If you look on the web, you can find a site that pretty much states “Although the water in the creeks looks crystal clear it is not safe to drink. If you must drink the water is should be boiled for at least 5 minutes.”
That is not a good sign.
I called into the park to ask a few questions. It doesn’t sound like I’m at a high risk, since the water I drank from isn’t far from the source. They still suggested I go see a doctor. I’m feeling fairly good. I’m beginning to suspect that the burping and stomach irritation I’ve been feeling is because I’ve also been drinking milk that expired (according to the best before date) two days ago. (Friends insist that doesn’t mean it instantly goes to undrinkable, so I’ve been playing with the ragged edge of disaster.)
I also found out that there is plenty of water in the park. If I had continued on the trail for a bit more, I would have found a drinking tap. All the campgrounds have one as well.
So now I have to go back and prove I can do this properly.

Yesterday evening was horrible. I came home and went to bed with a stomach and head-ache. I crawled out of bed by eight and got enough energy by nine to reheat some stale leftovers before I went back. Sleep eluded me for most of the night because the stupid headache wouldn’t go away.
Today I feel better. A Tylenol in the morning helped.
Now I have to wonder why I was feeling so bad. When you are awake in the middle of the night, your brain tries to find things to do, and random theorizing is as good a task as any.
The most popular: I was cramped up in a rainy house ever since the long run. Yesterday I walked forty minutes to a training session downtown. This exercise might have finally caught up all the abuse I did to my body. This caused the utter collapse of my health leading to my sickness.
Another theory: I went out to lunch at the Mongolie Grill and possibly spent too much time scraping out the dregs of their rice noodle container. I don’t know how long they had been there, and they may have gone bad.
Final theory: The classroom got stuffy and hard to breath. It was crowded.

I did it again today. Four days ago I ran more than I had ever done. I broke that record today.
I had planned to do some mountain hiking this weekend near Canmore, but that got cancelled due to avalanche warnings (probably for the best) so I decided that I would do my Sunday run today. In the Kananaskis. I chose today, earlier than is probably advisable, because it is looking like this will be the only nice day this weekend. Plus, my parents and sister were out in the morning, so I wouldn’t be missing their company.
I crossed the road to Highway 22. I also discovered that the ditch had water in it. The hard way. So my first act was to take off one shoe and try to wring as much water out of my sock as possible. An inauspicious start. I was surprised that I didn’t end up with a painful blister during the run. I did get one, but not in a painful area.
Then I ran.
My plan was to run 46km today. I headed into the park, mostly gaining altitude, but there are valleys in the way. The lowest point I hit was 1230 meters above sea level, and the highest point was 1450 meters. I had my mother’s six year old GPS unit with me to give me an idea of how far I was traveling. At about twenty kilometers in I found I couldn’t trust it; There was a place that I had driven a car odometer, and found it was 20.1km away. The GPS said it was 21.3km. I added three more clicks and then turned around. Now I would be going mostly downhill.
It was not easy though. I had thought there would be water available in the park. Technically, I suppose, that was true, but I was hoping for something more refined than crouching over a creek and trying to fill the bottle with non-silty water. When I was running towards the mountains I had gotten caught in a rainstorm, but you can’t get much water into your mouth with your tongue out. And it was gone by the time I came back again.
It also got hotter and hotter. I now have a nice sunburn. But I think, despite what other people might say, (you know who you are) that I need more sun in my life. I really don’t want to turn into a morlock.
The last ten kilometers were without water. I did harass an innocent road crew worker and got a few gulps of water out of her, but it wasn’t enough. I got sluggish. It was almost like I could feel my blood thickening. And those valleys were now killers. I had walk a large part of them. I’ll say it was because I was worried about my right calf, but really, I was tired. I have to go buy a better water carrying system.
My shirt had been around my waist for almost the entire run. Then, with three kilometers to go, I noticed it was gone. I looked behind myself and saw it lying on the pavement twenty meters away, back up a hill. It took several long seconds before I decided to go back for it. I was very tempted to take a car out later to collect it.

