Nothing much

So, currently I am watching my 4-year old nephew while his parents take his older sister out to celebrate her "graduation" from first grade. Apparently she wanted it to be just for the "grown-ups." Where does a 7-year old want to go for a big, celebration dinner? IHOP, of course. A brand new one opened in town and at the moment it is all the rage. Not sure what makes people so excited for chain restaurant pancakes when there are so many other good breakfast for dinner places around, but I will freely admit that when I was 7, I probably would've thought it was cool, too. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think I was a big fan of pancakes when I was a kid. I actually think I didn't like pancake syrup. I can't for the life of me figure out why that was the case. Maybe since the majority of my diet consisted of ham and cheese sandwiches on a very specific kind of bread (I thought wheat was gross - it had to be Pepperidge Farm white) before I eventually ate a turkey sandwich every day for lunch for probably at least 10 years, hot dogs, Kraft macaroni and cheese, the occasional McDonalds cheeseburger happy meal, and Doritos. Had I actually eaten any fruits or vegetables before the age of 20, I'd probably be at least 6'6" but I guess I'll have to settle for being an even 6'.

My nephew doesn't care at all about food, so we'll see if he wants dinner. Mostly I'm just wondering as we watch episode after episode of Scooby Doo on demand just how many haunted houses one can possible run into in their youth? You'd think after a while they'd stop going into scary-looking, abandoned houses.

So my niece is moving on to second grade and her new teacher sent her home with a list of school supply needs for next year. Remember buying your stuff for school? I definitely remember thinking I had finally grown up a little bit when I no longer bought one of those big boxes of crayons for school. You know the ones I'm talking about. With the sharpener in the back and even though there were 64 colors to choose from you still only used the same 6 or 7 and those were almost completely used up, which was annoying, but you still hardly ever used those other colors. Those boxes probably should've contained only 48 colors, but doubles and triples of the most widely-used ones.

So, oh yeah, probably nobody cares that much about my crayon pondering. How about a training update? Have I mentioned how much I love swimming in the lake? This time of year rocks. The sun is up insanely early and makes it almost impossible to get up at some hour that is dark enough to make you totally aware of just how early you are getting up. It is also good timing because as always seems to be the case this time of year, one of my longest rides will fall on a Saturday in with the temperatures will climb into the mid 90's. However, I know from experience that I can literally start riding at about 4:40 in the morning and it is light enough. Yeah, I know starting that early doesn't sound too appealing, but let me tell you, when it's not even noon and you're already done with the training and it's over 90 out, you will not regret for one second having gotten up at that ridiculous hour. It also helps to have parents with a lake house where I can finish my workout and then plunge directly into the lake in what will probably be already completely soaked clothing. Not such a bad way to start the day.

I should go now. After a dinner of oatmeal (hey, it's what the kid wanted for some reason) I am attempting to fix what I consider to be a pretty big issue in my nephew's upbringing: he cannot identify any Muppets aside from Kermit the Frog. I'm sorry, but that is just plain wrong! So, we will be watching The Muppets Take Manhattan in the hopes that he starts to understand just how awesome they are.