Kooks at it again

Election season, and I've just read through this year's ballot initiatives. And once again, there's a group of people who are trying to get the income tax repealed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Massachusetts Question 1, the State Income Tax Repeal Initiative.

Hey, who doesn't want to pay less taxes?

But, seriously, there are lots of things that I do think are important -- schools, public safety, environmental oversight, to name just a few -- that have to be paid for, and I look at it as part of the price I pay to live in a place that has given me the opportunity to have a good job that pays the bills, live in a nice house, maintains roads that allow me to get from one to another, keeps the streets safe at night, will come to my aid if there's a fire or other disaster, and so on, and so forth.

Frankly, I think the Commonwealth would benefit from a graded income tax to lower the tax burden on those with the lowest incomes in the state, especially given the increase in prices for the basic necessities, but I appreciate the value of having a slightly simpler tax code. (the in-state/out-of-state interest income has always been a little annoying, actually.)

Anyway, being curious, I read through the supposed benefits to approving the question that were provided as "arguments in favor" by the "committee for small government." I've listed them with heckling my comments added below:

• Your “Yes” vote gives back $3,700 each to 3,400,000 Massachusetts workers and taxpayers – including you – on average when we end the state income tax. $3,700. Each worker. Every year.
  
  Well, duh. Cutting the income tax means you don't pay an income tax. Have I mentioned "duh?" (yes, I know they're just quantifying it for people.)

• Your “Yes” vote will create hundreds of thousands of new Massachusetts jobs.
  
  Um, exsqueeze me? I went to the sponsoring organization's website (which I won't support by providing a link), and apparently they think that all this extra money "in productive, private hands" will result in new jobs!
  
  Strangely, in the video of the 10 people they interviewed about what they'd do with the extra money, none of them mentioned starting a business or creating jobs. A few were savers (One guy was pretty specific about investing some semi-risky funds, maybe THAT was the job guy!), the rest, spender -- travel, buy a car, put towards a mortgage, pay off credit cards.
  
  Frankly, I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you. (although, credit to the gentleman who was going spend it all at local businesses -- way to do your part, dude.)

• Your “Yes” vote will NOT raise your property taxes NOR any other taxes
  
  Also, everybody gets a pony.
  
  Just for the record, the committee for small government is based out of Wayland, which happens to have a median income almost $60k higher at $177,900 per household in 2006 than then median income for the Commonwealth, with almost double the median home value at $700k. So yeah, their taxes may not go up much.
  
  Should also mention that while Massachusetts does have the 5th highest median state property tax in the country, it's still behind nearby number 2, New Hampshire (which has no state income or sales tax), even though NH has the 5th lowest median property value in the country, well below number 25, Massachusetts.
  
  Just sayin'.

• Your “Yes” vote will NOT cut, NOR require cuts, of any essential government services.

• Your “Yes” vote rolls back state government spending 27% - $47.3 billion to $34.7 billion – more than state government spending in 1999.
  
  These last two are kind of related. First, it really depends on what you define as "essential." These guys are libertarians, after all. Also, any one got a read on what inflation has been like over the last 9 years?
  
  This site, which calculates inflation using the consumer price index, says 31.5% aggregated. So that's really like $26.4 billion in 1999 dollars... yeah, that's totally gonna fly.

I guess we'll see how well that Massachusetts educational system is working in November. To be honest, I'm not hopeful, even though I think a similar measure has failed in the past.

In other news, perhaps not unrelated, Question 2 is an effort to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Stuck in NY

Hopefully only temporarily. Especially since I've gotten nothing but attitude since I've arrived. Maybe it's just that you get what you give, since I've been somewhat cranky since we touched down. I knew we'd be late, but the shuttle to a different terminal and pulling the dumbass move of leaving the security area because I was paying more attention to trying to move, move, move, and I'm picking up on every little thing to tick me off.

I have to admit that I'm a bit surprised, since I've grown to believe that the "NY attitude" rep is overrated. But I guess that's just my bad.

Anyway, my flight to JFK got rerouted through Salt Lake City for refueling because of thunderstorms in NY, so it arrived a good hour late. Well past my scheduling connection departure. "Fortunately," THAT flight has been delayed by 2-1/2 hours, so at least I should make it home tonight. Of course, that means that I miss the dance, and there's a real possibility that I'll have to catch a cab home rather than get picked up by the SOOTTAD and get a quick dinner in Chinatown. Still a possibility though, so fingers crossed.

