You Know Where to Find Me

Half a year?

2009-06-10T11:16:00.004-04:00

Wow, it's been almost half a year since my last blog post. Between Facebook and my Twitter account, I have not felt the need to post anything here, which it seems is happening with a lot of blogs these days.

So what has been going on for me during that time? Lots of crazy hours at work to get our massive project ready for production. As of a few weeks ago, I am finally off the project which I have been on my entire time at my current company, which is almost 4 years. While I will miss the comfort of being an expert at what I was working on, I am looking forward to new challenges and getting back up-to-date with current technologies (besides a little C#, my last project mostly involved internally developed frameworks and tools).

I am also still continuing with the running. I finally managed to eek out a personal best in a race last month (at the Cleveland Half-Marathon) breaking a string of not-so-great race results. I have another half-marathon coming up in a couple weeks that is part of my trip out west to Seattle and Portland. Following that, I am planning on running the Akron Marathon in the fall. I am also going to do my one annual 5K race again in a few weeks, the Ohio City 5K.

Besides that stuff, I have just being doing stuff around the house. Despite finally getting my big HDTV, I have not been permanently fixated in front of it but have managed to finish some small projects around the house and have jumped into the world of grilling. I think I have mastered the basics at this point, and now need to try doing something more advanced.

coming to an end

2008-12-29T21:33:00.003-05:00

This year is winding down, and I've been pretty bad at updating my blog. I recently started a Twitter account which, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is sort of like a mini-blog. So that has been fulfilling my need to tell the world the less-than-exciting details of my life. I also added a link along the right side of this blog ('my twitter') which you can expand to view my 5 most recent twitter posts.

I spent most of last week in St.Louis visiting my family. Nothing too exciting besides quality time with the fam. I did try 2 new beers which I thoroughly enjoyed. A big bottle of the Boulevard Long Strange Tripel which was excellent, along with STL's own Schlafly Christmas Ale, which I daresay I enjoyed more than the Great Lakes Christmas Ale (not to say that I'm not still a huge fan of GL and their lovely Xmas ale).

After returning home, I've been trying to offset the holiday binging with some quality workouts. I did 4 miles on Saturday in our lovely 65 degree weather (despite the puddles along the towpath), 6+ miles yesterday on the indoor track at the Twinsburg Rec Center, and 5.25 miles today on the treadmill at my work fitness center, in addition to some quality elliptical time. But of course we brought home a ton of cookies from Mom which I have been unable to avoid, so some of my workouts have been canceled out fairly soon afterwards. But the running will help me get ready to start my training program next month for May's Cleveland Half-Marathon which I've already registered for. Hopefully that will keep my butt moving throughout the winter, and not get as big as it might otherwise.

saved by old times

2008-11-12T21:38:00.003-05:00

First off, I just noticed this is post #300 for me. The posts have been kind of sparse as of late, but it is nice to reach a little bit of a milestone like that.

Kristy and I just returned for the North End and their Holiday Beer Dinner. It was a five course meal, with each course paired with a holiday beer. The menu was as follows:

1. Southern Tier Old Man Winter Ale w/ Homemade Pretzel with Dipping Sauces (a warm blue cheese sauce and a grainy mustard)

2. Anchor Christmas Ale 2008 w/ Shrimp Bisque

3. Winter Solstice Seasonal Ale w/ Venison, Beef, Duck Carpaccio

4. Troegs Mad Elf w/ Pork Medallions with Stuffing and Waldorf Salad

5. Bell's Winter White Ale w/ Pumpkin Creme Brulee

The food was all excellent with the highlights being the delicious Shrimp Bisque, which was served in a clear mug, and the Pumpkin Creme Brulee was amazing. It was like a soft, creamy pumpkin pie. As far as the beers, I enjoyed them all. I think my top was the Mad Elf, a very high ABV offering that is like a belgian strong dark ale, which I had sampled once before and am now definitely a fan (and I found out Troegs, although from nearby PA, is just now started to be distributed in NE Ohio). I also really enjoyed the Winter Solstice Seasonal Ale, an amber spiced winter ale from CA.

Overall it was a really fun event, sitting around with a bunch of beer snobs in a communal sort of environment (we shared a table with some strangers which actually worked out nicely), with good service and a great, knowledgeable host. I believe that I heard they plan to hold another event like this in January, which I will definitely be attending.

real american hero

2008-11-04T09:30:00.001-05:00

This morning I cashed in my extra hour from the time change on Sunday and woke up an hour earlier than usual (5am) in order to get out the door and go vote before work. Kristy & I made it up to the local polling place in Twinsburg by 6:15, at which point there was already a sizeable line even though things did not open until 6:30. It went fairly smoothly, though it always seems like more people than not are unsure as to which precinct they are in which leads to a lot of confusion. By the time I left, the line was probably over an hour wait for the bigger precincts, so I'm glad I rolled out of bed early.

