The Pizza Was Good

This wasn’t a very good Halloween. The first and biggest problem was that it was 90 frackin’ degrees all day long. We didn’t get our pumpkin until this morning because it’s been 90 degrees for all but two days in October, we didn’t want it rotting on our porch, and last week we all had the flu. We went to the pumpkin patch, which was so much fun last year, but since today was Halloween the pickings were slim, and it was hot. The Florida-Georgia game was also today, which messed up the feel of the day. The weather also messed up the feel of the football game. One of my favorite things about The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party is that it’s usually cool enough for the hot young co-eds fans to wear jeans and t-shirts, and bourbon keeps everybody warm or drunk enough not to care. It also didn’t help that the Gators beat the Bulldogs for the seventeenth time in the last twenty years. I hate the Gators, and worst of all I’m finding it very hard not to be an Urban Meyer fan. The best part of the day was that my parents got to share part of LMJ’s first Halloween trick or treating experience. She dressed up as a very busy bumblebee. I don’t know if it was really a bad part or just a little disappointing, but no one in the neighborhood was home. LMJ only got to trick or treat at three or four houses, and one of those was a house whose family wasn’t home but they left candy on the porch. With the weather, the college football, and the empty neighborhood I think the worst part of today was that Heineken wasn’t involved at all. I’m still trying to lose weight, but I should have taken today off. I have yet to run into the problem that 24 Dutch beers in a box can’t help. Hot day or cold, good day or not, that’s a lesson I’m going to remember next year.

Small Victories

LMJ still isn’t a hundred percent, not that it slows her down at all. She just has a stuffy nose and the barest hint of a fever, but like I said she’s all go. We started the day with some oatmeal, and my learning that you can’t cook two servings in the microwave. It may be possible, but there aren’t any instructions on the box. I could have put it in a big bowl and doubled the cooking time, but I’m sure that if I had done that I would still be cleaning oatmeal out of the microwave. She has oatmeal every morning. I rarely have oatmeal. The only reason I had it this morning is because I’m lazy. I didn’t want to cook two breakfasts, and it’s not like oatmeal is bad for you. I also did it because if I give her oatmeal and make eggs and toast, especially cheese toast, for myself then her breakfast is her breakfast and my breakfast is our breakfast. We played in the sunroom/school/museum/library until the baby girl started getting insistent about watching some more television. Keeping her television limited is difficult because I really like all of the shows, but I did the responsible dad thing and fed her some week old mac ‘n cheese and then we went outside and played in the back yard. I’m worried about my influences on her when we’re outside. I’m relieved that she’s a girl and won’t absorb all of the dumb stuff that I do. We were playing with her kickball so I kicked it, hard. It flew over the fence hit the next door neighbors’ garage apartment chimney and bounced back into my yard. A reasonable person would count his blessings and stop with the aggressive ball play. It’s too bad there wasn’t a reasonable person outside with us. We were playing softball and I hit ball over the fence, even though I was consciously trying not to hit the ball over the fence, but it was windy and I hit a plastic softball in the air. The sad part is that this isn’t the first time and won’t be the last. At least, for now, the stupidity is limited to me. The upside was that we got to have an adventure trespassing into the neighbors’ yard. We played outside for another twenty minutes and no other balls left the yard. Maybe I am maturing. Not that it matters, I’m calling it a win.

Tap Out Ten Thousand Times

My lungs are clearing up and I’m starting to think about my exercise schedule for next week. It will have been about ten days since I did anything so I know it’s going to be a week of pain. I’m going to try to do the half marathon with Donna in February. It’s for breast cancer and it’s time for me to step up my game. Part of me wants to push it and run the whole damn thing. It’s more than three months away and bunches of people do marathons, but I’m going to let discretion be the better part of valor this time. I think the farthest I’ve ever run was ten miles, and there’s nothing to be gained and a whole bunch to be lost if I over train just because I wanted to be macho. I think I can finish a marathon before 2011 but I don’t think I’ll be ready by February. I don’t think it’s too lofty a goal, along with the sprint triathlon. I’ve done a good job dragging my fat ass all around the Jacksonville race circuit without getting shin splints, and I’m very proud of that. This has been a pretty good year as far as my fitness goals have gone. The only thing I’m falling short on is my swimming. I’m running well. I’m strong like bull. I’m dropping pounds. I just have to conquer my fears of YMCA floor fungus and not being naturally good at something. My lack of swimming skill was bumming me out but I found out in my reading that no one swims well. Every runner or cyclist who gets into triathlons struggles in the water at first, no matter how fit they are. I was going to jump back into my routine of weights, elliptical, and road work, but I’ve psyched myself into spending a lot of time next week in the pool. I have to get better at letting my ego be the novice so the rest of me can improve. I’m starting to believe that it’s important to suck at something every day.

This Thing Should Come With A Sawed Off Shotgun

I’m not a car guy, but AWWW HELL YEAHH!!! Every other car that’s ever been built is now gay. Women can’t sit in it because it will impregnate them. This is the Lotus Exige Stealth, which is a dumb name. There’s nothing stealthy about it. They should have named it the Bas Rutten because it’s made out of equal parts knees to the face and kicks to the liver. Actually, only the ones going to Japan are being called Stealth. The rest of them are named Exige Scura. Scura is Italian for black, but there’s speculation that the Stealth name change is because scura is too close to the Japanese word for scene of carnage. I guess no one in marketing actually looked at the car. I’m a little bit surprised that Lotus built it. The last cool car they made was the Esprit, which is now better known for being an 80’s girls’ clothes company than a sports car. Even though James Bond drove them in The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only, Lotus has always seemed to me to have an almost tweed impertinence. The Exige Scura is going to change that. Unfortunately, they’re making less than fifty of them and none of them are coming to North America, at least this year. I’m also not happy that it’s relatively cheap. Tricked out it’s going to sell for $75k and I don’t know if that will kill demand because no one wants anything cheap or if it will drive demand and Lotus will make a bunch of them. If Lotus makes a bunch of them then every douche bag yuppie going through a mid-life crisis is going to want one, me included, and then they won’t be special anymore. There should be some kind of badass qualification to be allowed to buy this car. You should have to kill somebody with your bare hands and then drop a one liner while putting on some shades. There’s your credit application.