Out West

It's 6AM local time and I'm kicking around at my parents' house until I have to head out to the airport to catch my flight back home. I've been in CA on business, and all told it's gone pretty well. My presentation seemed to go smoothly (there was no audible snoring), and I had some good interaction with the local peeps that will be implementing and verifying the design that I've been specifying for the last couple of months.

Given the problems I've had recovering from the time change the last couple of times I've travelled west, I've tried something new this trip: staying on east coast time. I actually went to bed "late" last night -- 10:30pm local and probably woke up late as a result. (5:45am) Other than that, I've been in bed around 9PM and up around 5AM all week -- a perfectly reasonable midnight/8am back home.

Anyway, a few thoughts from the week:

• A few minutes ago, I could hear the newspapers getting delivered -- it's actually the third time this week I've beaten the delivery peeps.

• I was pleased that I was able to run by the beach in the mornings before work. A 6 mile run on Tuesday and a 10 mile run on Wednesday.

  However, it should be noted that it's VERY dark at 5AM. The first night morning in combination with the fog, made the run on along the beach not much different from running through a foggy tunnel with an ocean soundtrack that you could barely make out if you tried to listen really hard. It wasn't light enough to see the surf until after I'd finished the run around 6:30. Worked out better the next day with the longer run when I could actually watch the surfers during the last few miles.

  Navigation is also challenging. It made driving and looking for parking more difficult than planned. I also stumbled a few times off street and driveway curbs and got poked in the eye by a tree branch because it was too dark to see.

• I was entertained by the sight of the throng of surfer kids who showed up at the beach at 6:30AM the first morning. I wondered if they were just following the surf reports, but it turns out that the parking lot didn't open until 6:15.

• Speaking of parking, it was strange to get turned away from a lot because it was too early. I wouldn't have wanted to pay $7 to park at that lot anyway (different from the surfer lot). Conveniently, the no parking zones generally didn't take effect until 8 or 9AM, well after I had left.

• 63 degrees at the beach at 5:30AM. 78 near the airport where we were staying and working. 98 in the valley -- whoa.

• Even though we were working near LAX, I flew into Burbank. A much easier airport to deal with, easier to get a rental car, and one of the two L.A. area options for JetBlue, which doesn't fly into LAX. And, the parental homestead is closer, so I was able to visit on the way in, and could stay here the night before my flight out. And I only had to navigate the traffic hell once.

• The traffic from the airport to my parents' house was surprisingly light when I arrived around 5PM on Monday. And no problems at 8PM when I headed down to the hotel. The return drive at 4PM yesterday was a different story. It took about an hour and a half to travel the 21 miles from the LAX area to here. And the majority of that time, maybe 70 minutes was spent on the first 13 miles from LAX to Sunset. There were miles that I could have run faster than I was going. I can't imagine making that kind of commute daily. And the round trip would probably eat a quarter tank of gas.

Ok, gotta head to the airport, maybe a few more updates later.

Ok, followup from JFK:

• coming through the Sepulveda pass into the valley, I couldn't help but think that it looked a lot more.... green, than I remember it. Hard to say whether it's because all the street side trees have just finally gotten visibly bigger over the years or it's the first time I've made the drive in daylight.

• Saw some surfer couples at the beach, complete with his and her surfboards attached to the roof or stuffed in the backs of their cars.

• Saw a prius with a HOV sticker. That really seems like a dumb idea. Sure, it's a motivation to get people to switch to hybrid cars, but taking up spots in the HOV lane? Isn't it possible for that to lead to an increase in the number of cars on the road, further increasing congestion, leading to longer commute times and more air pollution? I suppose I'm just being a whiner since the problem should be limited because they only issued a limited number of stickers.

3 things

18 mile run this morning. And for once, I kept to the plan, didn't start too fast, stayed off rough trails and hydrated on water and gatorade. It didn't hurt that it was a cool 60 degrees (make that 50 degrees -- brrrr... hoping it doesn't hurt the tomatoes) this morning and could see my breath at times -- a first in quite a few months. I've also been trying to keep the carb intake high, and didn't go all crazy and bike several miles the day before.

