Too much life, not enough writing

Whew!

Been busy lately, and I have had lots of experiences and events to blog about, but just haven’t had the time.

Moved into a new apartment two weeks ago.

Saw the movie “Coffee and Cigarettes” — very funny. Any movie that has appearances by both Bill Murray and a Tesla coil (built by Jack White of the White Stripes!) gets a thumb’s up by me. “So, Jack, aren’t you going to tell me about your Tesla coil?”

Threw a housewarming party for myself last weekend, had a great time. Used my Nalgene bottle as a margarita shaker and now it smells like tequila! Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Although I was under the impression that Nalgene bottles never pick up a smell that couldn’t be washed out. When the party rolled out into the street and I woke the neighbors cracking the 8′ bullwhip I’d picked up in Mexico last Christmas I knew that this was one of the best parties I’d ever thrown. There will be more, oh, yes.

Hmm… could do a review of “The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell. A friend lent it to me when she found out I was an atheist. OK, I don’t know that the two thoughts were connected in her mind, but she did mention my “beliefs” when loaning it to me. It was a surprisingly well-written novel about a Jesuit expedition to another planet for a first contact with an alien species… or two… Thought-provoking. But I don’t want to spoil my coming conversation with my friend about this (are you reading, Anna?) so I’ll say no more for now.

My PC won’t frickin’ boot up. Just clicks through the speakers. I’ve tried troubleshooting it and have had no success. Sucks. Looks like either the power supply, the motherboard, or the processor is blown. Happened after the lightning storm earlier this week, although I’m sure that’s a coincidence. I powered it down and unplugged it during the storm just because I didn’t want anything to happen to it. Grumble, grumble. Now I have to build me a new PC. Oh, well, my trusty iBook is still up and running… (What? Me, tempting fate? I don’t believe in fate, remember?)

I’ve gained 5 lb since the party. Weird. Probably just a random fluctuation. It’s dropping back to what it was before, though. If it went up and stayed up for a while I’d be more worried.

Vitamins do help my running. Guess I have to start watching my actual nutrition, not just calories.

Went to a book reading at Powell’s by Davy Rothbart, of Found Magazine and it was so very very funny. Davy is a guy who finds things; photos, tossed-away notes and letters, personal items… and he scans them or takes pictures and puts them in his magazine. It’s funny and sad, seeing into random people’s lives and the stuff they write, never knowing the whole story, or even whether the intended recipient received the note or not. Davy’s brother also sang two songs based on items that appeared in Found — one song had me (and, apparently, only me) laughing uproariously, which only made it funnier. I could write so much more about that reading… that deserves a full post.

Shit. So much stuff, so much rich material… and I have to turn them into bullet points. Each one of those things deserves a full post all by itself. It’s funny; when I had almost nothing going on in my life, I had lots of time to write but not a lot to say. Now that I’ve got a much fuller life, I have no time to document or create stories. Paradox.

Ray

Ray Charles passed away today, at the age of 73.

I’m listening to “Shake A Tail Feather” from the Blues Brothers movie soundtrack in tribute, on repeat. It’s the only thing of his I’ve got on my iPod.

C’mon, sing it with me…

{ lead voice, keys, solo }
“Well, I heard about the fella you’ve been dancing with
All over the neighborhood
Well, why didn’t you ask me, baby?
Or didn’t you think I could?

{ band joins in }

Well I know that the Boogiloo is out of sight
but the shingaling she’s paying tonight
but if that were you and me haughty baby
I would have shown you how to do right!
Do it right, ( ah ha ), do it right
Do it right, ( do it right ), (( do it right ))

(( Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! ))

(( Twisting, shake-it shake-it shake-it shake-it baby ))

(( Heaven go loop-dee-loop )), shake it up baby

(( Heaven go loop-dee-li ))

{ low } Bend over and let me see you shake your tail feather

{ mid joins } Bend over and let me see you shake your tail feather

{ All } Come on and let me see you shake your tail feather
Come on and let me see you shake your tail feather
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