The Battle Of Hastings Flu

We introduced LMJ to It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown tonight, and I don’t know if it was a sign that I’m getting better or getting worse that I had some really strange thoughts. I was watching Snoopy sneak his way across the French countryside after he was shot down in his Sopwith Camel by the Red Baron and was noticing the realistic feel of the whole thing, or as realistic as two dimensional animation can get, which got me thinking about World War I and how brutal it was. This got me to thinking about how Eddie Izzard describes Europe as where the history comes from, which lead me to thinking about England and how It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown was released in 1966, exactly 900 years after the Battle of Hastings where William the Conqueror upgraded his nickname and Frenchified England. It was the last time England was conquered by a foreign power, and the last time the French whipped anyone’s ass. I got excited because the thousand year anniversary will be 1066, but my hopes were immediately dashed when I did the math and realized I would be 95 years old and I most likely would have been dead for thirty years. Even if I’m not dead I don’t think I’ll be able to get to England, Normandy, or out of bed to celebrate with fine meats, cheeses, wines, beers, and whores. I looked over at my baby girl, who will only be 59 in October of 2066, and had the urge to tell her to keep herself fit so she can enjoy the festivities on the momentous occasion, like she’d be interested. I don’t know if I want her to be interested or not. On the one hand it’s where Old English – the language, not the malt liquor – started the transition into Middle English and it's therefore historic. On the other hand that’s some hardcore geek crap. She’s not English and it happened a thousand years ago. Like I said, I don’t know if my fever helped or hurt.

Welcome To The NFL, Rookie

Well that was fun. I felt like crap all last night. I got about four hours of sleep. I was simultaneously burning up and freezing. I can only imagine it’s what menopause is like, and all I could dream about was NCIS. I was stuck in a cycle of dozing in and out of a crappy CBS procedural crime drama. It wouldn’t have been as bad if I was stuck in CSI: Miami. I got up at about quarter to six this morning and felt like warmed over death. MJ gave me a run down of everything she learned about the swine flu on the internets. If I feel bad for more than three days I’m terminal. If I start to feel better and then relapse it means I’ve contracted a bacterial infection on top of the swine flu and I’m terminal, basic stuff like that. I sweat all the way to work. I was so hot that I skipped coffee this morning. I rode to work with the windows down so I didn’t burst into flames. The only reason I went to work was because I had to get walked through some securities disclosure thing that was absolutely drop dead due by midnight Halloween, and as per usual, something got changed and I didn’t really have to do anything. Then somewhere between 8am and noon I started to feel better. I wrote about this before. I might succumb to the pterodactyl flu or the Genghis Khan flu, but swine flu isn’t even in my weight class. My snot never even turned yellow, let alone green. There was a lot of clear runny mucous though. I’m not going to lie. The swine flu kicked me in the head. I’m still a little bit shaky, but the little piggy cold never really had a shot. Nice try, we’ll see you in twenty years. I also got a bunch of stuff done at work. I win.

I Need Some Cheese To Go With My Whine

Today has not been a good day. I think I have the flu; I don’t know if it’s swine, bird, or al dente flu. Yesterday, I had the sniffles. Today, my runny nose has been joined by aches, pains, chills, and fatigue. I have a busy week coming up at work and I need to start training for the Donna Hicken half marathon. Neither one of those things is helped by being sick. I’m also approaching a “fish or cut bait” moment with my job. LMJ is getting older. It’s less than a year until she needs to go to pre-school, and I can’t send her to a bad one. The bad economy is killing me. Strangely enough, it never occurred to me that 15 million people being out of work would affect my practice so drastically. I’m not getting paid because the works have been gummed up by the work those laid off people used to do. I’m still waiting on several fairly large sums that I should have received as much as six months ago. Unfortunately, things don’t get processed when no one is there to process them. I’m even noticing it with weird stuff on the edges in my office. Ricoh laid people off so the copiers aren’t being serviced the way they had been, and at least one of them is down for extended periods, it seems like, every week. All of this was fun and games when it was abstract classroom stuff, but it’s not just MJ and me anymore. I will get paid at some point, but there’s always a balance between potential and cash on the barrelhead. I’m not the only one in this boat. The sad part is that I’m doing better than the vast majority of people in my industry, but that doesn’t pay the bills. Actually, the situation will sort itself out because while I may get to the point where I want to stop fishing, there isn’t any bait in Jacksonville. All I can do is throw myself into my job a little bit more and weather the storm.

3 Years Ago Today

I wasn’t going to write about putting the Boyo to sleep three years ago today, but there were too many omens that suggested I should. I had planned on letting his deathday go by privately. I was going to have some tuna and maybe a shot of rum to commemorate him but not write about it. I was going to write about having a cold or the swine flu and how I blame MJ, personally, for bringing diseases she collects from her students. I’m surprised we haven’t all gotten cholera. School children are filthy and should be burned. Anyway, LMJ and I were on our way to the post office and Publix when the neighbors’ cat Familiar showed up. He’s a magnificent ebony beast, a big nasty tom. I haven’t seen him in a few months, and it was a little bit strange for him to show up out of the blue today – specifically today. I don’t mean I saw him scampering through the backyard. I mean he came up to LMJ and me and, just out of reach, hung out with us a little bit. He’s always been a little bit afraid of me because it used to be my duty to scare him away from CG’s cat Wesley, who he outweighed by at least ten pounds. Not today though, today he showed up to let me know that I should show Mr. Kitty’s memory the proper respect. LMJ was funny. As Familiar walked up to us, she told me that he was hungry and we should feed him. I don’t know if she was communicating with him telepathically, but I doubt he would have disagreed. He likes her a lot. He’s a full fledged cat so he couldn’t hang around shooting the catnip with us too long, and he went on to do whatever it is he does and we got in the van. He stopped to scratch his ear and I pointed it out to LMJ. She suggested that he needed some calamine lotion. I’m glad I had this little encounter with Familiar. It reminded me that I shouldn’t let the loss of my cat recede further and further into the background. It’s important to remember that he was gone before LMJ showed up, and that part of my life is fading in my memory. I wrote about him last year and the year before, but this year he was on the verge of not making the cut, and I’m glad he did. Right now, I hope he does next year too.

