Another one that falls into the "ridiciulous" category ...

Almost forgot to write about this. A few weeks ago my wife and I decided to go out and buy a new mattress. Our old one had served its purpose and started to become uncomfortable. We kind fo knew what we wanted and headed over to one these mattress chain stores. We settled on a Tempurpedic which is really nice and cost us about $1500.00. Not cheap, but hey, sleeping well is important. But if you think this is expensive, think again. I tried a mattress which cost $15,000. How ridiculous is that? And it wasn't even more comfortable. Kind of squishy and you kind of needed a ladder to get on top of it because it was so thick. Apparently, it's so expensive because it is handstitched. Who cares, it's covered by sheets anyway, so you won't even see it. Maybe they last longer? The mattress we bought is supposed to last 10 years, to make up the difference in price through longevity, the super-ridiculously-expensive would have to last 10 times as long, which comes out to 100 years. That's too long for my taste.

Heavy Machinery

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Originally uploaded by jmeyer

Ben, Chris and I were making a run to the Guadalupe Mines in San Jose, dumping some old concrete. There was this big loader and we enticed Ben to sit on it so we can take a picture ... Don't we all love heavy machinery?

Running another Marathon

Before Sonja and I had children I ran a few marathons. I had done the Silicon Valley marathon in San Jose, the Rock'n Roll in San Diego, Big Sur and the San Francisco marathon. Then our two boys came, work somehow got more busy and the time to train for a marathon wasn't quite there anymore. And to be honest, I sort of lacked the drive to go out 4-6 times a week and run a lot of miles. I have decided to change that now and run again. Other people can do it, so I should be able to do it as well. It's just really good to be in a good shape and just be able to go out and run 10 or 15 miles without suffering. I signed up for my second Silicon Valley Marathon in San Jose which will be held November 4th.

I bought a new pair of running shoes and have already started running again. And I started planning/searching for routes to run. There is now a handful of web sites that let users draw routes on maps (Google Earth let's you do it as well). I have tried the USATF web site and walkjogrun.net and they work reasonably well. I already planned a 15 and an 18 mile run for later in my training plan. Let's see how that goes. Anyone interested in joining?

Back to the roots - another name story

I started this blog a while ago because I thought I'd share my experiences using my first name here in the U.S., especially in coffee shops. Now, that doesn't happen that often anymore, simply because I now get my caffeine fix at work. One of the more enjoyable benefits at Yahoo! is the free coffee. We have fully staffed espresso bars where you can get everything from a simple espresso to something more complex like Low Fat Sugar Free Vanilla Half Decaf Latte with Extra Foam. Personally, I'd like to outlaw the latter but unfortunately I don't have a lot of say in this. Anyhow, the name problem in coffee shops went away but one problem that still lingers is the email problem. The email problem is this. I sent someone an email and end it with the line

-Joerg

Clearly, I don't know how to spell my own name because a large number of people (especially first timers) will start their reply with Jeorg. Drives me nuts. Makes me wnat to butcher their name too. Now how hard is it to get Joerg right? It's only five letters and only 4 if you were to use the proper umlaut ö. Do people not proof read? One thing everyone should do is to at least get the name right. But maybe that's too much to ask.

The "Bus" ...

Sonja and I have been debating for a while now to buy a bigger car. We owned a Volkswagen Jetta Wagon which did a fine job but was getting too small for us, the two boys and our dog. If we put the stroller in the trunk, our dog had to squeeze in behind a seat. Anyway, we have looked around and after a while it turned out that a minivan is the only logical choice. Why, you may ask? Well, we had a limited budget, so a nice Mercedes Benz wagon was out of the question. Additionally, while slightly bigger than our Jetta they would not have solved our space problem because having kids, a third row is noce to have. Then, there was the world of SUVs. The ones that are big enough suck in terms of gas mileage (some of the American brands) and the ones that are nice enough (like Lexus, Mercedes Benz and Audi) are too expensive and still suck in terms of gas mileage. We even tried the Toyota Highlander Hybrid, which has ok gas mileage compared to the regular model but nothing near where you would say this is phenomenal. On top of that, the third row seats it had would be uncomfortable for even our 4-year old and its price tag was ridiculous for the base model that had next to no options in it. So here we are, looking around and the only car category that would basically fulfill all our needs was the minivan category. So, knowing they are not the sexiest automobiles, we went ahead and test drove some of them. We really liked the Honda Odyssey and ended up buying one:

I have to say, it is one of the nicest cars, if not the nicest, that we have ever owned. Do I have a problem with driving a minivan? Not at all, the car is nice, my kids love it and we can haul all kinds of stuff around. And the car has a shitload of options that make it nice. Not to mention that it has twice the horsepower of our old Jetta and a gas mileage rating that beats any big SUV by a wide margin. A lot of people will make fun of us now but I don't care. Anyway, since the car is a lot bigger than our old one we have already nicknamed it. We simply call it "the bus" ... and we like it.

I like birthdays ...

Especially my own. People are nice to me on at least one day a year and I get to see a lot of my friends all at once. This year we met at Trader Vic's, a cocktail bar/restaurant. We slurped quite a few of their concoctions and I have to admit I had a pretty bad hangover the next day. It was fun nonetheless. And the band in that place even sang a song for me. They called me "Jorge" but if you have read this blog from the beginning you know that I am used to that.

We even shared some crazy cocktails with straws that were at least 2 feet long. Thansk everyone for coming and thanks to Sonja for setting this up. I had a blast.

He is not a puppy ...

This is my dog and his name is "Peanut". Yes, I know it is a silly name but he had already been given that name when we "freed" him from the pound. Well, we didn't exactly free him and it wasn't an adventure at all but it sounds much better than "when we bought him". Anyway, we got Peanut through the South Bay Purebred Rescue Service. Oddly enough, Peanut is a mutt, most likely the mix between a cocker spaniel and a golden retriever. The latter is probably the reasosn why he appears to be a Golden puppy even though Peanut is already 6 years old. Which brings me to my actual story. Whenever we go places, people ask us about how old our puppy is. Usually, we very dryly remark that our "puppy is 6 years old, approaching 7 fast". What happens then is similar to what happens to me in emails when people seem to believe that I can't spell my name "Joerg" but must have meant "Jorge". Some people won't believe us. Same thing with the question about his breed. We usually answer "coker-retriever mix, most likely" which sometimes is met with great skepticism by these freaks that, just because they have a dog on themselves, believe they must be dog experts. To those people we then say: "Well, we weren't there but if you have seen his parents do it let us know". Anyway, Peanut's great, he loves to play ball, chase cats and squirrels and he is great with our two boys. An he will always be our puppy... ;-)