{ repeat chorus }
Come on! Come on baby!
Come on-on, yeah come on baby
Alright, do the twist
Do the fly, oh!
Do the swim, ha ha ha
and do the bird
Wo do the jerk
and do the monkey
Hey hey The Watusi
and uh what about the fool
Do the mash potato!
What about the boogiloo
Or the phoney moroney
Come on and do the twist
(( Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! ))
Twisting, shake-it shake-it shake-it shake-it baby
Twisting, skake-it shake-it shake-it shake-it baby

Mentally succeeding

After the thunderstorm passed last night, I went out for a run. I planned on doing the Three Park Run, 3.5 miles. I know, I know, I ran the day before and I probably shouldn’t run two days in a row. But the Sunday run was out of sequence for me and I wanted to get back to the proper every-other-day sequence. Which is one reason I ran after work, not before — more than 24 hours since my last run.

I didn’t have high hopes for this run, considering my fear that I run for shit in the afternoon. But, I have been taking vitamins (a multi, a Super B-complex, a C, and a calcium and potassium supplement), plus I wasn’t going for speed, just endurance. I wanted to go the distance. I wanted to finish without walking.

And I did it! I now have a mental success to counter my fear. I only had to stop running and walk when traffic forced me to. I did the run in the opposite route of before: first towards Johnson Creek Park, then through Westmoreland, then uphill to Sellwood Park and back home. I have no idea what my time was; it felt like slower than a 10:00 pace. And I was afraid the thunderstorm (or at least the rain) would come back — it didn’t.

I also added push ups and sit ups to my routine. I’m going to track how many I can do, and do them every day. I went rock-climbing (indoors, at the Portland Rock Gym) on Saturday and I found I have very little upper-body strength. Gotta work on that. Come to think of it, I haven’t been to the gym in weeks and weeks… that would help, too.

My weight peaked after my party on Saturday. Got up over 176 lb. and freaked me out. But it’s coming back down, and I’m relieved to discover that it was probably just water gain. Or at least liquid (beer, tequila, vodka, sake…). Today I’m back in the “zone” — 173.5.

Stupid rain

Stupid rain.

Stupid stupid rain, first it ruins my run this morning, then it ruins my one freakin’ day to goof off outside.

Stupid, stupid rain.

Not many miles

This week I was weak. I only ran 9.5 miles: 2 miles on Tuesday, 5.5 miles on Thursday, drank myself stupid on Friday (I planned that, by the way), tried to go bouldering on Saturday, ran just over 2 miles on Sunday (today).

I’ve stopped taking my vitamin supplements, and it seems obvious in retrospect that my lack of energy is tied to the lack of nutrition. I’ve started taking them again, and I’ll see how my exercise goes.

Two weeks until the Mt. Tabor Challenge. Hoo-boy, that’s going to be a killer.

Non-morning

I run better in the morning. I don’t know why. I just do. I’m so much stronger, able to just keep running, able to dissociate myself from thinking about what I’m doing, able to breathe properly.

I did two miles tonight. Not great, had to walk some, couldn’t breathe. Bah.

Now I’m sitting here, in the dark, bathed in the cool soft glow of my iBook’s screen, listening to Mr. Colin Molloy sing “Clementine”. I’m now a big fan of The Decemberists. The songs are literate, ironic, slightly twisted, and generally sad, even when the tune is upbeat and catchy.

OK, time for bed. G’night.

More motivation please

I need to run. I should be running right now. Two days ago I ran the “Three Parks” loop and nearly died, but managed to finish it with an absolute minimum of walking. Two days ago, I planned on getting up early today and running at least 3 miles. Then I went out with someone on Monday evening, and stayed out late, at least too late to get up at 4:30 AM today and be in any kind of shape, and so decided to run tonight after work. All day long I could feel my energy level dropping, and the excuses came out in my head: “Run tomorrow morning! It won’t change your schedule that much… You’re too tired to run. You don’t have to run 3.5 miles, you can just run 2 miles… don’t run, go home, go to sleep, you need it… if you don’t have dinner that’s the same, calorie-wise, as running… don’t run…”

Dammit. I’m not going to give in to the negative voices. I’m going. I’m already dressed for a run. I drank plenty of water. It’s a beautiful warm evening outside. I just have to get up from this couch and go out that door…

I’m going. See me go? I’m gone.

