I don’t know what happened to me. Despite all the abuse over the past week, noted and otherwise (I ran up Emily Murphy Hill ten times on Wednesday), everything below the waist was feeling fairly good. Then yesterday I woke up with pain in my right foot; Horrifyingly similar to pain I felt two years ago that put me out for two months.
Every step makes the outside of the foot throb with a dull pain. Yet, if I walk around on my tiptoes (oh, that doesn’t look weird) it goes away.
What gets me is that on Thursday I did nothing unusual, or even exercise related. And yet here I am with pain.

Further evidence that the right side of my body hates me. That’s what you get for giving a side of yourself laterality. It thinks it should get all the perks.

The sins of yesterday have been visited upon me today.

The problem with beautiful days is that you are obligated to use them. Saturday was rainy, so there wasn’t a reason to do anything. But today it was nice out. After half a year of winter, you have to seize these moments.
But there is the chance of overusing them.
This morning was the traditional run. 26km of beautiful trails.
Then this afternoon, I went rollerblading with a friend for two hours.
Needless to say, I am tired. I am hoping the next few days have poor weather so I can recover. It looks like rain tonight, so it’s a good sign.

I thought I would be a good environmental citizen today.
Due to the medical test yesterday, I have to eat certain fruits and vegetables. The fruit isn’t a problem, but vegetables have been a personal nemesis. Fortunately, carrots were on the list. I can enjoy munching on a carrot.
While at the grocery store today I had two options. A 5lb bag of carrots or a 2lb bag of organic carrots. They were about the same price. And I knew that there was no way I would be able to eat 5lb of carrots, so I went with the organic.
I got home, cracked open the package, washed an orange stick of vegetative goodness and proceeded to follow doctor’s orders, with a healthy environmental consciousness.

Those were the worst carrots I have ever had.

What have we learned today?

I read today’s Penny-Arcade comic.
The commentary that went along with it was interesting. Particularly this:

I couldn’t help thinking about the Goddamn deathmarch the people over at Bungie have been in for what has got to be going on eight years now. I guess I shouldn’t invent motivations for them.  As people are bored by the time we have created the third panel of a comic, we may represent a statistical abberation. Maybe they still like Halo.  You know?  Maybe they are unstoppably enthusiastic.

That brings me back to the distant past. I played the Marathon game when it first came out. It was great. What sucked me in was the great story that was revealed as you played it. That quality has continued on at Bungie, even when they were bought out by Microsoft.
I don’t know if they still enjoy making Halo, or if Microsoft has them chained to their computers in some slave galley making its way around Peugeot Sound.
But I do remember a comment that was made by them after they had released the third Marathon game.

Imagine a painting of a horse, a marvellous white stallion. This stallion happens to be lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, dead. And Bungie employees are standing around it in a semicircle, beating the horse with various blunt objects. The painting is titled “Marathon 4.”

Irony? Prophecy? Karma?

In an interesting parallel, I was going through some old notes I had at work. I ran across a quote from one of the founders of the company.

“That’s why I would make a terrible product manager. I’m supposed to be the customer’s advocate when I’d rather just whack them with a big stick.”

The gentleman who send that in 2001, is now the product manager.

My meal times have gotten weird lately.
Yesterday I planned to make a nice chicken dish. I whipped up the marinade, using fresh lemons and soya sauce. I’ve made it in the past and it has always been good. Then I reach into the refrigerator and take out the chicken that was about to accept this delicious basting.
It, of course, had gone bad.
I can’t seem to plan my thawings lately. I either take them out of the freezer too soon as demonstrated, or too late so that the meat has a frozen core.
I tossed it and had some frozen fish instead.
Then today, I didn’t have breakfast. It wasn’t by choice. I had a medical appointment that said no food or drink after midnight. I wasn’t as starving hungry as I thought I would be. Luckily before the test they feed you something.
A barium drink. Mmmm. Nucleary.
After the lovely bit of scanning me (and a fire alarm) I horked down some donuts and a muffin from Tim Hortens. But for the rest of the day I’ve been gassy, and my digestive track has been feeling it isn’t appreciated.
I’m supposed to eat high fiber and bran food stuffs. I think you can guess where this is going. Or rather, what isn’t.

