Why yes, I did run a marathon today.
I did it in approximately 3:44:47, placing 54th out of 227 people. Which is a bit depressing, because it wasn’t my best time. That is still with the first marathon I ran three years ago. It wasn’t a lot worse, but it was still worse.
But, it is an accomplishment to actually run one of those things.
The weather in Red Deer was very nice. Which made it a bit hot as the day continued. I started out a little too quickly. I blame a friend who said she starts quickly to get out of the crowds of people. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Twelve kilometers in, I felt a blister on the bottom of my right foot.
Fourteen and a half kilometers in my pace band fell off, so I couldn’t keep track if I was still on pace to my goal time of 3:30:00. I tried to keep up with my friend, who had the same goal, but at around the half way mark I started falling more and more behind. By the end she had finished ten minutes before me.
At the seventeenth kilometer a blister appeared on my other foot.
The period from the half way point, which I reached at 1:43:20, until kilometer 35 is mostly a blur. I can barely remember it. It was mostly a slog.
Seven kilometers before the end, my right calf seized up. The muscle suddenly contracted and wouldn’t stop. I walked it off, and then kept running. But it would hit a few times more for the rest of the run. I’d complain more, but those walk breaks were heaven.
It was nice of the organizers to pass out PowerGels to the runners. But I noticed that I got very gassy; All the sugar fermented in my stomach. Bodily noises were made.
After it was over, some friends of mine, and my parents (there to cheer me on) went for a brunch. The place we ended up in was Montana’s. I don’t care for that restaurant much, but the quarter chicken dinner filled a void. Unfortunately, the run had made my stomach bounce so much that it had contracted. I couldn’t finish the meal.
And now I’m hungry again.

Okay. I have a plan.
Today I will go buy some properly flavored PowerGels, drink lots of water, and have a pasta dinner. Then I will go to bed early and hopefully get some sleep because I need to be up really early tomorrow morning. The weather in Red Deer is looking like it will be good for a run, without actually raining. I’ll need to pack as well.
In the meantime, I’m going to try to play an hour, (and only an hour!), of Civilization IV and then try to do some programming.
The plan is good.
The plan is sound.
Do not argue with the plan.

In 36 hours I hope I am not running a marathon.

Oh god. In 36 hours I’m going to be running a marathon.

If everything goes according to plan…

Navigational Marker and dog1
Originally uploaded by ad_havoc.

I finished the navigational marker. It definitely looks less tall than before. More rocks will be needed.
But, due to popular demand, I am posting pictures of the pile of rocks in question. I signed up for a Flickr account to allow this. Hope it works.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, birds were chirping, familiar stereotypes were typecasting.
The perfect day to rethink the navigational marker.
When it was first made, I used a pile of random rocks that the previous owner of the property had dumped in a corner. The new pile was made without any plan. Rocks were haphazardly thrown together.
There were a lot of ugly rocks there. (I think they are slate.) They were a depressing gray color. They brought the whole quality of the marker down.
So I took the thing apart, organizing the rocks into piles of quality and size. And we can rebuild it, we have the technology. The ugly rocks were put on the bottom, complete with pre-made nooks and crannies so that various woodland forest creatures have a place to live. With that base, nicer rocks were placed on the outside, keeping similar colors apart to give a nice artistic effect.
And the result? I’ve now got a very sunburnt back, and muscles are aching.
The thing isn’t even done yet.
I still have the upper layers to complete. It looks like the base may be larger than before; version two may not be as tall. It does give the whole project that long-term feel that gives it that extra pep…and continuing interest.

I’m in the greater Calgary area now. My sister came into town at 3:45 this morning, and considering that we live an hour away from the airport, it was a major undertaking to pick her up. But now she is here. Good times will be had.
We’re in the middle of nowhere, so my usually goal of exhausting her won’t be easily accomplished. Nobody is around here.
Usually when we are out and about and meeting people, I will explicitly introduce her as my sister. It might be rude, but if there is a pretty girl involved, I don’t want her to thing that I am unavailable. Not that anything is likely to happen anyway.
Interestingly, yesterday while I was in the elevator, there was the cute girl that lives in my building. I thought she was with her boyfriend, but she explicitly introduced him as her little brother…
Is she doing the same thing that I do? Is she available and finds me interesting? I’ve got to get on the ball here.

So much to do. I am fleeing to Calgary tomorrow for the weekend. I still have to do some packing, and yet here I am, listening to music, trolling the web, updating my web page to reflect movie night changes.

