"More Machine Than Man."

So I just got back from Bowling tonight. (I did well, thankyouverymuch - over average on all three games.)

There's a guy on my team ( the guy who I subbed for last week) who bowls with one of the contraptions on the right strapped to his arm. What it's supposed to do is allow you to get extra spin on the ball, and a bigger impact at the other end of the lanes.

It doesn't do that when he uses it. (No wonder the guys were so happy to have me subbing for him last week - he sucks.) I don't know what he's trying to do with it, but it's not even close to it's intended purpose.

I'm also trying to ignore the fact that it looks like some sort of kinky sex toy - the bulbous tip has me a bit worried, as a matter of fact. I don't want to judge a guy by the equipment he uses, but if he can't bowl with it, what does he have it for? (Maybe the whole bowling thing is just a cover for his deviant fetishes.)

I'd just like to point out that I score 40 pins average higher than him per game - and my equipment is all natural.

Take that, Robocop.




Later.

Disco To Disco.

------->






I ran 15K today. (9.39 miles.)

It took me 1 hour and 21 minutes.

It was exhilarating.

I got the crazy idea in my head that it would be cool to run from the Store I work at now to the Store I used to work at. I suggested it to The Wife last night, and she thought I was crazy - so I laced up the shoes this morning and headed south.

It was easier than I thought. I paced myself at about 30 seconds/mile slower than my usual, and tried to just keep one foot in front of the other. There's a big hill about halfway through the run, and that was the most surprising part - it was way easier than what I expected. I think I'll try it again in a couple of weeks, and just try to improve my time. (It all depends on the weather - I'm not running for over an hour in a so'easter.)

It's nice to know I can go that distance. I'll admit, my legs are a bit tight right now, but that's also after working for nine hours and walking to and from work.

It's a good thing I'm sitting down - my legs have done enough work today.




Later.

Good vs. Evil

Good: Going to The Gym this morning.
Evil: Having a Sausage w/Egg McMuffin with the Wife and Youngest afterwards.

Good: Having The Youngest pee on the potty and giving him his reward.
Evil: Having him shit his pants 15 minutes later.

Good: Skipping my run this morning because of the pouring rain.
Evil: Having the sun shine brightly when there is no chance I can go running.

Good: Having a health conscious Subway Dinner with the kids.
Evil: Running 5K an hour later, and almost throwing up because I feel full of bread.

Good: Even being full of bread, only being one minute below my best time.
Evil: The compulsion I have to go out and better that as soon as I can. (You know The Sidekick's gonna suffer, right?)





Later.

Where Credit Is Due...

I'm getting tired of admitting he's right.

I used to (and still do) give The Sidekick grief over his musical choices. I still think that 85% of them are shit - (I just can't get into James Brown) but there are a few gems that he suggests.

He'll point out a band and tell me how fantastic they are, but it's not usually until the 763rd time he mentions them that I actually pay attention.

(I should give him more credit, he is the guy who re-introduced me to Pearl Jam. We'll forget about the failed experiment that was The Tragically Hip.)

But a while ago he mentioned (for the 764th time) a band called Kings Of Leon. I decided to give their album Because Of The Times a listen, and really enjoyed it. ( At least half the songs are on my running playlist on the Zune.) I hadn't had a chance to hear the new album Only By The Night yet, but when The Sidekick stopped in to see me at work today he told me that he'd heard it, and since I loved the last album so much I was really going to dig this one.

He's right.

I'm on my second listen through as I type this right now.

It rocks.
(And I mean that as a former long-haired glam headbanger from the late 80's - when using the word "rocks" to describe music actually meant something.)

So Thank You, Sidekick - you were right yet again.

(He's never going to let me live this down.)



Later.

King Of The Lanes.

So I've gone back to Bowling.

I used to bowl competitively for ages, but quit it about 4-5 years ago - the league I was in was just too intense, and I wasn't having any fun. It's not that I didn't like the sport, but it was just too negative and I would have rather spent that time at home.

My old team is still (mostly) together, and they asked if I could be the backup - the guy who gets called if someone is sick or can't make it. I agreed - but said that I couldn't do it all the time, just occasionally.

Tonight was one of those nights.

Sure, the decor in the old alley has changed, but that's about it. There's a bigger T.V. in the lounge and they've put in computerized scoring, but it's still the same guys throwing the balls and drinking the beers. After I walked in, I realized I knew at least 97% of the people from when I bowled before. (Some of these guys don't know when to quit.)