The NBA Is FANNN-TASTIC

I don’t know if I’m going through a mid-life crisis or having a stroke, but I’m really excited about the upcoming NBA season. I haven’t been into the NBA since I was in college, and that was during Michael Jordan’s prime. I don’t know if I’m into it for the game or the soap opera. Back in the day, players would get coked up, spread some STD’s, and then put on a happy face for the television cameras. They’re still doing that, although weed seems to have replaced cocaine, but now thanks to every knucklehead in the world having a camera in his phone and a blog, we’re getting to see all the off the court stuff. Delonte West, my favorite player with a tattoo on his neck, was arrested riding a motorcycle with guitar case full of weapons. He was off his meds – literally. No, not weed but Paxil or Prozac or lithium or Thorozine. Lamar Odom seemed to be making a huge mistake when it was announced that he was marrying one of the Kardashians. They had known each other for three months. He makes $12 million a year. If a Kardashian is caught in the moonlight GOLDDIGGER shows up written across their foreheads in big bold letters. They went to the Paris Hilton School of publicity whoring, but they didn’t inherit a hotel fortune so they have to “work” for a living. Odom moved up my favorite player list by demanding suggesting a prenuptial agreement. This all happened in August. For some reason the happy couple hasn’t tied the knot. Dirk Nowitzki, my favorite seven foot German player with a bad haircut, was engaged to a woman named Chrystal who was arrested for fraud, and I’ll just let the Dallas Morning News expand on how the relationship was going.

The German (Nowitzki) hired a private investigator to check into (Crystal) Taylor's background and the gumshoe found that she had used at least eight different aliases in the past including Chrystal Ann Taylor, Crystal Ann Taylor, Crystal Ann Santiago and Crista A. Westerhays.

We haven’t even gotten to Kobe, LeBron, and Shaq. This season is gonna be awesome.

Sometimes Stupidity Is Funny In The Morning

I didn’t have a chance to eat breakfast this morning before I left for work so I stopped at Publix for a Met-Rx bar – lots of protein, lots of fiber, just what a growing boy needs. Since it was before 8am only the two express lanes and one full service lane were open, and both of the express lanes were occupied by people who don’t seem to understand the English definition of “express”. The full service lane had a lady who, I guess, was taking full advantage of the new sales items. She had a cart jam packed with stuff. The store hadn’t been open for forty-five minutes, yet here she was with two hours worth of grocery shopping in her cart. I’m only mentioning this because I was impressed. I wasn’t impressed, at all, with the people taking up the express lane with more than ten items. One lady had twenty items, minimum, if she had a pack of gum. Instead of stabbing people yelling at these people about clear signage and the absolute universal definition of ten, I acted like a good citizen and went to the customer service desk. There was one person ahead of me buying lottery tickets – plural. I’m always amazed at people trying to work the lottery scratch off system. Anyway, I was standing there looking at the Powerball display and wondering how much the jackpot was for Saturday - $31 million. I had the same reaction most Americans have. $31 million, that’s not even worth my time. I paid for my protein bar, walked out of the store, and then it hit me. I couldn’t be bothered to spend $5 and say, “5 Powerball quickpicks, please,” because that’s too much effort for $31 million. After taxes I’d be lucky to clear $15 million. I didn’t skip the lottery because I had a 1 in 57 million chance of winning, 1 in 11.5 million if I spent $5. I skipped it because $15 million in my pocket wasn’t enough. I would have to choose either the mansion on the beach OR the yacht, and I can’t live my life like that. I’m not going to compromise. That’s called intergrity.

I'm Like A Flock Of Seagulls Song

I haven’t been running outside very much lately, and I forgot a cardinal rule: however far one runs out, one has to run that far back. My recent runs have been on the dreadmill after I do my weights. I haven’t had a chance to get to the gym this week because I’ve been busy at work, so I made time for exercise today. I didn’t feel like going to the gym because I didn’t want to get home at quarter to six and today was a chamber of commerce Florida autumn afternoon. All of this factored into my running too far and too fast. I was planning on doing my standard thing of running down to Memorial Park, seeing how I felt, then either continuing on to the Y or running home. The first monkey wrench thrown into the works was the construction behind St. Vincent’s. I had to alter my route, which threw off my visual cues that tell me how far I’ve gone. I had my Garmin on but numbers don’t really mean anything when I’m running. I got to Memorial Park and did two laps instead of one and then continued along the actual river instead of heading up Riverside Avenue, which threw off my visual cues even more. I cruised up the hill under the Fuller Warren Bridge and along the River Walk. I felt great and a great song started on my iPod, an eleven minute song. Fueled up on adrenaline from the Metallica’s Mercyful Fate medley, I hauled ass up the train bridge and didn’t come to my senses until I got the landing and wondered, “What the f**k am I doing here?” I turned around and saw St. Vincent’s on the damned horizon. That’s when it hit me that I was going to have to run all the way back. I looked at my watch and saw that I was almost four miles from home. I had planned a nice and easy run to just get the blood flowing and keep my metabolism up. Well, I was stuck, which was both a good and bad thing. The bad was that I didn’t bring any fluid because I didn’t plan on running this far, and even though I felt good, I knew I wouldn’t when I was done. The good is that I got some extra miles in, I didn’t feel bad at the end, and I’m in better shape than I’ve been in since LMJ was born. It’s time to start looking at sprint triathlons in 2010.

I Didn't Know This Was In My Brain Until I Was Almost Done Writing It

I have absolutely nothing to write about. I didn’t get a chance to exercise. I was stuck in my office all day doing boring paperwork stuff. I think I need a new chair or a new desk or both. My neck is killing me because I look at my computer at a goofy angle in my office and I don’t think the cheap chair provides any support. I think the high point of my day, or at least the most exciting, was blowing a years worth of garbage out of my keyboard with one of those cans of air. I was kind of disappointed when I was done. I was definitely grossed out by all the crap that was stuck in the keyboard.

I had an interesting conversation with the company heavy hitter in the bathroom. He asked me how my year was going and I told him. I gave him some basic “how’s the weather” crap about the economy, some pseudo-positive drivel. The truth is that my production is about 15% less than it was last year and it’s frustrating. When I asked him how his year was going, he started bragging about hitting some bench marks that the company sets. He wasn’t patting himself on the back or trying to impress me. He was genuinely proud, which I found strange because he’s routinely hit these benchmarks by April for the last twenty years. His production is off about 60% from last year. He’s still making more money than anyone I know in real life, but income satisfaction is relative. At least it usually is. Then it hit me. He loves this s**t, every bit of it. A lot of his self worth is tied up in being a wealth manager ( that’s what we’re calling ourselves this week). He’s a really nice guy. I don’t want to make him seem shallow or superficial because he’s not. None of my self worth is tied up in my job. It made me think for a second.

