i am a traveller of all time and space...

So, this week I abandoned the Couch-to-5K program. The jump from two 8-minute runs with a break to one 20-minute run without a break just seemed too daunting, especially given that the 8-minute runs were killing me. So I came up with a plan to create my own playlists by displaying my whole iTunes library sorted by track time instead of title and artist. Then I would pick and choose 5:00, 8:00, 9:00 songs to fill the appropriate walk/run slots.

My first program was an all Zeppelin affair, owing to the ease of finding 8:00+ songs in their oeuvre. The program looked like this...

Warmup walk - Trampled Under Foot (5:37)
First Run - Since I've Been Loving You (8:24)
Walk Break - What Is And What Should Never Be (4:46)
Second Run - Kashmir (8:29)

Which has slightly longer runs and a shorter break than the place I left off on the C25k program. The idea was to make the walk break shorter and shorter until I could do 16-17 minutes at a stretch. Well, I ran that on Sunday and it basically kicked my ass. Then, just out of curiosity, I went to the Google-maps-based site "Favoriterun.com" and plotted out how far I went during the first 8:24 run. Because it seems like in eight minutes I should be running at least a mile.

.93 miles

Oh no you fucking don't.

This really pissed me off. So I marked on the map how far I'd have to go to get to an actual mile, and I was determined today to run to that spot. Which I did. Plus a little bit. (1.03 miles to be exact!) It required an additional 1:45 of the next song, which means means I'm running a blistering 10:09 mile, but still... it's a fucking mile. I read somewhere that 95% of adults in the US can't run a mile without stopping. Which by my reckoning, puts me in the top 5% of athletes in the country! Where's my medal??

So anyway, after a 5:00 walking break (I turned off the iPod to get back the 1:30 of my break that I ran through!) and a quick stop to massage the big cramp in my right calf, I ran the 8:00+ of Kashmir (another .81 miles, says Google maps) and felt really strong at the end. I probably could have gone another minute.

Last week I was going to post an entry here complaining about how this running thing has stopped being fun. I take it back. It's still fun as long as there is visible progress. Now if only the fucking SCALE would catch up.

in case you haven't noticed...

... we are suffering from the Summer Blogging Slump. Since I don't spend 4 hours on a train every day in the summer, I don't spend an hour of that blogosphering. But not to fear, faithful readers. Next week, I will be going in to campus FOUR TIMES. It'll be just like it was, I promise. In the meantime, I've ramped up my Twitter use, so feel free to do whatever it is one does with Twitter. I'm in the sidebar over there. (points right.)

no, she's not...

So Saturday was our anniversary and we didn't do anything or get each other anything... we didn't even have the sex. We decided that for the monetary part, we are going to go see BOTH Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls next month. (Both concerts are happening in the same week.)

Last night I had a great idea. Since we didn't get each other anything or have the sex... I told my wife should could bring home a nice lesbian from one of the concerts if she wanted.

She said "no thanks" but appreciated the offer.

Worth a shot.

shoot that poison arrow...

Just got back from seeing Prince Caspian with the kids... had to check IMDb to see how bad I should feel for ogling the actress who plays Susan Pevensie. Good news... she turns 20 this year!

Verdict...? Not a perv!

Blame it on too many years of D&D if you want, but... HAWT!!!

fitness is creepy...

So, i'm lying in bed really still last night, and i feel....

thump
.
.
.
thump.
.
.
.
thump
.
.
.
OMG!! WHY IS MY HEART BEATING SO FUCKING SLOW????
I'M DYING!!!!!
.
.
.
thump
.
.
.
Oh, wait... maybe this is that thing they call "fitness"!
.
.
.
Being healthy feels WEIRD.

blah blah blah...

Q: What does it take to make Dave "collegial" at a faculty party?
A: THREE Jack Daniels

Seriously, I think I talked more tonight than I have in the previous MONTH all together.

I'm not even sure who those people were that I was talking to. One was in Religious Studies and the other was some kind of artsy-fartsy person. I usually just stand in corner and talk to the other scientists.

It really makes me wonder how different my youth would have been had I discovered alcohol before age 30.

week 5...

