I'm back

Yes. I realize I haven't posted in here in a while. I have many good reasons.

First of all, two Sundays ago, a really bad windstorm came through the area. This windstorm was the remains of Hurricane Ike. I didn't get any rain or thunder that normally comes with a hurricane (and the winds weren't quite hurricane-force either), but the storm did knock down several trees in our yard- it also knocked out the power in our house for about a week and a half.

Life was pretty rough without power. The only good thing that came out of having no power was that I also had no school for two days (it took a while for the school to get power back as well).

During this time with no power, I had no running water, no computer, no ability to eat hot food (I ate a lot of sandwiches), no ability to see in the dark (I had to use a tiny flash light after the sun came down), and many other annoying inconveniences. I also had yet another week of not having swim team practice. The first week of practice was unofficially postponed until last Friday (due to the rec center not having power either).

The reason it took so long to get power back was that the power station caught on fire. I have no idea how, but for some reason the whole station caught on fire. I think there were over 400,000 people in our area without power.

With all the power and electric people hard at work, I finally got my power back this past Tuesday. Since then, I haven't really felt like writing in here, but now I finally do- so I am back.

The other interesting thing that has happened this past week was that I finally got to get behind the wheel of a car! I took Driver's Ed this past July and August, but haven't had a chance to actually drive a car until this past week. I haven't done anything fancy yet (just laps in a parking lot) but it was still pretty fun. So far, I have gotten to drive a car twice and will practice driving many more times to come (I am hoping to get my license in January).

I'm not really the greatest driver yet. On my first lesson, I drove onto a curb and gave my driving instructor (my dad's friend's son) a flat tire! I am definitely starting to get better at driving though. I can't wait to be able to take the car out on to the road!

I have another driving lesson scheduled today as well. This lesson is one with the driving school (so, a different instructor), but it should be fun too. It is a two hour lesson, and I think I might be getting on the roads today. Watch out Southern Ohio!

I guess I should update on my workouts too, since this is a triathlon blog. To sum up my workouts for the past two weeks: Last week I wasn't able to swim that much, so I did lots of running and biking. This week I was finally able to swim again, so I did lots of swimming.

I can post my workout totals for these past two weeks, if you really care at all:

Last week (Sept. 14-20)
Swim: 1h 33m
Bike: 6h 07m (my biggest bike week yet!)
Run: 3h 42m
Total: 11h 22m

This past week (Sept. 21-27)
Swim: 9h 16m (my catch-up week to the lack of swimming over the past month)
Bike: None (shame on me!)
Run: 2h 17m
Yoga: 50m
Total: 12h 23 min

P.S. I so badly hate the fact that autumn (and thus, winter) is coming. I looked at the extended weather forecast for this week, and it is supposed to get down to 38 degrees Thursday morning. Yucky!