I got home and saw the baby girl, and realized that this is where I’m emotionally invested. My loved ones are the only things that move me. I think about all the ridiculous crap that I do for MJ – and LMJ more and more – just because she asks me to, while I would find it a chore to call the fire department if my neighbor’s house was on fire. I only have so many rollover minutes and I can’t be dialing 9-1-1 willy nilly. Sometimes these things just need to burn. It’s good for the environment.

Via The Rectum Transmitted With An Apparatus

Sweet wounded Jesus! How did I miss this? Almost twenty years ago in the highly underrated, underseen (it’s a word, I just wrote it) film House Party, Pops played by the late Robin Harris asks, “Who would give a public enema?” At the time they were making a cheap pun on the name Public Enemy, but that’s irrelevant because we have a definitive answer, Tyra Banks. Apparently, giving someone a colonic on television some how qualifies as acceptable “content”. Why didn’t she just have Rebecca Romijn on again to talk about how difficult it is to be pretty? This wasn’t a colonoscopy like Katie Couric did on television for cancer awareness. This wasn’t even Tyra Banks getting her poop shoot cleansed. It looks like it was some chick that got paid to do it. For those that don’t know,

Colonic irrigation (CI) is a procedure in which very large quantities of liquids are infused into the colon via the rectum through a tube, a few pints at a time, in an effort to wash away and remove its contents. CI differs from an ordinary enema which involves infusing a lesser amount of liquid into the rectum only. A "high colonic" may involve the use of twenty or more gallons pumped by a machine or transmitted with an apparatus that relies upon gravity to achieve its purpose. Liquids used in colonics may include coffee, herbs, enzymes, wheatgrass extract, or many other substances.

How long is it until this is a show unto itself? It could be a game show. There could be different categories: guessing the liquid that’s being sprayed, producing the most volume, producing the least volume, withstanding increased pressures, making a coroner vomit, X-treem Jabeñero division. I could go on. How do I copyright this, even though I’m sure the Japanese and/or Germans have been doing a show like this for decades? Tyra knows Oprah. I seriously doubt Dr. Oz was consulted. Every time I think we’ve hit rock bottom, there’s another sub-basement. I’m just spit balling here but what about America’s Next Top Moyle?

Another Day, Another Piece Of Crap

Today was a day of noticing how quality is a dead art. MJ started crunching some numbers to see if we could save some money on our technology platform: land line, cellular, interweb, and cable. What she found was that we’ve been getting charged for more than a year by a scam on my cell phone. Nobody downloaded or authorized anything. Some company just started billing us ten dollars a month for the hell of it. MJ called Bellsouth and spent forty-five minutes trying to get them to refund the unauthorized purchases. I googled the company that was stealing from us, and the very first thing that comes up is that they’re fraudulent. Why would Bellsouth allow purchases from this company when they don’t even see any money from the transactions? All it does is create customer service issues. Since MJ was persistent, Bellsouth is basically going to have to front us $120 while they try to sort it out with the thieves. They’ll probably write it off because they can’t be bothered to chase $120, but all that means is that’s money out of their pocket. The other option would have been to lose us as customers, which they’re on the verge of anyway. I would think that the wireless phone market was highly competitive. They all use the same technology and satellites, so the only ways to differentiate are price and/or customer service, but I guess that’s not the case. The other crappy product I had to deal with today is our new ceiling fan. The weather is cooling off and we won’t be needing the fan as much. The problem is that we can’t change the speed of the fan without taking off the light shade/chandelier/cover. Our options are to hang the light cover properly and securely, which traps the fan chain against part of the motor case so it can’t be pulled or we can leave the shade loose and hope it doesn’t fall and shatter, filling our bed with shards of broken glass. It’s a design flaw and the fan company decided it was cheaper not to give a f**k, but I’m the bad guy for going on a rampage and murdering everyone involved.

Oktoberfest Begins

Welcome to fall – in the middle of October. I had a happy and eventful first day of autumn. I let the baby girl sleep in because she’s had a busy week, and if she’s sleeping then she needs it. MJ had gotten up early and headed to Panera to get some grading done. I finished the laundry before seven, and was ready when LMJ woke up. We had some grapes and kinda hung out until Mommy got home around nine. The girls went shopping. I went for a run. Running in the cool weather is so much easier than running when the air is, for all intents and purposes, fire. I saw an infomercial for some glorified reverse wet suit that claimed up to 97% of energy is used cooling the body during exercise. When the temperature is thirty degrees cooler I definitely feel like I have 30% more energy. After a comfortable run I mowed the lawn and pumped up our bike tires. MJ got LMJ a new front riding bike seat that we were going to try out this afternoon. The girls got back from shopping and LMJ took a nap. While she was napping I baked some pumpkin apple bread for our night out with The Writing Workshop Crew and husbands. LMJ woke up and we went on a leisurely bike ride down to the river to test out the new bike seat. The biggest difference, for me, is that I’m not carrying the baby girl anymore. Now she’s snug as a bug in a space aged seat on her mama’s handlebars. I got to be a little bit freer with how I rode. I could do stunts and stuff, but I really missed having LMJ ride behind me and kick me in the back of my legs. I think she enjoyed riding up front a lot more. After the bike ride we tricked Grammy into watching LMJ, grabbed a loaf of the pumpkin apple bread and headed to our night out. Dinner was great. The conversation and company was better, even though the teachers talked teaching. What else are they going to talk about? They’re in the sh*t man, they’re in the sh*t. It was a great way to end a great day. The only thing that could have made the day better is if the Gators had lost.

A Bit Of A Waste Of Time But Not All Bad

MJ turned me on to Pandora.com a couple of weeks ago. It’s part of the music genome project, which is, now that I’ve read about it, the biggest bucket of fail in the history of arrogant stupidity. They try to break music down into smaller and smaller pieces like it was matter. I was lost for something to write about tonight. I mean really struggling, so I decided to listen to Pandora and write about how cool it is. I had planned to write about how addictive it can be, and probably best avoided by those that are obsessive compulsive. I have some obsessive tendencies. I find that unless I love the song, I’m only interested in what’s coming next. I’m not interested in the next song for itself. I’m only interested in how it relates to my station, and I find Pandora to be a bit repetitive and stubborn. I love 80’s Bay area speed metal. It was the first station I programmed. I chose the Big 4: Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica, and Slayer. Pandora kept feeding me Guns ‘N Roses, which wasn’t a big deal until I found out that musicians and scientists were allegedly breaking all the music down into algorithms made up of 400 characteristics. The only things that Guns ‘N Roses shares with the bands I chose is that they toured with Metallica for six months. They were a rock band. The actual music on the page couldn’t be more different. I wouldn’t have noticed the selection if it happened once, but Pandora has chosen more Guns ‘N Roses than it has Megadeth. Megadeth has released five times as much music as Guns ‘N Roses, so it’s not a sample size issue. Basically, the end result of the music genome project’s analysis is a snapshot of a Turtles or Coconuts. I’m still enjoying Pandora. I’m being introduced to new bands and songs, which was nearly impossible for anyone with a full time job. I’m just a little disappointed. I thought Pandora was something special, but it’s just an extended iTunes random. I feel like Dorothy when she pulled the curtain back and saw the Wizard. But at the end of the day, I get to listen to Black Sabbath for free. I win.