It seems based on all of the polls that there will not be too much drama this year, but you never know. I'm hoping it does not end up being very close so that Ohio and other "battleground states" do not get thrown into the spotlight again for questionable practices and end up with tons of litigation. I am expecting there to be court orders to keep polls open late like there were in the previous election. As long as everything is sorted out and there is someone other than Bush in office during Janauary, I will be happy.

just because

2008-11-02T17:32:00.002-05:00

Another weekend is slowly winding down. Things started off with handing out Halloween candy at our house for the first time. Fortunately Kristy did some last minute stocking up, because our initial purchases would not have been enough to cover the large numbers of kids that came by. Strangely things suddenly ended around 7:20, and we had no one until 7:55, some teenagers of course, coming by in hopes of getting everything we had left (sorry kids, I get to keep some for myself). Afterwards, we headed down the street for a little get together one of our neighbors had stopped by to invite us to. We had only met them once before, during a summer "block party", and had gotten along but never followed it up with anything. But we were there for a few hours, had some food & beer and had a really good time. So this time we actually exchanged numbers and emails, so hopefully we will hang out again sometime in the not so distant future.

Saturday I kind of bummed around the house for most of the day, besides a trip to the fitness center to get in a four mile run. I only managed to run 67 miles in the month of October, so I'm hoping to beat that this month and lead into a strong finish to 2008 and a good start into 2009 with my running. My 1,000 mile goal is going to fall way short for the 2nd year in a row. Hopefully my third try will be the charm in '09. In the evening, we went out to dinner at Olive Garden (thanks to my coupon clipping and needing to use a gift card from last Xmas) followed by some furniture shopping in which we found what might be our future dining room table at Macy's. We then headed to Bricco in downtown Akron for a birthday gathering for one of Kristy's friends. It was a pretty cool place, though we had to stand around for over a half hour waiting for them to seat us despite our reservations. Since we had already eaten earlier, we just ordered some appetizers (scallops, and a tasty goat cheese/marinara dip with fried pita). I tried 2 new beers, the Bells Third Coast Old Ale and the Southern Tier Porter, both of which I really enjoyed, particularly the Bells. We also had front row seats to the line of people waiting to get into some "ultra lounge" night club next door for a day-late Halloween party. It seemed that sexy cop & schoolgirl were the choice outfits for the evening.

Today I did next to nothing besides going to the grocery store. Kristy is very under the weather, so I've been hanging out with her a good part of the day. I watched a bit of the Browns game unfortunately, and saw the last rays of hope fade on their season. Hoping this week brings some good news, such as a new President-elect much unlike the guy in office now, and hopefully some more stock market recovery like we saw last week.

no more birthdays

2008-10-27T20:51:00.004-04:00

It's been a while since my last post. In the meantime, I turned 30. It was a pretty good birthday, besides the shock of no longer being in my 20s. Kristy & I hit up Melt in Lakewood for some brews, grilled cheese, and deep fried twinkies. My birthday continued into the past week, as she scored tickets to see David Byrne, former singer of one of my all time favorite bands, Talking Heads. It was an awesome show (see review here) with many classics, a lot of energy, and a good crowd. David Byrne put on such a great performance, and it was a real show with dancers and a large band and such. Best show I've been to in a long time. And to round out my birthday, the past Friday we hit up the Fall Beer Fest as the Heinen's in Brecksville. 36+ craft & import beers, gourmet appetizers, cheese & sushi, and a crowd of beer snobs. It was a great event and I got to try many beers which I had never heard of, and found quite a few excellent brews that I hope to enjoy again sometime in the future. It is a great event for only $25, that I highly recommend to all Cleveland-area beer lovers, as I think they have one every 3 months or so.

Other than that, not too much going on. I was initially excited about this year's baseball playoffs, but never ended up watching any. I am very much looking forward to the election being over next week, as I am beyond sick of all things political. I've been hot and cold with my running lately. One week I'll be totally inspired and get in a few great runs, and the next week I'll struggle with getting in just one run for the week. Still trying to break out of this year-long running slump I'm mired in. But hey, I'm married now....I can just let myself go and get fat and out of shape, right?

empty seats

2008-10-04T07:34:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts. For the past couple of weeks, I've been semi-sick with a cold, which has been extremely annoying. I'm to the point where I almost hope I get full blown sick in hopes that it can finally go away then. These 30-degree temps at night haven't been helping me feel any better. I'm not ready for winter to begin the first week into October.

Kristy did awesome in her half-marathon last Saturday in Akron. She finished in 2:22, which is quite a bit under the 2:30 pace that she targeted with her training program. She is fairly happy with the result, and is already looking forward to her next one, which is still to-be-determined.

I've been trying to catch some of the baseball playoffs, though everything is a disappointment so far except for Tampa Bay. As much as I wanted CC & the Brewers to do well, I oddly ended up feeling slightly happy when I heard that he choked again. It would be a hard pill to swallow if he carried the Brewers on his back to the World Series after not showing up for the Indians last postseason.

Most of this weekend is going to be spent painting in the basement. Our basement is currently an eye-hurting shade of fluorescent green as it was apparently a children's play area for the previous owners. And with the first brush of paint, the conversion of the basement to man cave will begin. I already have what Kristy has termed the "man room", a large 4th bedroom which I've taken over as my office/tv room, but it's time I add a cave to my collection. She can have the rest of the house.

exact to me

2008-09-26T21:51:00.003-04:00

Well, I tried. Watching the presidential debate that is. I made it through about a half hour before I could no longer stand it. Both candidates were giving the same canned responses and arguments against the other that we've seen in news clips & commercials a hundred times already. Politics really make me sick, a feeling which has intensified greatly during this election, and all the crap that has been going down over the past week. I'm still going to vote, but it's sad that I can never really find someone to vote for that I like, I just vote more out of greater dislike for the other guy.

