The bright side of a Moon
My new kitten, Smacky, is intensely cute. We were playing “Hide And Go Smack” this weekend. He’d hide around a corner, waiting for me to walk by, then jump out and smack my feet or ankles, then tear off like a maniac. Then it’s my turn to hide somewhere, and jump out when he comes around the corner.
My friend Caleb called me up last night and asked me if I wanted to run in the Race for the Cure this morning. I thought, hey, great; dress all in black, sing depressing songs.
Oh, no, wait… wrong Cure.
But, hey, boobies! I like boobies. I think we should save as many boobies as possible. It’s a good cause. So I got up early this morning, and ran in the co-ed 5K. I did pretty good, too. My “unofficial” time, as reported by my trusty Timex Expedition, was 32:24.18, but I want to subtract 2:04 because it took me that long to just reach the starting line. There was quite a crowd; Becky and Caleb thought there was around 33,000 folks running today. My “official” time will include the 2:04, and might be a bit longer, too, because of the crowd at the finish gate. I stopped my watch when I went under the finish banner. At any rate, I was pretty happy with how I did.
The course went south on Front Ave., turned west then north down Broadway, then all the way to Burnside. Just before Burnside we passed by another monument to boobies, Mary’s Club. Hooray! We crossed the Burnside Bridge, which was a bit of a hill. It was impressive to see the crowd of people filling the east-bound lanes of the bridge! When we were on the bridge, the faster folks were on the other side, returning across the bridge. Man they were fast. We cheered them on. Then the route turned south again and went down MLK Jr. Blvd, looped back, and crossed the Burnside Bridge going west. Looped underneath, and finished back on Front Ave.
I ran for beer last weekend, and I ran for boobies this weekend. Say… they should combine those two events. (I totally stole that joke from a friend. Thanks, Deb!)
Downtown today, I saw a tall black woman, wearing a t-shirt that read (and I am not making this up):
“Blondes Do It Better”
Um… I don’t get it.
I’m walking downtown (heading back to my office, if you must know) and standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change, or for traffic to clear, whichever comes first. As I’m looking down the street, I see this small SUV, a Honda CRV or something similar, heading towards me, and it’s got it’s turn signal on. It looks like it’s going to turn onto a wrong-way street. That catches my attention.
It doesn’t, in fact, turn. But it pulls up in front of me, blocking the pedestrian walkway. It pulls up behind a row of cars parallel-parked on that side of the street.
And the car is full of bald Asian guys, all wearing orange-colored robes. They look like monks or something. There’s five or six of them.
The driver’s side window is down, and I’m feeling annoyance that they’re blocking my way, and on top of it they’re illegally parked.
So I say, “That’s not a parking space” into the window.
The driver turns and looks at me, and starts to say, “Oh, I know, we’re just here for a second–” but I cut him off and repeat, “That’s not a parking space. That’s illegal.”
He starts to repeat his statement, and the other guys in the car are looking at themselves and talking amongst themselves, and I start to think that I’m going to get my ass kicked by a bunch of pacifist Buddhist monks for pointing out their illegal parking. But, somehow, I just can’t stop myself.
“I’m just saying,” I continue, “that what you’re doing is ILLEGAL.” And I make air-quotes around the word ILLEGAL.
Luckily the bald robe-wearing guys aren’t getting out of the car. They’re still just sitting there, and the driver is leaning out the window and trying to explain himself. I repeat, once more, for emphasis, the single word “ILLEGAL” and again make with the air-quotes.
And then, because the light has changed, I cut around the tail end of their car and cross the street.
They’ve already posted results for the Pints to Pasta 10K. I did slightly better than I thought I had done…
I’ve added those results to my Trophy Page.
Thought I’d share this picture of me bonding with my new kitten:
Click image to go to Smacky’s picture gallery
…so it looks like “Smacky” very much fits his personality. I think it’s going to stick… but I’m not entirely sure. Stay tuned for the poll which should be up tomorrow.
Team Saponified was represented by one member today. I ran the Pints to Pasta 10K this morning. I ran it strong; only stopped twice for the water stations. My unofficial time, thanks to my trusty Timex Expedition, was 59:59.49, or a 9:39.481 pace (give or take a few). Which is almost exactly what my pace was in the Run Hit Wonder 10K a month and a half ago, at least my “chip time” — it’s 2:40 faster than my gun time in that race. Damn. For some reason I thought I did better.
Still, it felt good. Lots of downhills, which probably helped quite a bit. Started in north Portland, along the bluff on Willamette Avenue, ran down the hill to N. Interstate, then across the Steel Bridge, along Waterfront Park, and then finished at the Old Spaghetti Factory off of Macadam. There were a lot of people. I noticed a bunch of people with black Adidas dri-fit overshirts, emblazoned with the Pints-to-Pasta logo and asked about them; those were the race shirts from last year. This year they just gave out regular cotton t-shirts. Oh, well, at least I got soup, two beers, and a coupon for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Oh, and a coupon for a free Cinnabon which will be my reward later today. Mmmmm…
Not bad for my second-ever 10K.
It was kinda fun to look around at all these people and think, “I’ve got something in common with all of them.” Struck up a few conversations, although for some reason it’s difficult for me to come out of my shell lately.
I’m running in the Pints to Pasta 10K tomorrow morning. I have to be down at the Old Spaghetti Factory off of Macadam Blvd. around 7:00 AM, pick up my packet, then catch a shuttle bus to the start of the race in North Portland. It’s going to be fun. It’s my second-ever 10K (the Run Hit Wonder on August 1st being my first), and I’ve been taking it easy on the running since that last race. I was going to run in Tillamook a couple of weeks ago but ended up in a car accident instead. Oh, no one was hurt, but it still put the kibosh on the drive to the coast.
I’m not sure what to expect for this race but I’m going to do my best. I should be going to bed soon, but I have to go pick up a FlexCar to use tomorrow. Bummer, huh?
I’ll get a t-shirt, two free beers, some soup, and a dinner coupon for the Old Spaghetti Factory, plus live music and the accomplishment of running a freakin’ six-plus miles. Yay, me. I’m going to be using my new Nike Air Structure Triax 8’s in the race. Oh… maybe not. Maybe I should stick with my trusty Brooks Addiction GTS 5s… yeah, running a race in brand-new shoes is probably a Bad Idea.
I’ll post any pictures and my impressions of the run tomorrow afternoon.
Over on the right-hand column you can see a picture of my new kitten. Black with the coolest gray-green eyes, short-haired, a tiny little fluffball. He likes to climb things, like, oh, say, me by my pant legs (and skin when I’m wearing shorts). He turned seven weeks old last Thursday, the same day I brought him home.
I’m still trying to find a name that suits him. My original name for him, “Smacky”, doesn’t quite fit now that I’ve spent some time with him, although it might stick for a while until I can find a better name.
You can find more pictures of him in my Flickr Set named “Smacky”.
Yay! I can post at will once again! I was experimenting with other blogging software (including one written by my friend Caleb called “blogtastic”) but in the end I was able to figure out the settings that will allow me to use Blogger on my new webhost.
Prepare for lots of blogging to come! I’m also going to move my running journal to another section, and make some other changes to the site. But for now, it’s working just as it did before!