You guys aren’t helping. You’re enablers.

After work I grabbed Michael and jmacaig and went off to see a movie. Spider-man 3! It was immediately after work, so dinner wasn’t possible. Instead I used a coupon I had to get a pair of tickets, popcorn and drinks for a reduced price. I then spent $0.50 to upgrade the popcorn to a larger size.
Dinner of champions.
Oh, what is that on the horizon. Looks like a bunch of spoilers.
BTW, there is no sneaky scene after the end credits.
<Spoiler>
Too many super-villains. And they keep killing them off!
It’s a common complaint I have about superhero movies. They keep killing off what should be a recurring villain. And as the series progresses, they feel they need to up the ante, and do that by piling on the evil. That just dilutes them.
It was too much of a coincidence that the alien-being/costume would fall to Earth right next to the person who could do the most with it. I can accept the initial coincidence that led to the entire series (spider bite) because everything else followed logically from that one event. With a whole planet available, it seemed a too arbitrary that the symbiote would end up where it did. It just felt like a rushed way to stick another super-villain in.
I also disliked having Mr. Marko be the one actually responsible for the death of uncle Ben. That destroyed the mythology of Spider-man. It meant that even if Peter had stopped the mugger, Ben Parker would still have died. Well, maybe he wouldn’t have, but it made the thief that Peter let go too indirectly responsible for the great responsibility he was forced into.
Other than that, I enjoyed it. I did find Harry Osborn to be a more interesting character than Peter Parker. I think he has more depth.
More J. Jonah Jameson would have nice too.
I stayed until the credits were over in hopes of an additional scene. It wasn’t there. The scene I would have loved to see would be to have the snarky butler saying something to Norman Osborn, still alive and well.
He came back from the dead in the comics…

And keep your mask on for god’s sake!
</Spoiler>

So, no hill running, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped running. Or being busy.
I did the regular Wednesday run today. And then rushed off to Goldbar park to take part in orienteering. I signed up for it in corporate challenge despite having absolutely no experience. I gave the condition that they should only use me if they can’t find anyone else. Apparently they couldn’t. So I better get as much training as possible beforehand. Which is why the team got together to practice tonight.
It was fun. We were able to mainly stick to trails, but there were a few moments where I went off road. And because it is early in the season, vegetation is more thistly than soft and cuddly green.
My legs hurt.
Still I get to have a sport that combines my love of maps with running. What could go wrong?

Well the first public movie night didn’t go so well.
Oh it was fun, but we neglected to actually watch the movie. We just got to talking and before we knew it, it was past 9:00.
So instead of a whole movie, we watched episodes of Robot Chicken.
I guess A Knight’s Tale will have to wait until next time.

I would like to try holding regular movie nights on Mondays. It would give me an excuse to start watching the movies I have already purchased, and rent the ones I’ve always been meaning to see.
The past two Mondays I had people over to see Spider-man, and Spider-man 2. Well that series has run out, and now I need some others.
jmacaig seems to want to see A Knight’s Tale so I’m going to be playing that this Monday. Open invitation for people who know me and want to come. If you don’t know me, please don’t come.
But since I want to do this more regularly, I figure I should treat it like the Friday Feast; put on my website the movie that will be shown…
I would also need to put a list of other movies I have and hope people would let me know which ones they would most like to see. A movie night doesn’t work if nobody else shows up. Especially with comedies.
I have, in theory, already done this, but my website seems to take forever to update after I’ve uploaded the files. I’ve seen that if someone uses Internet Explorer to refresh, that usually gives it the kick it needs (stupid Shaw), but I do not have that program at home.

I haven’t read a book in a quite awhile. I’ve read “graphic novels” but not a book without pictures. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it.
The other day I got an Amazon order in. Included was the latest Lawrence Watt-Evans book, The Spriggan Mirror. He is easily my favorite author. I proved that by positively inhaling the book. After the farmer’s market this morning, I started reading it. I just finished.
He’s just that good.
I would feel guiltier about it if it was a beautiful day out. But it is only an acceptable day.

I’m a little upset with Air Monopoly right now.
I get a lovely email this morning talking about a seat sale. Since I have a resort in Jamaica reserved for November, and I just need a flight, I thought I would check it out.
Why yes, that is a good deal.
So this evening I started the process of signing up. I give them all the information they need, and in the end they snub me. I am not using an approved computer. They don’t support Mac OS X.
It’s been a long time since my choice of OS was snubbed. I’m not used to anymore.