Got up and ran this morning. Started week 5. The run went really well. Finally, a good run! The weird thing is... day 1 of week 5 is actually LESS RUNING than week four. (5+5+5=15 min as opposed to 3+5+3+5=16 min). But week 5 is also the first week that gets harder EACH DAY. Day two has a couple of 8-minute runs and then day three jumps up to 20 minutes! What the hell? I think in order the squeeze the whole plan into 9 weeks, they cut some corners here and there.

I picked up a backup set of running clothes on sale the other day. They were kind of semi-generic brand, but the shirt claimed to be made out of a wicking material, so I figured, what the hell. Mistake! This is the first time in the 5 weeks I've felt damp and sweaty during the run, and it was only 40°. I guess all that crap about CoolMax™ isn't bullshit after all.

announcement...

There is officially TOO MUCH FUCKING STRESS AND DRAMA in this house. And pretty soon, I'm going to be off from work and have no place to go HIDE FROM IT. Everyone needs to just calm the fuck down. Daddy drinks because you cry!!!

one more...

So, this is the last week of the semester. I have an exam to give today, a crapload of papers to grade, senior project presentations on Wednesday, graduation and a work-party on Thursday, and that's pretty much it. I hope. I thought I was having a pretty good semester, but I find myself really ready for it to END.

I ran yesterday. I decided to tack on at least another day to the Week 4 program, since I really haven't felt GOOD after that last 5 minute run yet. And yeah... didn't work. I still kinda feel like hell when it's over. Then today I got out of bed and when my foot hit the floor, something inside my ankle went *p'twang*... like a broken guitar string. It hurt like a fucker, and I thought - Ok, then... there goes the running! But it seems ok now. Maybe just plucked a tendon the wrong way or something.

Speaking of athletic careers cut short, we took the Boy to the pediatrician on Saturday, because his allergies had progressed from itchy eyes to a kind of disturbing wheezy cough. The verdict... allergy-induced asthma. The prescription... a nebulizer. Because this kid doesn't have enough genetic strikes against him in the nerd department.

I took both little nerds to see Speed Racer on Mother's Day. Great time to see a movie... Mother's Day at 2:00 in he afternoon. The multiplex was practically empty. The movie wasn't as bad as the critics are saying. Yes it's stupid, but you have to watch it as an homage to the stupid cartoon. If you did not grow up with the cartoon, there is no point to the film whatsoever. So as a stupid homage, it works ok... just campy enough without going overboard. The effects, on the other hand... "overboard" doesn't even BEGIN. Seizure-inducing is more like it. The problem is that it starts out so over-the-top with the spinning and flying race cars that there is no place for it to build to, so the later races are all just more-of-the-same. I was more impressed with the set design, actually... the wallpapers and the lampshades... than I was with the 500 mph zooming CGI cars.

The other highlight of Mother's Day was not only did I make waffles for breakfast, but I baked scones. This did not fail to impress. It helps to keep the bar set really low in that area. Only if you never bake anything EVER does scones-from-a-mix score you ay points.

I also cooked for the wife and I on the grill last night. I made her some kind of cheesy-artichokey stuffed sausages, and I grilled up some salmon for myself. One of us may have a tiny bit of food-poisoning this morning. I'll let you guess who.

Last night I went down to the basement to work on some computer projects. At one point I was working on three laptops at once. It was like the Matrix! Anyway, I dubbed off the Library of Congress LPs of my great-grand-family that I got from NYU, so I can take those back now. Then I moved my bit-torrent operations over from my iBook to my Powerbook. I set up the Powerbook as a 24/7 tv-downloading machine (via Miro) and set up the iBook as an OS9 only "classic" machine that I can put all my old, old programs on. Because you never know. (Anyone have any "Think Pascal" programs they need compiled?) Of course, if the end of summer rolls around and I still don't have enough money for a new computer... I'll have to give back the Macbook and undo all that. Let's all hope that doesn't happen.

And speaking of computers... I should stop fucking with mine and grade some exams.

backseat critic...

I never think he's paying attention to anything back there. I'm always surprised.

FLOBOT (on radio): "I can ride my bike with no handlebars... no handlebars... no--"

5 YEAR OLD: (in backseat): So what??

perhaps I should weed-whack the whole lawn...?

Ok, as depressing as it is to put $50+ into the van or $20+ into my tiny little car... the last straw came today when I put $8 of gas in my MOTHERFUCKING LAWNMOWER!!!

things about which i have been avoiding blogging, part two...

