Heat Wave

I got outside today for my first run since that cold snap hit like a week and a half ago. As a result, I'm 31 miles behind my pace to hit the 300 mile goal. That sucks. Plus my run today wasn't very good in itself, but I'm thinking the accomplishment is in just getting outside and doing it and not so much how fast I ran or whatever. Oddly enough Neil Armstrong popped on again after my run and congratulated me on my best mile yet...again. I don't think I really had a best mile, so maybe it's broken. Or maybe my Ipod realized how much extra motivation I need and it's going to keep abusing the quasi-celebrities to tell me how awesome I am. I'm looking forward to another gorgeous day tomorrow to get outside.

Friday was Christmas redux for me. I bought my parents tickets to the MN Orchestra for their Christmas present and the performance was Friday. The show title was "John Williams and beyond" Not sure why they even felt the need to have John Williams in the title because of the hour and a half performance, the two songs of his they did took up about 10 minutes. I enjoyed all of the songs they did, especially the Close Encounters of the Third Kind medley and Pirates of the Carribbean. They did an 18 minute piece from the movie The Red Violin. Man, that was bizarre.
I'm really considering going to the orchestra performance next Friday when they do "To Boldly Go..." They're doing Mars, Jupiter and Venus from Holst's Planets, Claire de Lune, Duel of the Fates along with some other Star Wars and Star Trek music. Anyone else want to go? Plus they have George Takei narrating! He was Sulu on Star Trek and Hiro's dad on Heroes. PLUS there's a costume contest! muahaha!! I am SO going.

The other part that made it Christmas-like Friday was I got my Christmas present from my brother. He'd originally ordered the item back in November and it didn't show up in time for Christmas, so he mailed it off as soon as it got to him. Ok here's the thing, I love my brother to death, but I REALLY don't want the present. Let me rewind a second. You see when he and I were little, we used to watch this cartoon called Robotech. We were both into it, collecting toys, books, tapes everything. It was one of the things he and I meshed with. One thing you have to know about my brother is he's very nostalgic. He hold onto his childhood very well and has a whole collection of old toys and junk he remembers as a child. Well, every year for Christmas and my birthday he gets me some sort of Robotech thing. Last year he got me a figurine thing which is fine. I have it sitting on my desk here at home. This year he got me some massive Robotech bookends! Bookends?? These things are massive! I have no place to put them so right now they're in my closet. I feel bad.

On bad driving

I've always prided myself on my driving prowess. I'd considered myself a very attentive and skilled master of the gas powered carriage. I've never even been close to getting into a car accident and have only been pulled over once about 7 years ago. My record is clean. The past few days however, has been anything but my normal skill.

Lets rewind to Monday. Tacy and I are driving along Washington Ave at the UofM on a nice fresh coating of snow. As I'm driving, some crazy guy takes 2 steps into the road and then changes his mind. I'm concentrating on this guy as we drive past not knowing if he was going to make another run into the street or not. However, with me looking off to the side, the car in front of me is stopped and waiting to turn left. High pitched, deafening screams erupt from the passengers side of the car and our lives flash before our eyes as my anti-lock brakes kick in and I go sliding past the car and down a cross street to the right. Mere inches to spare.


Accident averted! Success! But still. Not cool. Not cool at all.

Now fast forward maybe 10 minutes. We're in the Orchestra Hall parking garage (which is still in the stone age and doesn't take cards) and again I'm looking off to the side for a parking spot when screams erupt from the passenger side. Granted we were only going maybe 2 mph at that point, but it doesn't take much to draw panic screams from this girl. Abrupt stop, but again accident averted! Success!



Fast forward again a few hours. Wynton Marsalis concert is over and we're cruising back along Washington Ave towards the UofM and the light ahead of me turns yellow. I make every attempt to slow down and stop at that light, but no go. The car was not stopping so we went right on through. I'm pretty sure we made it through most of the way before it turned red, but still. On a normal day I would have stopped. I don't remember if she screamed that time or not, but most likely yes.





Seriously, I'm not a bad driver! I just had a bad driving day!

Running Wild

Tomorrow Mike and Derek and I are starting another weight loss competition. The weigh in will be tomorrow night and the competition will run until April 30th. For you mathematically challenged folks out there, that's 110 days or almost 16 weeks. The last competition was nearly 2 years ago and I completely decimated the competition. I don't remember what my weight loss total was at the end of the competition, but at the end of that summer I'd gone from 265 to 210. 55lbs! I don't think it's reasonable for me to expect the same results, since that was pretty extraordinary, but I'm going to try REALLY hard to maintain anything that I lose. Although I hope I win, I also hope we all achieve some sort of success in this competition. I don't know if I have any pictures of my skinny self, but I'll take a chubby picture of myself soon and then try to do a new one every month for progress.

As a side competition for myself , which happens to coincide perfectly time-wise, I've set a goal on my Ipod to run 300 miles in 16 weeks. I know that sounds like a LOT, but it's really not bad. It boils down to a little under 19 miles a week and since I don't plan on running every day, about 3 miles a day if I do 6 days a week. I think I'm going to do the 3 mile days for now and then as I get back in the groove of running, I'll increase the distance and lower the days.

Tonight however, Mr. Neil Armstrong talked to me on my Ipod after my run congratulating my on my best time for the 1 mile yet! 7 min 8 sec! Go team!!

Destination: Adventure!

Maybe it's been the weather, or my natural restless spirit, but I've been spending the past couple weeks trying to figure out a vacation that I can take next Fall. I've been to nearly 45 of the 50 states in the US, but other than a short border hop to Canada a couple times, I've never been anywhere outside of the US. So I'm setting my sights international. Right now I think I have it narrowed down.

Italy


This one is fairly obvious. My archeology degree was focused on ancient Rome (along with Greece and Egypt) so a trip here would be utterly fascinating to me. To stand in the Roman Forum where Julius Caesar himself once stood or where Marc Antony and Augustus gave their speeches to sway public opinion in their favor would be amazing. I almost can't put it into words. If I were to travel here I would probably try a tour package with some group. I guess the downside of a trip like this is it's expense. I'd be looking at roughly $2500, plus 8 or so days off of work and since I don't earn PTO, days off of work = lost money. But a trip like this is priceless right?

So those of you who have your passports, do I really need to go to the county courthouse where my birth certificate is and get an embossed copy of it in order to get myself a passport?

Backing the wrong team

I'm going to have a longer and more entertaining post in the next couple days, but I thought I'd share this.

This past weekend I finally broke down and bought myself the HD DVD add-on to my Xbox 360. I'd been holding out for a long time since I was nervous about the outcome of the format wars between Blue-Ray and HD DVD, but I had some Christmas money to spend and it seemed like a good time. I mean, Universal Studios and Warner Bros were on board and Paramount joined the HD DVD party last summer. Things were looking good! Well, I picked the wrong time I guess. Warner Bros defected a few days ago, giving Blue-Ray their full support and a current 70% market share of the movie industry. With the Warner Bros move, Paramount is setting itself up to pack it's bags and move to Blue-Ray also, which would be the final killing blow to the HD DVD camp. As much sway as Microsoft and Toshiba have, I don't see them being able to keep this sinking ship afloat.

I guess the good news is I'll be able to pick some HD movies up in the bargain bin in the coming future.