers, was surprised how well the functioned digging up the soil.

Five Fingers

Went out shopping in downtown Manchester for a good pair of shoes to wear walking back and forth to work everyday.  Stopped by Runner's Alley on Hanover Street.  Mike at the store was very helpful.  He asked a lot of questions and will check out your running style and help you decide what type of shoes are good for you.  They do not appear to be set on selling you any one type of shoe over the other.  He made some suggestions and then let my feet tell me which pair was best.

Mike also gave me a lot of pointers about running so I really felt it was well worth the cost of going to a speciality store to purchase the new shoes. After trying on several different pairs of shoes I narrowed my choice down the Five Finger Shoes and another minimalist style running shoe.  They were both the same price, so no help there in picking out which one I wanted.  They did not have my size in the Five Fingers so they ordered me a pair in a different size to try on.  Once again a good reason to shop at a speciality store.  That pair was a tad too small, so I waited yet another week while they got the next size up.  As you can see I bought the Five Fingers.

They warn you it may take your feet and legs a bit to get use to the different style of shoe.  You should walk more on the forefoot verse heel striking first, so you'll use different muscles.  The day I bought them I walked about 4 miles before having to switch back to my old shoes.  Your results may vary, but I started to get a hot spot under the ball of my right foot.  You may also want to keep the miles low since the next day I could feel some muscle soreness in my legs. 

Overall I love the shoes.  The really do feel like your walking barefoot, except your not getting hurt by the sharp objects on the ground.  They are better then sandals since when I took them off the paved paths onto a real sandy trail I did not have to stop and shake stuff out from between my foot and the sandal.  I even ended up digging up my garden wearing them the next Saturday and they worked great.

What about the fabric between the toes.  Yes I do feel that, but it is not too bad.  I have never liked flip flops because the the cord between the toes, but this feels nothing like that.  It is noticeable but not annoying.  And the overall feeling overrides that one small perceived disadvantage.

Note;  I am not affiliated with Runner's Alley in any way.  I purchased the shoes at full price and receive nothing for the positive review and remarks about their store.

Yikes! Green Hair!!

Not sure what happened here, maybe it was the shampoo or just because it was Crazy Hair Day at school.  She didn't want me to do any thing with her hair until I remembered the can of green hair spray that I had.  She loved it.  She says it was super crazy.  Her friend Corey had hair blue and orange hair dye in his hair too.    The only thing was she didn't want to wash it out at the end of the day. Each day at school they have a different theme, she plans to wear her Wonder Women outfit for one of the days.  School sure has changed since I was a kid.

New Bicycle Helmet

 I haven't bought a new bicyle helmet in over 5 years and they are said to only be good for 5 years.  Of course when I come home with a new helmet Starry needs one as well.  As long as it keeps her interested in cycling I'll spend the few bucks to keep her interest.

We go to my favorite cycling shop in Manchester, NH.  Blue Steel Cyclery on Second Street near the Queen City Bridge.  The guys there are great helping her out and they start searching for a helmet.  I find a nice pink one which she tries on and then spends 5 minutes looking in the mirror and decides she wants to try on another.  After another 5 minutes of looking in the mirror she decides on this helmet. Best of all, the helmets were all on sale.  Got this one for around $26, with expert fitting free of charge.  Try to beat that Wal-mart.

Afterwards we took a 90 minute bike ride up the bicycle path to Pinardville and then over to Staples in Bedford for some printer toner and finally back home.  Can't believe this great weather we are having in April.

Tanita Scale

I bought a new bathroom scale.  Not your ordinary scale.  This scale gives you a complete body anaylsis. 

This shows all my scale data from my first weigh-in.  I have been working on losing a few pounds, dispite what people may think I knew that I was a little over weight, this shows how much the  'little' was, a bit more then I thought. 

The best part of the scale is that it will let me know how much of my weight lose is actually the fat that I intend to lose and not muscle or water.  For a really good review of this scale check out http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/02/tanita-bc-1000-scale-review-in-depth.html

Starry's Tooth

Story by Starry in her own words

I was doing my reports on cats and Mr. Dominic came in and I showed him my tooth.  He then went out of the room.  Then I showed my friend Brianna.  She said why don't you get a tissue.  I got a tissue and I started to pull out my tooth.  And my friend kept encouraging me too pull it out.  I was scarred and I went into the bathroom and started to pull.  After I went to the bathroom, I wiggled it and I saw that I could turn it all around so I could see the back.   And then I pulled and it came out.  And I got pale and dizzy too.  And I was coughing and it sounded like I was going to puke, so I went to the nurse.  The nurse said that I could stay in school all day. The nurse gave me a tooth necklace to put my tooth in so I would not lose it.  I hope the tooth fairy does not take the necklace.

A Girl and Her Shoes

Starry just loves her shoes.  We went out to buy her new dance shoes, her old pair were two sizes to small.  Then since Easter was coming up and she didn't have a nice pair of dress shoes to wear I figured I would get dress shoes while I was there.  That lead to summer dress shoes (sandals) and might as well get her a pair of summer shoes as well.  I thought she would pick cloggs, but she choose the pink water shoes instead.  She still wanted a few more pairs. 

Slime Night

The church had a Slime Night filled with games for the kids.  Many of the games were centered around slime like this one where they dug around in the slime to find little toys they could keep.  They also made slime, played tossing games and many other fun things.  One interesting activity had them stand in the middle of a pool of bubbles juice on a cinder block, then using a hola hoop the attempted to make a bubble around them.