Started Week 8 of jogging tonight and was scheduled for 28 minutes. I like to avoid checking the time as long as possible so I don’t get bogged down by seeing I have more time left than I thought. My sense of time is pretty good so I’m usually pretty close when I check. Tonight I was jogging along merrily and when I looked I was 29 minutes into my run — oops. I decided to round it off and jogged until 30:13, completing the final goal of the 9-week program a week early.
w00t, I say. w00t.
August 2nd, to be specific. But more August activities in another update.
Here’s a quick rundown (geddit?) of Week 7: Redux of my jogging.
I restarted Week 7 — a straight 25-minute run — on Monday. I switched from late afternoon to early evening as we were still in the middle of a fierce heatwave. Even an hour before sunset the air was still furnace-like. As I jogged, I noted several girls in the play area and mindful of the recent past, looked upon them as the Eye of Sauron might as I jogged past them. It was apparently too hot for them to think delinquent thoughts. Really, it was too hot to jog and it was only the sweet mercy of the fountain that sustained me. I made three quick pitstops for a couple of sips of water. The problem with the fountain is you have to come to a full stop to use it and when it’s already very hot out and you yourself are also very hot, coming to a sudden stop results in your body heating up like a nuke plant. You definitely don’t dawdle.
Wednesday’s run was much the same but maybe even hotter. I went a we bit earlier because I was catching the fireworks that evening. Three pitstops once again but I managed to make it through. Both nights there were points where qutting felt like The Right Thing to Do, but I pressed on, not wanting to lag behind in the program even more.
By Friday evening the heatwave finally broke and while temperatures are still above normal, it’s now just really warm. By evening there is actually a slight cool breeze. I was curious how the lower temperature would affect my run. I ended up not making any stops and ran the full 25 minutes (plus 45 more seconds out of the park) uninterrupted. The difference was astounding. My only disappointment was a guy with a radio-controlled plane never actually flew it the whole time I was there. There was a soccer scrum in the middle of the field, so perhaps he was concerned about creating a miniature replica of an air show disaster. Several smartypants (including one guy in a kangaroo jacket — this is in weather that is over 30ºC) ran past me in great manly strides during my jog, outpacing me without trouble. Each conked out after half a lap. The kangaroo jacket guy was only wearing a t-shirt the next time he attempted the feat. I kept motoring along for a full 8 laps.
Overall, I feel I am in good shape for Week 8’s 28-minute runs if the weather doesn’t turn icky hot again.
Wednesday’s jog didn’t happen as I was still feeling a bit too much pain in parts that would hurt even more if I was running around. It was too bad as it was overcast — perfect jogging weather.
Today it was back to sunshine and it was warm but not hot, so I decided to salvage one part of Week 7’s regimen. About 15 minutes or so into the 25 minute jog my legs turned to lead and the sun became malevolently hot. I came very close to packing it in but decided I’d try to reconstitute myself at the fountain first, assuming it had not been vandalized yet again. Good news on two counts — the fountain provided the gulp of cool water I needed and I was able to finish out the jog without further pain or discomfort. I still find it slightly amazing that I can jog for nearly half an hour without stopping now. A year ago I’d have curled up in a ball by the side of the path ten minutes in.
Since I only completed one of the three parts of Week 7, I’m planing on a re-do starting Monday before moving onto Week 8, stretching the 9 week program to a total of 10 weeks (counting my initial week of runs where I expertly botched the timing every day).
The sty is also mostly gone, too, so hooray for my body still being able to recover from junk. Excelsior!
Within days of each other I get both a sty in my eye and my most fun organ (hereafter referred to as my MFO) decides it is suddenly going to become infected again and no longer be in a pro state (see what I did there?) Every time I put my right foot forward I get a small jolt of pain in my abdomen. It’s great aversion therapy to keep one from walking about on a hot summer day. But I’m going for a 25-minute jog tomorrow no matter what so I insist my MFO co-operate fully in this matter and stop being a nuisance.
Whilst I strolled about today gnashing my teeth with every other step, I observed that pretty near every young male (let’s say 40 or under) had a distended belly, as if they were bodily trying to empathize with the malnourished children of some impoverished African nation. Having had this sort of prominent midriff myself until recently, I know that it is in fact a kind of malnutrition that causes this. I call it The Twinkie Diet but it goes by other names, too:
I now regard the movie WALL-E and its depiction of our future aboard the Axion as prophecy. Choose your super-reinforced hover chair today!