It is about my bedtime. Yes, 10pm on a Friday night, how lame. Normally I would stay up later (well, honestly just a little bit), but tomorrow morning my wife (a term I think I just wrote for the first time) is running her first half-marathon @ 7am tomorrow morning in Akron. So for the first time I will be a spectator at a running event, trying to find ways to amuse myself during the 2+ hours I have to stand around. But I am excited for Kristy and this event that she has trained for hard for over the past few months. I'm totally expecting to feel very weird being there tomorrow, not participating. Hopefully it will provide a spark of motivation to get me out of the current running funk in which I have found myself, and maybe I will be out there again competing next year, trying to break my personal best which I set on that same course a year ago.

Pardon me now as I have to go locate my cheerleader outfit to wear tomorrow. Go Kristy!

end of summer

2008-09-22T17:42:00.001-04:00

First pitch,
originally uploaded by thespacerace.

Yesterday, Kristy and I headed downtown for the final Indians home game of the season. It was bittersweet since we love going to games, and saw the Tribe win their 6th straight decision and move above .500 for the first time since May. But on the flipside, it was the final home game of a season of disappointment, a season that was so promising when we went to see them back on March 31st hammer the Sox, a season in which a number of experts picked them to win it all, and at the very least win the division, instead of finishing 3rd. Hopefully they can recover next year, especially since they have really turned things around the last few months and will most likely have lower expectations to meet.

Before the game, we hit up the Winking Lizard (since sadly GLBC is closed on Sundays), where I enjoyed a couple pints of Paulaner Oktoberfest, the draft special of the month. The weather for the game was awesome. Too bad it probably won't be anything like this next April when I hopefully make it to the opener again.

Saturday went by very fast. Kristy and I headed out to the park to run. Kristy did 11 miles for her last run before this Saturday's Akron half-marathon, which will be her longest run ever. I was dumb and went out and did my own half in rather sad fashion. My right hamstring started cramping in mile 9, but I struggled to the finish in a very bad time. So I am looking forward to being a spectator instead of a participant this Saturday. Hopefully I'll get back in shape someday and make my return to racing.

when i live my dream

2008-09-14T21:44:00.002-04:00

We returned late Friday from our honeymoon in Jamaica. It was a lot of fun, and 10 days was long enough to where you really felt away from everything and could let loose and enjoy yourself. It is the longest vacation I've ever taken, and I could get used to doing that more often.

So to use a very cliché saying, tomorrow feels like it is going to be the beginning of the rest of our lives. This weekend flew by, trying to get caught up, unpacked and ready to go back to work. So tomorrow it begins, the routine, going back to work, doing what we do like before, except married. I don't really feel different (besides this ring on my finger which I cannot stop fidgeting with), but tomorrow is really the start of our life together now that things are getting back to normal.

I will try to post soon about how much fun Jamaica was, along with more pictures from the honeymoon. We ended up being without internet access the last few days of the trip, which was actually sort of a good thing, because I didn't need to spend time doing the same thing I can do at home. I have posted a few more wedding pictures today, though I still need to get up ones from the reception. Also, in the mail we received a DVD from our photographer, Rob, with a slideshow of our wedding pictures, which I have posted as a video below:

Kristy & Brad wedding from Brad L on Vimeo.

Beer - hooray beer!

2008-09-03T13:46:00.001-04:00

Lounging in Jamaica,
originally uploaded by thespacerace.

Kristy & I are enjoying our first full day here in Jamaica after arriving late yesterday afternoon. We are staying at the Sandals Grande Ocho Rios resort in Jamaica. So far, everything has been nice though the humidity is taking a little getting used to since it has not been too bad back home this summer. But all the staff at the resort have been awesome, and the resort itself is beautiful. I am currently hanging out on the patio of our villa suite, as seen in the picture, overlooking our mini-pool. Kristy, as always much more ambitious than myself, is currently getting her run on at the fitness center while I sit back here enjoying a Red Stripe and getting caught up. Once she gets back, we are likely going to hit up the much larger resort pool (complete with swim-up bar), and eventually make our way down to the beach.

So far so good. We just had a little rain last night, but otherwise the weather has been beautiful. Now we just hope those pesky tropical storms that keep lining up in the Atlantic stay away until we make it back home.

start together

2008-09-01T22:15:00.001-04:00

Walking off into the sunset,
originally uploaded by thespacerace.

Well, yesterday was the big day and I am now officially a married man. The weather was awesome, our friends and family came out to be with us, and we had a great time. No drama, no fights, no fainting. We could not have asked for a better day. I've been a little short on time today, getting ready for our trip, but I posted a few pictures on flickr that my brother's girlfriend took, and there will likely be many more to come as other friends share theirs, and eventually the photographer's as well.

As far as Jamaica, we are going ahead tomorrow and are going to roll the dice and hopefully slip in between the hurricanes. It looks like Hanna is going to hit the U.S. and totally miss us, but now we have Ike that popped up today which looks like it might be headed our way.

another 48 hours

2008-08-29T12:23:00.003-04:00

Time is drawing near for the wedding, and the last two days have been very busy. My parents arrived in town Tuesday evening, so I've spent most of my time with them since their arrival. Yesterday, my Dad and I spent the entire day doing small projects around the house that I had not dared to attempt on my own since I moved in. Unfortunately, one of the projects, to tie up the drain line from the dishwasher, resulted in us causing a leak in one of the lines under the kitchen sink which ended up eating up most of our day and involving multiple trips to the local hardware store. But it was all fixed by the end of the day, and I'm feeling more comfortable with my role of homeowner after working side-by-side with an expert.

