Not dead

Just alseep at the wheel

Sorry ’bout that. I musta dozed off and missed a couple ‘a weeks there. Well, here’s the grand update:

• Running: I had a bad week last week, and a really good one the week before. I hope to get back in the groove tomorrow morning and pound down the road for almost an hour in one shot.
• The Job: All continues to go well here. I rolled out a new homepage for the county a couple weeks ago and got a lot of good feedback (as well as a couple bits of under-educated crankiness) about it. Unlike my last job, this effort is all me, from the design to the incredibly (anal-retentively, you may even say) clean code.
• The Kid: This kid is just awesome. I really (most of the time) love being a dad, and I just marvel at all the cool and funny things Bub does. Say, like flirting with the waitress at the Deep Water, then chewing the table. All in about five seconds.
• The Writing: I’m writing? Really… This is news to me.
• The ass-kicking: I haven’t broken any more toes, I feel like I could do a fair rendition of any of the Kihon Happo if need be, though I’d probably not be able to name many of them.
• The love affair: We’re celebrating four years today. Mostly by going out for breakfast, then by snuggling on the couch and watching a movie. It’s been a great time filled with a lot of friendship, love, and arguing about the relative merits of tonaly neutral walls and colorful furniture and vice-versa.

Serious Extra Credit (and Spiderman)

Ran 30&1, x2

We got home last night lateish, probably around ten or so, after spending a nice evening with Pete and Robin and watching Spiderman 2, which sucked a lot less than Spiderman 1, but still sucked. Since Alden was up for a lot of the night Thursday, I didn’t go for my run yesterday morning, as per usual. Through the day, I was thinking that I’d just run when I got home from work, but then Meg and I wound up having a little impromteau picnic on Maslowski beach, just a stone’s throw from all the construction on the highway. Alden was entranced by the sand mostly, and by the sound of the waves, too.

P&R were going to meet us at the beach for food and a swim, but the breeze was a little cold and the kid was snotting up a storm, and Meg talked about feeling a little sick the night before, so we bagged the beach in favor of a warmer, less sick-inducing spell at P&R’s place.

Throughout Spiderman, mostly while watching Toby McGuire wrestle with all sorts of complicated internal issues, which is a lot like watching a very nice shade of taupe paint dry on my bathroom wall, I was aware that I still hadn’t run, and that this run was feeling important. I made a couple of small anouncements to P&R&Meg to that effect.

On the way home, I almost clipped a gangly black bear cub, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything, except, perhaps, to establish the darkness of the night (though there were still the last vestiges of color in the sky when I was running half-an-hour later, so that theory’s kind of shot) and the suckiness of the van headlights. But it’s a Chrysler, so I don’t know what I was expecting.

At home, I did a few small getting-the-house-ready-for-the-night chores, then put on my running stuff and a reflective safety vest and headed out the door, past the skunk prowling the yard, all the while wondering just what the hell I was doing out there at 11 p.m., what was I trying to accomplish or prove. Or perhaps was I just stubbron enough to not recognize a perfectly socially acceptable opportunity to go to bed?

As I started my run, the first thing I noticed was that though there was a gibbous quarter-moon shining down, in the shadows, it was still pretty damn dark. Dark enough that I coukdn’t see my feet; that I stayed on the road by feel, and occasionally by finding the road’s swath through the trees. I also noticed that without benefit of all the usual micro-landmarks, I was paying attention to other things while running. There were, after all, constellations above. And occasional startled deer. And my legs in their slow, shuffling pace, accompanied by my breathing which is not as raspy and wheezing as it was nine weeks ago.

At some point, fairly early on, the run took on kind of a dream-like quality, like those dreams where I feel physically stressed, though not necessarially in a bad way, and the scenery keeps changing, but I know I’m still in the same place. Or like in movies where the actors are in a car with filmed sequences playing out in the windows.

As I ran, I felt like I could keep going indefinitely. When my watch signaled the end of my first rep, I was a little sad to stop running. I knew I could have made the entire run in an uninterupped lope, but I decided to be faithful to the program I’m following, just on general principal. After all, if I’m faithful when things are going well, I’ll have more incentive to be faithful when things are more challenging.

New ph0tos up

Aloha!

There are a whole slew of new photos (mostly of the kid, of course) up at my Flickr account. Enjoy!

Launch!

My redesign of the Bayfield County Web site is officially launched! I made the last changes to my css templates today at about five minutes after four in the afternoon. I didn’t have a chance to tell very many people in the offices about it, but I expect to hear about it a little tomorrow when I get in to work.

