Well I Guess This Is Growing Up

We found out a while back that the IUI (fertility treatments) took hold and my wife is pregnant again, so that's pretty exciting. We had the ultrasound a week or so ago, and realized that as long as everything goes well we are going to need a larger car for my wife to drive around while I'm in the Middle East doing the Army thing.

After getting some advice, looking around online, and making a plan we went to a dealership tonight and arranged to buy a minivan. The best arrangement for us is to trade in my truck and my wife's current vehicle, so for the time being we will just have the van and the motorcycle. We looked at a few family-hauler SUVs, but the available options weren't exactly what we were looking for. I'm glad we will be able to finally get something nice for my wife to drive, as she deserves it, but I will miss my truck. When I get back home we will look into getting a commuter car for me and hopefully an old beater work truck, too. For now we're lucky to be in an arrangement that gets us out of a bad truck loan, gives my wife reliable and roomy transportation while I'm away, and allows us to concentrate on paying off some other stuff.

This weekend I had a diagnostic PT test for the National Guard. My run pace has been a bit off the mark for the last couple of weeks, so I figured I would do my best and see where I was at, but didn't really think I would be able to beat the minimum time for the 2 miles. The first event (push-ups) went better than I anticipated, so I got a little pumped up from that. My push-up score wasn't anything special, but it was okay.

For the run my goal was to try to hang with the younger guys for as long as I could and hopefully at least finish the two miles without walking. I kept up with them for a while, but they started to pull ahead or fall back and I found myself alone between groups. Usually I slow down a lot on lap 5 or 6, but my Platoon Sergeant started catching up to me around that time and I pushed myself to stay ahead of him. He finally caught me and we ran the last couple of laps neck and neck until I sprinted at the end to beat him by a few seconds. I only beat the minimum by about 20 seconds, but I passed the test and the scorers were duly impressed the sprint at the end. I could hardly walk for the rest of the day, but my knee hasn't bothered me much today aside from the occasional twinge while stopped on my motorcycle.

I have to keep up the running because I will be taking another test for record next month. You have to designate whether a test is diagnostic or record before you take it, so a passing diagnostic test can't be recorded as an official test. I hadn't anticipated passing the run this soon, so I hadn't properly made plans to reward myself with a copy of the Warhammer Fantasy 8th Edition rulebook. I'll probably just wait until I get home or save up some of the discretionary money set aside in the deployment budget.