The nine hills I did yesterday weren’t easy. It was especially hard to convince myself to actually do them. I finally did it by telling myself that this would be the last hill training I would do. And that is plausible, because any training you do two weeks before a marathon isn’t going to help.
Then, this morning, I get the idea that next week I could still do the ten hills I had originally planned. But if I do that, I’ll never trust myself again.
Does that sound weird?
It doesn’t help that today’s run involved going up that exact same hill. I’m totally destroying my body’s faith in me, never high to begin with.

I say hello to a lot of people. And apparently I meet a lot because I always try to go out and do things.
Today, I went grocery shopping immediately after a training run (Up and down Emily Murphy hill 9 times. I don’t recommend that.) So, while I am still hot and sweaty, in shorts with no pockets, I navigate the aisles of Save-on-foods looking for the groceries to sustain me for the next week.
Into this scene I bump into a woman, good looking and obviously healthy. And she says “Hi” like she knows me.
I apparently can not recognize people I don’t see on an ongoing basis. She looks vaguely familiar but I can’t place her. Since she is healthy looking, I’m going with the theory that it is someone I ran with as part of the Running Room.
I make small talk, and it seems to go well. She has no idea I don’t know her.
This has happened before. Pretty woman say hello to me, and I have no idea where I know them from. If I even do know them.
This is a good experience, I just wish I could act better on it.

Okay. That wasn’t too bad. The taxes are almost completely done. I just have to Netfile them. I’m going to wait a bit before doing that and just take a look around to see if there are any documents I may have missed. My office is rather messy right now, so it is possible.
I had spent time tracking my investments yesterday and I only needed to check exchange rates and then total the various parts. It revealed something very interesting. I was part of an Employee Stock Purchase Plan in US funds, and I sold the stock last year when it was higher than anytime it had been purchased. At least I thought I had. When the exchange rates came through, I apparently lost money. Not a lot, but I had thought that it would be a big moneymaker. I guess the rising Canadian dollar got me.
Ironically, I’ve kept the proceeds from that in US funds, so in a way I’m still losing money.

Except for when I use it to fund my vacation habit.

I go out to pick up a package from the post office. I suspect it is my new passport. The package is indeed shaped properly for a passport. Good!
I get home, open it up. Inside is my old passport, now voided, my birth certificate, and a credit card bill.
No new passport.
There is nothing I can do about it right now, so I am going to start doing my taxes.

So a week ago I came up with a schedule for myself. A way to organize the activities I do and actually do them. I put time aside for playing computer games, and for working on my computer programs.
In the past week the only thing I have done on that schedule was to have a movie night on Monday. And that was only because I invited people over to join me.
I could blame my taxes, but I still haven’t done them.

I did laundry though.

In keeping with my MO, I’m going to go out and continue to not do taxes.

After an evening of communist art, one feels the need for an opposing viewpoint.

Starbucks was happy to provide one.

New plan. As soon as I stepped into my condo the phone rang. A friend wants to go to an art show. I have a policy of never saying “no” to any social invitation, unless I have prior plans. (Leaving me in a deadly trap if I’m ever invited to see a male stripper.)
Taxes do not count as prior plans. More like nebulous arrangements. (Note: They do consist of selling and buying of foreign stocks, so it is not a simple job.) I guess I’m pushing it back to Friday. Wow, that’s a fun Friday night. Taxes! I think I’ll stick some laundry in there too.

I should be working on my taxes. Every time I think I have energy, something comes up. Yesterday, I didn’t have any energy at all; hill training will do that to you. Today, the run was tiring, but I feel alert. Except that I got caught up in the final episodes of the second season of Doctor Who.
So tomorrow sounds promising.
Until I remembered that there is a band I’m semi-interested in seeing. At my last improv class, the teacher mentioned his band was opening for a Danish band this Thursday at New City. I have Danish heritage, so I was thinking of going, nominally to support him, but also to check out what Danish music is like. And it is a good excuse to get out.
Well there goes that tax preparation day.
Not that I have ever heard of this band.

A short run today. Very bacon filled. That isn’t a slang term. Three houses smelled of bacon. Very salivating.
Afterwards, a bunch of us went to Artisans Bakery Cafe. The service was terrible. It took half an hour for them to take our orders for the meal, and then another hour for the meal to arrive. And what arrived was rather small. I’m still hungry. And afterwards, I didn’t hear an apology or compensation made.
I’ll chalk it up as a learning experience, but I’m never going there again.