Today I began Week 5 of my 9 week jogging plan. I approached it with some trepidation because Friday’s jog found me coming up a bit short on the last five minute segment, mostly due to the sun beating down on me like some giant hot thing and making me want to pass out. Today, however, it had cooled off and was overcast, so that wouldn’t be a problem. To further distract myself, I picked up a cheap 2GB Sansa Clip so I could focus on music rather than my lungs burning. For today’s run, which consisted of three five minute segments I chose:
The music not only provided ample distraction, I think I actually jogged faster than before and when “Rasputin” ended after the third 5-minute segment, I checked my stopwatch and found I had jogged almost a minute longer than I was supposed to. Madness!
I like it.
A fellow who goes by the online name roBurky began posting about his experiment with a homeless father and daughter in The Sims 3 on the Quarter to Three forum. Their not-so-excellent adventure is now chronicled in a blog he has created and it is replete with screenshots covering their ups and downs. Their many many downs. Recommended.
Alice and Kev, a Sims 3 adventure in homelessness.
I like short stories.
Among my many books, you’ll find a pile of short story collections and anthologies. I’ve just added two more today–Flights Volume 2 and 20th Century Ghosts, a collection from Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. Because I suck at recalling details of short stories later on (I’m good with the broad strokes but always amazed by people who can recall the most subtle of storytelling nuances years later) I thought I’d start offering mini-reviews of short stories as I read them.
The current collection I’m working through is called Dark Delicacies. It is modestly sub-titled “Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by the World’s Greatest Horror Writers.”
Ray Bradbury, “The Reincarnate”. I actually read this story months ago and don’t recall the details (see what I mean?) but leafing through it quickly, it’s written in second person, so everything is about you. You talk to her, you go there, you do this. I have never liked the second-person POV for fiction, it just rings wrong, as if the story is being dictated instead of simply unfolding for you. Sorry, Ray!
Lisa Morton, “Black Mill Cove”. A straightforward suspense tale in which a man and wife go camping and have an argument. The man heads off to the cove in the title to catch some abalone, hoping a full haul will help patch things over with his wife. As he threads his way into the difficult-to-reach tide pools, he comes across what he thinks are the remains of a shark attack. It turns out to be more sinister than that, and he faces a life or death struggle before the twist ending. No spoilers here but suffice to say this is a nicely presented tale o’ terror.
Whitley Strieber, “Kaddash”. A heavy-handed satire that imagines an alternate America after “Obliteration Day” in which a nuclear attack strikes Washington, leading the country to a full conversion into a Christian theocracy. The main character is a warden at a Texas prison who oversees executions of secular humanists and other troublemakers. This is completely over-the-top stuff and is presented as such knowingly, contrasting the ultra-religious fervour of the populace against the banalities of everyday life–shopping at Walmart, rooting for the high school football team. It’s a serviceable piece, but I felt it could have been funnier and still made its point. Still, it had Fox paying $11 million to broadcast executions, so there’s that.
Robert Steven Rhine, “The Seer”. This is a classic Twilight Zone tale, complete with twist ending in which a man can foresee the (inevitably) terrible ways people will die, including his own. The story is sad and funny, and there is some suspense in seeing whether the protagonist can cheat his own fate.
D. Lynn Smith, “The Fall”. A story told in the present tense about a boy and his family who are apparently being attacked or hunted by demon-like creatures that can assume human form. This one felt a bit rote to me and features people behaving in ways that serve the plot but are not necessarily believable–a big pet peeve of mine. The ending is especially unsatisfying, as the boy simply does not act in a way that has been credibly built up prior.
F. Paul Wilson, “Part of the Game”. An extremely racist cop threatens to bring down a horde of detectives on the illicit activities in Chinatown unless he gets a 50% cut of the illegal gambling revenue. “The Mandarin”, through the haltingly-spoken English of his representative, rejects the threat and the cop finds himself sleeping with a very poisonous–and pregnant–millipede. As the poison begins working through his system, the cop finds himself indeed “part of the game.” The ending is nicely satisfying, though I felt the racism was depicted in a cartoonish manner that was unnecessary.
Roberta Lannes, “The Bandit of Sanity”. I didn’t care for the title of the story, since the presumed “bandit” doesn’t really come off like one. A well-heeled psychiatrist begins to show symptoms of what he first thinks is some kind of mental disorder, possibly even multiple personalities, leading to a Jekyll and Hyde-like life. As he realizes an old case has literally come back to haunt him, the story works toward a reasonably predictable conclusion. This is not really a bad thing, as it works. My biggest complaint is how brand names are thrown around like excerpts from a James Patterson novel, as if we need them as reminders of how successful the guy is. Yes, he has Donghia chair. Oh, look, he’s sitting in his Donghia chair again and has Hugo Boss slacks. WE GET IT.