Anyway, all told, a good run. Even managed to have a good kick on the last 3 miles. The run felt good, and after the run felt pretty good, too, although I've got my nagging hamstring and achilles issues still going on. Tried to mitigate with some cold water cycles in the shower and a little ice massage on the achilles -- we'll see how that goes.

So, I think the quality of the run helped, but here are 3 things that made me smile (smile, as in, big toothy grin) on my run this morning:

1. catching a lungful of the sweet, fragrant smell of ripe concord grapes
2. passing a van parked on the side of the road by a field and catching the view of the woman in the driver's seat, pointing out the cows to (presumably) her daughter in the carseat behind her
3. sharing the playfulness of the side-to-side dodging game (pass on right? / pass on left?) with a couple walking on the path from the other direction. (I think I had seen the couple on another road earlier in the run)

Bonus: passing Peartree Lane and thinking about delicious pears. Yum. (ate two with lunch. :)

Yay, garden

We're getting the full array of tomatoes this week -- the orange banana tomatoes are finally ripening, for real this time. (although we have yet to cut one open, they at least feel meatier than the sad, hollow fruits we got last month.) And the "ugly" tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes are also doing well. I love that I grew these things from seeds. The "ugly" tomatoes in particular since I bought them from the grocery store, probably way back in 2005 or 2006.

Pricey at the time, it's definitely been a good ROI for the buck or so I spent on the original source tomato. I'm a little concerned that being commercially grown, they'd have a tougher skin that allows them to transport better, but we haven't really noticed a significant difference. I've always found the term "ugly" to be something of a misnomer, and doing a little research, I guess it's because the term (or at least "ugly ripe") is just the branding of a particular heirloom varietal by a commercial grower. The SOOTTAD and I actually find them to be quite pretty. And dericious.

The alpine strawberries are also doing unexpectedly well -- I don't think we've ever had the kind of harvest that we're getting this year. I've probably been pulling off a decent handful of berries almost every day for the past week, and I don't think they've ever been as consistently large as they've been this year. No idea whether it's just the plants or the crazy rain we had this summer, or the recent sunny warm days we've had in the past week.

Also not complaining about the first watermelon we ate last night.

Or the pears.

And the grapes will be coming along soon as well.

w00t! :)

Flakey

So we've slowly started to clear out some of the crap that's been lying around the house unused for years. And part of that process has been putting things up on Craigslist. We don't do this a lot, so maybe somebody can explain this one for me:

WTF is up with these no-response Craigslist people?

I post an item.

I get an email asking if it's still available.

I say yes.

And then ... nothing.

I put an ad up for a dryer last week. I got 4 responses. The first person asked if it was available and could they pick it up tomorrow evening. (Friday) Asked for contact info. I responded, and... hello? Are you coming? When are you coming? Same for a bike rack I posted on Saturday. 4 replies so far, including one saying they could pick it up "tomorrow, anytime." Not a single follow-up.

Are these people flaky or just rude?

Or is this some new sophisticated email address harvesting scheme? Eff me, if that's the case.

Either way, people suck.

Bah.

UPDATE: I had two people (TWO!) respond yesterday, 3 days after I replied to them, asking if the bike rack was still available, and maybe 2 hours after some guy took it away after responding to the post yesterday morning.

Again, WTF is up with these people?

all over the map

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.
Last day of the long weekend and I'm slipping into old habits again -- in bed after midnight and up after 8. Hopefully I'll get back on track tonight or I'm going to be getting into the office on the really late side given that these "shorter runs" that are part of the 3plus2 plan still take over an hour, not including stretching and clean-up. Fortunately, the SOOTTAD got back from dance camp today, and did the all-night dance thing last night, so she'll want to go to bed early.

Anyway, today's run was a track workout: 1mi(400m RI), 2mi(800m RI)/2x800m (400m RI). That is, a 1 mile interval with a 400m rest interval, a 2 mile interval with an 800m rest interval and then 2 800m intervals with a 400m rest interval between them. I could keep that in my head, mostly -- I ended up only giving myself a 200m rest between the 800s. What I couldn't keep in my head were the paces for each interval. The mile was supposed to be run in 7:18. I can mostly remember that. But I couldn't remember that the 400 split, to try and keep the laps relatively even, was supposed to be a little over 1:49. And the 800m intervals were supposed to be run in 3:31, equivalent to a 7:04mm or a 1:45 400m split. Thus the crude notes scrawly on my hand.

