Gotta love that headline...

CNN.com - Wife, closeted lover guilty of husband's murder

I'm sure the inmates at whatever prison Mr. Rocha-Perez serves his sentence will be happy to learn that the new fish is "closeted".

Who knew?

Certainly not me. I had no idea that Locusts had a spring break. Or that they took it in Cancun in September. I guess they wanted to avoid the guys taping "Girls Gone Wild."

Frickin' sweet!

Just what I need...Pong on a keychain. Thanks, OhGizmo!

It's good to be Willie

So Willie Nelson gets pulled over in Louisiana with 1.5 pounds of pot and 3 oz. of mushrooms and gets off with a misdemeanor.

Why do I think if it had been Snoop Dogg that penalty might have been a bit higher?

Um...what?

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal:

"An arbitration panel today reinstated Cedarburg High School science teacher Robert Zellner, who was fired by the school district after it discovered he had viewed pornographic material on his school computer.

School Board President John Pendergast said the arbitrator determined that the firing was improper because the school district had only reprimanded another teacher who had viewed stock quotes from a school computer. " (emphasis mine)

OK, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a sizeable difference between a teacher checking out hot naked chicks (or hot naked dudes...doesn't really matter either way) and one checking on his shares of Netflix? Yeah, I thought so...

20 miles

So back when I started on this epic treck to run a marathon I was focused on today. Well, actually I was focused on yesterday, but mainly because I didn't read the plan right.

Why the focus on today? Well, because today capped the peak week of training: 40 total miles, 20 of them today. Back in March 26 miles 385 yards was almost inconceivable. That was something you drove, or maybe rode a bike, not something you ran. So instead I focused on the peak of the training, 20 miles.

20 miles was something I could understand. Back when I was a Boy Scout I hiked 20 miles in a day (ok, technically it was more than a day - maybe 26 or 28 hours - but it was also more than 20 miles because we kind of got lost. And stuck in two or three white-out blizzards. And had to sleep on a logging road in plastic tube tents for 2 or 3 hours until it got light enough to keep on hiking...), and I've biked 20 miles repeatedly. 20 miles is the distance from my house to my Mom's house, roughly. It's home to work and back. It's a nice round number without any "385 yards" tacked on to confuse you.

But still...could I actually run that far? In March the farthest I'd ever run was 10 kilometers, and that was when I was 14. But I read the plans - work up to a 10k in May, go from that in to the Marathon plan and ramp up to 20 miles on September 10th - and figured "yeah, I can do that."

And today I proved that yes, I can indeed. Now, granted, I didn't truly run 20 miles, I probably only ran about 18 because my pace is to run a mile, then walk for a minute or so and have a drink, then run another mile. This makes the whole thing more digestible: I'm not running 20 miles, I'm running one mile 20 times.

So, what's it like to run 20 miles? Well, here's a recap (roughly):

Saturday evening
7:00 eat a big wad of spaghetti and drink a 20-oz bottle of Lemon-Lime Gatorade (the original and still champion).

10:00 Go to bed early but don't fall asleep until 10:30 or 10:45.

Sunday morning:
5:30: get up, dress, eat one packet of Quaker Apples and Cinamon Instant Oatmeal and a banana - the breakfast of champions

6:15 or so: pack up (bottle belt, wallet, keys, phone, mini-cooler with 3 bottles of gatorade, 2 Clif bars and a second banana) and drive to the office (downtown Seattle)

6:30: park, go up to office, fill water bottles with 1) water and 2) Orange Gatorade, load pouch of belt with phone, ID, credit card, bus pass and one Clif bar.

6:45: final restroom break, Albuterol hit (I had asthma as a kid and the doctor suggested I use an inhaler before I ran...this was back in February or March when it was cold and I was just starting training, but I figure it worked then and it won't hurt now), and 2 ibuprophen to fend off minor aches and pains (better running through chemistry, I say)

7:00 hit the road. The route I took was this, a portion of the Seattle Marathon course. I ran a similar route two weeks ago when I did 18, but with a couple differences I'll outline below in the mile-by-mile recap.