This morning, my Dad and I went and picked up our tuxedos and everything worked out except his jacket was a little small, but we should get a replacement by this afternoon. So far, everything is falling into place with the actual wedding. We are a little nervous about the tropical storms down in the Atlantic, but now that Gustav is moving towards the US, it looks like Jamaica might be safe for now. Fingers crossed.

Besides that, there are a couple of newish albums that I'm really enjoying as of late, the Fleet Foxes album & 'Sun Giant' EP, and the newest No Age album 'Nouns'. I'm also enjoying the Portishead album a lot as of late, which has taken a while to grow on me, probably because it is so different from what I had been expecting.

i know you, i knew you

2008-08-24T21:20:00.003-04:00

Wow, two posts in one day. I think that is a record. Well, after my first post today, I was bored, so instead of cleaning the house as I should have been doing, I decided to mess around with the template of my blog. So what you are seeing now (unless you're viewing me via RSS feed), is quite drastically different from what I had. After looking at what I had before, I realized it kind of gave me a headache after looking at it, between the bright colors, lack of organization, and just way too much going on. So the template, for now, is pretty minimalist. I found one that uses some cool (albeit simple) Ajax functionality to expand and collapse the sections along the right side. I make my living as a computer programmer after all, it's about time I have something geeky on my blog.

So there is still some tweaking that will be going on over the next month as I try to settle into my new template and try to make my blog more personal. While I am somewhat limited by the technological constraints of having a free Blogger blog, I want it to look like a little more effort was put into it than the millions of other cookie-cutter Blogger sites out there.

It is also worth noting that this week will mark 4 years since I started this blog. I've gone through some pretty long stretches with minimal posts, but overall I enjoy doing it, as it gives me a little bit of a creative outlet, and helps me stay connected with friends and make new connections. So hopefully there will be many more posts over the next year, and maybe even a fifth anniversary party...for me and all 5 or so of my regular readers.

So this blog and new design is a work in process, so any feedback, both positive and negative, is more than welcome. While I am a computer programmer, I am by no means a designer, so I'm kind of reaching around in the dark when it comes to stuff like this. So any advice would be warmly received. And thanks for reading and giving me a reason to keep up with this.

summer here kids

2008-08-24T13:01:00.004-04:00

The wedding is now a week from today. I will skip over the subject today except to note happily (for now) that the weather forecast looks good so far, though we all know forecasting weather is a pretty weak science that usually isn't reliable except for a few hours in advance. But for what it's worth, here is what the Weather Channel is saying for Sunday:

Just got back from lunch with Will & Tricia before their flight back to Portland. Very nice of them to make time for little old me. Fortunately last night's mini dinner party (I suppose it's not technically a dinner party when it's just one other couple) went off well, and while there were a couple bottles of wine consumed over the course of the evening, there was no pain to be felt this morning, at least for me. One very positive benefit of this whole wedding experience has been reconnecting with a lot of old friends who we've sort of lost touch with over time. We are both really looking forward to the reception next week where we get to hang out and celebrate with a bunch of people that are important to us. And given the small-ish size of it, we will hopefully be able to spend time with everyone.

Now I must leave to go make an attempt at a rain dance as my dying grass does not seem to respond as well to my sprinkler as it does to the sky opening up, and today is our only chance for rain over the next few days. While it has been a relatively mild summer here in NE Ohio, it's also been very dry, as evidenced by the brown yards all across my neighborhood.

my backwards walk

2008-08-23T12:09:00.003-04:00

This past week, I decided that I am going to skip running in this year's Akron Marathon. Instead, I am going to just be a spectator, cheering on Kristy as she runs her very first half-marathon. While I was doing pretty well with keeping up with my training plan, I just wasn't feeling it. Over the past year, my running has kind of plateaued, and I've really been struggling to break through and get to the next level. I'm not there yet, so I think it's better for me to just keep my race registration fee in my pocket this time around, and keep on pushing. I am not stopping my running though, and plan to continue going out Sunday mornings with Kristy to do long runs. But come September 27th, I'll be lacing up my shoes for the purpose of running around Akron with my camera to hopefully capture some pictures of Kristy.

Speaking of running around, the wedding is now 8 days away, and things are starting to get slightly hectic. There have been a few unexpected snags and things that have arisen over the past week to add to the already inevitable stress. We've definitely learned that no matter how small the wedding, there is still plenty to worry about. But we're trying to not let it get to us and enjoy this time in our lives. We're having another couple over tonight, which I believe will mark the first time I've cooked dinner for other people. Hopefully they enjoy my cooking as much as Kristy claims to. I'll be making one of my favorite dishes, Rigatoni with Sausage, Peppers and Onions from Giada De Laurentiis' "Everyday Italian".

things behind the sun

2008-08-20T20:51:00.003-04:00

T-minus 10 days and counting until my wedding next Sunday. Fortunately we have most everything squared away, so there is very little last minute rushing around to this point. A low freakout factor is a very good thing at this point. I had my quasi-bachelor party this past Thursday which amounted to a group of guys from work taking me out for drinks afterwork and then a few of us headed out to admire some shoe models. It was fun and pretty low key, which is good with me. Kristy had her party on Saturday, with dinner at Johnny Mangos followed by drinks at various bars in Ohio City.