There is a cult out there that is trying to get me to knit. They are persistent, and they make good arguments. But so do the Scientologists .
The biggest argument made was an article titled “Knit Like a Man”. In summary, if you are a man that knits, women will be all over you. That sounds very convincing, and normally that would be enough to get me going. Except for one thing.
I’ve fallen for that exact same argument twice before.
I’ll admit I’m stupid. That shouldn’t be a reason to do anything.
The first time was my scooter. The store was down the street from where I lived, and so I was always seeing scooters zipping by. They looked fun, and they said that girls would be all over me if I had one. In my defense, it wasn’t the only reason to buy it, but it did affect the decision.
I never did get a girl hanging off me. But then I never got the knack of hanging out by my scooter. I’m not even sure how it is supposed to work. Either I’m using the scooter and moving too fast to meet someone, or I’ve parked it and wandered off.
The second time was the guitar. Woman love a man who can play the guitar. This one I can’t really blame on anyone. It might actually work. I have tried to learn the guitar, but I don’t practice that regularly. And certainly not in a public forum where loose women would be wandering. I should get back to that, and try and see if it does work.
In other words, I’m cynical now.

I had my last improv class yesterday. It went well. It was a good way to end what might be the last improvisation I ever do. I was particularly proud of my reincorporation techniques.
With that class over, and I’m now being shunned by RFT, I am with a lot more free time. My adult acting class ended, which gives me more time. The Friday Feasts are on hiatus. The only consistent time suck I have now is training for a marathon. Even the magazines I read are being cancelled.
I have free time again.

I hate it.

I’m already noticing the bad effects. Don’t get me wrong, there are good effects. I am strangely sleeping better now. But I’m not used to this. Worst of all, it is giving me time to think. That has always been a bad sign for me. I tend to get introspective and depressed. You can’t be alone with your thoughts if you are busy.
I’ll try and find new activities. I came up with an idea for an interesting website today that I might try to make. But computer stuff will only hold the tide back for so long.
And it isn’t going to get better. Once the marathon happens in… oh god, it’s in exactly one month. I’ll have too much time on my hands.
This sucks!

Today was my ninth anniversary of working at my job. I’ve been through two acquisitions, but I’m still plugging away at it.
My traditional way to celebrate is to bring in donuts. It means people will be forced (not really forced, but programmers have a hard time resisting free food) to come to my office. There, guilt will make the congratulate me.
I went to Tim Hortons and picked up two dozen donuts. While there I decided to get a hot chocolate.
I have now tasted the worst hot chocolate of my entire life. I’m almost sure it wasn’t hot chocolate. It tasted wrong. Last night I stayed up too late, but after slurping that swill I was alert for the entire morning. That just isn’t right.
I think Tim Hortons slipped me a roofie. Or a mocha something.
I will give them credit. After work I returned with the barely drunk beverage and they refilled it with actual hot chocolate.
A little late, but still good.

Apparently I have graduated.
I got a nice email from RFT that said that I had learned all that they had to teach. All that is missing is a diploma and a ceremony.
Which would be great, if I agreed with them. I may have learned all the rules, but I still need practice to become better. Since I’m not part of the show, the best way to practice was to attend classes. I agree that I’m not learning anything I didn’t already know in my head. That doesn’t mean I’m good enough.
However, there is a new policy. Once you graduate, you can’t take classes anymore.
Well that sucks.
Now I have to either find a third party improv group to practice with, or watch the skills I have fritter away. On the plus side, I should have more free time now. Maybe I can catch up with life.

In the past three and a half days I have run 48.6 km. That’s over a marathon in length.
I think I get to take the rest of the week off now.
Oh, and that plan to stop talking about running doesn’t cover the blog. You come to me, you hear what I want to talk about.

Muscles aching. What do I do? I go out for another run. And not just any run, but hill training. Up and down Emily Murphy Hill seven times.
Truthfully, it felt better than last hill training two weeks ago. It may have had to do with drinking gatorade instead of water while running. Or I may have just gotten stronger.
Either way, I can’t wait for the marathon to be over with. Oh wait. That doesn’t solve anything, because a month later I have the K-100 to look forward to.
It’s like being on a treadmill, except… well no. It is exactly like being on a treadmill.

Oh yeah. The pain doesn’t start until the next day. Silly me.