Sunday, September 30, 2012

So Long, Farewell...

Once upon a time, this couch was reasonably comfortably to sit on and great for stretching out and napping. That was about twenty years ago. It wasn't even too bad when I first got it, but that was about fifteen years and countless cats and a couple of elderly dogs ago.

Today we said goodbye. Or at least, today I moved it out of the living room onto the patio where hopefully the house elves will magically take it away. Alternatively, my neighbors (who have have a trailer and have offered to make runs to the dump in the past) might offer to get rid of it for me. Since they can see it from their bedroom window, I suspect that door number two is the safer bet. And if that doesn't work, I'll throw it out piece by piece.

Now my living room sort of looks like I'm in the process of moving in, but that's probably still better than this:

Finally, due to popular demand, a picture of Guido:

I think while I was taking this picture he was reading my email. There's a reason why he's considered the evil genius of the household. (Mostly it's just in comparison to the dogs, but he's also the one that opens the doors and gets into closed drawers.)

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Couching Tiger, Skeet-shooting Dragon

I was going to celebrate the successful conclusion of the Couch to 5K program by taking my sofa outside and hacking it apart with my sawz-all, but one of the cats was sleeping on it, so I took a nap instead.

So now the question is: what next? I mean, clearly I have mastered jogging. I could use a little work on my falling on concrete technique, but as far as I know that's not an Olympic sport (although it's just stupid enough that it might have been added as one...).

I'm thinking maybe mountain climbing. Small, small mountains. Nothing over about eight feet. And I'll need a well-cushioned surface below.

If that doesn't work out, maybe I'll go with skeet shooting. I can say "pull" or whatever it is that you're supposed to yell. (I might need to look up a few details first.) I should probably warn my neighbors before I start shooting, but they've been really understanding in the past.

Or maybe I'll just try to extend my jogging distance a bit...

Monday, September 17, 2012


The penultimate week of the Couch to 5k experiment suffered a slight setback when I tripped and fell flat on the sidewalk, tenderizing my knees in the process. The good news is that there were no witnesses (one of the advantages of running at night) and I was already back on my feet and walking again by the time the police car drove by a couple of minutes later. For the record I would like to state that doing a pendulum swing straight down onto the sidewalk causes much pain. I was forced to consume a lot of ice cream to get over it.

Anyhow, Jojo the Enforcer was in town this weekend along with her daughter, Mary-Kate Olsen. (I don't really understand how the genetics worked out in this situation...) My parents also drove up for the weekend, so there was a partial family reunion, and my little niece only ended up with a slight bruise when she tripped and slammed her cheek into the coffee table. (See, we're related.)

Jeff managed to not light the propane grill on fire this time, so the entertainment wasn't quite as good, but other than that it was a pleasant weekend.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Thoughts of the Day

Here are some random thoughts from today:

- It's amazing how many days start with me saying out loud "What did I just step in?"

- I love my dogs, but why do I often wish the dogs were a little more like the cats, but I never wish the cats were more like the dogs?

- I send a lot of email to my boss consisting of forwarded messages where I've just added "La la la la la" because I can't deal with the stupidity of it all.

- I've officially named my dogs in aggregate the "stalkerazzi". They need to learn how to nap or something.

- Based on how much time it took me to clean up the back yard today, I'm feeding the stalkerazzi entirely too much food.

- Why does my work computer hang for ten minutes when I lose the VPN connection? Is this really the best they could come up with? I'd reboot it, but that usually takes about fifteen minutes. I guess slowing everything down is one way to make everything secure -- I'd certainly never steal that thing.

- Why does the VPN connection always go down when I have about two minutes of work left to do?

- If I throw the laptop through the window, can I write the repairs off as a business expense? Does that require a special form?

- Apparently manually ending Outlook to try to speed up re-establishing the VPN connection is not a good idea. Now I get to reboot after waiting ten minutes in the first place.

- Can I get the two minutes of work that I need to do finished within one hour? It's looking doubtful.

- Listening to podcasts while running works well as long as it's something that I find interesting enough to grab my attention. The podcast from The New Yorker about the ethics of using confidential informants worked well.The podcast about stranded prepositions not so much.

- If I ever have episodes of syncope and you need to raise my blood pressure, showing me the Windows XP logo will probably take care of the problem without any additional pharmaceutical intervention.

I think I'll go watch another episode of The Closer while I wait for the laptop to boot...

Monday, September 3, 2012

Simply Dashing

Now that I've made it to the part of the "Couch to 5k" program where I'm not supposed to be taking walking breaks anymore, I finally put the sensor in my shoe and hooked up the iPod to see how close I am getting to the recommended distance.

See, you can either run a set distance or run a set time. Theoretically they should be close. In this case, a 25 minute jog was supposed to be about 2.5 miles. I know that's actually not that fast, but I had my doubts that I was even hitting that mark.

So imagine my surprise when my iPod reported that in 25 minutes 7 seconds I had traveled 3.77 miles for a pace of 6.39 minutes/mile. I mean, if I'm going that fast when I feel like I'm plodding along, maybe I should really train and blow everyone else out of the water during a real race.

Or maybe I should follow the directions in the calibration section of the user manual.

Anyhow, twenty-five minutes is a long time to think about things, and you might expect that I would come up with some real insight during that time, but here's a pretty good approximation of my thoughts as I make three laps around my section of the neighborhood:

- "If I lost another ten pounds this would be easier and probably better for my knees."

- "Hah, I avoided that branch at eye level that I always run into."

- "Ugh, it's probably only been about two minutes."

- "Why did I eat all that junk food an hour ago? That was a mistake."

- "Hm... bread. I love bread. Maybe I should bake some bread when I get home. I deserve it."

- "Seriously, how long have I been running? This is taking forever."

- "I'm not buying any more cookie dough. I don't need stuff like that."

- "Hm... cookie dough. I wonder if I have any left in the refrigerator..."

- "Dammit, that branch is going to put my eye out someday. I should bring some gardening shears with me next time."

- "Only one more lap. Thank god."

- "Is this section uphill? I've never noticed that before."

- "Hm... cheese. I love cheese. Cheese and bread together. Maybe with some cookie dough."

- "Ouch! My eye!"

- "Yay, I made it."

Deep thoughts. Yep.