I Feel:

- That all things being equal, starting the day with a 36 minute 8k run is a good way to go.

- That, as a runner, the previous statement rings true. However, as a guy I have to say blowjobs trump all.

- That the fact that I'm typing this while I'm on hold shows that technology is a wonderful thing.

- That the reason I'm on hold has to do with my 90-year-old Grandmother wanting an iPad completely noted my mind.

- That my other technological wonder is my new Nike+ GPS Sportwatch. I won't rave too much, but suffice to say that the Wife is lucky this thing wasn't around when I married her - it would have been a tough choice.

- That the sunnier it gets, the less I want to work.

- That after going out for wine with the Sidekick and his parents, I've realized that I can be outdrank by a small child, and that a hangover reduces me to a useless heap.

- That as someone who works in customer service, I believe that cleavage is a distraction that women employ to get whatever they desire. And they do it because it works.

- That the fact that this list contains referances to both my grandmother and blowjobs is both hilarious and disappointing.

Later.

Semi-Nude with My Mistress in the Garage.

For those of you who've never read anything I've posted previously, and have only stopped here because of my captivating title, you're going to be very disappointed, very, very fast.

I'm using the term "mistress" as I've used it before, and not to mean some sultry babe who is just waiting to shower me with her affections.

You see, we just got a treadmill.

I know that some of you couldn't care less about treadmills - and at this time of year, I don't really either, as the majority of my runs are done outside. However, the opportunity arose to buy a treadmill reallllly cheap ( my sister had one and she's moving - it's barely used and I got a sweet deal on it.) and since my Wife is not the outdoors-type guy that I am and would like to have a chance to get some exercise in while in the comfort of our home, I couldn't pass it up. (Somehow Netflix is something she feels is necessary to achieve her fitness goals.)

I picked up the treadmill last night, but just shoved it in the garage until today. This morning I got it positioned, plugged in, and decided to give it a test run. I put my gear on, threw some Foo Fighters into the sound system and hopped on.

...and hopped off again right away.

Much like a regular mistress, this one needed a bit of fine-tuning before I could see what she could do - I should have known that you can't just jump on and go anymore - this isn't high school after all, right? After perusing the instruction manual I tightened the belt, adjusted the rollers and everything was as smooth as glass.

It wasn't a bad run - just a nice and easy 5k to see what it was like, but there was one thing I didn't think about - it's July, it's hot, and I'm in my garage.

Holy shit did I sweat a lot.

If you recall, I'm a sweater when I work out. But the sheer volume coming off me as I ran was amazing even to me. The thinking man would have cracked a window or door before starting, but I believe we've established that I'm only a thinking man part-time, so we shouldn't be suprised that I didn't.

What I did do was something I've never done before, and will probably never repeat unless I'm locked once again in my garage, away from prying eyes.

I took off my shirt.

Let me make a few things clear on the subject of shirt removal and exercise:

• As a former fatty, I never take my shirt off during any activity - I just don't.
• I think guys who run with no shirt on are douchebags. It's an immediate assumption, and I'm usually right 98% of the time.

But holy shit, was I hot. Sure, I could have stopped, but I look at anything less than a 5k run as giving up. If I can't spare 24 or so minutes of my time and my legs aren't broken, why stop?

So I took off my shirt.

BAM. World Changer.

Suddenly I wasn't just running any more - I was part of the primal hunter group. I wasn't striding on a treadmill in my garage with shorts on - I was bounding across the plain, chasing buffaloes through the tall grass, clad only in a loincloth and waiting for the opportune time to hurl my spear.

I'm lucky my water bottle was out of reach or I may have ended up chucking it at one of the kid's bikes.

I can now see the fascination of running shirtless. despite what the garment industry says about technical fabrics and their wicking abilities, it's a huge temperature difference without a shirt and feels much cooler. It's also very freeing, and just feels natural.

Will I ever do it while out for a run on the Seawalk? Hell no, but in the sheltered comfort of my own home, it just may be possible.







Later.

Checker Flannel Frog Shirt.

For those of you who don't recall, I work out in a very rural area.

There's this guy that comes into the store every day or two and he's always wearing the same thing.

A checkered flannel frog shirt.

The picture I've attached isn't it. There's no image I could find on the Internet that would do it justice.

I'm not sure if the shirt is store-bought or homemade, but it's an eye-catcher to say the least.

Just so you know, this isn't some 20-something hipster being all cool and ironic. This is a 60 year-old guy with faded jeans, black cowboy boots, and a folded up Buck knife on his belt. There's nothing ironic about it.