Mile-by-mile recap:

1. Mostly downhill on 2nd avenue through downtown Seattle. My left calf has been sore and tight all week, and today was no exception. Not enough to make me stop, just enough to be annoying.
2. Mostly uphill from around Seahawks Stadium to Rainier Avenue South. The least pleasant leg of the run is now over, as the armies of homeless men in Pioneer Square are now behind me.
3. Up through the I-90 bike tunnel under the Mt. Baker neighborhood and out the other side to a beautiful view of the sun over Lake Washington. It's now roughly 7:40.
4. A little over half way across the I-90 floating bridge. It's approaching 8 on a Sunday morning and the bike dorks are starting to come out. I'm passed by 8 or 9 groups - mostly small, 2 or 3 - of spandex-clad Lance Armstrong wannabes.
5. Up to the Mercer Island Lid and the first restroom break of the run. Also time to crack in to the Clif bar. I'm 1/4 of the way done and the legs feel pretty good.
6. A half-mile loop on top of the Lid, then back down on to the bridge. More bike dorks go by, as does a never-ending river of cars.
7. Back at the west end of the floating bridge. Time to walk down the stairs to the lake.
8. Coleman Park, about half way between I-90 and the Stan Sayer's Pits (home of the SeaFair Hydroplane race). Second restroom break, top off the water bottle, add some water to the Gatorade bottle, eat some more Clif bar. When I ran 18 miles 2 weeks ago I turned around here, then ended up tacking on another mile or two at the end because I shorted myself...live and learn!
   
9. Stan Sayer's Pits, the turn-around point for the southern leg of the route. Stretched out a bit, then headed back North. Lots of runners over the last 2 miles, including three pushing jogging strollers. Two of the stroller people were grouped together, the woman pushing a single kid, the man pushing two. I'm assuming they're together, and I'm impressed that anyone would try to go jogging with triplets.
10. It's around 9:00, I'm half way done and back at Coleman park. I don't bother stopping, just drink a bit, eat a bit, and walk past. I'm feeling pretty good considering I've just covered 10 miles. But then, it's mostly been flat, and I know that the next 10 are more hilly.
    
11. Continuing north past I-90 and up toward Leschi. Just as I hit mile 11 and stop to walk I'm passed by a massive peleton of bike dorks. Lake Washington Blvd. is a particular favorite of the bike dork breed, and these were parading by in true dork fashion: most in matching spandex outfits, riding 2 abreast and blocking traffic. Dorks.
12. Up through Leschi to Madrona. This part of Lake Washington Blvd. isn't quite as peaceful and pleasant as the portion south of I-90...more people, more cars, more coffee shops.
13. Mile 13 takes me past Curt Cobain's house (the one he shot himself in...or, if you believe some people, the house someone murdered him in), a bunch of other rich people's houses, then up some brutal switchbacks toward the Arboretum. I've ridden my bike up this hill before, and I dare say I think it's easier to run it. It still hurts, but in a different way.
    
14. After the big hill it's relatively flat for a bit, then down hill in to the Arboretum. I'm now running on busy roads, which isn't all that pleasant. Actually, now that I think about it, the only not busy roads have been downtown (not a lot of people out at 7:00 on a Sunday morning) and south of I-90. Luckily, that's all about to change...
15. Up Interlaken Avenue and in to Interlaken park. Interlaken is narrow, windy, and up hill. For the 18-mile run I took another street a block farther north that was straighter and less hilly...in fact, it ran down hill for about 2 miles. That was great, until I had to climb an incredibly steep hill to get back on the route...this week, I don't make the same mistake and am rewarded with a trip through a park I didn't know existed.
    