Brian Lumley, “My Thing Friday”. The lone survivor of a spaceship crash discovers he is on a planet inhabited by a group of interlinked and intelligent species he comes to call The Pinks. Some are winged, some are quadrupeds, some are biped and more humanoid. They have a great reverence toward the dead and the survivor’s journal chronicles his efforts to understand them, in particular, one that seems to follow him around as he ekes out a living on this strange world. Things turn stranger indeed as he better understands The Pinks. I quite liked this one. Told in the first person, Lumley captures a whimsical tone that remains believable, right to the disturbing finale.
Nancy Holder, “Out Twelve-Steppin’, Summer of AA”. A pair of middle-aged rock stars who happen to be cannibals try to “go straight” by attending AA. Despite the premise, it’s not quite as funny as it sounds and the ending is a bit left field. Still, a breezy read.
Last week I officially™ began the Couch to 5K running plan. Or so I thought. Thanks to my awesome math skills I figured I needed four circuits to complete the Week 1 jogging regimen. It turns out it was actually eight, so I now consider that to be Week 0 and began Week 1 properly this past Monday. If I was an engineer my bridges would collapse, roofs would cave in and babies somewhere would cry.
As mentioned previously I am jogging at China Creek Park. Despite the fact that there has always been a baseball game in progress (and sometimes two) I have yet to be beaned by a baseball. One did actually land on the jogging path ahead of me once on Wednesday (foul ball), making an impressive plume of bark and dirt kick up. I always keep my eye open when jogging within batting distance.
The park has been quite nice for running and so far easing into the routine has gone well. There is even a fountain ready to deliver a welcome sip of water right along the path, although on my last jog there was a half-eaten crawfish in it. Ew. When not being grossed out by fountain food, I enjoy the spirit, nay, stink of fitness that permeates the area. Every evening there have been other joggers, walkers, people doing aerobics, playing badminton, croquet or baseball or just hanging out. It makes the exercising just that smidgen more pleasant than it would be if I was humping along a sidewalk through the neighborhood.
Last night I tried the Strawberry Banana Burst protein drink powder (with water) and as expected science cannot successfully mimic the flavor of banana or strawberry. Plus the use of the word “burst” is totally gratuitous. There was a vague hint of something strawberry-like in there somewhere but mostly it tasted like scrapings from something dry, gritty and with all flavor carefully stripped away, like bones collected on a dusty summer day out in Death Valley. It might be better if you added real bananas and strawberries to it, skipped the powder and devised whatever you deemed an appropriate “burst”. On a scale of one to five steroid-injected weightlifters with huge muscles, tiny brains and no ability to touch themselves, I give Strawberry Banana Burst one weightlifter.
After seeing someone ask about “tasty” protein drinks on Quarter to Three, I thought it might be a good idea to look for something myself to help boost my protein intake post-workout.
I went to Whole Foods today and found this:
As you can see by the mungy cup and torn packaging I have already sampled the “decadent chocolate” variety. The directions advise you to add the powdery whey protein goodness to water, milk or fruit juice. I imagine milk is the preferred choice to create a pseudo-milkshake but I have no milk and it’s more sugar than I’d like, anyway, so water it was. Having read stories describing these mixes as tasting like “chalky coconut ass” (!) I was prepared for the worst but in fact, it was kind of tasty in a diluted sort of way. Next up is “strawberry banana burst”, which may be trickier to fake than chocolate but I’ll know in just two short days!
I also bought a pair of proper shorts for jogging. Like nearly every other item of clothing I have, the shorts I bought two years ago are now too big. The new shorts are very light and perhaps a wee bit shorter than I expected but since my legs are the one certifiably* sexy part of my body, I’m okay with that.
* really, give me a minute and I will print the certificate
Some random thoughts on the weightlifting:
The real test will come when I am once again gainfully employed and have to sacrifice “fun time” to maintain my routine. I think I’ll be okay there, since I usually work out in the evening.
Nothing makes for a light read like an impending apocalypse. For Exercise #16 I wrote a story based on the image below. The tale is a companion piece to Superhero Go Home and is called Armageddon, Part 2. Enjoy!