Not that it mattered -- I ended up mostly using the pace reading on my GPS.

Not that it really helped -- I found myself going all over the map as far as pace goes, although the average pace worked out to be faster than planned, at least. The fast, she is not so bad; the variation in pace, not so much. However, it's really difficult to modulate a few seconds off a minutes per mile pace, and it's exacerbated by the lag that exists as the GPS continually recalculates the pace. I was often finding myself running sub-7s and then overcompensating back and then running a few seconds per mile too slowly. The hysteresis, it's a killer.

More interestingly, it seemed like I was running the turns on the track much faster than the straights. I don't know if that has something to do with my form (knees more bent, leaning into the turn) or if there's some weird behavior of the GPS, like it's actually calculating velocity as opposed to speed, and taking into account direction. (This may not be the craziest thing, given that it is making guesses as to speed based on position.)

Whoops

I exchanged some email with a friend this week about my training conundrum, and she's reassured me that thing will be fine and that I'm doing the right things. Her main point: AVOID INJURY.

Got it.

Her other suggestions were to continue to include tempo/interval runs and to add "speedups" to the long runs as well. Also, hill workouts. And perhaps the most reassuring: to not go beyond 20-21 miles on the long runs.

Otherwise, the training runs had been going well the last few weeks (basically, since getting back from L.A. and readjusting to the time zone). I've been mostly running in the mornings, and I've generally felt pretty good both during and after the runs. It was mainly the length of long runs in the training plans I had seen that had made me nervous.

Yesterday, I proceeded with my new plan with the intention of ramping the miles of my long run, shooting for around 15 miles after only running a bit over 11 miles last week. (I had also snuck a hill run in on Thursday, but I did take Friday off as a recovery day.)

Route planning has gotten so much easier since the advent of GoogleMaps and the portable GPS.

In the old days, I would drive prospective routes, taking notes on street names and odometer readings. And then at home, I'd go as far as measure string on a driving atlas to guesstimate distances for trails or roads I hadn't driven.

I *heart* GoogleMaps and all your route dragging, mileage-calculating goodness. And with the GPS, After I map out a route on Google that's generally the right length, I just remember the one or two street names where I need to turn and then go. The GPS lets me know how far I've gone and how fast I'm going (for the most part... it does occasionally go off into the weeds where pace is concerned in hilly and/or wooded areas, but it's pretty obvious when it's off, and it's been pretty accurate for distance for the most part) so I don't sweat the details as much anymore.

Which may be less of a good thing sometimes. Take for example... yesterday's run. 15 miles, head out through Weston on 117, take a left on TOWER ROAD, and then follow the roads I'm familiar with once I pop out on Boston Post Road.

First off, I got held up by the train. Railroad crossing gates came down, so I turned around, retraced maybe 100-200 yards and then came back around. Still no train. On the second go-around, I see the train finally pull up. ...and stop, maybe 50 yards from the road. 2 minutes have already gone by at this point. After 3 minutes, I get impatient and just cross the tracks. I know I'm not supposed to. I was even good and waited when the gates first came down. But impatience, and fear of burning too much critical energy looping in the holding pattern got the better of me.

That threw me off. And I hadn't bothered to check where the train tracks were relative to the Tower Road turn off. And then I hit Route 126 and I was pretty sure at that point that I'd missed the turn.

Whoops.

I thought I might have missed it because I was distracted by the train or there was poor signage, but when I eventually found it, there were 3 signs, on both sides of the road. I either totally spaced or there was traffic on the road that was either distracting or obstructing the view.

So, instant 19+ mile run. I actually started walking after 15 miles, so I don't think I can say I ran 19 miles. I was actually feeling pretty good even on the 15th mile, but I guess my body took the 15 mile plan to heart because at 15.1 miles, my hamstrings and gluts suddenly got really unhappy. But I didn't stop -- just walked the next 3 miles or so and then ran the last mile and a half. (There was a false start maybe at the beginning of mile 17 where I tried to get it going again and the anterior tibs started complaining immediately, which led to some more walking.)