16. Another mile and I'm out of Interlaken Park, which is a shame. This park basically winds across the north end of Capital Hill. I'm assuming that Interlaken Blvd. or Interlaken Avenue used to run through the whole park, but at some point they cut it off to vehicle traffic. It runs through a deciduous forest and across a couple nice ravines, and the trees drown out most of the noise of the city. I think I saw a grand total of six people over two miles.
17. In to the home stretch. Mile 17 takes me parallel to I-5 until I get to the Lakeview Blvd. overpass. I ran this on the 18-miler, and it's not a lot of fun...slow grade, some traffic, not a lot of shade. My legs are tired, my feet hurt, and I want to be done. But I've got 3 miles to go.
18. Down across I-5 to Eastlake, then a turn down Republican in to the "South Lake Union" neighborhood that Paul Allen is paying to spruce up. Another area that's not really running-friendly, but since it's Sunday morning (although it is getting later...probably 10:30 or 10:45) there isn't much traffic out which means I can run through a few lights. This is a very good thing, because the sore legs really don't like stopping. Walking is OK, but stopping is bad. And running in place isn't much better.
19. Up through Beltown, heading back toward the office. I'm now chanting a mantra of how many miles I have left. The only problem is I know the GPS is going to cut out any moment as I get closer to down town...it doesn't like the tall buildings (or tunnels or trees either...my automatic 1-mile lap alarm reset from on the mile to on the mile-point-12 when I went through the I-90 bike tunnel between miles 2 and 3) and I'm sure I'm going to be short on distance if I go straight to the office. See, I didn't exactly follow the course outlined in Wayfaring, instead cutting up Bell. So I call an audible (kind of a grunt, probably) and decide to head up 4th to the Seattle Public Library, then loop back down to the office. This will give me a nice down hill cool-down, which sounds good since my legs and feet are dead.
20. Done! The last mile is actually not completely bad. There are a lot of people down town, so I have to dodge them, but I make almost all the lights. The cool-down from the library back to the office works perfectly, and I'm actually able to stretch the pace for the last 2 or 3 blocks, or roughly the last 385 yards of today's run. Which is good, because I'd like to be able to finish strong in the marathon rather than wimpering and crawling across the finish line. We'll see if it happens!

11:30: Back at the office, drink another gatorade (fruit punch, I believe), eat a yoghurt and stretch. Then back to the car, drive home (drinking another gatorade and eating a banana on the way).

12:00: brief ice bath to cool and soothe the legs and feet, shower off the stink, then collapse on the couch to watch the Seahawks game on the DVR. Not as relaxing a game as I might have liked, but at least they won...

So, there you have it. Probably more info than you wanted, but it's good to get it out of my head!

Running for a cause

So you know I'm running a marathon, right? I believe I mentioned something about that here... Well, I recently found out that I could combine the agony of 26 miles 385 yards of running with the joy of raising money for a good cause, the Oregon Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Why Make-A-Wish? Because the Arizona Make-A-Wish Foundation provided great opportunities to my nephew when he was fighting Hodgkin's Disease a few years ago. Where other kids with cancer ask to go to Disneyland or something, Robbie wanted to learn to fly a plane. And in spite of the fact that no one had ever asked for such a thing before, Make-A-Wish made it happen. He's now cancer-free, and he's still flying. Pretty cool thing. Oh, and they got him a tour of a local Air Force base so he could have this super-sweet picture taken, which is also a pretty cool thing.

My goal is to raise $2,000, which is a bit more than we raised for the MS Society last year. But then, last year I was riding a bike 30 miles through the woods for the 15th time...this year I'll be running 26 miles 385 yards through the streets of Portland for the first time (heck, before I started training the farthest I'd run was a 10k when I was 14 or so), and I think that's worth a little more of your hard earned cash.

To make it easier, you can give via credit card on line. All the donations will be processed via ActiveGiving's secure credit card processing services...you can visit the Active Network's Privacy Policy and User Agreement if you have any questions about whether they'll sell your info to anyone.

And speaking of passing it along, the more help the merrier, so please feel free to forward this on, post it in your blog, or otherwise get the word out.

Thanks in advance for your support!

Scott

Vietnamese police dispatch dildo-sniffing dogs to Chinese border

"Police and market inspectors Thursday confiscated the illegal shipment, which included more than 10,000 tablets of Viagra, sex toys and sexual stimulants in the form of tablets, powder and liquid hidden in a truckload of onions, the Laborer newspaper said."

And how could they have found them without the aforementioned dildo-sniffing dogs?

Chinese sex toys confiscated in Vietnam

Headline of the week

Officials: Man says penis pump is a bomb - Yahoo! News

"Honest, Mom, it's not mine...I don't know how it got in my luggage!"

A parade I'm sorry to miss...

Topless porn stars on motorcycles. What's not to like?

A different way to pedal porn... - Yahoo! News

My next car

It's little, it's electric, it goes 40 miles an hour. Which means it will get me to the park and ride! It's the ZAP Xebra Electric Vehicle and it's coming to a town near you.

Oh, and it comes in other colors than Xebra stripes, too...

Some not surprising poll results

Although I am a bit surprised that 50% of the Americans surveyed knew that Tony Blair was the Prime Minister of England...

Current events dwarfed by pop culture

Forget the body armor...

Breast implants saves woman after Hezbollah attack

A quick photo

Can't do the big "what I did on summer vacation" post yet (it's late and I'm sleepy...maybe tomorrow or Saturday), but here's a brief tidbit to get things started...

