Stuff Realtors Don't Tell People and The Chris Farley Diet

I honestly don't understand how I can get out of shape so fast. I took a week off, and I can barely run a mile without dying. I dropped the '97 Ford POS off at the garage to fix a flat and my AC, and I ran home. It's only .96 miles according to mapquest, and I followed the exact route that mapquest plotted. 7 minutes and 42 seconds later I'm in my kitchen trying not to throw up a lung in the sink. I had fun though as I ran through the ghetto. I guess not many people jog in the ghetto because I got some funny looks. I wasn't running fast enough to be running from the police, but I was running much too fast to be on my way to the liquor store. I'm not white so I probably wasn't running for my life, so what the hell was I doing? I love living where I live. I'm less than a mile from 8 figure homes on the river and less than a mile away from HUD housing -- only in Florida. I'm running in something called the Tour de Pain this weekend. It's three races in 24 hours, but the total distance is less than nine miles so it shouldn't be too bad. I will not be running 8 minute miles. My goal is 12 minute miles. If I get beaten by a group of mall walkers then I get beaten by a group of mall walkers. West Virginia set me back. Apparently, I tend to gain weight if my meals consist of 2500 calorie breakfasts paired with 2500 calorie dinners, and the only exercise I get is pushing a baby stroller around a ghost town. Who knew?

I Solemnly Swear I Am Up to No Good

I just got back from Charleston, West Virginia. I tagged along to play Mrs. Doubtfire while MJ gave her seminar. I was worried about air travel with LMJ. She’s just ten weeks old, and I was afraid the pressure changes would really bother her ears. She came through it like a champ, a very sleepy champ. She hibernates like a frickin’ bear. She dealt with the plane ride better than MJ and I did. I hate the whole air travel industry. I hate its casual acceptance of inefficiency. It seems that all the airlines have colluded to suck, which I’m sure has to be some type of anti-trust violation. Maybe the government should consider leaving Barry Bonds alone and fix the airlines. I digress. Perhaps it would have been better in the long run for LMJ to have been a little more trouble because on both the way up and the way back not everyone too young for Hogwarts (HSWW) was well behaved, and I’m worried that MJ and I are turning into those politely arrogant parents that pity other parents whose children aren’t perfect. If only they would read the literature. The little bastard on the way up made everyone on the plane laugh as we were landing when he screamed, “I AM NOT MISBEHAVING!” at his mother as she tried to settle him down.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites in Charleston. It was nice. They’re a little stingy with the pork at their breakfast buffet, but I understand that’s a bigger deal for me than it should be. There is nothing in downtown Charleston, WV. Team LJ (Ya boy and ya boy’s baby girl) searched and searched but we couldn’t find anything of interest other than the mall across the street. Our pattern took us a mile in each direction but there were few signs of life. We saw banks, furniture stores, a movie theater, both the state and federal courthouses, an actual haberdashery, but no crowds. The only discernable groups were the mall walkers who had to see the baby. It was like a movie set where the back drop was a façade. We walked to the Kanawha “river”. Maybe it’s because I’m from Jacksonville and I live near the mouth of the St. John’s, but I don’t know if the Kanawha qualifies as a river. It’s definitely more than a brook but not much more than a creek. Maybe it’s deep. I did see a large barge sitting underneath a bridge with no one on it at ten thirty in the morning on a Tuesday. The few people we did encounter were extremely nice. Charleston is friendly town. I don’t see how the people could have been nicer, but then I was pushing a pretty baby around. Charleston seems like a nice place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit there.

The reason we were in Charleston was that MJ, JG, and MB were giving their world renowned Writers Institute. Teachers came from all over West Virginia to see The Crew do their thing. Everyone knows that JG and MB are fantastic people, but they are also consummate professionals, which is rare. My job forces me to deal with people from a bunch of different professions in a bunch of different situations, and professionalism is rare. People don’t do their jobs to the best of their abilities. The Crew does. I think so highly of JG and MB personally that they each walked away with LMJ at different points and I didn’t think twice about it. My lack of a second thought is what gave me pause. I didn’t really want to go on this trip. I had a lot of stuff I could have been doing if I had stayed at home, but from now on, as long as they are going to travel around the country helping teachers get better at their jobs; LMJ and I are going to tag along at least once a year so that she can see exactly how powerful women get it done, and get it done well. Plus, adventure will always be the order of the day for Team LJ.

***WARNING: HARRY POTTER SPOILERS***

I just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I want to thank J.K. Rowling for the happy ending, but I really need to know what Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny do in their adult lives. Do they all become Aurors? Does Harry try his hand at professional Quidditch? Does Hermione reverse the spell on her parents? Who becomes headmaster at Hogwarts? What happens with Draco Malfoy? I’m bittersweet about the ending. On the one hand it’s great, it’s everything I wanted and there is a sense of closure. On the other hand I am

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/30/arts/EU-A-E-Potters-Afterlife.phpgoing to miss them.