From Morning Till Night.

Busy day today. I started by being woken up by my wife, who reminded me to wake up our daughter lest we get off schedule and have a baby girl awake after 9pm. You gotta plan ahead. I made LMJ some oatmeal with yogurt, which she enjoyed while watching Sesame Street. I made my breakfast while she ate hers, and Grammy showed up to take her off my hands. I sent some e-mails while I ate my eggs and cheese toast. I hydrated, brushed my teeth, got geared up, and headed to the gym. Chest and biceps were on the menu today. Being in shape is better for working out than being out of shape. I pushed myself because I had my bi-weekly lunch at my favorite sandwich shop scheduled and calories were going to be consumed. Eating after exercise is one of life’s great joys. I was so hungry that I was worried about looking rude while I stuffed a sandwich in my face. I love this lunch. Spending time with people in their seventies is interesting and educational. They have a completely different perspective on the world. Things that enter my field of view don’t enter theirs and vice versa. They don’t know about Beyonce and I only know about Curtis LeMay because of them. After lunch I came home, sent some e-mails, and woke up the baby girl so we could start the process of getting to My Gym. It was three hours away, but it’s better to be over-prepared than under-prepared. We wound up leaving late anyway, and when we got there Coach Jordan was in charge for the first time and the group was small. We love small groups. We had fun as we always do, and LMJ is taking baby steps toward being social with other kids, and by social I mean acknowledging their existence as people and not tiny zombies. I didn’t have as much energy as I did last week, but I wasn’t sluggish either. I had a bit of a strange moment as we were leaving. I finished putting on LMJ’s shoes, and when I turned around to put mine on, a mom’s coin slot was showing and she was wearing a thong. Maybe I’m getting old and crusty but I thought it was inappropriate. Quarters are close in the shoe area, and I was only about eighteen inches from her so I noticed that her thong was twisted. Isn’t that uncomfortable? Underwear comfort has become a bigger issue for me than it used to be. I’m definitely getting old and crusty.

Rush Limbaugh, Viagra, Dominican Lady Boys, and the NFL

I’m writing about this so I don’t forget it, because I’m sure it’s going to disappear to never be heard of again – unless I start listening to the Rush Limbaugh Show. The man with talent on loan from God is part of a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams. I think this is made of pure unadulterated fail for a bunch of reasons, some of them I will get into. My favorite sports writer, Jason Whitlock, thinks the whole thing is a publicity stunt, which I hadn’t thought of but wouldn’t surprise me if it was true. Limbaugh bids for the team. He gets rejected. He pretends to be all butthurt about liberal drive by media bias and reverse discrimination, while he doubles his ad revenue for his radio show.
I see ya working. The main reason I think he’s going to get rejected is because Rush would be bad for the NFL from a business standpoint. News of the bid was barely announced before everyone and their communist brother was protesting. That would be good if Rush was premiering a movie, but it’s bad because NFL owners don’t like being hassled. They want to run their teams and collect their money, and the controversy that follows Limbaugh would interfere with that. The reason controversy follows him is because he can’t – physically can’t – keep his mouth shut. The NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with the players is going to expire after next season, and the way these things go in the media is that the players run their mouths, digging a public relations hole as a bunch of millionaires complaining about not getting paid enough. The owners are silent, and usually win. The chances of Limbaugh screwing that up would be infinity percent. There’s also a subtle cultural difference and Limbaugh wouldn’t fit in. The NFL owners are all industrialists or the children of industrialists, while Limbaugh is an entertainer. Money, in this case, is irrelevant. Rush Limbaugh wouldn’t fit in. Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank started Home Depot. Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen started Microsoft. Wayne Weaver started Nine West. Rush Limbaugh is an extremely highly paid employee of the Premier Radio Networks. There’s a difference no matter how much money is involved. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is slamming the door shut on Limbaugh as I write this. We’ll find out in the next week or so if the whole thing was a publicity stunt or not.

Caught In A Web-Nado

Another day stuck in my office being forced to participate in ridiculous “training”. I get it. Fraud is bad. I can’t complain too much though. They could have made me go to some classroom somewhere, and I wouldn’t have been able to search the internet while they teach me how not to get caught laundering money. I got caught in a pretty good web-nado. I started with the lyrics to Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper”, which I had always thought was about cops, but I started thinking about it and I don’t think the British call any of their police troopers. I was right. The lyrics aren’t about police. They’re about British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War, which lead me to the look up the Crimean War. I didn’t know anything about the Crimean War other than the British and Russian were involved. This knowledge came from Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels. The Crimean War was serious business. It was almost like a dry run for World War I with the British, the French, and the Ottomans fighting the Russians over who was the rightful guardian of the Holy Land. It was the first war that used the telegraph and railways, and it also made Florence Nightingale famous. The fight over the Holy Land lead me to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which are a lot more groovy and chill than I had thought before. I thought the Eastern Orthodox Churches were like the Roman Catholic Church with witches and vampires and active dark magic. I was wrong. They’re like the Roman Catholic Church, but much less concerned with concrete explanations for Christian mysticism. They’re much more comfortable making leaps of faith in matters of Mystery. They don’t have a long-winded explanation of transubstantiation, although they do believe that the bread and wine consumed during the Eucharist becomes the body and blood of Christ. They also don’t believe that Jesus asked anybody anything. He died for man’s sins and in doing so redeemed man, believe it or don’t. The only Hell is the active rejection of God’s love. I could get down with that, but for one thing. Fasting. No, that’s a deal breaker. I’m not giving up meat for half the year, especially during gravy season. God understands. If he didn’t, bacon wouldn’t taste the way it does. My “training” ended at some point. I noticed only because my computer sped up. I had a history lesson and a near religious conversion. I’ll call that a pretty good web-nado.