I’ve spent a whole lot of time working on this project (probably close to two hundred hours, though I really haven’t kept track) and I have more to go to finish the site conversion. And then I have a couple of projects in mind for after that, so it’s not like I’m ever going to be done, really. But the site will keep getting better and better!

Sithless

We took Alden to “Revenge of the Sith” on Friday. He was really into it; just staring at the screen and for a while, just hanging out. Then he started talking to the movie. Something would happen on the screen and he’d reach out with his arms and say “Gah!” or occasionally “Bubbub.”

We didn’t want to irritate our fellow movie goers so we took shifts standing in the doorway of the theater rocking the Kid and trying to pick up snatches of the movie. That worked OK for a little while, but when Anakin went off to kill all the sepratists, Alden (and I) got bored with the movie, so we went on a rambling tour of the theater’s lobby, making sure to stop at all the important highlights like the water fountain (”splish, splash, I was takin’ a bath…), the mural on the wall (”Gah Reeshk!”), and the crazy old biddies (”Oh, what a beautiful boy! Do you have any smiles for me?” “Probably not, since it’s past his bedtime, but if you come closer, he might puke on you. But it’d be OK since you’re wearing a rain jacket.”).

I went back to the theater by myself on Sunday to watch the Sith en totale, but at the first sappy, sparkless scene between Anakin and Padime, I realized that I had no love for the movie and didn’t really want to be there.

So I went across the hall to “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” It was fun, violent entertainment. I’d give it about a 2.5 or maaaaybe 3 on the five-scale.

Catching up

So I’ve been a little busy. Running, healing, being a dad, fixing the house… that all doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for blogging, but you know, I can find a little time around the corners every now and again.

The last week of running

This was a big week for me. Last Friday (the beginning of my running week), I ran a 10&1, 20&1, 15&1, and a 10&1. That was one of the runs in my program that really felt like a milestone challenge working toward it, and while I was doing it. It really ramped up the time I spent continuously running.

My run on Sunday was a 10&1 x 4 which I was feeling pretty cocky about until I was in the middle of the second rep. and decided that maybe I needed to buckle down and get focused about things.

Yesterday was a 15&1 x 3 which went pretty well. My shins kind of took a beating, though, and last night, my calves were sore. It was kind of misty for a lot of the run, except for the end, where it was raining for real. It was pretty nice running weather all around. Except that I’m sick and damn tired of living in constant rain. Gah.

Sally-ass injury

Pete kindly reminded me last night at taijutsu (and again this evening) that I needed to come clean about my first (Sally-ass, so he says) injury at the workplace. Last Wednesday was a pretty decent day until I was up in the extension (as in UW) office working on a computer. I was sitting in an office chair and I turned around to get something off the desk next to me and something in my knee went “ting.”

You laugh. I heard it. It was definitely a “ting.” Unless maybe it was a “thwup.”

Anyway, I figured, hey, I’m young, this is no big deal. I’ll just stay in the chair until I’m done with the computer, then I’ll get up and walk it off. Hardly even worth commenting on. Until I tried to walk down the stairs.

Holy man.

I gimped my way down to the cave, plopped down in my chair, and called Pete.

“Uh, yeah, man, I’m not going to make it to class tonight. I hurt my knee. In an… office chair accident.”

There was just laughter on the other end of the line.

“Yeah… I was even sitting at the time.”

I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

But at least I had a good excuse for not showing up. At least I didn’t fall asleep on the couch.

Sorry, Jonus. We’ll be there next time; two of the seven dwarves: Gimpy and Yawny.

Help!

My bike needs a name. Make it a good one, and maybe it’ll get airbruched onto the frame.

Co-o-o-ld

It was in the middle 40s this morning when I saddeled up and headed out on my bike. It took almost half my hour-long ride before I could feel my fingers. But it was another beautiful morning, cold or not. It was kind of foggy, with a sky full of maleable clouds reflecing and refracting the rising sun in a myriad ways. Most drivers were nice to me and gave me a wide-ish cushion of space. Maybe they figured I was even crazier than they to be out and at it so early (05:30).

My ride was slower than the last one, but I figured something out about Hwy 112 on the section I’ve been riding: A big chunk of it’s uphill! I turned around at Sanborn and saw that I had been grinding up a gentle, nay, subtle grade without even realizing it for more than a mile.

Well.

I got a nice quick ride home, that’s for sure!

Early morning glory

I had a great run this morning! I felt fast, fairly strong, and like my cardiovascular system is well on its way to readapting to aerobic sports. I ran 5, walked 1 x 9, which took me around the (five mile) block. There was a beautiful sunrise behind me at the beginning; towering orange and purple cumulus playing peek-a-boo with the sun. It was just awesome!