The Cat

My 13 year old cat has been acting really strange for a few months now. She's always been kind of crabby and aloof and all of a sudden she is all over us, all the time. In our laps, on our shoulders... it's really a striking personality change. And she's been sleeping in weird places (the sink) and peeing in weird places (the dishwasher). Finally we noticed she was losing weight, so last week we took her to the vet.

Turns out she is really sick. Her kidneys are basically shot, and the numbers from her labs are off the charts. After a week of vitamins and special food and subcutaneous fluid injections, she looks a little better, but... if the tests don't show some pretty drastic improvements by tomorrow (and it seems unlikely) we're are probably going to put her down.

And so the wife is sad and we broke it to the kids and now THEY are sad (although I think the Boy is mostly sad about everyone ELSE being sad) and I'm sadder than I expected to be given that she has been, at times, a pretty fucking unpleasant pet. (After moving to Alabama, she basically hid under the bed and growled for 3 months.) But she was my wife and my first joint-possession when we moved in together, so she's been through a lot with us.

We could keep things going for a while with pills and injections, and if she was a laid-back cat, I could see doing that, but... given her personality, I can't see putting her through that. She would be miserable. And it sucks that this is a consideration, but... we can't really afford it either.

So, the whole thing has made for a pretty shitty week. And financially, for it to hit right at the same time as the laptop... that really fucking sucks.

--- -- --- -- ---

I had planned a nice day in the city for myself today, but it's raining and I'm in such a shitty mood (see above and below) that I almost bagged it and stayed home. I ran this morning, and I have to say, this was the hardest one, motivation-wise, yet. I just DID. NOT. FEEL. LIKE. RUNNING. But I did it, which I guess is good. I think I'm going to run the week 4 program one extra day. I don't want to repeat the whole week, but I have yet to have a "good" run at the "3 min/5 min/3 min/5 min" level. I would like to feel good at the end once before moving up to week 5.

Anyway, back to today. The plan is to hit the MoMA this morning to see a design exhibit that closes in a week that I have been not-getting-around-to for a year or so now. While I'm there I will pick up a Mother's Day present of some sort for my wife from the gift shop. Then I plan to head downtown to the Independent Film Center to catch a new documentary about Philip Glass. It's the kind of nice "just for me" day that I very rarely allow myself, but... I'm just really not feeling like gallivanting today.

I should try really hard to take a mental day off, though, because the next couple of weeks will be booked solid with meetings and exams and graduations and presentations and grading and grading and grading. And once it's done, I won't have much time to take a deep breath before jumping into a summer of curriculum retreats and gifted classes and vacations and writing and portfolio editing and planning and planning and planning. I honestly can't see how I'm going to do all of the things I need to do this summer. Next semester is going to be tough.

I'm just a barrel of laughs this week, huh? I should close the laptop and take a nap.

things about which i have been avoiding blogging, part one...

The Computer

Last Friday, the wife's HP laptop crapped out. No power, no lights... not even the light that comes on when the AC plug is plugged in. Nothing. I wasn't home at the time, and she was on a deadline, so she flipped out and went to Circuit City and bought a new Gateway for $549. She waited until I got home before she broke the "security seal" (15% restocking fee) so I could give the HP one more look. I took out the HD, verified that all her data was still intact, then proceeded to try to get into the guts of the actual laptop. After taking 30-some screws out, I was having no luck getting to the spot where the power meets the motherboard, so I gave up. She opened the Gateway and proceeded to fuck around with Vista. (more about THAT later.) Meanwhile, I put the HP back together (except for the HD) and just for kicks, plugged it in.

Beeeeep.

Mother. Fucker.

So, to recap. We now have a $549 Gateway laptop THAT NOBODY NEEDS. And we can either keep it, or pay Circuit City $90 FOR NOTHING. The current plan is to keep the Gateway and put the HP back together... test if for reliability, and either pass it down to the kids (whose eMachines is kinda old and crappy and we have been considering replacing) or try to sell it on Craigslist for $300.

The thing that makes me so mad is that I have been VERY PATIENT about putting off a new Mac purchase for the past 6 months, and arranging with work to borrow a MacBook so that I can wait out the summer as well. Now I still have this old piece of shit, and she's got a brand new shiny 3 GHz computer to run Microsoft Word on.