Workout Progress

Columbus Day sucks. I hate half holidays. We either need to be on or we need to be off. Some stuff was open like the stock market. Some stuff was closed like the bond market. What kind of sense does that make? I couldn’t really get anything done. I was tired. I came home. I had some lunch, and I seriously thought about taking a nap. On one hand I wish I had. Naps rule. On the other hand I was able to get to the gym and get a quality session in, and since I burned a whole bunch of calories I was able to enjoy more spaghetti. I’m excited that I’m starting my third consecutive week of hitting it hard. This is where my body is used to the routine and the quality gains start. I’m also excited because I really didn’t want to go to the gym at all. Usually when I feel like that I have a sub par session, but I count it as extra because it very well could have been zero. Today however, I killed it. I didn’t even freak out about having to wait for a guy to finish screwing around in the squat rack so I could do my deadlifts. I did my pull-ups first, which I never do, and did the deads second. I used a weight belt because I’m serious about the safety first thing. I hate the weight belt with a purple passion. I can’t think of an accessory that’s more uncomfortable, but it makes sure my back is stable and I can continue to lift. I haven’t given in to the temptation to go super heavy just because I’m wearing it, which is a minor miracle. I doubt I would have gone heavy today, but there are days when I’m feeling it that I might do something dumb. I wore the wrong shoes – not paying attention – so I did the elliptical instead of running. There’s no reason to tear up my feet. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get some time in the pool and I’ll be ready for my first sprint distance triathlon.

Surf's Up! Ho Daddy!

We woke up late this morning and almost skipped the beach. That would have been the biggest mistake since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I spent the week whining and complaining about how hot it was. It’s the middle of October and the temperature was 85 degrees last night at 9pm, but the weather was 100% perfect today. We got to the beach this morning at about ten, found it all but deserted, and there was a perfect tidal pool for the baby girl. I have no idea how waves work, but they were huge today. I don’t know if there’s a hurricane in the Atlantic or the moon is at its closest point to the Earth and I don’t really care. The surf was as rough as it’s been all summer – even though were almost a month into fall. MJ was brilliant enough to bring both Boogie Boards so I grabbed one and headed out. I don’t normally play on the Boogie Boards a bunch because the waves are usually small and there’s a very small chance of me dying. If I’m not in fear for my life then what’s the point? Today is what I imagine it’s like off the coast of Southern California. The waves were so big it was difficult to get out past the breakers to catch the big juicy ones. MJ has just as much fun on the small ones, but she’s not as much of an adrenaline junky as I am. A big bonus to the day was that we were joined by the Fleming Island Crew, who may be on their way to becoming the Beach Crew. The last six weeks we’ve been expecting something different at the beach, some kind of signal that the summer is over and the autumn has begun, but it hasn’t happened. I really, really want fall to start. We’re way past Indian Summer. We’re into Sitting Bull at the top of Little Bighorn Summer, but days like today make sweating on my fifty foot walk from my car to my office on Halloween worth it.

Dogs And Their Owners

The Riverside Arts Market is an interesting event. I manned a booth for the Riverside Fine Arts for the second time in three weeks today at the market. It’s more of a bazaar than a swap meet, and that reflects its Riversiditiude. It’s held every Saturday underneath the Fuller Warren Bridge and the vendors range from a copper sculptor who I’m sure was in prison recently to upscale restaurants. I’ve been to the market as a customer and wandered around, but sitting there as a vendor is a completely different experience. When I’m there walking around, I’m usually trying to figure out how I can eat something from every food booth, so I miss what other people are doing. Strangely, no one serves alcohol. Someone should be selling beer. When I’m stuck sitting by myself at a table waiting for people to ask me questions I have time to watch what’s going on. There are a lot of old people and a lot of freaks in my neighborhood. I never see them en masse because I’m a home body and I don’t really care about them. When I say freaks I don’t mean the vendors with blue hair, tattoos, and piercings. I mean people and their dogs. That is a culture I do not understand. It’s a dogapalooza. Big dogs, small dogs, old dogs, puppies, it doesn’t matter. Two dog owners see each other and their dogs must meet. Butts get smelled. Leashes get tangled. The owners talk about how adorable the dogs are. Don’t get me wrong. I like dogs – well big dogs, anyway – but there are two kinds of dogs: nice and mean. I’m not talking about Dobermans or Pitbulls that eat children. I’m strictly talking about inter-canine relations. Some dogs are really happy to see other dogs, while other dogs see other dogs as threats to their time with their owners. What I don’t understand are the people who own mean dogs that take them out into public so they can be hostile to other dogs. They know their dogs don’t play well with others. Why bring them into public, and why do dog owners all look like their dogs? I’d never paid attention to this freakery until this afternoon, and I think there should be a study.

And The Winner Is...

Barack Obama “won” the Nobel Peace Prize today for not being George W. Bush. I really had no idea how much the rest of the world hated W, and I’m not sure I really understand it. Does all this animosity stem from W not pretending to care about what Western Europe thought? That’s the only difference between his administration and every other presidential administration since the end of World War II in terms of foreign policy, pretending that we valued Europe’s opinion. Are they really this butthurt about his overt support for Israel? At the end of the day W’s foreign policy strategy was the exact same as every other president’s. He found some brown people and killed them. He let American corporations loot the brown people’s countries, and got his friends rich. When did this become a problem for Europe? As much as everyone vilifies Bush and Cheney personally for the torture and secret prisons, everything seemed to be turn key at best. There seemed to be a bunch of people qualified in waterboarding and stress positioning just when Bush and Cheney needed them. Did they throw an ad up on Monster.com? I don’t know if the techniques themselves are difficult, but I imagine finding the sort of people into doing that stuff might be. It suggests that these people were already well trained and in place. It’s either that or Bush and Cheney were efficient, precise, and thorough in getting Gitmo up and running. I find it much more likely that we’ve been torturing people for a long time. I find it unlikely that Obama has put a stop to any of it. The prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is still open. I don’t have a problem with it. What I have a problem with is devaluing an award that I still hold in high esteem. When I think of the Nobel Peace Prize I think of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Junior, Mother Teresa, even Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. They all did something. Barack Obama hasn’t done anything yet, and giving him the award because W didn’t let the Euros sit at the cool kids table justifies W’s snub. I guess it could be worse. They could have given it to Al Gore… nevermind.

