dumb thumb

When will I learn that chopping the tip off my left thumb is not a good option? About 2-3 times a year, I get carried away chopping vegetables and end up slicing a chunk out of my thumbnail and thumb. So today I was chopping garlic to add to my crock-pot of chili, and off came part of my nail, a chunk of skin, and out poured the blood. But I'm an old pro at this now. I simply grabbed a paper towel, wrapped it around the thumb and continued chopping. I was on a tight schedule, as usual. When it bled through that paper towel, I grabbed another one and placed it over the original. I learned from last time that if you remove that original paper towel too soon, it just prolongs the bleeding. I had planned to run this evening, but my thumb hurts too bad. In case you're wondering, neither Kyra nor I put the plant pot on the bed. That would be Riley... Kyra's still mad at him for stealing her brand new pack of Hubba Bubba bubble gum yesterday. On the positive side, this batch of chili just may be the best I've ever made!

happy birthday granny!

My Granny's birthday is always easy for me to remember. It's on Groundhog Day! When I was little, I thought my Granny, Margaret Elizabeth Wells Dorminy, was the meanest lady on the planet. But something happened; she transformed when I was in the hospital at age 12 after I had my tonsils removed. She spent most of my waking moments with me in the hospital room, giving me ice chips, popsicles and ice cream. I'm sure other people visited me as well, but it is her that I remember being there most. Maybe it's because that was the time she transformed in my eyes from being a bossy, mean old lady, into a loving and caring grandmother. I had a totally new appreciation for her after that event. She passed away in November 1992. I still think of her on Groundhog's Day, as well as every time I see a pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum, or wheat bread, or giant jars of pickles. And now I think of her almost daily because Riley's snores sound just like hers. I remember times that we would spend the night at her house. She'd get up early to make breakfast for my Papa before he left before dawn to go to the farm to milk the cows. They always kissed goodbye. She lived in a giant house on Main Street, only a block away from the train tracks. And now, when I hear the train passing by (many blocks away) at night, it reminds me of her too. I miss you Granny!

7-miler at Suwanee Greenway Trail

I jogged 7 miles at the Suwanee Greenway Trail this afternoon. I haven't run here since the Fall. I remembered that it was a great trail, part earth, part boardwalk, part asphalt. I also remember it being a slow run for what I thought was because of the heat of that particular day. But... the heat may have had something to do with that run, but today was slow in the cool. I really noticed the hills this time. Oh well, hills make you stronger, right?

http://georgiatrails.com/trails/suwaneegreenway.html

Last basketball game of regular season

Today was the last game of the regular basketball season. There are four teams in this league. Team Dynomite, Kyra's team, is solidly in 2nd place, and they played against the only undefeated team this morning. It was close during the first half. Coach Webb's team was solid on defense. Team Dynomite scored most of their points, if not all, on free-throws from fouls. As I've mentioned before, I'm the scorebook keeper for Kyra's team. During half-time, the time keeper and I talked about how much improvement the girls have made since the beginning of the season. Just in the past few weeks they have really began to work cohesively as a team and figure out each others strengths. The score was 7 to 5 at the end of the first half. But, the lead was extended during the second half. Team Dynomite lost to the only undefeated team in the league with a final score of 15 to 7. Next will be the championship playoff games which begin on Wednesday.

Hiigh School Memories

For months, several friends have been talking about Facebook. They glowed and were so excited when talking about this internet website that has connected them with long lost friends. So, after spending Christmas with Terri and Jim and their family, and watching Jim's face light up talking about it, I decided to give it a try. It was addicting... At first I connected with mostly people that I hang out with now. Then I started connecting with people that I've known this decade and have moved away, as well as people that I knew in high school. I was shocked when Sonya Norris Dykes found me. That brought back a flood of memories from high school! A week or two later, her brother, Jeff Norris, joined Facebook. Although I dated quite a few guys in high school, he's the one that I think of when I hear the term "high school boyfriend". I can't remember exactly how long we dated; over a year, maybe two. He's a year older than me, but we were in Beta Club together. I remember starting to like him a few weeks before our Beta Club went to Atlanta for some convention. I can't tell you anything about what the group did while there, I just remember being totally enamoured with Jeff, and was on cloud nine with that first kiss. I think I was in 10th grade. I remember him teaching me to drive a stick-shift since he had an awesome convertible! We used to run together since we were also both on the track team. (At least I think he was; I know I was on both the cross country and track teams.) I remember many evenings going down to the high school track together, after dark, and doing speed work or simply running lap after lap after lap. We broke up when he went away to college. I wanted him to enjoy his new college life and be able to date freely, while I did the same my last year of high school. This photo was taken at our first prom together, in 1984. I don't know where my old photos are, but this is one of several photos from my younger years that my aunt Cathy sent me a while back. I spent several hours tonight "passing notes" back and forth with Jeff through the Facebook messaging system. It was great to hear about his current life. It turns out, he lives in a suburb not too far from me. Maybe we'll go for a run someday...

