Touch You Last

Once again this year, Isha and I ran the Nordion 10K. I’d like to say we were as ill-prepared as we could be, but that might be over-stating it just a little. We’d trained somewhat, running intermittently over the past two months, but we got lazier the closer we came to the race time. Another big mistake was that neither of us had run a distance even approaching ten kilometers at any time over the past year. So we’re hurting pretty bad today. I iced my knees about eighty times, and Isha said that she felt like a sack of hammers this morning. But for all the not running, we only came in one minutes later than last year . And we were way more prepared last year. So, kids: training is for suckers. The highlight this year came around the six kilometer marker. There was a guy in a gorilla suit holding a framed canvas with an old shoe glued to it. All of the runners going by were encouraged to touch the shoe. For luck? Speed? Endurance? Dunno. I do know that we booted over fro...

We're in Rutland , Vermont for the annual May Two-Four Cross-Boarder Shopathon . Rutland itself isn't really a shopping hotbed, but it's got a good hotel and is only about a forty minute drive from Manchester (where all kinds of shopping sexytime can be found). I usually lose my mind after the first three stores, but I actually enjoyed the whole day--possibly because I picked up a ton of great stuff for me. At this point though, I already have everything I came for, and we have another commerce-filled day ahead tomorrow. So I'm gonna be hating everyone and everything about eighteen hours from now. My purchases today included kick-ass new team shirts for our OSSC team, XXH. The Wunderdogs are no more. We'd garnered a bit of a reputation last season (for being too goddamn attractive, frankly) so we're rebranding . We are now Double Extra Hard . Which means absolutely nothing. Well, we liked it because it sounds vaguely dirty, and because XXH would look pret...

What can I say? It’s good to be away once in a while. Sorry to borrow the old ‘too many balls in the air’ metaphor, but I’ve been juggling a lot of things of late and it was nice to set just one thing aside. This is, I think, the first time I’ve ever been away for an entire month. What have I been up to? Work was crazygonuts busy for a month and a half after we got back from the cruise. It’s calmed significantly since and is actually manageable now… but I'm sure I’ve just jinxed it just now by saying as much. I’ve been teaching myself some of that crazy CSS that the kids are so big on these days. I scored Web Design in a Nutshell from the library, and it’s been a strangely compelling read. It was all theory and no practice at first… until I scored a little web design project to work on. I’m hoping to launch the site in about a week’s time, and after that I can turn my efforts to the old Touch You Last shack. More recently, we’ve been on the road. We drove back to Georgetown this ...

Despite what you might expect, this isn’t simply about doing the dishes. I actually do wash the dishes, after each meal, even. (And Sarah does the cooking. It’s part of this whole division of labour thing I got roped into.) The problem is that I’m not a real attention-to-details kind of guy. I don’t half-ass it, but I’ve been known to three-quarter-ass it on occasion. Which means I’m not also so good at getting all the crud off the dishes. I swear that I don’t know that I’m doing it when I’m doing it. I don’t see that half brick of cheese caked on to the plate. I overlook that chunky bit of whatever that gets trapped in the bottom of the glass. I’ll let Sarah correct my if I’m overstating these stats here, but I think that five dishes out of six come out okay, but that sixth dish always seems to end up with shmeng on it--which I don’t see until it’s been on the drying rack for half a day. And this isn’t a new phenomenon. I remember Brady pointing this out to...

I think the fittest I’ve ever been was between 2000 and 2002, and I’ve always held that up as my gold standard (in contrast to my current, corpulent self). The problem wit h striving to reach that level again is that a lot of different factors conspired to make that possible, and it’s a confluence that will never happen again. I was running then. A lot. There were a few 10Ks and one half marathon, and it seemed like I was always training for something. And when it was too cold to run I was a fairly steady gym goer. But this was all because I had loads of time on my hands. I was living in Georgetown with my parents, and for two of those years Sarah was still going to school in Guelph . Also, all but about three of my friends had moved from town by then, so a lot of my nights were free. Generally speaking, I was fit because I was constantly exercising because I didn’t have anything better to do. Since then, I’ve been totally unable to keep up any kind of regular fitness regime...

Okay, so I’ve been away from this project for a while. But I intend to finish what I started. (Total side note: I was thinking the other day about what a person would have to go through if one day they decided to finish everything they’d ever started. Every home reno project that had been half-assed, any race never finished or diet not seen to completion, every fistfight that was broken up, every relationship that was thwarted. I’m releasing that idea out into the ether. If anyone wants to script a rip-off of My Name is Earl, there’s your story basis right there.) Change Four: Keep in Touch With People More I go through cycles of being really good at this and pretty bad at this. I’m currently in a bad cycle that seems like it’s gone on for years. For those of you who this applies to—and you know who you are—it’s not something I do because of apathy or because I’m a jerk or because I want you to call me first, I’m just the type of guy w ho puts things off. “I have to call Brady ...

(Alternate title: I Regret Nothing!) So it was a Movie Marathon first last night: we threw in the towel two movies shy of the end. I'm not ashamed and I'm not disappointed by this. Two things killed us. First, lots and lots of shoveling. Second, the movies playing during that critical 3am - 6am timeslot were terribly dull (more on that later). It stop being fun and started being work, and everyone was dying to just go to bed, so I called it a night. We missed Footloose, which we've all seen, and Hedwig, which is actually a shame but I have no doubt I made the right call. As for the rest: Bloodsport - Best marathon opener yet. Everyone was hyper, and on, and we just really enjoyed it. This movie is the template for so many martial arts movies that followed. Secret tournament, combatants with different backgrounds and fighting styles, and the hero wins. Excepting Timecop and that movie where he played twins, every Jean-Claude Van Damme movie since this is just Bl...