I Heard He Left Her For A Nineteen Year Old

This time of year I really notice the time change and things get stuck in my memory more often. We were driving to LMJ’s My Gym class and a kid who may be the son of a guy I went to school with was crossing in front of the van as we passed Robert E. Lee Senior High School (GO GENERALS!). He looked so much like the guy I went to school with I had to stare at him. It wasn’t obvious or confrontational, but I needed a good long look because my first thought was hey that’s so and so. I had to remind myself that the guy walking in front of the van was seventeen at the oldest. All of this happened in less than a second. A couple of miles down the road, as we passed FCCJ (GO STARS!) or whatever they’re calling themselves now, this same kid passed me in a green Ford Expedition. He was straight ballin’, beatin’ up the street with his 18” sub-woofers. I remember doing that twenty years ago, and I felt nostalgic and jealous at the same time. Then I saw that he had his blinker on and didn’t know it. For some reason this made me feel better. I also may be more observant because I’m not tired like I was last week. I had a lot of fun at the My Gym class tonight because I had a lot of energy. I wasn’t looking for a place to sit down or staring at the clock hoping the hour was up. We had guy coaches tonight after almost all girls the past month. The guys are a lot nicer and much more concerned with LMJ’s feelings. The girls aren’t as concerned with what she wants and are a little more insistent that she tries new things. It’s a cool balance. I also noticed who’s a good parent and who isn’t. There’s one woman who I think is a recently single mom, and her son seems to have worn her down. She just can’t keep up with him. He’s got a little bit of a reputation with some of the other parents. LMJ may have a reputation but it can only be that she’s shy. We’ve been there long enough that the gossip is starting to trickle – good times. That’s why it’s important that LMJ is clean and well behaved, and that I have enough energy to be a good dad. I don’t care what people think about me, personally, but I need to reflect well on the baby girl. All politics is local and My Gym class is about as local as we can get.

A Step Back To Gain Momentum?

I didn’t sleep well last night and it screwed up my day. The alarm went off at 5:15. I turned it off, started the coffee, and went back to bed. I got up at 6:45 and didn’t feel any more rested. I dragged myself to work and was not very productive. Then I got an email saying that there would be no “domestic” water. I didn’t want to find out what that meant so I headed home and tried to work there. No dice. I sat at my computer staring and unable to focus. I wanted to go workout, but I couldn’t get myself up. It was so bad that when LMJ took her nap I joined her. I took a very good nap but it didn’t help. It’s 8pm as I write this and I’m ready to go to bed. I’m trying to listen to my body more. My new triathlon book says that I should take breaks when I feel I need to – just like every other piece of exercise literature ever written – and I’m trying to pay attention. I think when I try to push myself when I don’t feel up to it that I set myself back. At some point my body is going to quit or I’m going to injure myself. I’ve also adjusted my nutrition. I’m refueling like I’m supposed to and not dieting just to lose weight. It may slow my weight loss down in the short run, but it’s a lot better for my performance in the long run. I’m not broken down like I was last week, I just didn’t get enough sleep last night so I have to push my sessions back a day. No big deal. What’s funny – and frustrating – is that I continue to do things the hard way when it’s much more efficient to do them the right way the first time. I hope that lesson really is starting to sink in - this. Anyway, legs tomorrow.

A Bad Way To Go, Dadgummit

A trustee for FSU has publicly asked Coach Bobby Bowden to step down at the end of the year. There are rumors of a divided coaching staff, and a bunch of excuses about not winning football games. The game has passed the old guard by. Bowden, Chuck Amato, and Mickey Andrews seem to think it’s still 1988, and what worked then will work now, even though that was twenty years ago and they were twenty years younger. Andrews, who’s in charge of the defense talks about a lack of discipline on the field, what exactly does he think his job is? Myron Rolle is probably going to cure cancer, but he could never quite figure out where to be on the football field, whose fault is that? Darnell Dockett, Antonio Cromartie, Javon Walker, Anquan Boldin, and Leon Washington are all guys that are doing better in the pros than they did at FSU. Those are five guys off the top of my head. It's not supposed to work like that. The Noles are going to lose to the Gators for the sixth year in a row and finish the decade 3-7 against UF. The 5th year seniors were juniors in high school the last time the Seminoles beat the Gators, and they won that game on a bad call. The current freshmen were too young to have been in MJ’s class that year. They were in seventh grade in 2003. I could understand Coach Bowden's reluctance to go if he was still actively coaching, but he isn't. He stands in his tower and watches. He's not even recruiting anymore. He also has zero chance to catch JoePa, 14 forfeited wins or not. If we ignore the sanctions, he's still going to be five or six behind Paterno at the end of this year. This is ending badly and it breaks my heart. I really wish he would have retired after 1999. He could've ridden off into the sunset with the storybook ending. His first undefeated season. His second National Championship. The first team to go wire-to-wire at #1. He would've trumped John Elway. Instead there's a good chance he's going to leave the program he personally built a smoldering ruin.

It's More Than A Turducken- Boom!

Perception is a strange thing. It’s all we have to go on. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi said, “Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” This brings me to John Madden and my place in two worlds. Madden retired from doing color commentary for the NFL last spring. This is the first time since 1979 that he isn’t in a broadcast booth on Sundays during football season. There are people writing about him who were born after that. All they know is the caricature of himself that he settled into in the mid-nineties and his video games. They know nothing of him as a coach. My memories of him start with him being a coach. He and Tom Landry are the coaches that I remember most from the seventies. I was very young, but Landry stood out because of his fedora and Madden stood out because he was a fat guy with manic energy on the sidelines. Madden took football too seriously, stressing himself into an ulcer. He was smart enough to see the game was killing him so he retired after the 1977 season. I was only six but he’s tattooed on my brain. He became an NFL analyst in 1979 and completely changed how games are called. He brought a technicality to the game that’s ubiquitous now, but back then nobody did. He didn’t treat the audience like they were clueless. Almost everything I know about watching football analytically I learned from Madden. He was the first guy to not only differentiate between zone and man-to-man defense, but to get into the different zone defenses and where the holes were in them. He was the first guy to explain how play-action works. And I could always tell that he was having a blast doing it. He was coaching without the stress. Strangely, no one copied him. Maybe because there wasn’t a way to do it without being blatant about it. He lent his name to a video game in the late eighties, earned $98,870,696,877,565,645,765,867,000 and started mailing in his commentary. Unfortunately, the youngest kids who first fell in love with his video games are turning thirty and they’re the voice of popular culture. It’s like only knowing U2 from Achtung Baby on, or only knowing Steve Martin from his stupid family movies. You missed all the good stuff.