I'm really looking forward to my parents coming next week to stay with us for a few days. It's been over two years since they moved away from here, and this will be their first time back, and the first time they will be seeing our new house. My Dad, the original handyman, will be helping me out with a few small projects around the house. Maybe he can help me erect a wall between me and my neighbor's house so I don't have to see them sitting out in their driveway barbecuing every night with a couple of the other hillbilly neighbors from up the street while their little children run around, screaming.

Meanwhile, I recently saw that Cleveland was named on Forbes' list of America's Fastest-Dying Cities. What a great distinction. As much as I enjoy living here, it's hard to read something like that and deny everything it says, especially when it comes to the hard economic facts. Despite the economic realities that our country has started facing over the past 20 years, which have hit this area particularly hard, I feel that Cleveland is a better place than it has ever been in the 29 years that I've been here. And now that I've started laying down some roots, I'm looking forward to being here to continue to see it change and improve.

Bye Bye Byrdie

2008-08-12T18:25:00.002-04:00

I was somewhat saddened this afternoon after reading that the Cleveland Indians finally managed to trade pitcher Paul Byrd. I wasn't excited when Byrd first came to town, and while he played in the shadows of CC, Carmona and Lee, he has put in a very solid effort the past couple of years. He just went out there every night and did his thing, and more times than not ended up winning somehow, including twice in the postseason last year. I will definitely miss that weird looking guy and his olde-timey pitching style.

As a good-bye to Mr. Byrd, I poured myself out a beer to enjoy and wish him well on his way to Boston. As much as I hate Boston, maybe he'll enjoy some success and maybe even get a chance at a ring. I didn't have any Boston beers, so the closest thing I could find was a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA from nearby Delaware. I've been trying to chronicle all the new beers I try at home on my Flickr account, which you can check out here. My good friend Will recently moved to Portland, so I am really looking forward to him scoping out the town and taking me on the grand tour of beer when I make it out to visit him. According to this article, Portland has more breweries (28) than any other city in the US, and possibly even the world. I might need to plan for a few extra days, depending on how many good ones he finds.

sleep walker

2008-08-09T22:16:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since my last post, as I've been keeping myself pretty busy as of late. A few weeks back, I took a Friday off (something I wish I could do every week) and headed up with the soon-to-be-Mrs to Debonne Vineyards to finalize some of our wedding plans. Fortunately this included some wine tasting so we could decide which wines to make available to our guests at the reception. We were pleasantly surprised to find out they recently added a microbrewery to their operation, the Cellar Rats Brewery. They only had one beer available that day, a rather tasty wheat beer, my favorite summertime style. So now it looks like we might be having some beer at the reception after dinner. We also met up with the DJ recently and finalized the music plans, including the banned songs list (sorry guys, no 'Macarena' or 'Mambo #5').

Last weekend was the annual Vintage Ohio, which I believe this was our 4th straight year to attend. I've noticed that I'm slowly developing my wine tasting palate as there were a number of wines I tried this year that I didn't particularly care for, whereas in the past I was more of like "wine is wine, tastes OK to me". The weather was perfect, and the only downside was I spent way too much as we were leaving, buying about a case full of assorted wines which we had tasted and liked. As for Sunday, I was doing my best to play Mr. Homeowner and finally paying some much-needed attention to my lawn, trying to clear out some weeds and water the dying grass.

Last night, Kristy and I met up with a number of our friends at the local Winking Lizard to celebrate her turning the big 3-0, a fate which I myself am facing just over 2 months from now. Tasty beverages, food, laughs and much conversation was enjoyed and we ended up staying out pretty late, so I was up way past my usual lame Friday bedtime of 10pm. I picked up their glass-of-the-month special, the Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale which I enjoyed, but was nothing super special.

Today, I did absolutely nothing. I just rented the Guitar Hero: Aerosmith game, and made my way through the entire career on easy this morning. It reminded me of why I liked them back in the day, as they were one of the first bands I can remember really getting into like back when I was 12 or 13 and the album 'Pump' had just come out. I then enjoyed watching the Indians win a rare Saturday afternoon game with an ever rarer complete game effort from the Byrdman. I then made a tasty pasta and broccoli dish for dinner, and we finished off the evening with custard from the local Rosati's. The flavor of the day was Grandma's Cookie, which was pretty good. Now it's about time to head off to bed and get ready for a 10 mile run tomorrow morning, which looks like it is going to be very nice and cool, perfect running weather and the kind of summer day you can get up and actually look forward to getting out and running.

one month less

2008-07-24T12:35:00.001-04:00

Today I mailed in mortgage payment #5, with an extra $50 to pay down the principal. After making my first two payments, I have included an extra $50, 100 & 50 with my monthly payments, and I just calculated (using this handy tool) that I have already knocked one month off my 30-year mortgage as the extra $200 I've chipped in so far has saved me $818.33 in interest. I know that most people would advise me against paying extra, since I got such a good rate (5.5%) and that money would be better off invested (though look at what the stock market has done this year), but when I sit down and calculate it all and come out with results like I see above, where an extra $1 now saves me more than $4 in the future, it's hard to resist as long as I'm able to continue to do it. Not to mention that it moves me slowly closer to ridding myself of that one big monthly bill. I'd love to move up that party from it's current scheduled date of February 2038.

dumb luck

2008-07-20T14:17:00.002-04:00

I managed to finish today's run without passing out, which is a feat that I'm quite proud of. It was in the low 80s, though the difficulty had much more to do with the insane humidity than the heat. Less than a mile into my 10 mile run, I was just covered in sweat that seemed to go nowhere but in my eyes. I am normally a sweat hog, but today was over the top. My shirt was soaked immediately too, so it was no help in wiping the sweat away. But I managed to overcome the humidity, a rare but very necessary bathroom break in one of the park's lovely outhouses, and a quick depletion of liquids from my CamelBak to actually finish my run at a 8:18 minute per mile pace, surprisingly besting my training plan's goal of 8:25.

