The Summer of Ben...

I apologize for not having posted in a few weeks, but I'll try to cover as much as I can here...

Let me just say the last 17 days have been pretty darn awesome. Perhaps the best summer of my life so far? Let's go for the recap:


June 13th: Seinfeld Live!!
The Summer of Ben seemed to have started a little over two weeks ago when I treated Julie to one of my trademark "surprise date nights." Of course, I had been planning the evening for over two months, but it was well worth it. We went downtown for the evening to grab a delicious hamburger at Zip's before seeing none other than Jerry Seinfeld live and in person at the Aronoff Center! Both Julie and I love Jerry and we watch reruns of the old show all the time. Let me just say that Julie was really surprised and excited!

Jerry didn't disappoint. He put on a great show. A good hour and a half of pure comedic genius. He talked about the weather (Why do we have 5-day weather forecasts every day? To me, if they're so good, then the 5-day forecasts should only be once every five days!), cell phones (Why do we always have to have our phones completely charged before leaving the house?), and of course, the show. And in a fun Q&A session afterwards, he answered questions about a possible reunion show and about his favorite moments from doing the show (which, by the way, were when Susan died from licking the wedding invitation envelopes, when Jerry stole the rye bread from that old lady, and when Kramer hit the golf ball into the whale's blowhole).

Classic Jerry. I highly recommend going to see him if he comes to your town!


June 19th-21st: Father's Day in Warren
Over Father's Day weekend, I got to go home with Julie to her dad's house and spend some quality time getting to know her dad and her brother. We had a great time! We hit up the Hot Dog place (best hot dogs in the world!) on Friday night, then went to Outback with Julie's Uncle on Saturday night. We also rented a movie Saturday night called Seven Pounds. Very interesting movie. I highly suggest it if you're into the mysterious drama types of movies. I got to see some embarrassing photos of Julie (which is always fun) and she showed me some of her old school projects and yearbooks. And I got to see her dad attempt to catch a pesky chipmunk that's been destroying his garden (of course, he caught 3 squirrels instead!). Good times!!


June 25th: Just Lazin' Around
The Summer of Ben continued when Julie offered to make me dinner after work on that Thursday night. She made a delicious batch of lasagna and we spent a real nice evening together just lazing around watching movies.


June 27th: 'Till Death Do Them Part
My good friends Scott and Andrea got married this last weekend. I have known both of them for over 3 years now and they are both dear friends of mine. It was a blessing to attend their wedding and I thought they had a really nice ceremony. I will say this was the first wedding I had ever been to where they actually had a part of the ceremony where the people just worshipped together. Pretty cool!

Here's a cute picture of Julie and I at the reception. Aren't we adorable?















June 29th: The Fray in Concert!!
And last, but not least... Last night we went downtown to Riverbend and saw The Fray live in concert!! It was a really awesome show! Julie and I had always said if The Fray were to come to town that we could go in a heartbeat. So we did!

But they put on an awesome show. They played for a solid hour and a half and did probably over 20 songs. They did all their new hits (You Found Me, Absolute, and Happiness), some of the classic ones (Cable Car and How to Save a Life, anyone?), and even a few great covers (Counting Crow's Long December and Kanye's Heartless). Totally worth it. Great show.










And now let's hope this great summer keeps rolling on!!

Hello Old Friend...

So last weekend, I met back up with an old friend. Who is this friend, you might ask? It's not a person, but rather my old friend, the 5k.

Yup, last weekend I ran in the Redlegs 5k, which is a charity race that is held every year downtown. The course circles around downtown, but the coolest part is that the race ends inside the ballpark. For the last 0.1 miles of the race, the course takes you around the outfield warning track and it ends near home plate. It's such a cool experience to finish the race on the playing field and see yourself up on the Jumbotron as you finish. Pretty neat stuff.

And to top it off, after the race, there is all sorts of food and goodies. Stuff like Powerade drinks, cookies, pizza, ice cream... all for free!! Pretty sweet deal! Plus, who can argue with a free t-shirt? I'm probably one of the biggest suckers ever when there's a free t-shirt involved!

Anyways, this year I ran in the 5k along with some friends. J-Tizzle, Julie D, and some of Julie's co-workers decided to run too. So we had a good time going downtown on a Saturday morning, enjoying the nice weather, and getting a good workout... all before 11:00 am!

I've been feeling the urge to start running again lately. I am finding that I miss that part of my past life (when I used to run all the time in high school). I miss the feeling of being in that great of shape, with my legs, upper body, and lungs all working like a perfectly-oiled machine. And I miss the feeling of gliding effortlessly along the course with the wind in my face and being able to recover quickly when the race was over instead of being sore for 3 days afterwards. Sometimes I just long for those days.

But I am also finding that getting back into shape is not easy. The more I run now, the more I get frustrated because I remember how fast I used to run in high school and now I get down when I can't even come close to that anymore.

My goal for this 5k was to finish in under 30 minutes, which is a pretty modest goal. I finished with a time of 30:39. Not great, but at least that's a sub 10-minute-mile pace. But considering that in high school, I used to routinely run 5k's in under 19 minutes, it's quite a fall from glory.

I would like to someday get back to running a 5k in under 20 minutes, but that just seems so impossibly far away right now. But at least sub 25 minutes may be more realistic.