I had planned to finally get back to hill training today. Except I don’t think I should. While doing the really long run on Sunday, I strained my right calf a bit. A year ago I got a large recurring cramp in it while doing the Red Deer marathon. Since then, when all my muscles are tired, it has started to get tight. While pushing up a hill I think I may have done something to it.
So I’m not going to do hill training and instead will try (this is a weird concept) to “listen to my body”.
I’m still going to do an insane distance for next weekend. Unless I do mountain climbing instead.

Today I ran the longest I have ever done. Later on I found out I had also run the furthest. In other words, I ran more than a marathon, but only by about 100 meters. However, it took about 40 minutes longer than a marathon. It was a training run so I wasn’t pushing it. In fact, I was occasionally stopping to wait for slower members of the group to catch up.
I was out for four hours. Long enough that, even though I started at 8:30, at some point I had to switch from saying “good morning” to people to “good afternoon”.
Four hours of running pretty much ruins your day. After the run and eating a lunch, the day is pretty much gone. And the only deadly sin you have the energy for is sloth.

I forgot how messy tonkatsu is to cook. My kitchen looks like a disaster area now.
I remember learning once, in a recipe, how to check if a pan is hot enough: Sprinkle water on it, and the drops should bounce around. Or something like that.
Word of advice: That doesn’t work if the pan has hot oil in it.
We’ll chalk this up as a learning experience.

I have run out of soap. I have been using Ivory soap, which comes in nice economy packs. It doesn’t imply anything other than getting you clean.
I decided to try something classier this time while I was shopping. My old brand was there, cheap as ever, but my skin has been dry lately. Let’s upgrade. So I grabbed a different brand of soap, more expensive, but with great potential promised.
At least I assumed it was soap. When I got home I noticed that it makes no promise to make anyone clean. Moisturized, yes. Cleanliness, no. The actual product described itself as a “Beauty Bar”.
Apparently what that means is that the soap stinks and will give your entire bathroom a sickly floral scent.

My skin is feeling much nicer though.

My diet isn’t going well. I ran a far distance yesterday morning, then had a good lunch. But for dinner I had a Dairy Queen blizzard. I had snacked on some Timbits, but on the whole, that wasn’t a proper meal.
Surprise surprise, I was lethargic most of today. It only got better when I spent time making myself a sizable dinner.

I’m still hungry.

Last Friday I had a barbecue. I had a box of fortune cookies wandering around and we had a few of them. I like the taste of these cookies, and generally would prefer if they came without a piece of paper in them.
However, these cookies, VH brand, were bad. They didn’t taste that good. Maybe it was because they were “Low Fat” but I’m not going to give them that credit. And maybe I don’t like the fortunes, but these were insultingly bad. They read more like advertisements for VH sauce. And they were worded so that you couldn’t add “in bed” to the end of them.
That’s just wrong.

And now comes the part where your legs realize what you did to them and take revenge.

I got up really early and ran a marathon today. I only did a minute and a half better than last year, but I felt a lot better at the end. I wasn’t dying, and my right leg didn’t cramp up. It did feel tight a few times, and I had to run up hills carefully, but it never cramped. It helped a lot to go slowly at the start. I could have gone slower, but I think that would have backfired on me; I would be out running for longer and getting worse.
My time was 3:43:20. I placed 48th out of 301 runners who finished. My goal was 3:30:00, but I’m okay with missing it. I had a pace calculator that indicated I should have gone faster, and I’m glad I ignored it. I wasn’t doing too badly at the halfway point, getting there in 1:47:50, but, well let’s face it, in the second half I was tired.
The weather-wise, it was hot. Thankfully, for the first half it was overcast. I think it drizzled a few times. In the second half, you really felt it when the sun was out.
Getting to the race was interesting. I got up before the crack of dawn and a friend, also running it, drove me down there. He had a GPS guidance system that was supposedly telling us how to get to the start line. First it told us to turn where there was no street. When we didn’t it offered an alternate route, turning right onto 55st. We did that and found it dead-ended after twenty meters, where it turned into a running path. Eventually we got there with only one more weird route. The theory is that because we hadn’t docked the unit, it didn’t realize it was in a car. It was trying to find routes for pedestrians. Apparently very fast moving ones.

