A friend got married in Rancho Santa Fe this past weekend. Got to see all my summer friends from my lake house in NJ. Here is a pic of me and my mom at the reception.

Two Marines in their dress uniforms – the ones with white hats, khaki shirts and blue trousers with red stripe – say they were accused of recruiting at a Target department store here and told to leave.

“We weren’t recruiting,” according to Cpl. Carlos Rodriguez, 22, who said he returned in October from his second combat tour in Iraq. “I just popped in to say hi to a guy I went to high school with. He works there.”

But an assistant manager who saw Rodriguez and the other Marine apparently thought otherwise and showed them the door, according to both servicemen.

- from Protein Wisdom

Crazy story, I wonder if it’s true…

My wife’s uncle works in a military hospital and told me about this. Its pretty amazing. Kevin Garrad (3rd Infantry Division) was on a street patrol in Iraq (Tikrit I believe) and as he rounded the corner of a building an armed (AK-47) insurgent came from the other side.

The two of them were within just a few feet of each other when they opened fire. The insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest where his iPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound.

Training was going well until last Tuesday when I took a class at my gym that was a little too rough on my leg. I thought I would just take a couple days to rest, but those two days turned into almost a week and I haven’t been back out running yet. The good news is before last Tuesday I was running 2 days/week, and had gotten my run time down to 8:37 minute/mile. Hopefully I’ll be able to run this week and start adding a little more distance.