Category: General

I went for a short run tonight, to clear my head. Partly from the stress of nightmares last night, and partly from the stress of a horrible horrible run yesterday afternoon. My route today was in my neighborhood, 2.5 miles total, and thanks to the wonders of mapping software, I know where each half-mile point is.

My plan was to take it easy every other half-mile, but aim for as close to a 4:00 mark on at least two of the segments. Since it’s an out-and-back route (the middle half-mile is actually a quarter-mile one way, then turn around and come back), each half is a mirror of the other. The first half is almost all downhill and therefore the second half is almost all uphill in equal measure.

During the run, though, I realized that if I throw out the middle leg, I can average the times for the first and last mile and have a pretty good idea what my flat, no-hills time would be for a mile.

And I’m pretty pleased with the result. Here are the individual times:

1. 4:24.90
2. 4:22.85
3. 5:23.94 (I really took it easy)
4. 5:04.20 (This is the toughest uphill segment, very steep)
5. 4:19.74

So my first mile was 8:47.75, and my last mile was 9:23.94, making my average 9:05.85! If you average over the whole thing (including the half-mile of slow-poke) then my average is still a respectable 9:30.25!

Yay, me!

I missed a friend’s birthday this past weekend.

Happy Birthday, Christi!

Just for her I’m turning comments back on. I mean, she won’t be the only one who can comment, but she’s been the most vocal about my not having them on.

I kinda feel like a blog without comments is like a motorcyclist riding with a helmet, but what the hell.

So comment away, commenting motherfuckers!

Joss Whedon is helming a remake of Wonder Woman?

There’s some bogus MTV “poll” on who Joss should cast that has its results rigged to give one of three answers: Catharine Zeta Jones, Angelina Jolie, Queen Latifah (pardon me for being non-PC but WTF?!) and “unknown actress”. No, I’m not gonna link to the poll; I already said it was bogus.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the creator of Wonder Woman, Dr. William Moulton Marston writing under the pseudonym of Charles Moulton, was, well, into bondage and submission — which is why in every single comic he wrote, Wonder Woman ended up being bound somehow. And loving it. Often, other women and men were bound up somehow, too; the most obvious way being with Wonder Woman’s golden lasso.

Dr. Marston was a fascinating character. Inventor of the pseudo-scientific “lie detector”, a feminist theorist, and apparently happily polygamous, fathering and raising two children with two different women. He claimed to have created Wonder Woman in an effort to get boys to enjoy being bound and dominated by women:

But, apparently, the woman-dominated society Dr. Marston attempted to create by means of comic books did not come to fruition. Even the sight of Halle Berry in a leather dominatrix outfit with a whip didn’t save the truly awful “Catwoman” from dying a horrible box office death, f’rinstance.

So casting Wonder Woman, a modern one, at least, is a tricky proposition. Sure, the obvious choice is Angelina Jolie, but, well, in my opinion she’s a little too into the whole B/D thing. Not that that wouldn’t be fun, mind you.

There’s lots of non-obvious choices, or should I say, less obvious choices. But for me, there’s really only one actress on my personal list of “wouldn’t mind being tied up by”.

My vote? I’d write in Kate Beckinsale:

Rawr

…I’m sorry. What were we talking about? Oh, right, Wonder Woman. Yeah, OK, Kate looks better in black leather/spandex/vinyl, I suppose, than the bright red-and-gold of a Wonder Woman costume. I just lost my mind there for a second.

…c’mon, you can’t tell me you didn’t see that one coming?

I ran again tonight (I have a lot of frustration from work lately) only this time, because the weather was gorgeous, I ran outside, in my neighborhood.

I did my normal 3.5-mile loop, but pushed myself extra hard, and managed an average 9:33 pace for the first 3 miles, finishing the 3.5 miles in 34:28 (9:50 pace average — had to walk part of the last half-mile).

I’m proud of myself for the past two runs.

Just wanted to mention that I had a great run last night, even though it was at the gym. 3.1 miles, 30:32 total time, for an average 9:50 pace, which is the fastest, farthest I’ve done this year. Yay, me.

I got to sit in a meeting yesterday, and have a manager look me right in my face, and justify his cover-up of a plan to use thin client to eliminate 10 jobs from my department by saying the following:

“You’ve caught us at an awkward point in the project implementation process.”

*sigh*

No, we’ve caught him in a lie. He’s been putting the tools in place to implement this for over a year, while training the people he’s hand-picked and lying or just saying nothing to the rest of the work unit, and spitting in the CIO’s face and telling her it’s rain, and now that he’s finally being called on it, he can sit there and tell me that “there’s no plan; it will only be implemented if the customers drive it.”

Then why the fuck have they been allocating resources to this for over a year? And evaluating nothing else?

Does senior management have any idea how ludicrous their lies make them look? Do they not understand that we don’t believe them any more?

Welcome to the Lie Factory.

Found this on one of the internets and had to preserve it for future reference:

A Girl’s Guide to Geek Guys

It’s almost enough to make me turn on comments again. Almost.

Yeah, not much posting this week, not since Monday anyway. I was going to turn the posts about meeting women in Portland into a series, and I still intend to keep writing about that, but I’m not sure I should post about girls I’ve met whom I might continue to see. Not without their permission, of course. But since I’ve had many many (many) first dates that didn’t pan out, I’m not hurtin’ for material, for sure.

I also have been noodling around with fiction, which I have posted on this blog before but I’m not sure I want to continue doing that. I might set aside another blog for just fiction, and leave the basically-true emotionally-filtered stuff for here.

At any rate, just popping in to say “Hey”. I know that the 2 or 3 people who read this blog may have been wondering what happened to me.

Tun in later tonight for more Friday Night Cat Blogging. Smacky’s been really cute/psychotic this week.

Standing on the track at the Tualatin High School, I ogled the women around me, all clad in clingy tech materials, and all in decent shape or better. Yeah, there were men, too but I didn’t notice them.

I turned to Caleb, who, like me, was getting ready for the start of our race. “On my way to pick you up this morning,” I said, “I drove by the Portland Running Company store and saw a group leaving for a run.” I paused significantly. “And they were all women. Maybe I should join that group…” I smiled.

Caleb looked briefly uncomfortable. “If you’re looking for a woman without baggage, I don’t know that you should be looking at runners. They’re always running away from something.”

I smirked, “You mean, like you and me? I don’t think it’s just the women, actually. Everybody’s got baggage.”

“I’m just saying that a higher percentage of women run because they’re avoiding something.” He chuckled. “I have other ways of avoiding things, I don’t need running to do that. I run for other reasons.”

I looked around at all the toned bodies. “Do you mean that you think everyone here has baggage?”

“No, I said a percentage. I’m just saying that you might not want to date a runner.” He smiled again. “I should know, right?”

“What percentage, then?” Even though I knew Caleb was speaking generally, I pushed for specific number from him, for what reason I don’t know, but asking the question allowed me some time to process what he was saying. I honestly couldn’t think of any category of woman that I might meet that didn’t retain the possibility of having at least some issues. Considering my hobbies and my habits, where else am I going to meet women? And what the hell; I know I’ve got issues, too.

“Sixty percent.” Caleb stated it flatly. I suspect he knew I was pushing for an unrealistic assessment from him, but he accomodated my defense mechanism.

“OK, sixty percent,” I said, as we shuffled forward towards the starting line, “I like those odds.”