New home

All moved in. At least, all my stuff is here. None of it is where I want it to be, not to mention where I expect it to be.

But I’ve got InterWeb, and a bed for when I’m sleepy, and something to eat when I wake up, and clothes to wear. The rest will sort itself out in time.

Oh, but no music. I can’t remember how I had my iPod hooked up to my stereo. No music, no life. I want my music!

Qwest begins to piss me off

I hate moving.

I have been moving boxes of stuff out of my old apartment all day long, and yet it still looks like I live there.

Bah.

In other news, Qwest is still a pain in the ass. I decided, since I was moving, I wanted to pare down my phone bill a bit. I thought it would be nice to just have the cell phone, but keep my landline number (got to preserve that 503 area code, plus that way I wouldn’t have to change as much stuff on my checks and business cards). I figured it would be complicated, but since both my cell and my landline are through Qwest I figured it was at least feasible.

Sometimes I’m so naive.

So tell me if this seems overly complicated: They had to split the landline and the cell phone into two separate accounts, generating two different bills. For some arcane reason, that put a 24-hour hold on my account, where they were unable to make changes (like, for instance, putting in a request for the landline number to be switched to the cell phone, or disconnecting the landline number). Of course, 24 hours isn’t really twenty-four consecutive periods of 360 seconds; it’s doled out as “business days”, which, due to the looming Memorial Day weekend on which I had the misfortune of attempting this technological feat, means that they can’t touch my account again until Tuesday.

The phone rep, Devin, said that when he got back in the office on Tuesday, he would personally make sure that the order went in to “port” my number from landline to wireless. He repeated this several times, almost as if he were trying to reassure me that it would actually happen. Instead it had almost the exact opposite effect.

Let me rewind that for you, in case you missed it: Qwest, one of the pre-eminent telecom companies in the entire Free World, a telecom whose market capitalization on the New York Stock Exchange is over six and a half billion-with-a-B freakin’ United States Economic SuperPower dollars, has to have a flesh-and-blood human being make sure that an order for a phone number to be switched from one account to another. Gee, I can’t wait until they start using actual computers to do this stuff. That makes me feel real good, that, in this day and age of computerized automation that my billing and orders for new service are dependent on the memory of a minimum-wage phone monkey after a three-day weekend. Can you spell “nifty”? ‘Cause I sure can’t.

At any rate, assuming that the CSR remembers to put in the order to “port” my number after imbibing brewed hops and barley and meat cooked in sauce while watching highly specialized cars drive in circles all weekend, then it only takes another three or four days before the number is actually switched.

And then, and only then, can they, the mortal men and women dutifully slaving away while holding off the future automation of telecom services, disconnect my landline completely, probably by having some strong-backed soot-covered ape in the bowels of the Qwest headquarters’ machinery at 1801 California Street in Denver, Colo-freakin’-rado turn a giant metal wheel, thereby closing the massive steam-driven valve that will eventually result in shutting off the dial tone twelve thousand fifty-eight point six miles away, in my apartment in rainy south east Portland, Oregon. Maybe, if I’m feeling generous, I’ll call up CEO Barry Allen (Holy shit! Isn’t he the Flash? You’d think he’d know a thing or twelve about speed!) and casually mention to him that there are these things called computers, see, and even the slowest of them can calculate millions of times faster than a human brain…

New CIO

Hee, hee, hee!

I just ran out to the bathroom to change into my “I read your email” shirt… and when I came back, I walked right past Becky, the new interim CIO for Multnomah County, and she looked right at my shirt and gave me a vacant clueless smile, like she had NO IDEA what it meant.

Maybe she’ll ask me to remove it or cover it up for being offensive?