Speaking of training plans, I don't think I've actually told many people yet that I am training to run this year's Akron Marathon...though the half-marathon, not the full. I had not planned to do anything this fall since I'm getting married at the end of August and then going on a lengthy honeymoon. But, my fiancee Kristy decided a few months ago that she wanted to train for her first half-marathon, so she managed to talk me into doing it too. No, we will not be running it together. My pace is quite a bit brisker than hers at this point, though I'm sure she'll catch up to me someday. It's a little weird training to run only a half, but I do like looking at my training plan and not seeing any of those dreaded 18 and 20 mile long runs.

hard to understand

2008-07-15T20:44:00.002-04:00

Over the weekend, a senseless act of violence hit very close to home. On the other side of town Saturday night, a police officer was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop. While this happened on the opposite side of town from where I live now, it's in the same quiet suburban city that I live in. And it's literally a 5 minute walk from where I used to live, a place I used to run by. It's one of those things that always happens "somewhere else", so when it's that close to where you live, it's a shock. I've always been against the death penalty, but it is an incident like this one that inevitably makes me question my position.

one out of eleven

2008-07-12T12:08:00.004-04:00

Thursday night, Kristy & I headed downtown hoping to see the Cleveland Indians snap their 10-game losing streak, their longest in 29 years. It didn't look good when Aaron Laffey gave up an early 2-run homer, but the Indians battled back and ended up spanking the 1st-place Devil Rays, 13-2. The weather was perfect, and the crowd, though sparse, was surprisingly enthusiastic given the Tribe's current last place standing, which I was glad to see. We have tickets to the game tonight, but currently the weather forecast isn't looking so great. Which sucks because tonight is supposed to be their big Rock n' Blast fireworks show, which I am particularly looking forward to since I missed seeing any fireworks last weekend.

Speaking of baseball, I've seen this video of a minor league manager video going nuts way too much over the past few days. It reminded me of my favorite manager meltdown of all-time, Phil Wellman of the Mississippi Braves AA team.

change i can't believe in

2008-07-04T18:25:00.005-04:00

Despite being a pretty loyal Democrat for the last few elections, I missed the boat on Barack Obama, failing to see in him what has captivated millions of otherwise apathetic citizens across the country. Initially, I think it was the lack of details behind his ambitious speeches and message of "change". I wasn't thrilled with Hillary, but she got my vote in the Ohio primary. Now that Obama is the Democrat's guy, I've been trying to get behind him, but he keeps making it harder and harder.

First, there was the news yesterday that he was going to "refine" his pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq within 16 months, which it appears now that he is quickly trying to back away from. Then today, I was reading an editorial in the NY Times (which Secret Storms, a big Obama supporter, kindly shared with me) entitled 'The New and Not Improved Barack Obama' which shows him doing an about face on a number of issues that are important to me. I was shocked to read that he is actually talking about expanding(!) Bush's seemingly un-Constitutional policy of funneling taxpayer money to religious-based organizations, in a move to attract evangelical Christians to vote for him. In addition, it appears that he is supporting the use of warantless wiretapping, a complete 180 on his previous position. Also, two issues that are big to me, gun control and the death penalty, he is moving to an almost conservative position.

Make no mistake, I'm not going to go out and vote McCain anytime soon. But at this point, Obama is looking no different to me than the John Kerry or Al Gore that the Democrats have trotted out the past two times. I just hate how the Democratic primaries are almost a battle to see who can be more liberal, and then as soon as they become the nominee, they quickly move back to the center to try to win the general election. I realize that this is might be what needs to be done to win a general election, but I'd like a candidate that can stick to their positions and not fold in the face of popular opinion. I'd like to think that Americans would have more respect for someone who has strong opinions and stands behind them than someone who will flip at the drop of hat to attract more voters. It already sounds like his apparent waffling on the Iraq issues is getting him some big criticism, and deservedly so. Hopefully he learns his lesson from that and sticks to the other promises he made during the primaries.

last place

2008-06-26T22:08:00.002-04:00

last place,
originally uploaded by thespacerace.

It's been a bad month, especially for the Cleveland Indians. With another loss last night, they moved into last place in the American League Central. How does that happen to a team that was one win away from the World Series? I realize there have been a lot of disappointing performances by players this year, but I really put the blame on the fact that they did nothing in the off season while everyone else around them made moves to improve.

Yet here I am tonight, watching the game as I write this. I need to find some new hobbies....

back to the future

2008-06-25T20:39:00.004-04:00

Yesterday at work, I got a new (well, a different) laptop as our company moves off Windows 2000 and onto Windows XP, about 7 years after it was released. Better late than never I suppose. The only bright spot for me was getting a different laptop with a better processor, and more memory and disk space. I went from a big clunky HP that I'd had for 3 years, to a slighly less clunky Dell. The only downside was going from a 15" to a 14" display, though I have a 19" LCD to hook up to at work, so it's not too big of a deal.

