Run for the Cheetah 5K 2005

exercise

I and my 13-year-old nephew ran in the First Annual Run for the Cheetah 5K yesterday and had a great time. I didn’t really expect a lot of people, but there were about 500 entrants, according to the announcer guy. Also, it wasn’t raining, which is always a plus.

There were, however, hills. The course was an out-and-back loop, starting at the front entrance to the Oregon Zoo, going northerly uphill to Kingston Drive, then down, down, down hill, before turning around and coming back uphill.

My dad showed up to get pictures, but because we were faster than I thought we’d be we came in before dad got there. Oh, well, next race.

This was my nephew’s third race, and he did great. We stuck together, and we crossed the finish line in 37:07, give or take (I had some technical problems with my watch), but I’ll be sure to post the official time when the results go up. Which will probably be soon because it was a ChampionChip timed event.

He makes a great running partner and I hope that he’s caught the running bug enough to keep it up. I think the next one we’re going to do together is the Run Like Hell 5K on October 30th – probably not in costume, at least for me…

Mirrormask (2005)

Movies

Two words:

See MirrorMask

Need more words? Neil Gaiman’s got you covered for story.

Direction and visuals? Dave McKean’s on top of that.

Overall production? What, can’t you trust Jim Henson Productions? Sure you can. Crazy kids these days!

Did you like “Labyrinth”? Of course you did. David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, trippy puppets, goblins and monsters. What’s not to like?

Now picture that on acid, and not the bad brown stuff, the good stuff, and imagine what could be done with CGI these days.

Oh, yeah. You want to see it now, don’t you? Don’t you?

G’wan. Get out of here. These talented folk deserve your money.

Conversations in men’s rooms

General

First rule of men’s rooms: men don’t talk to each other, or acknowledge each other, unless they’re on equal footing. And even then, the topics of conversation are quite limited. And really, only at a urinal. If someone’s in a stall they might as well not be there.

I’m at the gym, in a stall (see above), and a guy gets in the stall next to me. Loudly calls out something that just doesn’t register with me. Because I’m in a stall. I’m invisible, or should be.

He repeats it, and I make out his words: “Hey, do you know when the Notre Dame game is on tonight?”

It takes me several minutes to process, as I wait for his buddy or whoever to respond. When no one does, it dawns on me that HE’S TALKING TO ME.

“No, sorry. I have no idea.” Is this appropriate conversation for strangers that are supposed to be invisible to each other? Is this guy crazy? Wait, sorry, all humans are crazy, so of course the answer is yes, but it’s the wrong question. Is he one of the obviously crazy people? Evidence is collecting, and signs are starting to point to “yes, yes he is, get out now.”

“That is going to be the game” he continues. I fall silent, because, well, there’s really no response to this, for all the reasons I stated above, plus the fact that I simply don’t care about college football.

We both fall silent for a bit. Then I hear ringtones, ringtones that are playing Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer”.

And the guy answers the phone.

More evidence.

He chats with the caller, while sitting on the pot. I’m even more stunned, but also… I’m thinking I should flush the toilet or make some noises in an effort to call attention to the guy’s location. Y’know, to alert whoever is stupid enough to chat with this obviously crazy person that he’s obviously crazy.

The guy tries again to find out when this Notre Dame game is, and from the one side of the conversation that I can’t avoid hearing it’s clear that this game is not taking place tonight, or at least the person on the other end believes that adamantly. The guy is not entirely convinced, but then tries to get the person he’s talking to to go to Montana with him next week. The dangers of being alone in the vast open spaces of Montana with this insanely unsocialized man are apparent, though, and the other person declines. The conversation ends.

My services in noisemaking turned out not to be needed. The other person is safe for the moment. I am still in inadvertent contact with this guy. And the final piece of evidence is revealed.

Because the guy starts muttering under his breath.