Anyway, really long run yesterday. Big ramp from last week. And... feeling pretty good. The quads are sore and the achilles has tightened up a bit, but pretty good, all things considered. I'm even thinking of running an easy 3 just to get the body loosened up a bit. Held off first thing this morning because I'm waiting for another stupid Craigslist person that I was hoping would call me back, like sometime during the day that she said she could pick the damn thing up "anytime." WTF is up with the flakey Craigslist people?

A few random notes:

• After crossing the tracks, I ended up running almost a half a mile MUCH much faster than I had planned (driven by adrenaline and possibly guilt for doing a no-no). Definitely sub-8s for a 9:30+ intended pace.
• Sheep! Moos! And only because I missed the turn. (but which unfortunately made me think of this comic.)
• Also saw a cardinal and a flock(?) of wild turkeys. (Not to be confused with a case of Wild Turkey. [Yes, that was bad. Sorry.])
• really good luck with the traffic lights on the last few runs -- thank you, Traffic Goddess.
• 3 Obama yard signs, in Lincoln and Weston. I saw my first McCain sign on a run on Wednesday, in Auburndale/West Newton of all places, which always struck me as slightly more working class than the other villages.
• Hit another "private road" that looks like a normal road on GoogleMaps. It cuts through a golf club. Only slightly nervous. Still better than some of the dead-end roads and non-roads that I used to hit from my driving atlas days.

The problem with the plan

So I've mentioned that I was planning on running a marathon this October. And I finally signed up for the Cape Cod Marathon on the 26th, just to make sure I actually had a race to run in. drive a stake in the ground. Training was actually going pretty well through early June, even though I had blown off a half-marathon in May that I was going to use as training. It was all cool.

And then I got sick. Probably the worst I've felt in years.

And so I've been carefully trying to get myself back into game shape, or race shape, I should say. This week felt like a major accomplishment -- morning runs 5 out of the last 6 days, a long run over 11 miles (the first long run in double digits since before I was sick) and over 33 miles total for the week. It actually felt like a real training week for the first time in ages. And I didn't feel like total crap after any of the runs.

So that's good -- I finally feel like I'm ready to get myself back onto a real training plan.

And so I've taken a look through one of my books, gone back to a few of the websites I was looking at before I started this whole business.

And it looks like I'm well and truly screwed.

I'm just under 9 weeks away from the race, and most training plans I've looked at had me running 20 mile runs by now, if not 3-4 weeks ago. I know I'm not qualifying for Boston, but I'd still like to actually *run* a marathon, not just finish it. So at the moment I'm struggling with whether I just stick with the gradual mileage ramp-up and peak at whatever I peak at 2-3 weeks before the race, or try to ramp more quickly to get the miles in but keep the tempos down and be more careful about giving myself enough rest between runs. I'm not convinced either approach is necessarily going to be a good idea.

It feels like things always seem to be more difficult than planned*. I figured that this marathon training thing should have been straightforward, if not easy. I knew it was going to be work, but it wasn't supposed to get so... complicated. It keeps making me wonder whether SOMEBODY out there is trying to tell me to just cut it out and sit my ass down.

Bah.

* I know that at heart, I AM kind of idealistic, but I'm not supposed to be that positive, optimistic guy. I'm supposed to be pragmatic. Realistic. Pessimistic. Plan conservatively. Maybe I've changed. Or maybe it's just overconfidence when it comes to physical activities. Like when people heckle pro athletes or watch action movies and think that they could be all heroic and shit.

Why I hate Facebook

Facebook: Hey! A friend wants to share a book with you! Click here to see!
Me: Uh, thanks... what's the book?
FB: Hang on, just sign up for this application!
Me: Huh? Ok, fine. [clicking Add] So what's the book?
FB: Wait, look at all of your friends who aren't using this application yet! Why don't you let me infect I mean, invite them to use it too!
Me: Um, no... [clicking Skip] so, think you could tell me what book that was?
FB: Hey, do you like any of these books?
Me: C'mon, quit it. [clicking Skip] Ok, so what was that book?
FB: Thanks! Hey, here are all the great features for this application!
Me: Alright, already! What was the fucking book?!
FB: [crickets]
Me: um, hello?
FB: [more crickets]
Me: Ok, this says recommendations, maybe you put it under there? [clicking Recommendations]
FB: Sorry, we do not have any recommendations for you.
Me: DELETED.