Out With The Old, In With The New

I got the ceiling fan up without electrocuting myself, which isn’t really a big deal. I turned the power off at the breaker. I got the ceiling fan up without stabbing anyone in the neck with a screwdriver, which is a big deal. I’m short tempered and caustic when I try to put things together with crappy directions, and since I never have a reference point for any of this stuff, crappy directions are the only kind. It’s not just home projects and it’s not just me. Without a point of reference even the simplest tasks are almost impossible. My favorite jiu-jitsu wizard, Eddie Bravo, likes to use the example of tying one’s shoes and how ridiculously complicated the movements are, but after countless repetitions the hands do it without thought, from only muscle memory. That's really the only way to learn anything brand new. I’m all philosophical about it now that I’ve finished putting up the ceiling fan. I have a point of reference, actually, I have two. I have the reference point of the new one I just finished hanging, and I also have the reference point of the old one I took down. MJ has two other fans she wants replaced, and I think I can cut my total assembly time by seventy-five percent. That’s not impressive. It took me six or seven hours to get this thing up and running. I now have a basic conceptual understanding of how these things go, so while there will be cursing, there won’t be a need for a sniper with a dart filled with Thorazine in case I go berserk. This is all based on the assumption that all of the pieces that are supposed to be in the fan kit are in the fan kit. I’m not feeling quite as unprepared for the Apocalypse as I was yesterday, but I still need to learn some carpentry, some basic plumbing, and most importantly, I still need to learn how to hunt, fish, and farm.

Lambs To The Slaughter

It’s Saturday and that means the Seminoles went into the tank. This week they flew all the way to Boston to do it. I’m numb. Today wasn’t a good day. I didn’t really do anything. The best part of the day was my nap. The worst part was trying to put together a ceiling fan. I got part of it done, but I had the realization that I have every time I try to do something real: I have no meaningful survival skills. I spent sixteen long, horrible, frustrating years being “formally educated”, yet I can’t do anything that counts. What a complete waste of time. Actually, that’s not fair. I learned to read and write, and that takes us all the way up to the end of second grade. I learned algebra in eighth grade and geometry in ninth. I think the Pythagorean Theorem was the last piece of information imparted to me with possible, practical post-apocalyptic applications. What the hell am I going to do when the economy collapses, and it will. I can’t hunt. I can’t fish. I can’t plumb. I can’t farm. I can’t build. The Rule of 72’s doesn’t help me irrigate crops or dress kills. I don’t even know if there’s a place I can learn the skills necessary to survive after The Fall. FCCJ has turned itself into a four year college, so I don’t know if they still offer carpentry, plumbing, or electrician courses any more. I’ll never forget the professionals that did the foundation work for the Habijax house that I helped to build. A bunch of “uneducated” contractors making sure a bunch of doctors, lawyers, clergy, and other members of the “educated class” didn’t impale themselves with nails or drop a house on their own heads. I guess learning about the fall of Rome is paying dividends since I can see the same thing happening to the United States and I still have a chance to get ahead of it. I need to learn to use a bow and arrow.

The Law Is The Law

There’s nothing to write about so I have to write about Roman Polanski and why everyone in the world justifiably hates the French and Hollywood. He was forty-three. She was thirteen. He gave her were Quaaludes and alcohol. He asked her for sexual favors. She said no, even in her altered state. He ignored her repeatedly. He accepted a plea bargain to a lesser charge offered by the Los Angeles district attorney because he, the D.A. wanted to spare the victim from having to relive the whole thing. This was in 1977 before C.S.I. The judge was going to renege on the deal (Ed. maybe because she was THIRTEEN!). Polanski panicked and fled to France because he was afraid of the ninety days he was going to have to serve. France is where he’s spent the last thirty years in exile, even though he’s French (Ed. Is he Br’er Rabbit?). He was arrested in Switzerland last week and is facing extradition to back to Los Angeles. Movie stars and directors are signing petitions and writing op-eds protesting his oppression and the corruption of the California justice system and the fecklessness of the Swiss government. The guy made – makes – movies, and he’s lived a life as a millionaire in Paris. He’s never denied any of the facts of the night in question, but he and his friends think he shouldn’t have to pay for what he did, and that this whole thing is an inconvenience that’s interrupting his work. I might be willing to see him as the quirky artist if the words “drugged thirteen year old girl raped and sodomized” couldn’t be used to accurately describe what happened, and if his sentence was almost certainly going to be suspended. He’s a movie director. He serves no real beneficial purpose to the planet. He was arrogant thirty years ago when he brutalized a little girl, and he doesn’t seem to have learned anything. He feels that the he’s the victim. I hope he dies a slow, painful death.

Seven Weeks Till Gravy Season

I’ve never been so tired in my life. I decided not to chicken out this morning and made the horrible mistake of heading to the gym. Normally, after my warm up, I’m warmed up. Not today, today I was tired through the entire session. I wasn’t expecting to set any personal bests, but I also wasn’t expecting to have difficulty getting up off the bench. The whole weight session was a struggle. After I took ninety minutes to do my one hour work out I got onto the dreadmill. I was still under the impression that I was going to run eight miles. WRONG! Even though I slowed down to almost a fast walk, I couldn’t get through it. I cut it short at three miles, and I really had to push myself to do that. I wanted to quit five minutes in. I wanted to quit again ten minutes in. I was so tired that I had trouble finding the energy to stretch. Usually, stretching is somewhat relaxing. It represents that the hard part is over. It’s the final part of my cool down. Today it was equal parts pain and difficulty. I think I overdid it this week. I was loopy for the rest of the day. I decided that since I cut my running short I wasn’t dehydrated, even though my clothes were drenched in sweat. That’s what was going on in my brain. An hour and half later I couldn’t understand why I felt like garbage and was having difficulty swallowing my food. Then I took a sip of water and the light went on. A gallon of water later and I still didn’t have to pee. Sometimes stupidity is painful. I’m with LMJ tomorrow, but depending on when she takes her nap, I may try to get in a quick session of weights. I can rest on Saturday and Sunday. I’m pushing myself because I have seven weeks until Thanksgiving and if I haven’t hit my goals by then, then I’m not going to this year.