It’s a Popeye kind of muttering, where I can’t make out all the words. It’s practically Tourette’s Syndrome muttering (Tourette’s is not always curse words; sometimes it’s just pre-verbal sounds, or even tics and gestures, at least that’s my understanding), but one word in about 5 or 6 floats out; I make out “dingbat” and “dickhead” mixed in with the inarticulate grunts and chuckles. I see that he stands up, all the while muttering, and finally he breaks into a bit of sing-song muttering, with a rhythm, or at least a cadence. And then, he’s gone.

Sauna time

General

I wanted to add this to my previous post but I forgot.

After my run last night, I decided to make use of the sauna. I just wanted to relax in the steam-y heat, let it open up my sinuses and lungs and permeate my sore muscles. Just a nice quiet time after my run. Ahh.

When I got there, some guy (tattooed, bleach blonde hair, fake tan, toenails painted hot pink) had gotten the temperature and steam up really high. It felt great. It’s usually not very warm in there. I was going to ask him what he did (open the door until the steam came on? Pour water over the sensors?) but then I remembered that I didn’t want to talk to anyone and went back to ignoring him.

The guy (I’ll call him Blondie) had a bottle of what looked like flavored water and he kept dousing himself with it, and rubbing it through his hair. It had a faint lotion-y smell, but that could have been my imagination.

Then a girl came in, brown hair, thin but she had a receding chin, wearing a red bikini, having just left the other sauna, the one with no steam (I’ve just realized that I don’t remember what it’s called; is it the sauna, and the one with steam is the steam room?). She and Blondie talked about the sauna, and how it wasn’t very warm, cool, in fact. I kept ignoring them. Then Blondie left.

The girl pointed up to the ceiling, covered in droplets of water just waiting to, um, drop, and asked me if I thought that that was human sweat. I was mildly disturbed to think of it like that, not to mention being all ignore-y, so I mumbled some response about it being just condensation. She started to describe a micro-climate of clouds of human sweat, a cycle that just repeats.

Then another guy came in, dark hair and shorter than me (which makes him pretty short) and he climbed up to the area where Blondie had been sitting.

“Ugh” he said (he actually pronounced the word), “This is awful!” He looked down at his feet, and slowly shifted from one foot to the other. “Someone had been putting lotion on here. Can you smell it?” The girl and I shook our heads. “That’s… that’s so… ugh.”

“Maybe it’s just sweat,” the girl said, with a faint tint of hope to her voice.

“No.” The guy (I’ll call him “Ugh”) was adamant. “It’s not. It’s lotion. I’ve seen it all the time. Not only is it disgusting, it’s a safety hazard.” He slid his feet around. “See? It’s slick right here.”

I mentioned Blondie, who had been dousing himself, but I suggested it was probably water. Oops. I was getting pulled in to the conversation again. I scooted over to make room, and the girl scooted over closer to me. “You can sit here,” the girl said. But Ugh didn’t take us up on the offer. He sat near but not in the puddle of lotion/sweat/water.

After a brief, blissful moment of silence, the girl (I want to call her Sweat but it just doesn’t seem right) started up again. She asked Ugh if he’d been in the sauna. They chatted about how it wasn’t very warm for a moment, and Ugh, cynical Ugh, complained about the maintenance staff and how the facilities guy wasn’t fixing it.

Then Sweat (see, it just doesn’t fit) said, “I wonder if, because the other room has all that wood, that it absorbs all the sweat, and then the heat causes it to get, um, deposited all over the room, making a cycle…” She trailed off, lost in wonder. Then she sniffed and shook her head. “Because,” she said ruefully, “I know I just get drenched when I’m in there.”

Again, I was getting pulled in. I didn’t know what this girl’s deal was but for some reason I felt compelled to counter her mental image. “I don’t know if this is the same thing, but I know that when buying a cutting board,” and here I framed a flat square in front of me, “they say that a wood one is cleaner,” and here Ugh and Sweat started nodding in agreement with me, “because it absorbs the food particles and bacteria and locks it in. Where a plastic one, the bacteria just stays on the surface until you clean it off. Maybe it’s harder for the sweat in the other room to get pulled out of the wood in there.”