Fucking facebook.

barriers to productivity

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

This is one of the few downsides to working from home. I can feel myself getting carpal tunnel trying not to disturb him too much when I try to type around him.

On the other hand, it's 3:30pm and I'll probably head out for a run in less than an hour. (seeing as I couldn't motivate when I woke up at 6 this morning, and then ended up over-sleeping*.)

* Prolly got up around 10. Yeah, jetlag...

Um.... what?

"Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."
- Attorney General Michael Mukasey

I guess I'm going to need to look up the actual definition of "crime" now...

In other news, we're back from our trip to Kansas City (actually, Olathe) and Los Angeles, but posts will probably continue to be sparse given the whole work and training thing. Better to check up on twitter, flickr and facebook... (yes, facebook -- got sucked in, but still trying to lay low over there)

Glorious, glorious legroom

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

The travel gods were kind to us on our leg from K.C. to L.A.

Southwest has made some changes to their line-up policy and assigned actual line number positions. We were pretty deep into the first seating group, but I was still able to get the double row exit row seat, a much-welcomed improvement from the last trip to L.A. when I was stuck in a middle coach middle (on American with crappier seat pitch) in both directions.

It wasn't a full flight, so it probably would have been okay elsewhere on the plane, but I'm still grateful.

It's just kind of a bummer to have to fly into LAX. Unfortunately, the only flights that were available into Burbank at the right times had layovers and were almost $100 more expensive, and sometimes I'm just not willing to throw that much more money at a problem. (And the return leg on JetBlue -- thankfully out of Burbank -- cost us a lot more than I would have liked, so that figured into the equation as well.)

Context

I'm working from home right now.

This is generally a good thing -- easy commute, less distracting hallway chatter, comfortable surroundings (not over air-conditioned, or air-conditioned at all, really), no interrupts from coworkers or the boss.

Quite good, actually... if it weren't Saturday.

From seed

From seed
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

A few photos from the garden. These are all from plants that were grown from seeds that I'd harvested out of fruits that we either grew, received from the CSA or bought at the supermarket. There are notes on the image in my Flickr stream.

Kind of exciting, but maybe that's just me.

We've been getting some crazy rain the last couple of days. So far, it seems like the bed is draining well, so the plants seem happy enough.

Our "new" rain barrel is almost full even though we haven't actually fitted the gutter downspout over to it. (I guess there are some advantages to having old clogged gutters -- there's plenty of water that's just been dripping/pouring over the corner of the roof rather than going down the downspout.) We're probably going to look into getting another rain barrel at this point, but for the time being, our party buckets have doubled as water basins, and even they're full up and overflowing.

That's more like it

3 miles this morning. Average pace a little below 8:30 minute miles. Max heart rate somewhere around 169*.

It's still not where I'd like to be, but it felt a lot better than a week and a half ago. And it's progress.

* Within the first 1/2 mile, I checked the monitor and it read 176. Then 179. Then 181. I definitely didn't feel like I was working that hard so I tried adjusting the strap of the sensor and the reading shortly dropped down to 156. *phew* For the record, I don't think this had anything to do with the high reading from the last 3 mile run, and I really did feel like crap at the time.

square zero

Hey.

So, I've basically been sick for something like three out of the last four weeks. Sinusitis and bronchitis, according to the doctor. At a follow-up appointment last week, he now tells me that he thinks I have acid reflux (which is making my cough persist) and asthma. He's recommending that I start taking a daily dose of Prilosec and regular shots from a Albuterol inhaler.

Needless to say, this is news to me. Also needless to say, I'm not particularly happy with his diagnosis.

Since then, I've gone to the acupuncture clinic and have been trying to just rest and give my body a chance to recover. It's been a week, and I'm feeling like the cough is getting a little better, but I'm going to give the Prilosec a shot for a week, just to see whether it makes a difference or not. I'm not thrilled about being on a regular regimen of meds, but we'll see how it goes. My hope is that it will clear things up to allow my body to heal, and then I can go back to business as usual and let my body take care of itself.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that my marathon training got completely derailed. I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to get back on track and be ready to go by October, but things really aren't where I'd like them to be right now.

