Saturday, April 30, 2005

Happiness is...



Well, it's snowing again, and I didn't get to go on a run before it started. Instead I took care of Elijah while Melisssa took a nap. Stew is coming along, and will be a nice dinner tonight. I decided not to make bread, and opted to buy some from Whole Foods when we went there today. We also checked out a new "running" store when we went to the mall, Finish Line. I got the impression that no one in the store has ever run anywhere, and none of the products could ever be used for running. Left feeling pretty disgusted with the whole facade. I guess we'll have to hit Runner's Roost when we have money again. Hah!

Friday, April 29, 2005

On a roll!


Well I've posted for the past few days, so I feel like I should keep it up. Today was a much better day than yesterday, although I'm still feeling pretty tired as Elijah had a bad night last night. I'm also a little hungry as I didn't have anything to take for lunch today and wound up bringing two apples to eat. That should be okay though as I will not be running today; it's freaking cold out.


This weekend has no plans associated with it, other than making stew. It's supposed to be rainy, so stew sounds like a good plan. I'll have to get some veggies for it though. Maybe a nice rustic bread to go along with would be in order. I always like to bake when it is not so nice out. With any luck I'll get a break in the weather and be able to go running. The only thing I can run in is my shorts, so it's running on nice days only for me until I can afford some higher tech gear. Monday Melissa and I are off to donate blood. Mmmm, cookies.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Not alone


Good to see I'm not the only one having a bad day.

"Day ain't over yet."


It's noon and this morning has been one of those mornings I'd just rather forget. I'll make a disclaimer at this point, however, that my problems are probably inconsequential compared to the problems of others. But these are my problems, and I cannot seem to step away and view their absolute magnitude, I can only see their relative magnitude. End disclaimer.


This morning Elijah was up early (5:30), and as the cat was acting squirrely I decided I might as well get up and try to get him back to sleep. I knew that this was a one way ticket out of bed for me, but I took on the responsibility knowing that sometimes there is only so much a mother can take. So it was an early start, and Elijah was not really interested in sleep. He has come a long way in the past 7 weeks, though and he was content to sit relatively quietly while I bounced on the exercise ball and watch the early morning news. By quarter to 7 mom was up and feeding him so I went about my day. Unfortunately, I had neglected to turn on the dishwasher last night, so my orange juice container was not clean as I had planned. And the water jug was empty, so even after cleaning the container, my OJ was still warm. I hate that. By this time I knew it was going to be a bad day, and yet for some reason I still went off to my car service appointment as planned. This was a bad idea. New O2 sensor, radiator flush and oil change later I drove out of there $500 lighter in the pocket. Although when that $500 isn't even in my pocket I'm not sure how it could be lighter. Anyway, I have resigned myself to the fact that I cannot expect our car to not need a little work once and a while to keep it running well. It has over 100,000 miles on it and I hope to keep it long after a new Saturn has graced our driveway. But what with that and paying for tickets to Calgary (I don't know why we even bother with points if it costs so much to use them) I have no idea where we are going to get the money to cover everything. Savings was cleared out last month for taxes and my income level is not going anywhere for the next 6 months. "When it rains it pours" I guess, which is ironic because it is raining here today and will be for the next few days, meaning I can't even get out to run to forget about money. And even when I do run, it won't be in a new pair of shoes, and it won't be in the Bolder Boulder. To top everything off, I get to work and find out that my copy of Tiger will not be delivered tomorrow after all. It's getting pushed to Tuesday, and then who knows when.


I thought it would help to get this all off my chest, but it hasn't. This morning still sucks, and the afternoon ain't looking much better. On the bright side though, the afternoon is not looking much worse either. No scotch for me tonight, I don't like to drink when I'm depressed. I can feel sorry enough for myself when I'm sober.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The results are in...



Well the final results are in at the Cherry Creek Sneak website. I came in 803 out of 2027 with an official time of 42:38. I'm happy with the result and I sure had fun running it. It's funny but it doesn't even seem like I was running that long, it just flew by. That's what tends to happen when I go out though. Last night I went out for about 5 miles at an easier pace, it felt great to get the race kinks out of my legs. Now I am thinking about whether I want to run in the Bolder Boulder. We'll see I guess. Hopefully pictures of me in the race will be online soon!


I'm going to try to start blogging more regularly now, although it is harder than it seems. I always used to give Melissa a hard time if she didn't blog in a couple of days, now I can't think of anything worth writing about. Unfortunately as my time after work looks like: get home, make dinner, eat dinner, go for run, check email, go to bed, the time to blog is limited to work hours. Elijah really has made an impact on our lives. I can't wait until he starts sleeping more and we can stay up a little after he goes to bed. As it is we sleep when he sleeps.


In Apple news, Tiger is coming out on Friday. I have a copy on preorder for work, which is supposed to arrive on Friday, but will probably only make it as far as Shipping and Receiving, and they'll sit on it for a while. There really is no point in Couriering anything to my work anymore as it takes two days to get to my office after it appears on campus. The whole distribution system is much worse here than at the old campus. Anyway, hopefully it will arrive Monday at the very least. I'm looking forward to seeing if the 64Mb stacksize limit is lifted in this new kernel. I tried fiddling around with recompiling the current kernel, but still met up with a hard limit set somewhere in the system. This problem is just pushing me to do a full rewrite of the software in C rather than in FORTRAN. Believe me, if I've lost any of you it's not your fault, just be glad I decided not to talk about my byte-swapping problem I had a few months back. Apart from this rewriting business, I also have to write up my latest experiment for publication. It's a great method and really buttons up the major project that I came here to do. Next stop, who knows?

Sunday, April 24, 2005

It's about time!


Well, I think it's about time that I started writing things in this blog that are not necessarily scotch related. What with new baby and all, there hasn't been enough time to settle down with a nice dram. I did get a new bottle, however, a McClelland's Lowland, which is apparently a 5yo bottling of a Lowland distillery. The name of the distillery was changed for this bottling so the young age would not affect the name inversely. Most distilleries won't bottle anything less than 10yo. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but as it was free, even if it is crap it doesn't matter.

Anyway, a year ago at a conference in Monterey, CA I started jogging for excercise. I kept up with it through the winter on the treadmill, but outdoor running is really more enjoyable. At any rate, as a celebration of a year of running I decided that I should partake in a race. I chose the 2005 Cherry Creek Sneak as a starting point. I entered the 5-mile run, and Melissa participated in the 3.1-mile walk. My goal was to run the race in less than 44 minutes, which was the best time I've recorded (on my own) so far. A race is totally different than going out on your own for a run. There are so many people at the start that you really have to weave your way through at the beginning. As a result, my pace for the first mile was about 10 minutes. I knew I had to step it up for the rest of the race. By the second mile the pack was thinning out a bit and I was able to get back down to my 8:30 pace. But I was feeling really good and I knew I would be able to bring it up in the last miles. As a result each mile of my race was faster than the last, and I was able to burn over the finish line at 42:38! Having people out there to cheer you on is great too, although I missed Melissa as I thought she would be watching on the left side of the road and she was actually on the right side. What a run!

I was very happy to reach my goal for this race, now I have to think about what next. I'm thinking of doing a 10k at the Bolder Boulder in May, but we'll see about that. The eventual goal is to do a marathon, so this is the first step along that path. I'm really enjoying running, and it was wonderful to have my wife and son there taking part with me. 'Til next time!