February 15, 2008 - Friday was relatively uneventful. I did the carpool thing with Ellie again, then spent the day at work researching something for my boss. Then after work Ellie and I went to the gym. I stayed on the treadmill for 300 calories worth of running, which was about 2.5 miles. I also added the ab machine into my workout. It is a pretty cool machine. Instead of laying on my back doing crunches, I do the crunches at a 45 degree angle, with resistance weights. I managed to do 50 reps at 45 pounds. We'll see how that stacks up. Ellie has started to use the machines a lot too. I think she was afraid of them because she had never used them, but once she realized that they have directions on how to sit on them and use them, and I showed her how to adjust the weight, she has become more comfortable with them. My cousin Mike came over for spaghetti dinner, and then Ellie's brother Mike surprised us by showing up unannounced. He is in the military, stationed at Fort Polk, and if anyone found out that he was that far off the base he'd probably get in trouble, but he decided to come into town on his long weekend to visit his family.