It serves as a good illustration of what it's like to work at a big company. At my previous job, with an IT department numbering less than a dozen, things were a lot more flexible and we could fairly easily upgrade and try out new things (once they're proven somewhat stable, obviously). Meanwhile, at a big corporation, things move at a snail's pace, and there are tons of red tape and processes and committees and meetings about meetings. It can get very frustrating at times when I sit and think about it, so obviously I try not to. Companies of both sizes have their pluses and minuses, which I'll save for another time, and I don't see myself going anywhere anytime soon, so I don't give it much thought. It is just days like this that remind me of that debate.

Ohio City Run & Crawl 5K

2008-06-22T08:03:00.003-04:00

Last night, Kristy & I took part in the Ohio City Run & Crawl 5K. I have run it all three years they've had it, and this was her second time. I knew we were going to be in for an interesting evening when the baseball game I was watching while waiting to leave was interrupted by the local weatherman due to a tornado warning a few counties over. I looked at the radar and saw most of northwest Ohio was covered in dark greens, yellows and reds. But we had paid our money already, and figured it would end sometime and they would still have the race.

So we ventured out at 5:45, just as the skies were getting very dark. Within a couple of minutes, it started raining. Just as we got on I-480, the wind started whipping around and was blowing my car around worse than I had ever experienced. I had a death grip on the wheel just to try to keep it in my lane. Fortunately that only lasted a few minutes, but was followed up immediately by torrential downpours, the kind of which the fastest setting on your windshield wipers doesn't do much for. So we ambled along at about 30 mph, trying to avoid all of the cars with their flashers on, and eventually it let up enough to where people realized the world wasn't ending. We did a drive by of the starting area in Ohio City, and saw people lined up to get their numbers and chips, so we found a parking spot, and reluctantly made our way through the still heavy rain to the starting area and picked up our gear.

We hung out at the starting area, under the cover of the Great Lakes Brewing Company awnings until the rain stopped, around 7:10. They finally started setting up the start/finish lines and had us line up to get things going a little before 7:30. It was at this time, during which I saw another runner with an inhaler, that I realized my dumb ass had forgotten my inhaler. So I quickly realized today would not be my fastest 5K, and might even end up being my slowest. But oh well, there was beer at the end, so at least I had that going for me.

Surprisingly though, I actually felt really good. My time ultimately was really slowed down by the fact that I started the race near the back, and it was really hard to get around people during the twists and turns of mile one. I finished mile one in 7:22, which was my slowest by far of the race. I believe I ran the second mile in right around 7:00 flat, and ended up finishing in 21:24, for an average pace of 7:02/mi. This put me in 8th place out of 42 runners in the men 20-29 category (in my final appearance in this category), and 42nd overall out of the 271 runners who competed. My time was about 50 seconds slower than last year's race, and 9 second slower than my time from 2 years ago, but I was content. I was just happy to be able to run well without my inhaler. Somedays my body is cool with that, other days it's not.

Kristy also ran, and beat her time from last year almost by a full minute, so she was very happy. Afterwards, we went back to the car and changed into some slightly less stinky clothes, and headed up to the Bier Markt. We stood around forever waiting to get our 25 cent Labatt Blue draft, but after seeing the keg was empty and there were about 100 people waiting, we ended up just buying beers. I picked up a Bells Oberon, which was the first time I'd had it on draft and surprisingly I did not enjoy it as much as the 6-pack of bottles I had of it last month. I resisted the urge to order one of my new favorite beers, the Gulden Draak (which I had for the first time last weekend on draft at the North End in Hudson and loved), as it's 10.5% alcohol content might have made it an early night for me. We ended up meeting Kyle and Erika, and a few of their friends and family and hung out for a few hours, between Bier Markt and the Garage Bar, and had a really good time. It was well worth the crap we went through to get there.

A little about me

2008-06-14T10:48:00.003-04:00

I was recently tagged by Kyle over at Northcoast Lifestyle, so here are 10 weird, random, facts, habits or goals about me, which some of you may or may not already know.

1. I am a creature of habit. While I do enjoy things like trying new restaurants, new drinks and new places to travel, if I had my way, I'd work get up and work the same hours every day, do the same workout, eat at the same time, go to bed at the same time, and spend plenty of time at home, relaxing (being the anti-social homebody that I have to fight the strong urge to give into).

2. Although I was raised Methodist, going to church every week throughout my childhood and serving as a youth group leader during college, I now consider myself to be agnostic.

3. With 6 marathons now under my belt, I plan to try to refrain from running more until I get closer to being able to achieve my goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon (even if it means waiting until I'm 35 when the qualifying time gives me an extra 5 minutes).

4. Despite always keeping a mid-3.0 GPA throughout high school and college and only getting 1 or 2 Cs, I actually failed Calculus 2 my sophomore year at college. Not my brightest academic moment. I blame my heavy accented (and emotionless) Irish professor.

5. I did not have my first alcoholic beverage until the age of 24, at which point I gave up my straight-edge lifestyle (and it's mostly bad hardcore music).

6. As a follow-up to #5, while I'm still not much of a regular drinker, I have developed into quite the beer snob, and do my best to avoid to avoid anything from the mega-breweries.