Billy Joel Sucks

About a month ago a local high school football coach, J.D. Hall, dropped dead from a heart attack. Normally I wouldn’t think twice about it but I went to school with him. He was a year behind me at Robert E. Lee Senior High School (Go Generals!). I was class of ’88; he was class of '89 . He wasn’t a close friend. He was barely more than an acquaintance, but sitting here at 3:30 in the morning reading a crappy Times-Union column about him, his death is hitting me kind of hard. Maybe it’s because I remember the columnist occasionally lifting with us in the afternoon of my senior and J.D.’s junior year. I was the hard case knucklehead counting down the last 180 days of my sentence. J.D. was the star quarterback. The only way to describe him is he was a hell of a nice guy, which is a consensus. The next guy with a bad word about J.D. will be the first guy with a bad word about J.D. We all encounter a few people like this in our lives, people you just hope good things for. The anecdotal/speculative cause of death was that he worked himself to death. What the hell for? He was thirty-five years old. Maybe we just had different perspectives. I grew up the petulant middle class kid whom the world owed things. J.D. was a poor kid who had to be focused from day one just to escape the ghetto. Right now as my life is beginning to take form and I can see the real possibility of a near fairy tale existence my worst fear is that I die at work when I could have been spending time with my family and friends. Nobody in the history of the world has ever been on their death bed wishing they had spent more time at the office. I don’t know if only the good die young, but sadly J.D. Hall sure did.

Baby's First Protein Shake

Technically it was a full on nutrition pack. We went with 20g of whey isolate because she needs short protein strings. We went with 5g of creatine monohydrate so she can recover quicker. That's why she looks a little bloated. Creatine makes me sick, but everything makes her sick so I figured what the hell. Don't tell her mom but I gave her 5mg of iocane powder because it's never too soon to start building a tolerance (extra points if you can tell me where iocane is from). Which brings us to the 100 micrograms of Asian, not African, cobra venom because what if she finds herself barefoot in a Bangledeshi jungle? She doesn't own a lot of shoes yet, and the ones she does own aren't hip boots. It was all suspended in 2 oz of human milk. Healthy, healthy babies.

Random Stuff

Are you checking that out? That vomit stain is bigger than she is. She puked on me again ten seconds later. She's like Jeff Goldblum in the fly.

I'm gearing up for a 1/2 marathon next year, and I started a 10 week program I saw in a magazine. Sunday I went for a long run, roughly eight miles, and on the way back I was attacked by a mockingbird. Mockingbirds are psychotic. If something gets too close to its nest it dive bombs the interloper. It's funny when they attack cats, dogs, crows, other people. It's not funny when the little bastard heads my way. I was in the last 1/4 mile of my run and I felt a really weird wisp of air on the back of my right arm. I whipped my head around and saw this sumbitch flying back towards a tree. I kept going because if I stopped I would still be there. I had waited until the early evening to start my run so the temperature was a breezy 94 degrees. I had run another ten yards when I felt a disturbance in the Force, so I turned around and saw Harper Lee headed my way again. She tried to play it off like she wasn't attacking me, but I knew what was up. Damned bird.

Sorry for the short post but The Closer is starting and Chief Johnson needs my attention

Bored on a Conference Call

I'm trying to post more often this month.

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above,
Don't fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love,
Don't fence me in.
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze,
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don't fence me in.

That’s the first verse of Bing Crosby’s “Don’t Fence Me In”. This is what I foresee George W. Bush’s life being after he leaves office, and good for him. I’m looking forward to him replacing his father as Bill Clinton’s international wing man. Add Newt Gingrich and Colin Powell to complete the New Rat Pack – sorry, no other Democrats are cool enough for this crew. They’ll do two sets of brokering world peace by day and party till dawn every night. However, I see Dick “Darth Coronary” Cheney spending the rest of his life getting revenge on the weak willed traitors in the Republican Party who have betrayed him recently. You know, for expecting him to tell them what he’s been doing for the past six and a half years. He’s trying to accomplish something, dammit. He’s Victor Drazen from 24 with better resources and a fouler disposition. He found out that bird shot isn’t going to get the job done when he tested it accidentally shot his friend in the face. I imagine he’ll skip buckshot and load the shells with 18 dimes dipped in rat poison.

Misogyny

I rented the first season of 24 last week, and after watching it the only conclusion I can come to is that women are stupid (Teri and Kim Bauer) or careerist, backstabbing, uber-beeotches (every other women on the show). If Bill Gates and Warren Buffett pooled all of their money the Bauer women still wouldn’t have enough to put a clue on lay-away (90 days same as cash). Kim gets a pass because good Lord is she a lot of Aryan refreshment. I apologize if anyone is offended, but I think I can speak for the group here, the heterosexual American male finds little more appealing than a young, dumb, hot chick with an aversion to clothing. SPOILERS FOLLOW SO STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THIS SHOW AND YOU WANT TO: As for the uber-beeotches: Nina is has been a double-agent the whole time. She was Jack’s mistress when he was separated, not divorced, from Teri, and after stabbing Teri in the back metaphorically she shoots her in the back literally. The soon to be first lady, Sherry Palmer, attempts to have one of her husband’s aides seduce him so he won’t be able to ignore what she wants. She’s covered up a murder and is frustrated when her husband won’t cover up a second. Those are the four main women on the show. If I have missed a female with even a glance at a redeeming quality please comment and let me know.