OH HAI...

Busy
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.
So, yeah, haven't really been doing much with the blog in a while. I think the Project365 business really burned me out on the whole post every day thing, even if I was only generating a post for every day and not *actually* posting everyday. (details, details) Tweets have still been happening, so if you're really craving that tall, asiany goodness, peek on over there, since things are still going to be sporadic over here for the time being.

For those keeping score at home, I did finally finish the acorn flour project, although there still needs to be a post about that. Or at least a recipe. Perhaps I'll put that up over on FoodNerd's site. I mean, it's hers, but y'know, I get some privileges for setting it up at least.

I guess I do owe y'all a quick recap, so here's a quick list of what I've been up to:

• Dancing -- I'm trying to get to more of the local dances on a regular basis, but we're also attending local workshops as well as traveling for workshops and exchanges in other cities.
  
• Running -- I was getting my mileage up in preparation for running the Chicago Marathon this year, but that fell through when some friends decided they were going to get married that same weekend. Nevertheless, I was reintroduced to a few guys who work locally and have been running pretty regularly with them for the past few months.
  
• Guitar -- been working on my finger-style country blues using this book. Good so far. Occasionally picking up the Uke, but it's been mostly guitar recently.
  
• Massage Therapy -- happy to finally be covering expenses this year, but still not a practical source of income, but enough to keep my hands busy, so to speak.
  
• Studying up on my perl and C++ to work on a random OCD data-collection project focused on shopping for organic food. I've been collecting the data and building a back-end perl-based parsing app, in part to exercise some of those coding muscles I haven't used in a while, but also because I'm tired of keeping all the data in my head. Obviously still a work in progress.
  
• studying Chinese -- some nice online services have popped up making it a lot easier to practice listening and reading skills. I'm currently using Popup Chinese, although it's taken a bit of a back seat recently since...
  
• I started a new job last week -- engineering, 3 miles from the house, nice people who run (same guys I've been running with, actually. Worked out quite nicely.) Still getting up to speed, but interesting to observe how my body is adjusting to the new schedule. (or rather, how it's not)
  

So, yeah, kind of busy. And we've also been having a lot of work done with the house -- blown-in insulation and a new roof while exterior painting in the queue and plans to rejigger the back deck. And jeez -- disc started a few weeks ago and there's some more travel coming up, a couple of weddings and... well, you know the drill.

Hopefully I'll see you guys around, even if it takes a bit of time for me to hit equilibrium 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.