I normally do Three Things Thursday, copying the lead of several other running bloggers out there, but over the weekend, I saw this on Facebook from Operation Jack supporter AJ Reese:

I like AJ. I talked with him periodically on Twitter, and then last year, we ran together just by chance for several miles during the Operation Jack Marathon. It was kind of cool to meet him — I love putting faces with (screen) names. I think he’s running the Long Beach Marathon with Train 4 Autism in October, aiming for his first Boston Qualifier.

Anyways, just for the heck of it, I’m doing a bonus of edition of Three Things for AJ. So here’s Three Things Wednesday.

1. I saw a bank robbery at work yesterday! Sort of. I look out the window from my desk at a building that has a bank. Right to the right of the building, there’s a grassy area that has a little hill and ends up wrapping around behind our building. A little after noon, I saw some dude running down the hill and then out of side. It looked kind of odd, although I didn’t really think much of it.

A little bit later, we saw four or five police cars and there was definitely something going on. We weren’t sure what — there wasn’t a swat team or anything exciting like police officers crouching behind their car doors with guns drawn — but they were definitely up to something. Then they used yellow tape to block access to the building. We knew something was up, but weren’t sure what. A canine unit came out and started sniffing around. Then a woman I work with said she read online in the local paper that there had been a robbery and they had a description of the suspect.

“Short guy wearing green?” I asked. Yep, sure enough. That was him. That was the robber I had seen running away 30 minutes earlier! I went outside to tell the police the direction I saw him go, but it looked like they knew. I talked to a man who worked with the bank. He asked for my info and what I saw, then gave that info to the police. I went back to work. I doubt I’ll ever get contacted, but it was definitely an usual experience!

Here’s the article if you’re bored. It wasn’t me!

2. I took this picture last Wednesday from a park less than 500 feet from my front door. Zero cropping, zero Photoshopping. Just point and click with my iPhone.

3. Here’s a video of Jack the other night. Really, there are no words for this.

OK, that’s three! Have a great Wednesday!

Well here we go, Three Things Thursday.

1. My work is filled with a bunch of clowns like me. We like to play pranks on each other and while some of them are pretty geeky and you wouldn’t understand (like putting an exit in a bash profile when somebody leaves their computer unlocked — ha!), some of them are funny enough that non-geeks would find them funny. Take yesterday, for example. We have a guy who was just out for the past 2 1/2 weeks and today is his first day back. He spent a lot of his time off camping, so we wanted to gradually ease him back into the workplace.

Side on the folks I work with … we have a small white board on the fridge and we make a list of things we want for snacks and they bring them in. It usually starts with a couple of legitimate requests and then it diverges badly. Here’s what’s up there now:

2. Yesterday was the first day of school out here. Summer vacation is over … or, as I like to say, Tiff’s fall break begins! I have a middle schooler now. Makes me feel old. I remember my first day of middle school like it was yesterday, although really, it was less than halfway through Reagan’s second term. But whatever. I have a kid in middle school. I feel super crazy old.

3. I wrote a lot last week about struggles we were having with Jack, our 8-year-old son who is severely autistic. Well, he’s doing better with his sleep, making it through the night. We’ve had him in ABA therapy all summer, which has helped quite a bit and we’re really starting to see breakthroughs. That doesn’t have anything to do with him sleeping through the night, but still, it’s good news. We’ve also been fighting pretty hard behind the scenes to get him in the right school and it looks like we have that taken care of. We’ll know more in the next week. It’s a lot of ups and downs with him, but we just keep pushing forward. This week has been a pretty good one.

That’s all I have for today. Do you like to pull pranks? What are the people you work with like? Are you old like I am? Have a great weekend!

In three-plus years blogging and doing my thing trying to make things happen, I always wonder what approach I should take with my blogs. Should I talk about autism? Fundraising? Running? I try to reach both groups, but there’s not a whole lot of overlap. So last night, while I was thinking about what to write about, I figured, hmmmm, maybe I can just be Sam for a day and not be Operation Jack and just talk about what Sam’s up to. So what the heck, here goes, let’s see how this flies.

What You Can Learn About Me On Twitter

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, go here and follow me. I throw out so much useful information. Here are a few gems from last night:

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