Month: January 2005

It’s not my fault

Tech

Update:

My previous post originally contained a link to a lyrics website. I found the site through a quick Google search and it seemed inoffensive enough.

However, I have been informed by one of the six or seven readers of my site that the link led to a bunch of nasty spyware-installing and popup-producing windows.

Since I use a Mac as my primary machine, and use Firefox when I’m forced to use a Windows machine, I didn’t even notice that my browser had blocked a bunch of nasty probably-virus-installing-but-definitely-deserving-of-hyphentation malware from ever appearing.

I tested the link by loading it up in Insecure Exploiter (a.k.a. Internet Explorer), and, sure enough, managed to get infected with lots of stuff that my virus scanning software didn’t like.

So I have changed the link in the original post to Blues Traveler’s official lyrics page. I would have linked there originally but this morning the Blues Traveler site was tremendously sloooooooooooow and I had better things to surf for.

My apologies to the other readers of my site who are stuck using insecure operating systems and haven’t seen the light. My sincere apologies. I’ll be more careful next time. Probably. But if I’m not, it’s not my fault.

Accidentally ran

exercise

Oops. I accidentally went to the gym and fell onto a treadmill and ran 2 miles before I could stop myself.

Even though, technically, I was supposed to wait until after my follow-up visit with Nurse Cindy on Thursday.

I think I did pretty well, waiting this long. I’ve done a lot of walking in the past two weeks, though, and went back to taking the stairs. And even so, I could, when I sat down and stopped moving and was forced to feel this body I was living in, I could feel the lack of running just like it was a cold compress on me. Or maybe a hot damp blanket. Something constricting, at any rate. And smothering. Like any attention from your mom would be when you were thirteen. Wait… that’s not a lack of something, is it?

Oh, hell, you know what I mean.

My run tonight was good, even though I kept a fairly slow pace. I didn’t want to kill myself or anything. And I also specifically didn’t keep track of the time. Just wanted to move and run and feel fast again. My breathing afterward was fine, too, so hopefully that almost-like-asthma-but-not-really thing was temporary. Getting the fleas under control on Smacky helped a tonne, I think, too. And, sadly, I no longer let him sleep in my bed. Well, sometimes. But not on nights before I plan to run. Mostly.

The weather’s been strange. We had freezing rain this weekend, but today it was in the 60s and almost spring-like. Crazy (only one ‘a’-crazy, though).

I need to archive my 2004 trophy page and my running log, and set one up for this year. For the record, I participated in 8 official races last year, six 5K runs and two 10Ks. Not bad for a first year runner. I look forward to this coming season to see how much I can improve.

There’s so much in this post that I should link to but damn if I’m not too tired. Check back Wednesday and I might have come back and updated with links ‘n’ stuff. But don’t hold me to it. ‘Cause I’m like the wind, baby.

Clever, original, and inventive

General

I’m tired of carrying around a thick wallet.

Mind you, I wouldn’t mind so much if the wallet was busting open with twenty-, fifty-, and hundred-dollar bills. Sadly, that’s not the case. Instead it’s full of credit cards that, more often than not, are maxed out, multiplying “customer appreciation cards” of the sort where you collect stamps or punches in order to earn a freebie, and various other “membership” cards that I use from time to time for discounts or just basic access. Add on top of that all the receipts from debit card transactions and ATM uses, and my wallet bulges like some bulge-y thing.

I’m sure sitting on that thing is killing my back and neck. Sure of it.

This weekend I adopted a solution. I’m carrying two wallets now.

In the first wallet I put just the bare minimum; my debit card, my bus pass, my FlexCar card, my driver’s license, and most of the “customer appreciation cards”. Much much thinner that way. Oh, and any cash I may be carrying, although thanks to my debit card (and the fact that I earn miles on Alaska Airlines for using my debit card) I rarely carry any cash these days. That’s thin enough to sit on, although I still tend to put it in a front pocket out of habit.

Into the other wallet goes everything else. And that wallet goes in my jacket, or my backpack if I’m carrying that. And if I forget it? Not a big deal; I can get by with the primary wallet most of the time.

I’ll try it for a while and see how it goes.

Close call

General

Almost got hit with a car tonight. I was crossing 12th at West Burnside, heading east. The light was with me, but an older couple in some SUV wasn’t looking both ways as the driver creeped out into Burnside; he was only looking east, waiting for the traffic to clear so he could shoot out into the lane. He was in a hurry, dammit, his life was important or something. He had a wife with him that had to… be… somewhere, or something. I stepped out cautiously, looking directly at the driver, figuring he’d have to look where he was going instead of to his left eventually, like, maybe, a couple of seconds after he started up Burnside.

Which would have been a couple of seconds too late. Too late for me, at any rate.

I was directly in front of the SUV (it was silver; people who drive silver cars are weird), still waiting for the driver to look at me. He was still intent on watching the traffic, waiting for it to clear. It was dark. I was wearing my black leather jacket (too cold for this weather, made a bad choice this morning) and a black hat, a black-and-gray scarf my friend Rachael knitted for me. And another car was waiting for the pedestrians in front of me to finish crossing and was likewise creeping from Burnside onto 12th. It caught my eye for a moment, the headlights looked like a Mini Cooper, I was distracted for just a moment, and I don’t think the driver of the Cooper saw me, either–

–And at that moment the driver of the SUV decided that the traffic was clear, since the Cooper was blocking the cars behind him. So the SUV surged forward.

And into me. It actually made contact with me, the bumper touching my legs and pushing me back, my hands slapping down on the hood, my torso twisting to my left and taking a half-step backward to get away from the silver tank heading my way. It had moved maybe a half-foot, six inches before it surged to a stop, gas-brake, that quickly.

The driver looked at me, I glared at him from under the brim of my black hat. I shook my finger at him, and shouted “You need to watch where you’re going!” and continued through the intersection, and at that moment the white-man-says-walk changed to the flashing-orange-hand, and the Mini Cooper stopped so its headlights picked me out like spotlights. My heart was beating and my face warm with embarrassment or something like it (which makes no sense; why would I be embarrassed?) and a guy on the opposite corner, the safe corner, up on the safe sidewalk was smiling at me.

It felt, after the fact, like a close call. Could have turned out differently. Didn’t, though. Still here. Yay.

Assumptions

General

I’ve got to stop assuming that random people who piss me off (not using their turn signals, for instance, or stepping in front of me in line, stuff like that) voted for President Bush.

I’m sure most of them are, but probably not every one.