Sweat looked around. “But it’s the same in here. This tile is hard; the sweat just lays on the surface…”

Ugh and I looked at each other. “Oh, I’m sure they clean this room out” I said.

“They have to!” Ugh agreed.

Ugh looked up, and we could make out the shape of Blondie standing at the door. Ugh immediately began talking as though continuing a sentence from before, as Blondie walked in: “…as I was saying, what I really hate is when people put lotion on in here, it gets all over, makes things slick, and, well, disgusting. You know?”

Blondie looked sheepish. I smiled at Ugh’s tactic but felt embarrassed for Blondie, being the target of Ugh’s passive-aggressive tactic. The four of us lapsed into silence. There was now a tension in the room.

Dammit, I came in here to relax. Before anything could escalate, I got up and left. There was no relaxation in there to be had.

Ran to the gym

exercise

OK, more running stuff:

Ran at the gym tonight. One mile warmup and cooldown at about 10:20, and in-between I did four sets of 4:00 at 9:00 pace and 2:00 of “active recovery” (around 10:30-11:00 pace). Total miles were 4.45, giving me 7.93 miles so far for the week. I ran in my Adidas.

Around the waterfront

exercise

Ran tonight. It was a gorgeous fall evening, still warm and bright when I got out of work, so I ran outside and downtown, around the waterfront. I wanted a bit longer than the 2.8 miles or so of my normal loop, but not the full twice-around distance, so I planned on adding the Hawthorne Bridge, east and then back west, to finish on the same side of the river. I figured it added almost a mile, and Google Earth tells me that the distance I ran was 3.48 miles.

I was strong and steady the whole distance, not breaking stride to walk or pausing for water. I wasn’t especially fast, but concentrated on maintaining an even pace. The last mile felt a bit slower because I had to dodge around so many people! Lots of pedestrians and cyclists on the bridge last night!

It felt like about a 10:00 pace or so, and I watched my posture and my breathing. I ran in my Asics. I like the Asics over the Adidas; I’ve gotten used to the feel of the gel, it’s not as wobbly-feeling as it was at first. I ran in a short-sleeved shirt (this year’s Run Hit Wonder shirt, bright orange; only saw two others wearing the same shirt tonight) and shorts. Also used my inhaler before, one shot.

My final time was 37:33, for an actual pace of 10:47. I swear it wasn’t that slow, though.

Tomorrow I’m doing some kind of speed workout. If the weather holds, I’ll go home and do hills in Sellwood Park. If not, I’ll hit the gym and repeat my treadmill interval workout from last week. I also plan on running Thursday, and Friday I plan on running in to work. Saturday, rest day, and Sunday is a race, the Run for the Cheetah, which I’m doing with my nephew, just for fun.

Define: dreary

exercise

Lately, it seems, my hobbies (that is, the things I do by choice, not because it’s my duty or obligation) boil down to:

  1. Running
  2. Sleeping

I spent the entire weekend in or near my apartment. Saturday was a dull gray day, one of those kinds of days for which they invented the word “dreary”. I was planning on going for a run but it was too cold and whenever I was ready to run (either right out of bed or two hours after lunch) it was raining. I did go for a short 2-3 mile walk, but since the middle part of that walk was spent in the Iron Horse scarfing down a huge lunch I’m not sure that counted as exercise.

Sunday I planned on going for a run, along with cleaning up my apartment and going out and being social, but, well, only one of those got done, and since I’m complaining about doing nothing but sleeping and running I’ll bet you can figure out which one. My run was 7.5 miles, and, knowing that I wasn’t all that energetic, I should have left my watch at home, because I was sure to be disappointed no matter what my time. For the record, I ran the 7.5 miles (with frequent walking-breaks) in 1:24:46, for a pace of 11:18. I know, I know, for longer runs it’s OK to go slower than shorter runs, but, dammit, I’ve done that exact run in much better time and under worse conditions (hot and muggy). Oh, well, I’ll do better next time.

