Three Things Thursday: Half, 405 and Flicks

1. First Race of 2013: As you may have read on this blog already, I signed up for the LA Marathon, to be run March 17. However, that won't be the first race on my race calendar this year. On Wednesday, I registered for the Highland Half Marathon. Highland is a small community east of San Bernardino. It's a hilly course and should be a good training race for LA. It's a small local race and that appealed to me, mostly because of the price; $45 for a half marathon is very reasonable, especially here in SoCal. It also will take the place of Surf City. I could not justify paying $110 for a half marathon, one that I've run before. Now, the downside to not running Surf City is that I won't get a special medal I would have gotten for having run OC and Long Beach, but that's okay. I'd rather save some time and money and run the local race instead of getting a medal I didn't set out to get in the first place.

2. My New Love: I haven't blogged about it too much yet but I got a new toy for Christmas - a Garmin Forerunner 405. It's pretty stinkin' sweet. I've used it quite a bit as you could imagine but I haven't yet used all of the features. Right now, it's like a new car that I've only driven on side streets and not the freeway yet - I haven't opened it up to see what it can really do. In some ways, though, that's fine because I want to get uh, intimate with it and then have it start revealing new sides to me. Hey now. We'll see when that next step happens but with the usage I've already put it through it's going to happen soon no doubt. Definitely before the Highland Half I'll want to see what all it can do.

3. Oscar Buzz: So, I love movies. I've always loved watching movies, losing myself for a couple of hours and diving head first into a story. It's a great way to pass the time. Before I had children, I used to go to the movies quite often, from back in my late teens/early 20s (when I started to afford going to the flicks) to before Mrs. LB and I delved into the world of parenthood. Then, it abruptly ended. Yvie came along in 2003 and my days of going to movie after movie were over. As Yvie and Kennedy get older (they're 9 and 7 now), things have gotten better in terms of movies but it's still not quite to how it used to be (not that I expect it to ever quite be that way, at least not anytime soon). I've gotten to see some movies recently (The Hobbit, Argo) but my girls still dominate the movie dynamic in the house. Case in point: between myself and Mrs. LB, we've seen two of the nine Best Picture nominations - Argo and Les Miserables. Between the girls, they've seen five of the five Best Animated Feature nominations - Pirates: Band of Misfits, Wreck-It Ralph, Frankenweenie, Paranorman, Brave. We all went to watch Wreck-It Ralph while Mrs. LB took the girls to see Pirates and Brave while I took them to see Frankenweenie and Yvie got Paranorman for Christmas (she'd read the book first). Now, I'm not necessarily complaining. There was a time when the girls were too young for movies and now they're not, and the animated movies are getting better in quality (I really enjoyed Wreck-It Ralph and liked Frankenweenie way more than I thought I would), but still. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining (too much). I know there will be a time when I long for the days that we could go watch an animated movie with the girls, so I'm enjoying it. Just pointing an observation of how things can change on you.