I figured it'd be a slow start, but my first run the Sunday before last wasn't promising. 3 miles. started at 8-1/2 minute miles, finished closer to 10 when my heart rate hit 176, which, for the record, is higher than when I was trying to test my max heart rate by doing 300m uphill sprints. Granted, it's been hot and humid, but I don't think it accounted for all of it. I've since played a little frisbee (and aggravated the hamstring) and had a disappointing "long and slow" 5.5 mile run, that was supposed to be more like 6.5 miles but was cut short because my knee started hurting after striding up a short uphill.

Bah.

It's worse than square one. It's square zero. A friend thinks that it's just residue from the sick, and when I'm *really* back at 100%, the endurance and stamina will come back with it. I have a few other friends who also think I should be able to get back on track.

Hope so. There is at least one guy who thinks I'm screwed (and believe it or not, it's not me), but I am ignoring him at this time.

So I'm clearly not going to be running the marathon for time. Which makes me wonder whether I should put Marine Corps Marathon back on the table for consideration. It's supposed to be kind of a clusterfuck because there are so many people, but if I'm not worried about trying to finish in 3:20:59, maybe it'll be more interesting than running one of the quieter races. It also has the benefit of giving me an extra 2 weeks for training, which is not the worst thing ever.

Hopefully they won't close open registration before I make a decision. Too bad it's already sold out.

Have I mentioned, bah?

UPDATE: just signed up for the Cape Cod Marathon. Just in case. Poking around, Long Beach is looking somewhat appealing except that I'm not all that excited to travel (cost, and time, and well, the stress of travel these days), even if it is near home base.

Fuck.

RIP George Carlin.

[we'll see how long that video lasts on YouTube.]

Thanks, man.

"We're number one, so you can just suck it"

Sorry folks. I'm only back to rant about Verizon.

I was already annoyed that their voicemail system seems to have gotten flakey recently (have you received a message indicator for a voicemail a week after the original message was left?) but the events over the last few days have me pretty ticked at this point

Ironically, I just upgraded our home service mere hours before this, and even during that process, I was getting myself incremental frustrated and angry.

We have FiOS internet. We've been pretty happy with it. We have a 20/5 plan, or 20Meg download, 5Meg upload plan for about $50.

Rather than burn minutes on her work cell to call clients, the SOOTTAD has been using our home phone which has an unlimited minutes plan with Vonage. (Whoo VONAGE! We <3 Vonage.) This was a reasonable solution until the clients started calling the house because they had the number from their caller ID. Clients calling the home number is unacceptable so we've started looking into picking up a second phone line. Enter Verizon FiOS that has been aggressively pushing their service bundles. (generally with somebody calling or stopping by the house at least once a week for as long as we've been living in this house.)

Anyway, Verizon suffers from the same problems as all the other providers (read Comcast and RCN) in that it is virtually impossible to find out how much the services cost short of signing up for the service or dealing with a customer service rep on the phone. So I ended up digging around online looking for prices through our Verizon account, only to discover that they had raised the price of our internet connection to $57.99.

Um, hey. That's not cool.

I eventually found an email (sent to an account I never wanted, and that I never check because it's been full of spam since day 1) that notified me of the change of price.

Lovely.

Seeing as I still hadn't found the fee structure for the bundled services, I called them up, so I could then ask them how SOL I was about the new price. Only to discover that I was actually going to be $65.99 because I hadn't signed a new contract.

Proof that we're a captive audience is reflected in the fact that 2 days later, I've actually signed up for a 1-year contract for Internet, Phone and Cable. Yes Cable. We're getting Cable TV, god help us, complete with HD DVR. We are so screwed. And not just by Verizon. It works out to a decent deal as a bundle, especially since we're getting an extra $5/month discount, effectively $50 for internet, $25 for phone and $50 for cable. We'll see how the year goes, and decided whether or not we want to ditch it. (especially if they decide to raise rates again.)

So fine, done is done.

Except that I just looked through my most recent Verizon Wireless bill, and was struck by the $14 charge for text messaging, which seemed like I lot since I only pay $0.10 a message.

Except that I don't. Apparently I missed it when they raised it to $0.20.

Except that I really missed the boat, because apparently they raised it to $0.15 over a year ago. I guess we were a little busy.