I'm tempted to ask him about it - but he is carrying a knife, after all.

If he thinks I'm making fun of him, the next thing I know the "clean-up in the Dairy Aisle" is me.

Later.

I Feel:

- That running with a cold turns my nose into a snot faucet and enables me to hock loogies of gargantuan size.

- That I should have warned you not to be eating lunch before making that previous statement.

- That the most thankless job in any household is being the guy who always changes the empty toilet paper rolls. That's how chaos starts, people.

- That Lululemon capri tights and Nike Free shoes should be standard requirement, clothing wise, for women at my gym.

- That it worries me when I make a sly double-entendre joke to my wife, and my 10 year old goes "I understood that, Dad - you're gross."

- That with Tornadoes in Oklahoma, Floods in Alberta, and all the other nasty shit that's going on in the world,  I figure I better start going to a couple different churches.  Maybe Buddhist and Anglican, with the odd mosque visit thrown in. Seems like shit's getting biblical out there, and I'd like to hedge my bets.

- That on certain days, I think the decision to cut back to only 5 travel mugs of coffee a day was unwise.

Later.

Status Update.

I am currently:

1. Enjoying a coffee. (Yes, I know it's 9:30 at night, but caffeine is my friend and can be trusted.)
2. Decompressing after watching Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals. As shocking as it is, I'm cheering for Chicago -mainly because my team never made the playoffs and I can't fucking stand the Boston Bruins.
3. Listening to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Sweet, auditory goodness. I suggest you give them a listen. (The video I linked contains boobs, so depending on your workplace, you may not want to watch it or you may want to have everyone gather around - it's your call.)
4. Recovering from my lunchtime run. I'm on a quest to do 150 miles in the month of June. It's 5 miles a day, which I either spread out over morning/lunch runs, or rest a day and do 10 or more the next run. So far, so good - and my Half-Marathon training starts July 1st, so I'll have a good foundation to build on.
5. Congested as fuck. After hanging with my oldest son's class on a field trip on Friday (which entailed a  3.5 hour school-bus ride each way) I became afflicted with some sort of bug. The only times I don't feel like my head is full of cement is in the shower or on a run. Thank God for Neo Citran.

Now that you're all up to speed, maybe I can find the time to update this place a bit more often - four months between posts is a little long....






Later.

Petty Penny.

As you may have heard, Canada has started phasing out the Penny from use. It took effect on February 4th, and I thought I'd wait a couple of weeks before I commented on it.

Now, I work in retail, and there has been various responses to the change from our customers.

(In case you're wondering how it works, it's easy - we still accept pennies, we just don't hand them out. If your total was $4.31 and you give me a $5 bill, we give you back 70 cents. If it was $4.33, I'd give you back 65 cents. Debit and credit pay the exact amount - nothing changes for them. Simple, right?)

Not fucking likely.

The majority of people don't pay in cash anyway, and of those who do, the majority doesn't care about the one or two cents they may be gaining or losing per transaction.

However, there are people who think we are stealing their life savings from them, one red penny at a time.

They howl about whether it should have been rounded up or down (we've got the government guidelines posted beside each register) and say that it's some sort of conspiracy to make our money worthless. I had a lady say that taking away the penny will make future generations bad at math. (Someone please explain the thought behind that to me.)

The irony of it all is that at the end of January these were the same people who would have gladly chucked 4 pennies into the "Have a Penny, Take a Penny" pot beside the register - they'd complain about pocketfulls of pennies then, and now they mourn the the fact that they only get silver back when completing a transaction.

I'm glad it's going away - the fact that the government was losing 11 million a year producing it was a kicker - not that I think they'll spend it any wiser, but you know what they say - "A penny saved is a penny earned."

See?  Round that up to a nickel, and we're really making money!

Later.

Sweetness Weakness.

Right now, I'm in a love/hate relationship.

That relationship is with my body and the food it craves.

With training for the Comox Valley Half Marathon I find I'm constantly hungry. Nothing wrong with that, right?  Food is fuel, and the body needs fuel to work efficiently.

The problem is that I keep filling my tank with old-fashioned leaded gas instead of premium, high-octane fuel.

Basically, I'm eating like shit and I know it.

I can get my head around it - I've done it before, but this time feels like more of a struggle than previous times when I've had issues with food.

It's quite aggravating.

When you think of a guy with his jaw wired shut and go "He's got it easy." you know you've got to address it.