Actually, I didn’t sleep that well.

And it feels really hot.

I have internet again. The problem was my cable modem had gotten out of date in the past five years. Shaw had changed their system so that it didn’t work with the old modem. They replaced it and now I have access again.
Yesterday was my half-birthday. Nominally I celebrated by having a barbecue. I made Baked Alaska again, but it didn’t turn out as well as the last time. We’ll chalk it up as a learning experience.
Tomorrow I have a marathon. I’m fairly calm on this. Hopefully this will let me sleep well. I don’t need stress preventing me from sleeping. Especially since I have to get up before the crack of dawn.
I think I know what to do to run a marathon. Chiefly is to run slowly. Do not try and go fast. Eat lots along the way to keep up energy.
There is nothing I can do about the weather. And it looks like it will be really hot tomorrow.

Growing up, teachers would love to point out the fallacies of Star Wars. A common favorite is that ships wouldn’t explode in the vacuum of space. But let’s think about that for a moment…
What would lead us to believe that space is a vacuum in that galaxy far, far away? When they are dogfighting, ships seem to steer gracefully, as if in an atmosphere. You can apparently park a ship in an asteroid field and then go out for a stroll with minimal protection. X-wing cockpits look flimsy enough that I almost expect the pilot to be able to open the window. The aforementioned explosions in space…
I think we have to face facts. There is no vacuum in space. There is air. I can grant you that there isn’t a lot of air, but there is something out there.
Could someone please point out to me where there is concrete evidence of a vacuum?

While driving to work today, I heard the following two songs in a row.
Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne
Don’t Cha by the Pussycat Dolls
Give them a listen and you will see that they have the same plot. The basic premise is that my current girlfriend isn’t good enough, and that I would be better off with the singer. (Yes, I’m using the personal pronoun there. This is my blog, I can project if I want.)
Is this a common theme in bubblegum pop? Is this also giving men (me?) false expectations?

My internet has died.
Until Shaw comes here, next Saturday, I am reduced to stealing from neighbors who haven’t figured out how to protect their wireless internet.

What would we do without stupid people?

I went to a swing dance class this evening. It was fun, but I didn’t really care for the instructor. He went fast and seemed to assume everyone had a photographic memory. Plus it was crowded. I’m an introvert, so I don’t like crowds. The instructor was apparently oblivious to this because he was teaching moves that took the dancers all around the floor.
Luckily, I only saw the first part. A friend then helped me cover the basic things I should know. I still haven’t gotten it perfectly, but I am learning.
I have found that when dancing in a crowded area, it is the people who know what they are doing who are the most annoying. They will happily go all over the floor and get in people’s way. And because they are putting on a great show, it isn’t their fault, because they own the floor. The newcomers will just stick to their small area of the floor, do the basic steps and try to stay out of the way.
It was a nice group. Very welcoming and it was easy to ask girls to dance.
And yes, I did dance with the hottest girl in the room.

I could have called into work, sick, claiming an iron deficiency. But, the right thing to do is to just take the afternoon off.
Did you think I wouldn’t see Iron Man on opening day?
Heck, my manager was right there with me.
Previously I had said that Transformers was the greatest film ever made. I was fully expecting that this would top that. However, I never really felt it. The problem though is that I have been waiting for this film for eleven years when the rumors had it that Nicolas Cage would play Stark. I have been reading the comics for a long time. There was no chance of surprises happening.
I’m going to hurt the logic people when I say this. Transformers is still the greatest film ever made, but Iron Man is better.
This movie did several things correct that most comic book movies ruin. For one, the hero keeps his mask on and isn’t constantly losing it or taking it off. (I’m looking at you, Spider-man 2.) And he certainly doesn’t do it to get the girl. In fact, the hero doesn’t even get the girl! Very minor romantic sub-plot is never finished. Woot!
Go see this movie.

