What a Good Friday it Is

...if for no other reason than I actually got to drive the speed limit (or greater!) on my way in to work this morning.

LICE SUCK!

My wife called me toward the end of my work day a couple of days ago to tell me that my oldest daughter came home with lice.

First, let me say that I have never had lice.  Nor has anyone in my family, that I know of.  Yes, there is a stigma about lice--people seem to think that if you have lice then you are a dirty person or at least have poor hygiene habits.  That is not the case in our house.  My wife is super-anal about keeping not only the house but the kids, too, clean.  And I mean eat-off-the-floor clean!

So when I heard that my oldest daughter had lice, I was floored!

We're not sure where they came from, though we had just bought some clothes from a consignment sale and the girls were trying them on before they had a chance to get washed.  That's my guess...no telling who had the clothes before the sale.

Of course, school is another option.  So is the YMCA.  The kids spend a lot of time in both places.

Anyway, we'll probably never know where they came from.

But now that people have heard that we've had lice in our house, there are the stories about how long it has taken people to get rid of them.  Hopefully we were extreme enough to prevent them from coming back:

• Everything, and I mean everything, that has material/is soft in all of the kids' rooms was bagged, awaiting a deep cleaning by our new washing machine (which has a "Sanitize" setting).
• All rugs were rolled up and put in the garage.
• Lice spray was sprayed everywhere (mattresses, carpet, rugs, and so on).
• Lice-killing hair cream was applied (before we read about all the dangers of this product).
• Lice combs were used.
• Vaseline was applied to the hair to smother anything that survived the cream.
• Tons of Joy disk liquid and Gojo cream was later applied to try to get the Vaseline out!
• Pillow cases and sheets were slept in once before being bagged (to be cleaned by said new washer).

Luckily, I escaped un-infected.  Somehow.  I know that the girls get in my bed while I'm showering in the morning before we all head down for breakfast on school/work days, so I'm surprised that I didn't pick up one or more from that!

Anyway, I just wanted to vent that LICE SUCK!  And they are expensive, too!  The chemicals we've bought has set us back $150 or more.  We also chose this time to replace our existing washer and dryer.  Our washer was fine, except that it had lost a few screws and as a result it rattled like crazy during spin cycles.  Our dryer was on its last legs, however, and was in desperate need or replacing (and had been for months!).  So we got the front loading ones.

No, we technically didn't buy them because of the lice,  but we thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and replace them now, since we were planning on it anyway.  Thankfully we had the money to do so, too.

Long story short: I'll never think poorly of people who have lice again.  It can (and does) happen to anyone!

Salem Lake

I hinted a while back that I needed to post about Salem Lake, near Winston Salem, North Carolina.  It was at this lake that I did many of my training runs for the Chickamauga Marathon, which I ran last November.

What can I say?  I pretty much fell in love with the 7-mile dirt and crushed-gravel path which surrounds the lake.  I would leave work around 4:30 or 5, change clothes, and then head over to the lake, which was about a 10 minute drive from the office.

The trail has a few hills, but for the most part is flat.  The hardest part is by the dam, where you go from 10 - 15 feet above lake level to about 10 - 15 below lake level and then back up to 15 or so feet above lake level again!  And with the direction I ran (counter-clockwise) this was always at the end of the run.

The lake trail is also connected to a green-way, which if you ran from the parking lot at the head of the green-way to the lake and back is 9 miles, if I recall correctly.  I ran this a couple of times by itself, and I also ran it a couple of times including the loop around the lake.  Yes, it was dark by the time I finished, and part of that run goes through some, well, less-desirable areas of Winston Salem.  Let's just say I had my phone with me, just in case.

This is what the actual path looks like.  What looks like tire tracks actually are...cyclists use the path too, and they tend to "keep to the right" as you would expect on a highway.

It got to the point where I would recognize several of the people on bikes.  Several of the joggers and walkers, too.  It really is a very popular place for the fitness-oriented folks in the area.

Every so often there are park benches.  I'm not quite sure that they get used--I personally never saw anyone sitting any of the times that I was there running.  One bench in particular, though, caught my attention.  It had a small plaque attached, which had the following inscription:

Brenton Hiroshi Stovall
June 7, 1988 - May 3, 2007
His beat goes on...

Obviously, this was to memorialize a young man who died.  I did some Googling to see what I could find out about him, and discovered that he died in a car wreck while running an errand.  I'm not sure how long these links will last, but I'll include some links here to some news stories:

• Winston-Salem Journal
• A neighbor's personal blog
  (scroll to the entry at "Friday, 11 May 2007")

Very sad, indeed!

Overall, I attribute my personal success in the Chickamauga Marathon last November to my training here at Salem Lake.  If I'm ever back in the area, I'm brining my running shoes (even though I'm not actively training for anything at the moment).