If you happen to come across a guy in a staring contest with a donut and losing, don't worry.

That's just me.

Later.

Imagination Conflagration

I had a strange dream last night.

Not only was it strange in the fact that it was weird, but strange in the fact that I remember parts of it. (Lately I've had issues with waking up throughout the night for 2-3 min and falling back asleep, but that's another post.) It was just odd enough that it stuck with me after waking.

I've recently switched gyms to something newer, nicer, and closer to my house.  It's literally less than a 10 minute walk away - sooo nice on those early mornings.

In my dream, I was working out at my new gym, and post-workout jumped onto the treadmill.  I'm running along thinking about nothing (a usual occurrence when I run) and I briefly looked to my left - running beside me was Rich.

Rich is a guy from my old gym. I've never really mentioned him by name in any posts before, but if there was ever an incredibly annoying, loudmouth, close-talking, bigoted, misinformed person mentioned in any of my former "gym" posts, it was him.

As I look away dumbfounded, I glance to my right, and am equally shocked at who is on the treadmill on my other side.

Does anyone else have that first girlfriend/boyfriend who ripped their heart out and stepped on it? Well, that's who was on the other treadmill.

I looked at them both gave them the "What the fuck are you doing here" look and just kept running along.

But they stayed there.

And stared.

And stared.

Finally I just remember running so fast that when I looked back again, they were gone, and the gym was empty.

I know that all of that has to be symbolic of something, but I'm clueless as to what it is.

All I know is no more Subway for dinner - I'm guessing the Cold Cut Trio was the cause. That's my theory.

And I'm sticking to it.

Later.

Spirit Squared.

Watch "Spirit of the Marathon II Official Trailer" on YouTube

Now this gets me excited.

Ages ago Triple T introduced me to Spirit of the Marathon.  I think it's the type of movie that any runner should watch, whether they plan on doing the 26.2 or not - the way it showed that no matter what level, we're all runners at our core really had an impact on me.

That movie centered around the Chicago Marathon, which I thought was cool, being as it's where Triple T lives, and it's also one of the premier Marathons in North America. I thought it was great that they showed the different parts of the city, and I envied Triple T because she got to run in that giant concrete forest. (I run in an actual forest, which some of you may think is better, but trust me, after seeing nothing but trees, barns, moose, and deer, running between skyscrapers would be bitchin'.)

This time around the movie revolves around the Athens Marathon, which is just as compelling to me because it's one of the ones that I dream of one day running in. (The others being London, Paris, New York, Chicago, and Boston.)

I know I'll find the stories intriguing.
I know I'll find the scenery breathtaking.
And I know I'll be watching it alone because the Wife thinks I'm already too nuts about running.

If you haven't seen the first, I'd recommend it - and try not to drool when the elite runner gets her year's worth of free shoes delivered from her sponser.

Later.

I Fought the Bottle (And the Bottle Won)

In the last month, I have been drunk exactly two times.

The first week of January I was in Victoria with the Sidekick, and he decided he was going to "educate" me about dark beers. Somehow that evening turned into a two-man pub crawl, and the next morning was the worst I've felt since I was thirteen and had Mono.

Last night I was with the Sidekick again, and the culprit was wine. There were many, many good bottles that were sampled, enjoyed, and demolished. Between the two of us and his parents (it was their wine, after all) I think we polished off five bottles.

I woke up this morning feeling horrible.

From this, I've learned two things:

1) The Sidekick is a bad influence. (However, he does have numerous beneficial qualities, so I'll keep him around.)

2) I just can't fucking drink anymore.

Since I hit the big four-o last year, I just can't seem to handle my booze. I don't put away as much as I used to, it hits me harder, and I feel absolutely disgusting for at least a day or two afterwards.

I toughed out a four-mile run this morning just because I hoped it would make me feel better, and maybe getting a good sweat going would get my body back to normal. (It did help, but was the most unenthusiastic run since man began walking upright.)

I think my only choices to improve the situation are to either quit drinking entirely, or start some sort of progressive training plan where I incrementally increase the amount I drink each week - sort of like a marathon training plan for my liver.

I'm pretty sure it'll have to be the first one - my liver just twitched as I was typing up that last sentence - I'm pretty sure it would move out if I attempted to follow that plan.

For now I'll just suffer in relative silence, and hope that the next time the Sidekick rolls into town I dimmly remember the way I felt this morning.

Good luck with that, eh?

Later.