Fire, lit

As I’ve been pounding down the road, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about where I want my exercising to take me. Funnily enough, it seems that more than a few roads lead to Kona.

I’m sure there are tougher rows to hoe, but that seems like a pretty good one. Right now, I’m thinking in terms of a decade of prep (and waiting for a different age group, maybe). I really like running, and I really like biking. I think I really like swimming, too, but I haven’t sone any serious swimming, ever , really, so I don’t know for sure.

At the very least, thinking about Kona is like drooling over a really big, tasty carrot. And it gets my lazy butt out of bed to go play early in the morning, too, so it’s not all bad.

Father/son bonding

The Bub and I are hanging out on the couch, listening to Lynard Skynard and watching the pretty colors in the visualization plug-in for WinAmp.

Run report

I ran 2, walked 1 minute x12 reps this morning as a frontg was coming in. We had a little rain last night so the road was a curious mix of hard (where the water washed loose gravel from the established tracks) and soft (along side the road in the mud and loose gravel). These shorter reps always get me in a little bit of trouble since I think tomyself, “Hey, I only have to run for two minutes; I can hit it!” I played with hitting it and backing off, kind of in the spirit of Fartlek and had a pretty good time.

My knees feel it some when I run, but not enough to stop. My shins also get a little sore, but it’s not always the same one. Today it’s the left shin… The wierdest thing to happen since I’ve started running six-and-a-half weeks ago is that I’ve gained about seven pounds. I think maybe it’s because since I’m running regularly, I haven’t been paying attention to what I eat, thinking that I get a bunch of free calories every other day. That’s one of the things I need to be more mindful about (see post below).

Friday’s run

I ran 5 min, walked 1 min, x8 reps. It felt like my first “real” run in terms of distance and effort. Each rep was a little over half-a-mile long and pretty much took it out of me by it’s end. The run felt really good over all. I almost made it to the half-way point of going around the block. Emphasis on *almost*. I needed to run for another couple minutes to make it around, so I turned back instead. I ran without a shirt and got some good pit chaffing going on, too.

Getting it together

I’m trying to get my life together.

It’s not so much that I feel like things are in a death spiral or anything like that. It’s more like I fritter time away doing trivial things that I don’t really care about instead of doing things that I do care about. I’m trying a couple things to stay on track:

• A schedule
• Some goals
• A little mindfulness

Schedule

I’ve gone a little crazy with this. Most of you know that I’m something of a sucker for Productivity Pr0n (aside: read this, too!). I also have been known to have a hard time making a dcecision about things.

So when it comes to my own personal productivity system, I waffle. I could use a PDA (I’ve got a pretty nice one from work). I could use paper (which is infinitely more expandable and convenient than a PDA, though less searchable). I could use the Hipster (see 43 folders yet again). What it all boils down to, though, is that I have to use a system. It doesn’t matter what kind. I just have to commit.

So I chose the PDA, since I have it, and since a lot of the sort of information management I do is list based. I spent some quality time yesterday putting a rough schedule for all my days in it. I went so far as to schedule my sleep time (coming up shortly, here) as well as regular workouts, house cleaning and dinner making.

I don’t have all my time committed, which is probably a good thing since everyone needs some flex and downtime. I also have no idea if I’ll be able to stick with this idea, but I figure trying it out can’t hurt, you know?

Some goals

Since I’m trying to grab the reins of my time, I figured I should have some fairly concrete idea of how I’d like to use that time and what I’d like to do with it. I’ve been thinking a lot about goals, values, and committments, more specifically, what mine are. I don’t have a lot of answers, but I’m trying to do the work.

Mindfulness

To make all this stuff work, I think I need to focus on what I’m doing as I do it. I need to be in the moment with whatever I’m doing or whomever I’m with at the time. A manifestation of that tonight was that I set the table for Meagan and I to have dinner instead of going to the couch and watching part of a movie as per usual.

I don’t know how all this is going to work. I’m not convinced I have the energy to follow this sort of regimen day in and day out. But I know I’m going to try. I want to give myself a fair chance at getting my act together and growing in some positive ways.

Verified

I just got myself hooked up with Thawte’s free personal e-mail certificate system. Now when I send a message to my co-workers, or other folk, they know it’s really from me, and not from some thirteen-year-old hacker pretending to be me so that he, too, can command my minions of darkness.

Dear god, when will it end?

A tech from Dell is here, trying to fix Paul’s laptop. This is his second visit. He keeps showing up at 3:15 p.m. I don’t think he realizes that we leave at four. But oh! Wait… it’s now five minutes after five.

Yeah, I went to bed wayyyy too late last night. And yeah, I got up wayyyyy too early this morning. So of course I’ve been a crankmonster all day. And now this knob is here, keeping us all here. What have I done to deserve this?

Currently playing

I’ve got a 112-song playlist going right now… just made the turn from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to James, Aretha, and Janis via Wierd Al’s Bohemian Polka. Dig it.

Screw iTunes

I’ve decided to can iTunes for now. I like the interface, but the library issue is too much. For now, I’m using WinAmp and a nifty little cataloger called Tag&Rename.

Well woes

Our well pump broke midmorning on Sunday. Our water is still out. I’ve called three well guys, and one actually came out and looked at things. Apparently, he needs some sort of shaft to fix things. But he didn’t leave a message or anything like that. Even after saying he’d be out to fix stuff later yesterday.

I had to call him this morning and almost pry the information out of him. Now he apparently wants me to track down this part for him. I say bullshit. That’s his job. It’s why I’m trying to hire him (on the advice of a skilled tradesman for whom I have the utmost respect). But I think I’m pretty much done with this guy since he doesn’t really seem to want this job.

Dang iTunes

I like iTunes’ music playing interface. It’s slick, it looks nice, and it sounds good. But it’s a royal pain in the ass to try to import existing WMA files to it. There’s conversion involved, I know that much. So I’m choosing the only conversion option in the menus, hoping that’s what I need, and going from there. If anyone has any insight to this little conundrum, I’d appreciate your insights!