There's the fat guy who wheezes a lot when picking up the ball, (There's more than one version of him.) The guy who is really into analyzing the breakdown of the match (it's all done by the computer, retard), the guy who has the rank B.O. but nobody says anything because we are all nice Canadians, and the guy who has more supplemental equipment attached to him than is really necessary to throw a ball. (The only sport that exceeds Bowling for useless things that are supposed to help your game is Golf. Seriously, I'm not kidding.)

All in all I did well, considering it's been so long since I bowled - the guys were impressed with the strength of my throw - I didn't mention the gym, instead I told them it's my masturbation arm.

I'm covering for a guy for the next two Bowling nights, so we'll see if my skills are truly back or if I'm just a flash in the pan.

See you on the lanes.





Later.

Pace Yourself.

I've had 4 runs so far with my Nike+ Sportband.

I'm digging it.

Being the visual guy that I am, I like to be able to load my runs into the computer and "see" my progress. It's also nice to be able to set goals and watch as you make progress on them. (I thought I'd start with 90 miles in 30 days - should be able to do that, right?)

So why did I go with the Sportband and not the iPod plug in? For one, I like my Zune, and enjoy running with it. I also sometimes like to run with just the natural sounds around me: birds, cars, my own tortured wheezing... (I kid, I kid.)

Sure, I could have gone with a GPS unit, Like the Garmin 405 (Sexy!) but I also didn't want to drop $300+ dollars on something I'm just trying out. Maybe, in the future, I might go that way - but for now, the Sportband is great.

Just so you know my stats so far:

4 runs - 15.06 miles total ( 24.23Km)
Avg Pace - 8'21/Mile (5'11/Km)
Fastest mile - 7'25
Fastest 5K - 25'22
Longest Run (so far) - 6.47 Miles

I'm going to be working on improving those, especially before I go to Victoria. (21 Days!)


See you on the streets...




Later.

Dumb, Retarded Humor...I Love It.

Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) has some clips from his "Cavalcade of Comedy" up on YouTube.



Are they lowbrow? Yes.
Are they in poor taste? Yes.

And thus, they make me laugh.



Later.

A Bridge Too Far.

Remember my Coworker? The one that talks too much?

Things just got a whole lot worse.

She was having some problems with her teeth - I'm not sure what, as I wasn't paying attention when she was going on about it. In the end she needed some work done while she was on her holidays, and came back with a partial bridge on her front bottom teeth.

The problem is, she now has a slight whistle/lisp when she talks.

I don't think she's noticed it yet, and if she has she's not drawing attention to it. It's hard to ignore, though, as it's like talking to someone who's been eating crackers and trying to whistle. I'm sure it's frustrating for her, but it's down-right annoying for the rest of us. (Like I couldn't stand to hear her talk before.)

I am being civil about it, though - which is a change for me. I know I'd hate to be in the same situation, and I think that the other staff would take it easy on me if I was.

Who am I fucking kidding? - They'd make my life a living hell if they had the chance, and I'm turning down a prime opportunity for some revenge - payback for all the times I had to sit through her inane prattle in the coffee room.

I think I'll start off by calling her Snagglepuss.... and go downhill from there.




Later.

Jerry & Bill

You know, after seeing these Seinfeld/Gates Commercials, I've realized one thing:




The random, weird conversation type thing? That's what The Sidekick and I sound like. Why didn't Microsoft offer us $300 Million to talk about Windows Vista?

Hell, we would have been funnier.

Their loss.




Later

Crazy Like A Fox

Highlights from my 8K run in the 2008 Terry Fox Run:

• 41:00 - My time for the run. 2 laps of 4K each. (As an afterthought, I should have done the 12K.)
• Having only three guys finish ahead of me - One's a marathoner, one's a longtime runner, and the other guy was only 25 feet in front of me.
• Watching the one girl that passed me (snottily) slow down and start walking at about the 6K mark. As I ran by her, I picked up my pace just a little, because I could.
• Getting high fives from the wife and kidlets as I lapped them my second time around. (They were walking the course.)
• Having The Boy run into my arms at the finish line, were I was waiting for them after I was done.

Talk about a great fuckin' day. Awesome.




Later.

Save My Soul.

I'm in the market for an External Hard Drive.

Come payday, I'm probably getting this.

Yeah, that's one Terabyte of storage. I need it for all the porn.

The Sidekick even went as far as to accuse me of getting ready to download HD Movies - it hadn't even occurred to me to used the space for that.