So I was in Chiantis on Whyte Avenue today for dinner. The place was rather dead. There is a pool hall/bar on the floor above it. I guess that’s where everyone was. Every so often there was a large pounding from up top. You would almost think that the ceiling was going to cave in.
Oh, did I mention that it was game six of the Oilers vs. Detroit. The Oilers are now going to the second round of the playoffs. Detroit is not.
Whyte Avenue is where it is happening in Edmonton. The equivalent in Calgary would be the Red Mile.
While walking home it was hard not to be affected by all the screaming people. They were everywhere. I felt like an intruder though. I still have yet to watch a game of hockey, and here are all these people for whom it is the most important thing in the world. They were all so happy and so was the group consciousness. I did have a longing to be part of it, but that would require me to watch hockey, and I don’t have the time.
Edmonton treats its hockey players like Gods! I wonder if the players get the same kind of attention in the southern states.

I recently got an invitation to join gmail. I’m one of the cool people now.
The problem is that I have to come up with a user name. This is where the problem happens. What unique noun/adjective combination describes me. I can come up with ideas, but what do I want to represent me in the fantastic years to come.
If I was less creative (Which is still a possibility. Look at the name of this journal.) it would be easy. I would have at most one idea for a user name, and off we go. But with so many choices open to me, I have brain freeze.
I will continue to ponder it.

Remember the date I had last month. I’m meeting her again tonight. Dinner and a show.
Second date.
I guess this is the one where I reveal all my embarrassing secrets; I play D&D. I read comics. I stupidly climb hills.
I’m going to try and treat her as a friend instead of a date. That should make things easier. Of course, I might venture into the territory of being myself. Previous advice has been debatable on whether that is good or not.

I have an opinion I have held for some time now. Recent events have led me to question it. That opinion deals with cooking.
If someone is cooking with cilantro, it is an admission that they are making a bad meal. Cilantro will totally overpower the taste of anything, masking what was there previously. The only reason to mask the taste is because you already know it is bad. Hence, it is the crutch of bad cooks.
Yesterday I found the lovely website IHateCilantro.com. This seemed to back up my opinions completely. Then, while reading it, I found that around 10% of the population is genetically allergic to cilantro. For this minority, cilantro has an overpowering taste.
So my opinion remains that cilantro is the spawn of some vegetative demon in the fetid swamps of hell. However, I realize that for some foolish people out there that it might be a pleasant mild taste that may actually add to the enjoyment of a meal. These thoughtless people will probably not even realize the horrible abomination that they have let enter their own mouths. All we can do is pity that poor souls.

Just keep it off my plate.

In June I have a leg of the K-100 relay. That’s through the mountains. You know, the big rocky things with snow on the top. My leg is all uphill and has a nice high altitude. Since I am living in Edmonton, I don’t have a lot of experience with long inclines, or with lack of atmosphere. So, while visiting my parents outside of the Kananaskis, I planned to go run my leg as a practice.
After a 100km road trip, we arrived to find that the road was shut down for winter. Winter apparently ends in mid-June. So the gate stopped me from getting to my running route. So other plans needed making.
You know those hills you see at the side of the roads when you travel in areas with extreme topography. Every time I pass, I can’t help but think that it would be possible to climb to the top of one of them without too much trouble. It would make a nice accomplishment.
Really, they mock me. They have low self-esteem (You would too if you had bigger brothers with a permanent ice cap) so you can hear them calling out “Oh you’ll never climb me. You would have to stop the car and get out. Look there’s a ditch in the way. You’ll never even get to my base.” Mountains don’t need to taunt, they have nothing to prove.
Well, there I was, on the side of the road. Ready to do physical activity, but without a proper outlet for it.
I took their challenge.

Those hills are taller than they look. It didn’t help that they had altitude on their side. Or that I was wearing running sneakers instead of climbing boots. The side was steep, and the lack of oxygen meant that I had to stop every few steps to catch my breath.
But in the end, I won. I stood at the top. My GPS informing me that I was 1820 meters above sea level. About 300 meters above the base. Of course its batteries died soon after the summit. If it was still running, I might have been more ambitious. Behind that hill there was another which looked like a gradual climb to the top.
Either that or I had no energy.
So now those hills can just shut up. I have conquered them. No more lip now.