But, yeah, the sleeping. I napped both Saturday and Sunday, and above and beyond the napping slept for at least 12 hours each night. I even ended up sleeping in this morning and not getting into work until 1:00 PM. Sleep is practically my second hobby.

I’m not even sure it’s depression; more like a general apathy towards anything that’s not sleeping. No motivation. I’m not sure what’s keeping me running other than perhaps a psychological inertia.

Meh.

Deeds not words

atheism

Two thought-provoking articles I have read recently, and I’d like to share. Later, I’ll post my own thoughts on them, but for now I just want to preserve the links.

First is an article entitled The Christian Paradox that appeared in Harper’s that discusses the contradiction between what Americans profess to believe, i.e. Christianity (per the article, America is the most religiously homogenous of all the rich nations), and what Americans think that belief means. America is the most Christian nation, by professed belief, and the least Christian nation, by their actions. The contrast is startling.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

*****
Ours is among the most spiritually homogenous rich nations on earth. Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, somewhere around 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian. Israel, by way of comparison, is 77 percent Jewish. It is true that a smaller number of Americans—about 75 percent—claim they actually pray to God on a daily basis, and only 33 percent say they manage to get to church every week. Still, even if that 85 percent overstates actual practice, it clearly represents aspiration. In fact, there is nothing else that unites more than four fifths of America. Every other statistic one can cite about American behavior is essentially also a measure of the behavior of professed Christians. That’s what America is: a place saturated in Christian identity.

But is it Christian? This is not a matter of angels dancing on the heads of pins. Christ was pretty specific about what he had in mind for his followers. What if we chose some simple criterion—say, giving aid to the poorest people—as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior? After all, in the days before his crucifixion, when Jesus summed up his message for his disciples, he said the way you could tell the righteous from the damned was by whether they’d fed the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner. What would we find then?

Second is a post by Sam Harris that speaks directly about atheism as a rational response to, and an observation of the world, and the damage that non-atheist beliefs do to the social fabric.

As Sam says:

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different.

To paraphrase Sam, no one ever needs to state that they are non-Zeusians or anti-Thorians – that would be silly. But somehow, seeing clearly that none of these supposedly-powerful beings exists puts me and others on the fringes of human society. I am immensely sad that this is so.

Both of these thoughts are heavy on my mind lately, as I watch the leadership in this country, well, fail to provide leadership, all the while firmly avowing their supposed “faith” in the teachings of a certain Jesus of Nazareth, as handed down by his followers over the past 1800+ years and as selectively redacted, amended, and translated over the ensuing centuries.

I know that, since religious faith is so strongly irrational and contra-logical, that none of this will discredit Christianity or religion in most people’s minds. And that makes me saddest of all.

In discussing this last night with a (theist) friend, I was challenged about what I have done or do to justify my bitterness towards fundamentalist religion (indeed, I’m bitter lately towards all religion). I expand my answer slightly from my conversation with my friend:

I try to educate others about the damage religion has done and continues to do.

I vote and donate to and eventually will campaign for the politicians that promote rational thought over faith-based “solutions”.

I try not to directly support, patronize or purchase from companies or organizations that directly promote religious-based ideologies – but I realize that that’s a near impossibility in a nation and a world that’s overwhelmingly theistic.

I know I could do more. I know my answer is inadequate. But hopefully, it’s a start.

Friday Night Cat Blogging 15

Smacky

Friday Night Cat Blogging!

Smacky, hiding that he’s trying to get close to me, hiding in my bed (see how he blends in with the other black clothes?):

And Smacky, later, eschewing consciousness, curled up in the blanket on my couch:

…and here’s some more!

Don’t forget to check out The Modulator’s Friday Ark for more cat, dog, and assorted animal blogging, and if you’re reading this on Sunday or later, check out the Carnival of the Cats, which is hosted this week at Ginasrantings!