the weight

Been on a bgrass kick lately and found this gem:

muppets bohemian rhapsody

love, the glaciers

Last night's SNL was, for me at least, one of the funniest in quite some time. And Dave Matthews Band was great.

Here's a cameo of Al Gore:

back to the hundred acre woods

Temps in the mid-70's this weekend. November in Atlanta! This means camping at the 100 acre woods again!


Though I doubt I'll hear the summertime bugs like this time:

say what??

Captured this on an approach trail near Deception Pass in NW Washington. By far the best sign on the trip.

anatomy of a half marathon (#5)

silver comet half marathon

i think i write these race descriptions more for a journal for myself in the future. this past saturday was my 5th half marathon. another 13.1 miles under the belt. unlike the last one this past feb, it's not part of my marathon training. well, at least not yet. more on that later. !

5am--wake up. well that was a lot earlier than i wanted.
501--coffee automatically brewing. got to love that.
502--curse at the weather channel and the line of storms racing from the alabama line towards atlanta. could it be more perfect timing? SERIOUSLY?
615--folks arrive outside my apt in the dark to carpool.
745--race starts.
747--rain starts.
750--rain pelts. leaves blow everywhere. skies are black. rain drips off my hat. clothes drenched. toes begin to feel damp.
mile 1.5--finally off the road and onto the paved multi-use silver comet trail.
mile 3--the rain subsides to a drizzle. but the damage is already done. drenched. i recall saying "at least it's not cold."
mile 4--remembering why out and back races are so annoying because you start thinking about how you aren't even at the turnaround point yet.
mile 5--seriously? the elite runners are already turning around and passing us on the eastbound side? and i get elbowed by one of those elite ones for getting too close to their lane. i was not happy with that guy. we were both at fault. i wasn't going to elbow him though.
mile 6--squish, squish, squish go the feet.
mile 7--clif shot bloks at a crucial point in the race. again, nothin like orange gummy candy in the middle of a long run.
mile 8--oh. yep. there's a blister on the foot. i can already feel it.
mile 9--never thought i'd be askng for hills. running on flat straightaways is about the most boring thing. though the thousands of leaves all over the trail is making it worth it. despite that it's raining again.
mile 10--squish, squish, squish.
mile 11--the whole time i thought it was mile 12.
mile 12--the feeling i felt when i realized i was off by a mile completely drained all motivation i had at that point. the feet were turning to mush. my legs felt like spaghetti. my calves felt like i was throwing rocks at them. yet i was still going forward.
mile 13.1--complete. a lot slower than my other races. 2:13:20. but it's complete. and it's raining. and freezing. and my feet hurt.
1010--finding friends that showed up for support.. well worth it. and the hamburger slider at the finish line.. not well worth it.
1130--watching my friends eat burgers at the market. i just can't eat much that close to post-race. and then a magician walks up to us and spends 15 minutes showing us some very interesting tricks involving cards, names, invisible coins, rubber bands, and even his pet albino parakeet that at some point appeared in his hand. i've never been that close to magic.


and with that, i've got another half this weekend in columbia. ever onward!

november at last

It's been a busy past few days. I'm actually looking forward to sitting in my cube farm Monday. And that's a sad statement. Update on the race and halloween soon.

But for now, a funny video of a math teacher that uses the power of newfangled technology to keep the topic fun.

LED sheep

This is just crazy. Sheep-herding with LED lights..

fun with math

i've got a feeling

I figured the blog needed a new header at the top. As I was searching through some pics, I realized the new one (above) actually had the ocean meeting the land. And some jumping folks.

I entered a video contest through Lonely Planet. The goal was to make a 3-minute video of videos from your roadtrip. Good thing for me, I just went on one.

Here's my choppy video. The song was chosen because we heard it probably 40 times while surfing the channels.

i am a lasagna

I am what I eat, ergo, tonight I am a lasagna.

I'm still constantly amazed and how much food I eat. Especially after I buy a Stouffer's "Family Size" lasagna. Serving size: 4. Then I proceed to eat over half of it. And I still feel hungry.

High metabolism from all the running lately maybe? Caught the running bug again.

I'll be running my 4th (*CORRECTION: 5th) half marathon this Saturday. It'll be a nice reprieve from all the hills around here as the course is flat.

Other things to note:

It's been fun watching the Angels in post-season baseball. Especially when giving the Yanks a run for their money.

And I saw a Christmas commercial. Let the games begin.

more giants

Today, my boss knocked on my cube and told me to come to his office. He was genuinely interested in hearing about my recent adventures throughout the past 2 weeks. And to quell any rumor that my coworkers had started about me going to Seattle to interview for EPA there. Though I might have told him that I would like to work in Region10 (which is the NW). He seemed ok. Maybe he didn't hear me.

5 candles

Hey, guess what?

The blog is now 5 years old.

825 posts in 5 years.

Thanks to the 4 or 5 people that still read this. You rock!

In other news, I looked at my states map again and realized I've now been to 40 states. And 5 of them are states that I only briefly visited for a few hours. One day I've got to do a tour of the NE and see what it's all about.

slow shutter

Kept the shutter open longer on this one. Taken on a ferry while crossing NW Washington, so it was interesting to see how the pics turned out while speeding through the waters.

Meanwhile, put some of the NW roadtrip on flickr.

standing on the shoulders of giants

Redwoods, California. And Deception Pass, Washington.