Hey, is that a mountain over there?

There is a recurring idea in some science-fiction stories; A technology that comes along that lets you see an occurrence in the past. You punch in the time and place and you see what was happening at that spacetime. Theoretically it would be used for historical events in the distant past. How involved was Brutus in the Ides of March. Was Cleopatra a looker? Did Judas invest his thirty pieces of silver wisely, or did he blow it on beer and whores? The distant past doesn’t break privacy legislation.
If we had such a device, it would certainly change the world. If you wanted to try and find a famous terrorist, you could just plug in a time and place that you knew he was at, and then keep following him around until you find out where he was at the present. Nasty political issue solved.
But let’s wonder about more local problems. Solving crimes would be a snap, when anyone can become a witness to any event. Unabomber style antics would be a lot more popular because its would still be nearly impossible to trace the origin of a package.
But let’s say there was a cost involved in using this technology. It obviously can’t be free. Nothing is.
If it was $100, could you offer it as a service to citizens. If a crime has been committed against you, could you pay $50 to get definite proof of who did it, and then have the perpetrator pay the balance as part of the judgment against them.
And most importantly, could you use it to find the malicious idiot who decided it would be a good idea to leave his chewed gum in a place where someone could walk in it.

People in Edmonton don’t know how to be celebrities.
When I bump into actors from Die-Nasty, I usually ask them “Aren’t you someone famous?” They smile, but they deny it.
One of the people who is responsible for the improv jam, and knows far more about improv than I probably ever will, seems to think I was joking when I referred to him as a “Guru”.
These people have to accept that they are above the mere mortals and that people should be asking them for autographs. I think it might be the Canadian way of self-deprecation. Otherwise they will never come to accept the celebrity. Josh Dean did it and look where he is now.

So much for being lazy today.
I cleaned up the kitchen, but it was for naught. When I was making Pepper Jack Chicken for dinner, I pretty much messed up everything I had scrubbed. Cooking isn’t a neat and tidy activity for me.
After the kitchen I just started cleaning up other parts of the household.

I really need to learn to goof off.

I went to the improv jam. Afterwards, I was talking with one of the class guru and admitted I had a blog. Now I feel obligated to talk about improv in case he decides to read this. So here we go.
On Monday I got a nice form email telling me that I was not selected to go into Theatresports. I got it in the morning and shrugged. I expected it. What was surprising was that for the next few hours I felt depressed. Which is silly, because I don’t deserve to be on stage. Yet.
I think I learned a bit at the audition. I noticed that I was placing others in trouble instead of myself. I did it again tonight. When I broke the fine china, I blamed it on my brother and sent him off to the aquarium to escape our parents. I should have taken the blame. But I realize that I’ve done something wrong and I need to work on it.
Later that class I had an idea to play a father upset that his son had colored his hair blue. I stopped, and switched it around. I played the son with the blue hair. And we ended up with the start of what could have been a good scene. (I think I gagged it though.) But afterwards I felt good. It was liberating. I could get myself into trouble and be the center of attention. And I did the right thing.
I have room to improve, but I know what to work on.
Of course, when I went to Chimprov yesterday and saw the 25 trading cards of all the improvisers, four of them were people I had gone to class with.

This looks like it will be a good day.
Because of a persistent stitch in my side I’ve decided to take a break from running for awhile. Next weekend I will be definitely be running, but that’s not the point. Today I got to sleep in. (That’s big news for me.) I stayed up late last night and went to see some improv at 11:00, featuring a new play “The Quick and the Undead”. Really, a predictable plot, but that’s improv.
Today it looks cloudy with a chance of rain. So I can justify doing whatever I want and not feel guilty that I should be outside. Besides I did my outside stuff yesterday.
The only obligations I have is to go to the improv jam this evening, and make a nice meal for myself for dinner. So I can waste my time with anything.
I could play computer games. I can do some personal programming. I can watch TV (but there is nothing on). The possibilities are endless.

I’m going to go clean the kitchen.

I’ve been wanting this song for about a decade. It was finally added to the iTunes store. And now it is mine!

Other than that, life continues.
I’ve been getting the stitch in my side every time I run now, so I’m thinking I might need to take some time off. Hill training doesn’t aggravate it too much, so I think I can continue that. But the 23km run last Sunday was probably a little much.

