Tuesday Night Run and "almost finished" great room

Now that I've gotten over my cold, I returned to the infamous Tuesday Night Races, this time at Moesley Sports Center at Alaska Pacific University. The farm race started out through the woods, up a very steep 50m incline called Cardiac Hill, then down through a swamp before skirting Goose Lake (part of the course had to be changed since there was a cow moose and calf hanging out on the trail). It really was a swamp -- there was no way to get through it without getting wet. In one part of the swamp, you had marked choice of "wet" and "really wet". I chose "wet", which involved negotiating a beam across a deep part. After the swamp, we ran through a glen, where I got a spectacular view of alpenglow. The mountains and clouds were a vivid pink, and the sky was a beautiful pacific blue. I wish I'd had my camera, but here's a picture that comes close to what it looked like.

As for my results, they are posted. I came in 85th out of 120, so that's not too bad for a trail racing rookie :).

Last weekend, we finally finished off our great room furniture. Well, we're still waiting for our entertainment center to be shipped, but everything else is there. Out of all the rooms in the house, this is the one we felt was most important to get right, since it is such a dramatic room. Here are some pictures:

Finished Great Room


Coffee Table

We did finally get a new TV! It's a big 50 inch TV, and it came with a free TiVo with rebate. A TiVo is a Digital Video Recorder, which allows you to easily tape your favorite shows as well as pause/rewind live TV. The biggest advantage to the TiVo is that you can watch your favorite shows when it is convenient for you instead of when they are being shown on TV. This is particularly important in AK, where for example, Jeopardy comes on at 4:30pm. You also can fast forward through commercials, and pause live TV while you take a break. The biggest drawbacks I see so far are:
1) You can't record on a different channel than the one you are watching
2) One feels "obligated" to watch recorded shows, especially if they are going to be deleted soon
3) I still can't get my network adapter to work with my wireless network in the house
4) The TiVo cannot turn on the Cable box, and the cable box changer that the TiVo uses actually attaches haphazardly to the cable box.

Disadvantages 1 and 3 can be fixed by more technical jerry-rigging. I still highly suggest TiVo, it really does change the way you watch TV.

Puppy this week learned "Find the Mouse". This game involves having Galileo hide in a room, then hiding his mouse toy (pictured below) in another room. He's pretty good, and wants to play constantly:

Galileo