So, two nights ago we stayed at the "Crystal Springs Hot Springs and Water Park" in Honneyville, UT (just north of Bringham City...which is north of Ogden, which is north of Salt Lake City). And there, we found this little specimin:



Yes, that's a dragonfly. And yes, he's (she's? Don't know enough about dragonflies to know) dead. Where, you ask? On the floor of the men's room in the camp ground.

The reader board at the Crystal Springs Hot Springs and Water Park read "105 years old and still hot!" And, I might add, 105 years old and looking it.

The campground was great - grassy, trees, no heavy exterior lighting - but the "hot springs and water park" were, um, skeezy. The slide (there were two, but one was broken) was great - not too fast if you didn't use the foam mat, insanely fast if you did - but the pools were, shall we say, suspect. The main "swimming pool" apparently had broken or clogged skimmers, 'cause there was all kinds of junk floating in it. And they were all filled with natural spring-fed mineral water, whihc means one thing: cloudy. So you couldn't really see what it was you were stepping on on the bottom until you brought it up with your feet and found it was a koosh ball. Or the lid from a soda cup. Or something else you really wish you hadn't stepped on or looked at.

The hot pools were a bit better, but mainly because we weren't expecting them to be a swimming pool (we were spoled on pools by the Fort Collins Mariott's indoor-outdoor pool with the swim-under wall feature). The water was warm in the big one - maybe 90 or 92 - but insanely hot by the jet things - more like 120 or 130. The hottest of the pools overall was probably closer to 110 - hot, but not scalding.

You can get an idea of the cloudiness of the water in this picture from their own web site...

Anyhow, more on the trip when I get time...

Word of the day: Lactivist

Lactivist: a proponent of breast feeding.

According to this story on CNN's web site, "Babytalk" magazine is being bombarded with hate mail because they ran a this cover photo of a baby nursing. Shocking, I know.

For the record, I suppose I'm a lactivist. The wife nursed both kids until they were eating solids (our son for just about 2 years, the daughter a bit less since she took to food faster). She nursed wherever we went, very discreetly, and we only had one problem (an elderly usher in the old Kingdome who told her she'd have to move to the "family section"...this was AFTER the game was over, and there were about 10 people in the entire section. Ol' Eagle Eye spotted her nursing from the aisle and yelled up at us (we were probably 15 rows up), calling far more attention to the activity than if he'd just kept his pie hole shut).

But what strikes me about the CNN article is this quote:

"'I'm totally supportive of it -- I just don't like the flashing,' she said. 'I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see.'"

Mam, I think I speak for every straight male when I say there is just about NO breast we don't want to see. At least not of nursing age...

Sorry, Steggy...

No more chants of "Steg-A-Saur-Us!" at Safeco Field, becuase the Mariners DH Carl Everett has been designated for assignment.

Why "Stegasaurus?" Well, because Carl doesn't believe the dinosaurs existed. So what better nickname? Besides, he's kind of spikey.

Sorry, Steggy...

No more chants of "Steg-A-Saur-Us!" at Safeco Field, becuase the Mariners DH Carl Everett has been designated for assignment.

Why "Stegasaurus?" Well, because Carl doesn't believe the dinosaurs existed. So what better nickname? Besides, he's kind of spikey.

First trip to the Podiatrist

Haven't posted in forever, so here's a big 'un...

Yes, I'm clearly getting old, 'cause I had to go to the podiatrist today. No, he's not the one with the rubber glove and the KY, that comes after I'm 45, I think. He's the guy with the foot models and lots of shoes all over the office.

So the story goes something like this: Back when I was a kid I was prone to do stupid things like jump off monkey bars. One day, playing tag on said monkey bars, I violated rule number 1 of bar tag, "no touching the ground." Then I violated rule number 2, "don't get hurt." See, in a dodge to avoid being tagged I jumped backward off the bars and, to quote my current self (since I'm sure I didn't use such words at the tender age of 10 or whatever), "twisted the shit out of my ankle." Like to the point of requiring a cast.

So, fast forward about, oh, 25 years or so and it's 2000. I've had weak ankles on both sides pretty much since the Bar Tag Incident and, being a relatively smart and financially independent person, have purchased a pair of industrial-strength ankle braces to wear while playing softball. These are the good ones...steel ribbing, laces, they look like thoroughly unsexy ankle corsets. I'm playing a co-ed game and hit a weak line drive to the outfield. Being an idiot, I attempt to stretch a single in to a double, then decide to slide far too late.