My running shoes died last Wednesday. They had been giving signs for a few weeks, and I tried to pretend they weren’t there. But you have to face facts when your legs start hurting on runs. Well, more so than usual, and on a short one.
I wanted to hold off for another two weeks. That is when the Running Room is going to have a sidewalk sale. And I had a 20% off coupon that would go nicely with that. But painful-legs trumps saved-money. (And I’m going to try and score another coupon. Vector cereal may taste bland and give me gas, but the coupon easily saves me more money than it costs.)
So I went and bought some shoes on Friday. These ones aren’t very expensive higher end ones, as I’m really just using them to pass the two weeks. Still, they aren’t cheap. And I needed them for today, because I ran 32km. Which is probably wrong on so many levels. Don’t break in new runners with really long runs.
Normally the group I’m with would do 16km, but they are training for a marathon two weeks earlier than mine. So I figured a long run on my own would do the trick. Unfortunately that means there is no conversation to keep me going. So I brought along my iPod and listened to Escape Pod; Science-fiction short stories read out.
I’ve been holding off on listening to their really long 100th episode: Nightfall by Isaac Asimov. Fifteen years ago I had read a longer novelization made by Robert Silverberg, but I must say, the original short story is better. Much more compact. I highly recommend you give it a listen.
When I listened to their Christmas episode (I’m a lot behind in my listening) I also found a lovely Christmas carol at the end. And springtime is the best time to listen to them, because it doesn’t have the trappings of commercialism. I did not expect Twisted Sister to be that versatile, but it really got me pumping. An excellent running song that I will have to add to my repertoire.

The newspaper has a section on new condos. The front page of this part is about boring bachelor pads and the mistakes single guys always do.

• The dark leather sofa: Yup. I have one of those.
• The AV equipment: Does a 56-inch widescreen TV count. Yes it does. This indicates my living area is for watching TV and playing video games instead of conversation. Ironic considering how little time I do spend using the TV. Maybe I should move my aforementioned sofa and chairs around so they are arrayed in a circle?
• The cheap shelves: Check. They were a good place to store remotes! I thought they were a great idea.
• The bad art: I might be better here. But then again, most of my art is inherited from my mother. I do like my wooden framed medieval map of England. (Or is it France? I’m not sure, I never look.) Against me, is that I actually have purchased beautiful numbered prints of half-naked winged fantasy women. They previously adorned the walls of my apartment ten years ago, but I still have them.

So, it can not be argued. I have a boring bachelor pad; As defined by an article written by a woman. (Does that give it more credibility or less?) However, I can’t really see it changing. I don’t like to sell things. It makes me feel like I was wrong to have purchased it in the first place. Better to throw it out and maintain some honor.
Why do you think I still have a scooter?

I haven’t been out to dinner in quite some time. The last time I can recall would be back in November for my birthday. So I can’t blame this drought solely on last month’s financial challenge.
I am, of course, discounting fast food restaurants. Although, come to think of it, I haven’t gone to one of those places much lately either. And I’m also skipping Chianti, but that place feels more like family than a restaurant. (And I’ve been served faster there than some actual “fast food” places.)
I used to go out much more often. I remember a time I went out every Friday for a meal. But back then I lived within walking distance of a food court. Now, I am living in the greatest density of culinary art in Edmonton, and yet I barely use it.
Part of the problem would be that it is somewhat uncomfortable to eat in a restaurant alone. I used to have friends who wanted to go out often too, but I no longer live close to them.

A theory I heard the other day:
The reason that fashion models are so thin and sickly looking? The gay fashion designers want the models to look like their boyfriends.