Big cat chases squirrel out of trash can

Well, today was fairly uneventful. I drove from Wilmington, NC to Atlanta during the work day. The most excitement was at a rest station. I was stretching before getting back into the vehicle and some movement caught my attention. I looked over and saw a huge cat sitting on top of the trash can between picnic tables. It was so big that at first I wasn't sure what type of animal it was. I grabbed my camera, but by then, it had jumped off the trash can and was sitting patiently. Next thing I know, a squirrel pops his head out of the trash can and stares at the cat. Then the cat jumps back up on the can and chases the squirrel across the yard until the squirrel climbed a tree. Wish I had caught it on video!

Work, work, work

Today I'm in Wilmington, NC (as well as Castle Hayne and Riegelwood). Kyra asks me frequently what I did at work today. My typical response is "phone calls, e-mail, reading reports, writing letters, meetings." So, I thought I'd chronical my work day while I'm away on a business trip. My day started by waking at 6:27 a.m. (no I didn't set my alarm for this time) and checking work e-mail from my hotel room. I'm really glad I did, because the hotel internet was down in the evening. I mainly wanted to make sure there were no last minute emails announcing a change in my plans for the day. I was glad to read in the weekly progress report for my HoltraChem Site, that they were still on schedule for completing this portion of the project today.

I left the hotel at 8 a.m. and met a half-dozen people at the Reasor Chemical Co. Site at 9 a.m. The contaminated soil, sediment and surface water was removed from the Site in the summer of 2007. Land use restrictions have been added to the property deed to prevent someone from installing drinking water wells on the property until the groundwater remediation is completed. All that remains to be done at this site is annual groundwater monitoring and annual inspections to ensure natural revegetation of the areas where contamination was removed. The property is about 25 acres of woods. Spending the morning in the woods watching groundwater sampling was a lot more fun than sitting at my desk in the office! The yellow posts in the photo are simply posts to prevent a vehicle from running into the wells. The grey rectangular posts on either side of the barrel contain the two wells that the contractor is sampling. At this point in time, we simply monitoring the pH of the water. The water in these wells have historically had very low pH values and elevated metals concentrations. Because metal concentrations in groundwater are somewhat dependent on pH, the goal is to increase the pH of the water to a neutral range in the hopes of dropping the metals content. They installed a lime trench just upgradient of these wells in 2007. This sampling event noted an increase in the pH of the water in the shallow well, but it's still not close to the neutral range we're looking for. We knew it may take years for the lime trench to completely neutralize the water in the wells, so we're happy with seeing at least some progress in the right direction.

When we were finished with the wells, we walked over to the ponds to observe their progress. All three held water and had grassy vegetation growing around them. Small trees were also starting to grow. We heard frogs and birds and saw tracks of deer, racoon, and a big cat. It looks so much better than it did years ago.

If you'd like more information about this Site, feel free to click on the following link: http://www.epa.gov/region4/waste/npl/nplnc/reasornc.htm

Also, I won a national award for writing an excellent Record of Decision for this Site in 2002: http://www.epa.gov/superfund//accomp/awards/rods/index.htm. I took Kyra with me to accept the award in Washington DC in 2003. We stayed an extra day and visited the National Zoo and a few museums. Not sure if she remembers it, but it was a great trip...

We left Reasor at 12:30 p.m. and drove towards the HoltraChem Site (also known as Acme Alkali). We stopped at Roberta's Country Kitchen for a great meal of meatloaf and fresh vegetables. Yum! The weather forecast called for rain later in the day, but the clouds were getting darker and the wind was picking up. When we arrived at Acme, I could see workers on top of Engineered Stockpile #2 working on the liner. The purpose of my visit was to view the finished product, but they were still working on it. Drats... This site's primary contaminants are mercury and PCB Aroclor 1268. During 2003-2004, the property owner's contractor worked to remove all containerized hazardous chemicals under EPA's oversight. I spent roughly one week a month at the Site during that time period, while two other EPA staff covered the other weeks. After that was complete, we began sampling the groundwater, soil, surface water and sediment to see how deep and wide the contamination existed. In the process, the neighboring facility, International Paper, took samples in their former waste water treatment lagoon and found PCB Aroclor 1268. HoltraChem used to discharge waste water to IP through that lagoon. So, in May 2008, contractors began excavating the contaminated sediment. The plan was to temporarily store the sediment with PCB concentrations greater than 50 ppm on the HoltraChem property in Engineered Stockpiles, and place the rest of the material in IP's landfill. The third photograph in this blog entry is of Engineered Stockpile #1. The contractor estimated it would take two months to complete and that the volume to be placed on the HoltraChem property would be about 6,500 cubic yards, in one stockpile. They were way off... Eight months later, and almost 20,000 cubic yards, they finally finish this phase. I've spent roughly 2 weeks a month here since May (sometimes more, sometimes less). The last photo is of Engineered Stockpile #2, with workers seaming liner segments together to seal the PCB-contaminated material into a gigantic baggie.