Except of course, she CAN'T run Microsoft Word, because most of her old installs will not work on Vista, or she doesn't know her OS well enough to get all the pieces of the installs to transfer, or she's lost license codes to her various downloads because she doesn't keep track of shit. Which means she's probably going to drop $200 more on software, essentially killing her biennial argument of "Well MY computers only cost $600."

Anyway. I'm pissed and I feel like now I cant buy my iPod Touch next month b/c we're out $600, and my reimbursement check for latest chunk of my research funds is just enough to cover that. It seems like every time we have an extra couple hundred bucks come in, it immediately disappears into some kind of fucking black hole.

Oh yeah, and the DEADLINE she was on that necessitated buying a new computer RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT? She hasn't worked a single minute on it since Friday.

just like a brown bottle should...

TV Commercial kid: "Mrs.Butterworth, how come you taste so good?"

I'm sorry, but is that not just too disgustingly similar to the lyrics of the Stones' "Brown Sugar" to be appropriate ad copy for a wholesome syrup commercial??

noodling...

My senior project student is finishing a documentary film this week, and the person she was counting on for the score didn't come through, so this is what I've been doing for the past couple of days. I love having an excuse to fuss around with GarageBand.

The documentary is on a space-related topic, so any passing resemblance of the music to the work of Vangelis is COMPLETELY INTENTIONAL!!

liveblogging the week four run...

ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow
ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow
ow ow ow ow ow fuck ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow
ow ow ow pant pant ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow
fuck ow ow ow ow ow ow fuck fuck ow ow ow ow
ow ow pant pant ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow

"dear penthouse letters..."

I had drinks with some colleagues after work today. Then after that I was supposed to meet a former student for coffee if she got to NYC from Boston in time. She never called, so I assume she was held up. Which is fine. Probably for the best, actually, because... cute former student/groupie who has since graduated and then comes back to town and invites you out for coffee... I have an awful lot of recurring sexual fantasies that start out that way. God forbid the situation should ever actually set itself up so perfectly... I'd almost certainly find some way to ruin it.

shoe report...

Well, the verdict is in, and while the new slow-motion-video-approved shoes are not working magic, they are pretty fucking impressive. I ran the last day of week three Thursday morning and my shins only gave me the tiniest tweak during the last run... a tweak that I probably wouldn't have noticed had I not been obsessively monitoring the state of my shins. Given that for the past 3 or 4 runs, the pain has been sharp and obvious - not unbearable, but certainly impossible to ignore - a little tweak is a big improvement. So, I guess that was worth $95 (or rather, worth the $40 MORE than the $55 shoes) after all.

Shoes aside, it was 28º fucking degrees this morning. The whole point of waiting until mid-April to start this endeavor was to NOT have to deal with sub freezing temperatures. So my lungs were not terribly happy about the cold air. But the thing that happened this morning that I felt good about was this... I complained to my wife about the cold while I was getting dressed to run and she said, "So just run tomorrow instead"... and I wasn't even tempted, not even a little bit. It simply did not occur to me to not run today. When I realized this, I was surprised. Maybe this running thing is going to work.

If I'm starting to sound all Oprahfied or like an inspirational poster or something, please feel free to tell me to shut the fuck up. I know that's not what people come here for. But I'm finding it hard to contain my bemusement at even these tiny successes.

commute...

Once every six months or so in NYC, there is some sort of minor problem with the mass transit system that in most any other city would remain a minor problem, but in New York, quickly snowballs into a giant, city-wide transit clusterfuck. And I'm almost always watching it on TV from home saying to myself "Ha! Good thing I didn't go in today!" or "Glad I leave on a 4:08 train!".

Not this time.

An electrical fire shut down the whole PATH system that runs from NY to NJ, which meant I had to take the subway to Penn Station, the NJ Transit train across to Secaucus, and pick up my regular train there. Me an the other 100,000 people who couldn't get to Hoboken. Fun.

I missed my regular train by TWO FUCKING MINUTES, which always sucks. But I was only an hour late getting home. It could have been worse.

I'm taking an extra extra late train today to let get things back to normal. The Port Authority website tells me that the trains have been running a normal schedule since 6:30 AM. We'll see.