Good morning, planning on a few miles this afternoon.

I am remodeling DS's room, and planning it takes a lot of time for two reasons:

1) the room is tiny and poorly laid out (you wonder how a 8x9 room can even be laid out, but the closet, described as "walk in" in the lease, actually is only 4'8" high  and this makes things difficult when you know your son is growing up to be somewhere around 5'8" to 5'10" in the next 2-3 years).

2) Currently there's our piano in the room and I can't get rid of it - nobody wants it. I have tried donating it to different organizations, advertising it for free, asking people, no success. And I can't get my heart to just destroying it, as it is fully functional and flawless. So there's that piano in this tiny room, and it takes up half the space already.

How the heck do you get rid of a piano? It weighs around 350 lbs and pianos break easily, so I can't even move it myself.

moonlight: Enjoy the time with your grandkids!

QOTD: My dad is a hero in my life. We are very similar in terms of being risk-takers, fearless and adventurous, and rather be without people around than having to deal with them. We both love nature and being outdoors, hiking, camping, and observing wildlife and flora.

When I was growing up, our family used to go on extensive travels, or rather expeditions, by car, from one place to another every day, to find my dad's "animals" (he is an entomologist and works on tiny leaf-mining moths). That involved a lot of hiking, and looking at all kinds of plants and trees to find leaves which had the moth larvae in them. We would travel across whole continents on these expeditions.

Now my dad is 86 years old, and up until this year, he still went on his expeditions, either with my sister, or with fellow entomologists, or twice with me. At the age of 83 and 85, he took a plane from Europe to America, and together we traveled by car across several states, again in search of his "animals". It was fun to come around full circle again and re-live this experience from earlier years that we both love so much.

It is sad that my mom can't do this any more, she is suffering from severe dementia, but my dad takes care of her at home and would never put her in a facility.

Just a few weeks ago, my dad was diagnosed with parotid (?) cancer, and he got surgery. He is scheduled to receive radiation treatment as follow-up. Unfortunately, in the three weeks between surgery and radiation, the tumor grew right back to its original, huge size, and the doctors do not give him much of a chance of getting rid of it. So it might only be a few weeks that my dad's going to be around, or a few months. I do not know how this is going to turn out, but I hope to be able to travel to Austria and see him again.

I don't have a passport (it expired), and I can't take my kids with me (court order within divorce), so this is difficult to arrange.

But still, my dad is my hero, and I hope to see him again while he is still around.

First three miles at a quick pace for me, but I quickly overheated doing that, so the remaining 1.1 miles was more a brisk walk to get back to the start.

qotd: My father was a character. Think Groucho Marx type of sense of humor. He was also a commercial artist and that extended to always having some sort of remodeling project in progress around the house and yard. Largely self-educated he was enamored with trying to understand relativity and quantum physics despite having no head for math and only a GED as his formal education. Fortunately I had a talent for math and much of our interaction while I was growing up was helping him with his equations and calculations, no tossing a baseball or football for us. I apparently inherited his quirky sense of humor and love of puns.

Spending a day at work.  Sometimes I think I'd rather be poor then to keep working.

FTYC - Ouch, that sounds like an impossibly small room.  No ideas on the piano. Did you try Facebook Marketplace?

QOTD:  My dad was by far the adventurous one of my parents.  He always wanted to just take off on a Sunday drive and keep going to see around the next bend and over the next hill.  Unfortunately my mother was the exact opposite.  She always was anxious and fearful and seemed to cultivate that. She also had a much stronger personality then my dad so he mostly just stayed home.

At the same time he managed to do some interesting things.  Dropped out of high school after 9th grade, went in the Air Force, became a aircraft crash rescue/firefighter for them then worked in that job as a civilian for 16-17 years. Ended up getting pretty high up with some very high security clearances.  Met several of the presidents back in the 60's and 70s when he would be providing fire protection for Air Force One.  He always seemed to have a knack for meeting and talking to the bigwigs. When he was driving truck he was on a first name basis with several CEOs of larger supermarkets.  Part of that was that he hauled a lot of produce for a old order Mennonite guy and would often deliver special products to the CEOs and others.    At the same time he didn't really do a lot of things with us kids. Hunting every fall was one of the big things that we did together.

When we moved to PA, they bought a old farm house that had some really bad floors and walls. He tore out floors and walls, replaced joists and studs and really became a pretty good trim man.  Now at 82 I had to go over and change a flapper bulb in their toilet the other day. He knew what was wrong but seemed unable to know how to proceed . At the same time my mother may have been the one not letting him do it.

Ran a longish run at Mash Creek SP on or way to Philly. Lots of MTB’ers out there and a few hikers. Was pretty warm and mugggy and trails seemed to be in the direct sun more than I thought they would be, but nice place.

Saw Paul Simon last night. Great concert.

QOTD:  My Dad died in a car accident 16 years ago. He had just retired and never gt to enjoy it. He was a great guy and my favorite quality that he had was treating all people the same. It didn’t matter if it was a company CEO or the company janitor, he always had time to talk to them and showed respect when he did.  Family was everything to him, and he was the one who kept everyone connected. He coached us in any sport we played growing up and to this day, my brother and I still help out coaching kids.

Did 13 yesterday and 6 today.  Sort of a cutback week for me since I'm going to do that 30k with my kiddos next Saturday night.  Today's run was in the pouring rain, I was hoping it would be cool, but it was like a warmish shower.  The sun came out for the middle miles and it was like a total freakin mugfest steam bath...  uuugh.  For the last mile the rain really came down and wind came up a bit out of the north and it was a refreshing 82 deg. The lightening also help keep my legs moving.

Cool cake GC !!!!  By the way and with a nod to the “great pie debate”, here’s a photo of today’s desert; my DW made a blueberry buckle.

qotd: My Dad was pretty cool.  He had all of us sailing on the bay as soon as we could and I always appreciated that.  He was a bit of a hot head at times and drank a little too much at times, but his heart was always in the right place even if he did things in his own round-a-bout way.  He always listened and looked after our Mom and us kids though.  I have a ton of really great memories growing up, but also a few not so great ones too. What can I say?, he was my Dad.

Long road trip to VA and back over the weekend, and now just catching up and really enjoying all the dad stories.  It's interesting how we can see bits of own own father in others'.

Ran 11 along the Potomac Heritage Trail on Sunday morning.  It was pretty muddy in parts from all the rain this year, but not terrible.  Saw a fox and lots of deer along the way.

FTYC - Hope you can find a solution to the piano.  And if you don't try to get an expedited passport renewal, go with the regular renewal ASAP.  Sometimes it doesn't take as long as they say (surprising for the government).  Hope you can get back to see your dad soon.

My dad went straight into the Army at 18 and retired as a colonel after 32 years, being stationed in Germany, Japan, and Korea.  After retiring from the Army, he went into seminary and became an Episcopal priest for another 12 years.  While my mom was the matriarch of the family, dictating our family activities, my dad was the one who kept everything and everyone grounded.  Being the youngest of 6 kids, I didn't really spend a lot of time with my dad growing up, because by then he was a priest and spent a lot of off hours and weekends doing his duties.  But I always found it funny that he didn't want to swear, but when he'd lose his temper, he'd only say "Judas Priest".