During the next few years will be completing the ecological risk assessment and figuring how to treat or dispose of all the contaminated soil, sediment and groundwater. If you'd like more information on this Site, feel free to click on the following link: http://www.epa.gov/region4/waste/npl/nplnc/holtranc.htm

I had planned to run at the beach this evening, but the storm began about the time I arrived back at the hotel. I don't mind running in a light rain, but this storm had hard rains and wind gusts up to 40 mph, so I opted to do my tempo run on the hotel treadmill instead.

Sesquicentennial State Park

This week is the beginning of my 9-week half marathon training program. My goal is to stick to it at least 85% of the time, and ideally greater than 90% of the time to score an "A". I won't hate myself if I only score a "B", but really want to be better at sticking to the training program than I did for my marathon training plan. My goal is to either (a) run the ING beside my sister the entire route, or (b) run the ING faster than I did last year. This means I need to stick to a program. I decided on the Hal Higdon Intermediate Half Marathon Training Program. It is a 12-week program and I only have 9 weeks until my race, so I'm just going to skip the first 3 weeks and jump in at week 4. I can do this since I'm not a beginner... Today's schedule called for 3.5 mile run. I had a very upset stomach yesterday afternoon and evening and woke up this morning wondering if it was over. I couldn't possibly have anything left in my system. I felt weak and still not the greatest so I didn't run on the treadmill this morning as was my original plan. I told myself that if I felt better later, I would run when I arrived in Wilmington, NC. If not, this would be one of those "excused absenses" from deviating from the training plan. So, I showered and put on my running clothes. After getting Kyra to school and the dogs to Funnybones, I went to the office and picked up the government vehicle to begin my drive to Wilmington. I was off to a later start than I had hoped. After lunch I started feeling a little better. But because I left so late, I knew it would be dark when I arrived in Wilmington. I remembered that Sesquicentennial State Park is not far off the highway in Columbia, SC. I went running there years ago and enjoyed running on the dirt roads. So, I stopped there mid-afternoon and headed out for my 3.5 mile run. I couldn't remember how long the loop trail was, so I thought I would simply turn around at 1.75 miles. This turned out to be my only choice. At about a 1.5 miles, there was a sign that said the road was closed for the season. So, I made a left turn into the scout camping area, followed the trail to the lake, jogged along the lake a minute or two and then turned around. I hadn't looked at a trail map since this was a last-minute decision, so I wasn't sure if the loop around the lake would eventually lead me back to my vehicle or not. It was so peaceful running through the woods along the dirt road! By the time I got back to the starting point, I had gone 3.61 miles. I felt weak during the run, but truly enjoyed the nature, especially the deer that I heard and then saw scampering through the woods. I consider this an "A+".
http://www.southcarolinaparks.com/common/maps/parksmap/MapSesquicentennial.pdf

Riley: 6 months, 2 days

Riley is now 6 months and 2 days old. I somehow forgot to take a photo of him two days ago. He has grown so much! And wow does he snore loudly! It's funny, but I tell Kyra that his snoring reminds me of my Granny. Her snoring sounded just like his. It brings back fond memories of Granny falling asleep in her chair while we kids watched TV or played games in the living room.

Neko

How sweet!!!! This evening, Kyra came into the kitchen and said she needed to know the year I was born. I wondered why and she said that she was creating a webkinz account for me on the internet. I wondered why, and she was quite secretive but said that I needed one. I thought it was odd and wondered what she was really up to. When I called her to dinner, she had a big smile on her face and brought me a kitten webkinz (stuffed toy). She asked me what I would name it and I immediately said "Neko", because it looks just like my favorite cat Neko that passed on when Kyra was in kindergarten. She said, "I KNEW IT". Then she proceeded to tell me that she was giving this kitten to me and that she had created an account for me on webkinz.com and had registered the kitten's name as Neko. And, it turns out that its birthday is in March, like mine. How sweet! I doubt I'll spend much time on webkinz.com, but will definitely take "Neko" with me on business trips.

On another positive note, team Dynomite won again today, 20 to 16. At the moment, Kyra's team is in 2nd place (out of 4 teams). Next Saturday will be the last game of the season, which will be followed by the playoff/championship games in early February. Go Team!!!