Yesterday I had an audition for a part in Theatresports. It was easy to prepare for, because, well, it’s improv. Preparing would be a bad thing. There are 8 spots available and there are twenty two people trying out for them. So roughly a third of the people will get in.
It didn’t feel that high pressure for me. I’m not sure I deserve to be on stage, but if they want me, I won’t say no. If they don’t want me, well I have a good career as a computer programmer to fall back on.
Looking back I didn’t do too much wrong. I can think of two places where I could have been better. One scene where instead of putting myself in danger, I put someone else there. It was funny, but I should have done it the other way around. In another scene I tried to be clever and did something that would make me look like a bad improviser. It wasn’t too obvious, but it made sense in my head. Unfortunately, the audience wasn’t in my head.
Well, we’ll see what happens.

Yesterday I came to a realization.
Running hills isn’t fun!
That would explain why I have such a feeling of dread when it is that time of the week. The depression. The avoidance of actually doing it. I try and stay away from things that aren’t fun, but I’ve signed up for the race, so I’m stuck.
I did the hill training yesterday instead of Wednesday because of the blind date. I only got out at 7:00 PM. I might have been later except I wanted to get home and see the next episode of Stargate SG-1, after last week’s cliffhanger.
All that said, it went surprisingly well. I had new runners, because my last have started to die. The hill didn’t have many other people using it either. I think that helped a lot because I didn’t feel the need to try and pass the person in front of me. So I could take the hills at a comfortable pace. After the session I felt good, and got home just in time to find a rerun being played.
Hopefully I”ll remember this good feeling for next week.

Yesterday I saw a play called “Three Days of Rain”. I don’t know what it is about Shadow Theatre, but lately, all of their plays are… well they leave me empty. They are dramas, and very rarely funny. They never seem to conclude and leave me confused. Maybe if I was more intelligent I would get more from them.
As it is, the first half seemed to be revealing bigger and bigger secrets about a family. I was getting interested. Then the second half went back thirty years and revealed… nothing.
I wouldn’t recommend it to a friend.

Blind date tonight.
I’ve been nervous about it all day. The most popular piece advice given to me is to not be myself.
The person who set me up commented that I strike him as a person who is never afraid of anything.

Ah, my old foe irony. We meet again.

I’m thinking of joining the conservative party of Alberta. It’s not because of any great love of them, but just so I have a chance to have a voice in this province.
As it stands, the conservatives will always win. Nothing will change that.
Everyone in the Tory party gets to select a leader or decide when there should be a leadership election. As an average tax-paying citizen, I don’t get that right. So I should spend some money and join.

Payback sucks.
Yesterday I went running with a friend. I use the word in its most liberal sense. He hadn’t been out exercising in awhile and he was using me to get himself motivated. He only wanted an eight km run, which is so short, I really don’t need to tie my shoes. He conked out halfway through and we walked most of the rest. At Victoria hill, he wanted to run it, and he did start out with a good pace. That lasted halfway up the hill and we walked the rest. At the top he found a bench and collapsed on it. According to him, if he didn’t lie down he would throw up.
Me, I was just enjoying the nice weather. Not even sure I broke a sweat. (Yes, I’m bragging. It just makes my fall that much more entertaining.)
After he made the best french toast I have ever had. He likes to cook, and I am perfectly willing to be the guy who eats what he makes.
However, payback came today. For the past year I have had a shoulder injury. That normally doesn’t sound like it would prevent me from running, but the shoulder muscles are shared with the lungs. So, after awhile, trouble breathing. It has slowly been getting better, and so I have been able to do further runs. It’s been about a year and a half since I have run 32 km. (Can you tell where I am going with this?)
Today was a run scheduled to be that distance. For the first 45 minutes it was rather awkward because my right calf was tight and I was wondering how far I would be able to go. That went away when I warmed up and we continued on the rather hilly route. When you go that far you pretty much cover a good chunk of the city. Kinsmen. Snow valley. Qu’appelle bridge. The legislature.
The last seven kilometers did me in. I got a stitch in my side. It went away when I walked, but that is only for one minute for every ten minutes of running. I kept up, falling behind a bit as we went along. I completed it about a minute behind the pack. But I did it. And now I feel terrible. (Note: We actually ran 33 km.)
My legs hurt, and so I don’t really want to take long steps. I don’t need to vomit, but I’m not that far off.
To celebrate I’m going to go to McDonalds and gorge myself on a quarter pounder with cheese. Mmmm. Greasy!
Let’s hope I can make the walk there.