The result? Well, as your basic physics text book will tell you, a body in motion will want to stay in motion. And, as a corolary, mass plus velocity equals pain. Especially when the lead foot hits the base, the cleat grabs the base, and the mass of the body continues to slide past the base, folding the ankle over.

Thanks to the ankle corset nothing broke, but I did have another case of "sprained the shit out of the ankle." No cast this time, but it never really healed completely. Or, rather, it did but was weaker than before.

Fast forward another 6 years and, as you are no doubt aware, I'm now in Marathon Training mode. As the milage increases I realize something interesting: when I run on the right side of the road my right ankle (the one that was hurt in 2000) starts to ache after a mile or two. If I run on the left side of the road it doesn't. It doesn't take a master's degree in rocket surgery to realize that the road is humped, and when I'm running on the right side the road is sloping down to the right, subtly rolling my ankle outward, the direction of the injury. On the left the ankle is rotated inward, which doesn't hurt. Naturally, I begin running exclusively on the left side of the road.

Unfortunately, while that plan is great for training, I can't guarantee that during the 26 miles 365 yards of the Portland Marathon I'll be able to exclusively run on the left. So I check with a friend who's also a runner, she says "you should get Orthotics", and voila I'm in the chair having my feet examined.

To the doctor's credit, he didn't say anything about all the gnarly calouses and excess skin on my feet. He did, however, say "yeah, you need orthotics, and it's going to cost you about $500." Swell.

He did, however, explain my new and previously mysterious foot pain! Ever since going to Cub Scout camp a couple weekends ago (after running 12 miles one Saturday morning I packed up the boy and headed off for 4 days in the woods with a bunch of 8 - 10 year-olds) I've been getting pain in my heels and along the outside of my foot. It's at its worst the day I run (especially on days I run before work, where I can't just sit on the couch with my feet up), and I noticed that the outside of the foot hurt if I tried to do things like open a drawer with my foot (what can I say, I don't like to bend over...). Well, as the good doctor explained, there's a big ol' tendon that runs from the heel up to the tarsal or metatarsal that keeps your foot in place, and I've been stretching it out. So it gets sore. Which means...I need orthotics.

Amazing how it all comes back to the $500 foot gear...

Another study I'm glad I wasn't a part of

Moms Prefer Smell of Their Own Baby's Poop

What kind of sick mind decided to study this one?

"In a new study, 13 mothers were asked to sniff soiled diapers belonging to both their own child and others from an unrelated baby. The women consistently ranked the smell of their own child's feces as less revolting than that of other babies.

This effect persisted even when the diapers were purposely mislabeled."

Apparently there are plenty of these studies going around:

"The finding is among the latest in a series of studies suggesting that humans can determine biological relatedness through body odor. Another recent study found that mothers more accurately identify and prefer the smell of their biological children over that of stepchildren."

That could explain the whole Cinderella thing, I suppose...

Big Dig tunnel collapse

And Mayor Gridlock wants to replace the Alaska Way Viaduct with a "cut and cover" tunnels...why? Sure, it's probably a fluke, but really. I already spend most of each drive across the viaduct worrying about an earthquake dropping me 100 feet to street level (or sandwiching me between decks first, then dropping 40 feet to the street). I don't want to spend time thinking about bolts breaking and dumping 20 tons of concrete on my head.

Besides, the People's Waterfront Coalition has a pretty good vision of what things might look like if we blew up the viaduct and replaced it, not with a tunnel, but with a wide surface-level roadway similar to San Francisco's Embarcadero.

So where will the cars go? Well, if Mayor Gridlock hadn't killed the Monorail I'd say they could ride that. But he did, so that's out. My feeling is that people will adapt. After all, even if we build the cut-and-cover boondoggle tunnel there will be several years without either a Viaduct or a tunnel option, and I seriously doubt the city will grind to a halt. Sure, we'll bitch a lot, but we do that anyway. By replacing the Viaduct with a 6-lane surface street with well-timed lights and (hopefully) some pedestrian sky bridges we'll significantly cut down the amount of time the main artery is gone, as well as saving all the money that was going to be pumped in to digging the tunnel. That cash can then go to fixing the sea wall, creating parks and walking spaces, and generally making the waterfront something other than an orphaned tourist-trap.