If my work had an actual security department, I would be in an afterschool special today.
I use Henckel knives. My mother used them and I have inherited the habit. Since they are expensive, I don’t want to sharpen them incorrectly. Which has led me to not sharpen them at all. But today, a kitchen store that sells the knives was having having a representative from Henckel do free knife sharpening. Perfect. I’ll go after work.
So, in other words, while I was at work, I had two, very large, rather deadly, kitchen knives in my backpack. Thankfully there is no metal detector, or trigger-happy rent-a-cops packing heat at work. But if there were, I don’t think they would have been pleased with me.
The kitchen store had a lot of cool gadgets. I don’t cook enough to justify most of them, but the hoarder in me would still like to get them. Do I really need a special pan just to make omlettes. And a pressure cooker? Not really.
Is a cooking store a good place to pick up chicks?
However, I am weak and did buy some stuff. Of course, it is hard to feel like a real man when you decide to buy six ramekins so you can make Crème brûlée. I didn’t get their butane torch, and they seemed rather upset when I suggested getting one from Canadian Tire, but it has got to be cheaper there. (Plus they will have the actual butane needed.)
If this was last month, I probably could have controlled myself and not gotten anything.
And I got a diamond edged knife sharpener. Defeating the purpose of going there.

The other day a friend asked me why I continue to run if I complain about it all the time. He bicycles all over creation and says he always enjoys it.
I can think of two answers to his question.
The first is simple. I complain because it gives me a chance to brag about how far I’ve run. I like to be the centre of attention. This is a mark of poor self-esteem and I do need to work on this.
The other answer is that when I am running, I am usually training for something. When you have to do something, it becomes less enjoyable. Some of the best runs I’ve ever had have been short 16-km ones that didn’t matter. When you pile on the distance, because you have a marathon coming up, then it starts to become work.
Competition ruins hobbies.
Why do you think no one watches the Olympics anymore?

Every so often I get a project idea in my head. These are projects that will take time and energy, but in the end will challenge me and build character. Unfortunately, if I see that someone else has taken over the same project, it gives me an excuse to bail out on the whole idea.
I once started making a program to give clues to someone to help solve a sudoku. I never really got down to the user interface; You had to do a simple rewrite of the program to solve different problems. (Not as hard as it sounds.) I even used it to help me solve monster 16×16 problems that the newspaper was having contests with. Then I found the application Sudoku Susser. Clean user interface, uses tricks I didn’t know about, and would give hints in exactly the way I want. (I don’t want a solution, I want to know how to solve only one more square.) When I saw that someone had already done all the work (probably better than I would have), why should I bother.
It doesn’t solve 16×16 problems though.
Now, I had another project in mind, if I ever got my hands on Lego again. But today I found someone had already done it, and probably better than I would have. Darn professional artists.
I could still build a simple sphere.

The run this morning was long. Longer still because I decided to run to the Running Room. But surprisingly, I felt pretty good during the last part. I’ll take that as a good sign that I am getting healthier.
The only unfortunate part about it was that the group never really came upon a water refilling. There is only so much water you can bring along with you, and you don’t want to get dehydrated. So, it is good to stop off at some gas station or rest stop and refill the water bottles.
Thank goodness it had snowed recently. The fresh snow was not particularly tasty, but it did have the added benefit of cooling me down.

Well, I nearly made it. I checked online and found that I am $3.60 over my goal of $300 for the month. It was the newspaper subscription that pushed me past the target. Curses for staying well informed!
Mind you, there is no prize for meeting the goal, and I did accomplish what I set out to do; Get back to financial discipline.
Hopefully my car will start tomorrow and get me to a gas station.
There is thoughts in my head to reward myself for this. Mostly by going out and spending money. Which sort of defeats the purpose. But the iPod touch does look sweet. And I should get Super Smash Brothers Brawl. And I have a friend who believes that Guitar Hero 3 would be a good investment. And I haven’t done an order from Amazon in awhile.

And I’ve never been to Las Vegas…