In a way it is disturbing.
This morning I woke up with a semi-headache. Basically my left eye had an ache and I felt sort of blah. I still pulled myself to work, feeling pretty uncomfortable. I assumed the pain would go away eventually. After lunch I had had enough. I went to the first-aid kit and pulled out an aspirin. Popped it and went back to work.
Now I am feeling no headache. I’m alert and ready for anything. Better living through chemicals.
Generally I don’t like the thought of taking chemicals to feel better. If I take that pill that makes you happy (I forget the name, it’s not Viagra) I will feel better, but will I still be me. The magical effect of an aspirin makes a very convincing argument.

On Friday I drove down to Priddis. I had originally intended to leave on Saturday so I could pick my sister up at the airport. However the weather report indicated that there would be heavy snow starting that night, so I figured it would be better to get there sooner, than later.
On Wednesday I had filled the car with gas, and purchased a car wash as well. I didn’t use the wash immediately. I had planned to go and get the car cleaned right before I left so my sister would have a clean car awaiting her. Of course, when I went to the gas station to get to the car wash, they had a big sign saying it was closed. Bait and switch. So the inside of the car is all clean from where I cleaned it, but the outside looks horrible. I did not make a good first impression with it.
The trip down was otherwise uneventful. I do seem to have picked up a strange habit. Above the highway, at certain points, there are large light signs that flash important messages about how it is wrong to drink and drive. Whenever I go under one, I make sure I’m drinking. A coke of course, but it is the thought that counts. I think I may be speeding as well, when I go under them, but I’m not as sure about that.
It was St. Patrick’s day, so I suppose it would be the appropriate time to be drinking. Lunch that day was at Chili’s, which seemed to be doing their best to be as un-Irish as possible. Not a lick of green anywhere. I suppose if we wanted Irish and Tex-Mex, it would have been better to go to a place called Chilegans. But no such place exists.
If it is St. Patrick’s day, it means I have had my shoulder injury for a year now. Last year at this time I was at The Druid in a lot of pain from it. That’s kind of depressing.

I’m on vacation in Priddis right now. My sister is here on holiday from Florida. It’s good to see her again.
Of course I wasn’t feeling as generous when she declared to my parents that the resort I had stayed at in Jamaica was Hedonism. I had been trying to shelter them from that information.
She has to do a lot of school work, and the weather here has been fairly bad. So I’ve spent time trying to clean up my computer. I’ve been going through all my old files and putting them in organized locations. A lot of the time I have the same file, maybe with minor differences, in multiple locations. I’m paring them down and keeping only the essentials.
I have a huge pile of “Magic: The Gathering” stories I had written in 1994. I tried to figure out exactly when I had written them by finding them on the newsgroup that I had posted them to. I found four of them there, and then suddenly nothing. It took me awhile to figure out that after some time I had started posting them to a mailing list instead. Which is a shame because it means that there is now no record of them on the internet.

It finally happened. I was able to cancel my subscription to the newspaper. It’s been a long journey, but finally I’ve been able to see the end.
The deal I was on ended, I called up and said I wanted to cancel, and the guy didn’t make me a cheap offer to continue. Like the last dozen times. I get the feeling his heart wasn’t really in the salesperson side of things. In any case, at the end of this month I will no longer have a newspaper.
I will have to get my Sudokus elsewhere. Comics will need to be read online.
I will still remain informed because I read Time magazine. But now I won’t have the additional burden of a newspaper.

Of course, this could all come crashing down if they call me up and offer me a “special” deal.

I really didn’t want to run today. I had a feeling of dread that made me drag myself around. Hill training feels like work instead of fun. But I’ve signed up for the K-100 relay and paid my money, so I better get on it.
Surprisingly, I did actually do the run. I only did six Emily Murphy hills. That’s about all I can stand. I like to believe that physically I could do more, but mentally six hills is my limit.