Really, though, I'm just doing it so that I can wipe my main system when ever I want to, without all the hassle of juggling 17 DVD's worth of backups. It's really something I should have done a long time ago - I've just been putting it off for a while.

I think while I'm at it, I'll throw in some more memory as well - give the 'ol girl a treat. (More memory is like Botox for computers, right?)


We'll see how it goes - but having almost 15 times the amount of storage I currently have at my disposal will be tempting. I may never delete anything ever again.




Later.

Where Real Life & Hollywood Differ...

The Rocketeer was released in 1991. It's an American movie involving spies, saboteurs,the mob, federal agents, and a guy just trying to do the right thing.

10 years later, in real life, a bunch of crazy fuckers killed 3000 people in one day.

In the climatic scene at the end of the movie, the Mob and the G-Men team up to help defeat the Nazi's - The Rocketeer saves his girl, defeats the Head Bad Guy, and all is warm and cozy at the end of 110 minutes.

It's been seven years since 9/11. The Bad Guy is still out there, the Republicans and Democrats are still at each others throats, ( if the Mob and the Cops can team up, why can't they?) and nothing is warm and cozy at all.

Of all the failures of any Government in the western world, the fact that the main people responsible for this one atrocity still being at large ranks somewhere at the top of the list.

Maybe we should get Hollywood in on the action.





Later.

Quantify My Solitude.

Behold the Second trailer for the next 007 film,Quantum Of Solace.




God Damn.

I don't care if the Secret Evil Organization is Spectre or not - I'm lovin' it. The inclusion of Spectre in the Bond mythos was always one of my favorite parts. The fact that Bond isn't facing just one crazy fucker, but a whole cadre of them seems to just make sense. After all, who better to challenge those who fight for Queen and Country than those who hold allegiance to no country at all?

I can't wait for November.



Later.

Duck & Cover.

In just about 3 hours, the Large Hadron Collider will be fired up.

What's going to happen? Nobody has a friggn' idea. Miniature Black Holes? The end of the Earth? Absolutely nothing? Who knows?

If you're reading this in the morning - I guess nothing major happened.

If you're reading this on the other side of the event horizon, we've got bigger shit to worry about.



Later.

Sad Ronald.

So today was the Sidekick's last day at The Arches.

Sadly, I did not get to see him walk out the Drive-Thru door into the sunset (I was at my job), but I'm sure it was both relieving and bittersweet at the same time.



Of the fond memories I do have of The Arches, The Sidekick is prominent in a lot of them. Leaping over chairs to fight in the office, shooting the shit by the landing area, faxing "I Feel" lists back and forth, and just making my days there tolerable - he covered all the bases.

But he's moving on to better things now. I know it will be a shock to have a job where people don't automatically assume he's a piece of shit just because he works there, and dealing with people who don't flip out over missing their Chicken Sauce will also be a surprise.

He's going to enjoy it.

Good on ya, my brother - and remember - whatever you do, I got your back.



Later.

3 Steps Away From A Sonic Boom....

I went for a run today on my lunch hour - I just wanted to run at close to "race pace" and see where I was for the Victoria Road Race.

I ran 7K (I know, not 8) in about 33 minutes. It worked out to a pace of 4:52/Km or 7:49/mile. I think that's a good improvement.

Why didn't I just run 8K? Well.... I had my distances wrong. What I thought was my halfway mark was about a half kilometer off - hence only 7 and not my 8K.

Still, it means that my time in Victoria should be around 36 minutes - and I think that'll be just fine.


Catch me if you can...


Later.

The Redneck Within...

I can't help it - I fucking love this song.

It plays at the gym every morning, and I find it hard to lift while it's on - I'm laughing too hard.




Your mileage may vary, but I think it's great.


Later.

Signed & Sealed...

It's official.

I'm now registered for the 8K Road Race at the Royal Victoria Marathon. I'll be one of 747 (so far) people lining up to run on October 12th.

Am I excited? Yes.

Am I nervous? Yes.

I want to do well, but I've also realized that just doing it is an accomplishment. A year ago my largest form of exercise was getting up off the couch to get a donut off the counter. (I'd say I've made good progress so far.)

If I do well this year, I think I'll do the Half-Marathon next year. (That's 21.3K - a step up from what I'm used to, to say the least.) But we'll take it one step at a time (excuse the pun) and finish this and the Miracle Beach run first.

The race is at 7:30 am, and my biggest fear is that I'll have to run by a Starbucks or two on the route. I hope they wouldn't frown on a guy running while chugging a Skinny Vanilla Latte.

We'll see how it goes.



Later.