Katie's Bday and other fun

Yesterday was Katie's birthday. I remember when we first started dating and I was trying to brag that I remembered what it was. It is easy, 1, 2, 3, but for some reason I said 1, 2, 6, :-/. I haven't lived that one down yet. I am almost never around for Katie's birthday, most of the time I am gone for work, and back in college I was competing. I think in that last ten years this was the second time I was around for her birthday. So I suck at being here. I don't know how to surprise her, I can almost never keep a secret from her. I am going to try to plan a vacation for us and surprise her with it. She knows we are going to go someplace but doesn't know when or where. I think I will be lucky if I can pull it off. I don't know what that is about.

Over the years I have liked to buy Katie some nice jewelry. It was something that my grandfather said to me about how he would duck into the jewelry store on his way home some days and buy my grandmother something nice. I thought that was so amazing to be some successful that he could do that, and I wanted to be like that. I am not there yet but I have gotten her some small things. This year I got her some nice diamond stud earings. They are not big and unless you look you might not ever see them but she likes them. And it makes me happy that I can get them for her. We also went out for breakfast in the morning and we went to dinner that night. In between we went shopping for most of the day. It was nice just hanging out all day.

I road for about an hour yesterday on the trainer and was planning on riding again today. I have been battling something again though and had to leave work early. So I have taken the day off the bike, again. The kids at the gym have been passing around something and I just caught it. I really need to do something about getting sick so often though. It has never been this bad, and I am not even training that hard. Once I start doing 15+ hour weeks I am going to really be hurting if I can't hold off these colds, or flu, or whatever.

I went in last night to work with an athlete of mine to learn a new release move. She has come along really quickly, going from drills to this in about 2 weeks.

This is really pretty good except for not catching the bar. Most girls don't ever do this skill this well. Over the next year I hope this will get even better. It helps that she is a great bar swinger and very strong. With some courage and determination she will be catching this next weekend in Collinsville IL at the Gateway Challenge.