I can't help but feel like there's something illegal about raising your rates when you're under contract, but I'm not sure what I can do about it.

I'm going to have to figure something out. Hopefully things won't be too busy that it'll drop under the radar again.

Excuses

Well, it's clearly summer, even if it isn't official for another week or two. And I'm not talking about the mini heat wave we had last weekend, I'm talking about the density of our calendars.

The SOOTTAD and I are off to All-Bal weekend this afternoon. We've been talking about going ever since she went a couple of years ago, but we haven't had the chance because, well, it's summer and y'know, there always seems to be too much stuff going on.

This morning was actually the first time I'd gone for a run in over a week -- a little over 6 miles, decent pace for most of it.

I've pretty much fallen off the wagon since a had to go on a business trip in California almost a month ago. Hopefully, I'll finally get back into the swing of things, seeing as we've hit the 16-week mark before that marathon I'm supposed to be running in October, even though I still haven't actually figured out which one it's going to be*. I've even packed my running gear and a map of the area around the hotel in the hopes that I'll be able to run while we're in Ohio.

So yeah, off the wagon. We played this game a few weeks ago, returning from a wedding in NYC where we'd had WAAAAAYYYYYYY too much to drink and had painfully paid the price for it that morning and on the drive back home. It went something like this:

TALLASIANDUDE: The problem was, I didn't get any sleep the night before. If I'd actually gotten some sleep last night, I would have been fine.
SOOTTAD: No, the problem was, you kept drinking the bourbon out of my glass.
T: No, I think the problem was, when you stopped letting me drink out of your glass, I went and got another glass of my own...
T: And actually, maybe the problem was every time I ordered a bourbon and a glass of water, I kept getting the bourbon and not noticing that they weren't giving me the water. If I'd just had that water...
T: Well no. The problem was I shouldn't have had that cigar. That thing was totally giving me a false second wind so I didn't notice I was out of gas...

Stupid open bar**. The problem was that I drank too damn much and I totally didn't get enough rest, so my body basically shut down. Except that it couldn't because I'd been spending the evening poisoning it until 3 in the morning.

Anyhoo...

The game, as applied to my running (and by extension, blogging).

Precede each with "I would have run if I hadn't been (at/on/with) [a/the]..."

5/17-18 - Wedding in New Hampshire (got a run in before the ceremony)
5/19-21 - 3-day business trip in California, stuck at the airport hotel with no car and no time because of the meeting schedule.
5/22 - return flight to Boston, just in time for a frisbee game (ADDED BONUS: body clock reset to Pacific time)
5/23-26 - Boston Independence Exchange -- full dance weekend with friends visiting and late-night dancing running until 4AM. (I did get a run in on Memorial Day...)
5/23-26 - 4 clients (3 new). This is good (Yay, clients! Yay, covering rent!) but still time consuming.
(5/26 - Run 4.5mi)
5/27 - frisbee game
(5/29 - Run 6.3mi)
5/30 - client
5/30 - All-nighter finishing document for work. (1-1/2 hours of horizontal time) before...
5/31 - client, before...
5/31 - drive down to NYC for (previously described) wedding
6/1 - return to Boston hungover
(6/2 - Run 5.25mi) (OMG!)
6/3 - frisbee game
6/4 - 2 clients
6/6-8 - fly to Buffalo, drive to Fergus, Ontario for frisbee tournament, drive back to Buffalo, fly back to Boston
6/8 - install of the A/C unit in SOOTTAD's office
6/9 - install of the A/C unit in bedroom
6/10 - frisbee game
6/11 - client (2 clients canceled)

So yeah, a little busy. Gonna try to resync to the morning run schedule, especially after sweating out the tail end of the heat this past weekend. Which means I'll need to be careful this weekend and not stay up too late at the evening dances. Which is tricky, since that's where I'll probably get the most practice for the material I'll be learning in the workshops.

Oy, it never ends.

* I feel a bit like Goldilocks right now. Marine Corp is too big (described as a "clusterf*ck" by more than one friend. Cape Cod is too small. That probably rules out Mohawk-Hudson. So maybe Breakers in Rhode Island? Or maybe Steamtown, although both may be too much on the small side. *sigh*

** Awesome wedding/reception, though. Even if I was semi-zombified and had to nap under a table for part of it.