7. After graduating high school, my post-college plan was to move to St. Louis. After graduating college, my post-college plan was to move to Seattle. It is now 7 years after college, and I'm still in Northeast Ohio, but happy.

8. My first post-college job, with Arthur Andersen as an IT consultant, ended with me getting paid for about 6 months, but never working a single day.

9. My high school athletic career feel far short of it's potential due to my lack of interest. Despite being the best sprinter on the 8th grade track team, I quit because it was boring. Despite finishing 3rd at the conference tournament in 8th grade wrestling, I didn't wrestle in high school because of a fear of skin diseases and cauliflower ear. And I quit football my senior year because I was too punk rock, and hated the coach.

10. While my dad, the retired engineer, has MacGyver-esque skills to build elaborate contraptions out of minimalist scraps and everyday items, I have inherited none of that. I need detailed instructions to do much of anything more complicated that changing a light bulb. Not a good thing now that I am a new homeowner.

I'm still figuring out who to tag. So watch out.

Marathon #6: A 26.2 mile tour of Cleveland

2008-05-18T16:44:00.002-04:00

Today I woke up at 5am to the sound of pouring rain. Things didn't improve much by the 7am start of the Cleveland Marathon, and the rain continued for most of the first hour or so of the race. It was my first time running Cleveland, and unfortunately the hometown race did little to impress me. The parking situation sucked, and luckily I was able to improvise and navigate some side streets and find a lot to park in. I then got to the starting area, and waited forever in line at the port-o-potties. Luckily the race started a few minutes late and I was able to squeeze into the masses for the actual race start.

The first 3-4 miles were pretty chaotic. It was very crowded and cramped, and as usual there were quite a few idiotic walkers that felt the need to start near the front of the pack so they could inconvenience thousands of runners who had to dodge them during the first few miles. At one point, we turned down some narrow side street that was incredibly poorly paved, and it was so tight that I felt like I was in Spain doing the running of the bulls. I missed the first water station because by the time I realized it was there, it was too crowded to move over to grab a drink. Things thinned out a bit once we got to the west bound Shoreway, though it made for an incredibly dull four miles since it was a spectator-free area. I hit the 10 KM mark at 52:30 and felt pretty good.

I made it to the halfway point, 13.1 miles, in 1:52:36, so I was on a 8:35/mi pace. At mile 14, as we headed out to the east side along Chester Avenue, the sun finally poked out and stayed out for most part. My pace was slowing at this point, but I still felt fairly good after downing some energy gel. The sun made things a bit warm, even though it was only in the low 50s, and I started to regret the long sleeve shirt I was wearing.

One part of the race I did enjoy, was running along MLK and passing through the Rockefeller Park and past the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, which is where Kristy & I had our engagement pictures taken a number of months ago. I passed the 30 KM mark at 2:40:33, and my average pace had slowed to 8:48/mi. We then made it up to Lake Erie, and started the 4+ mile run between the coast and I-90, another least favorite running spot of mine (which is also part of the Hermes Cleveland 10 Miler). After that, we passed the Rock Hall and Browns Stadium before looping around some downtown streets and hitting the finish line at St. Clair and E.12th. I finished in 3:54:29, for an average pace of 8:56/mi. I was happy with this, because I knew my training had not been great and my goal was just to get in under 4 hours. So now personal bests this time, but I actually felt good at the end of the race, which isn't really something I've been able to say in the past.

Would I run Cleveland again? Probably not. I'd take Akron's marathon, even with it's hills, over it any day just because it was more enjoyable to me. As far as any future marathons, those are on hold for now. Getting married at the end of August, and taking a long honeymoon, has ruled out the chances of running one this fall. Plus I think I'm ready for a new challenge, which will probably be improving my "short game" and trying to best my times in shorter distance races. I've proven that I have the endurance, now I want to work on my speed before trying to tackle the marathon again.

Mr. 1124

2008-05-16T19:49:00.001-04:00

Mr. 1124,
originally uploaded by thespacerace.

I just looked at the Cleveland Marathon website which informed me, via it's countdown clock, that Sunday's race is only 1 day, 11 hours, 20 minutes and some odd seconds away. Which means it's about the time I start getting tense. Even though I'm by no means a serious runner, I still get excited (and anxious) whenever a race is coming up. After all, I've spent the past four months training for this.

Today I went downtown to the marathon expo to pick up my free stuff, along with my number and timing chip. I'll be sporting #1124 on Sunday, in case anyone is out there watching. The forecast for Sunday, unfortunately, is calling for a 50% chance of showers. I don't mind the mid 50s high, in fact, I actually like that. I would just rather avoid any sort of rain. But it's not the end of the world. It's better than 80 degrees and sunny.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has actually done some very good coverage of the race through the week, which you can find here. It was interesting to read about how last year's marathon pumped an estimated $12 million into the local economy. You think with that kind of an impact, it would get a little more attention than it does.

Prepaying a mortgage

2008-04-29T21:32:00.003-04:00

Keeping up with the personal finance theme that I started yesterday with my post about investing on Propser.com, I will admit that some of my favorite sites to read around personal finance blogs. My favorite is Get Rich Slowly. One of my favorite posts from that site deals with the topic of prepaying your mortgage. If nothing else, it shows that not even the "experts" can agree on what to do, so it really comes down to a personal choice.

For anyone, obviously, buying a house is a huge decision and investment. For me in particular, it was the first time I was putting myself in debt. And boy what a debt it is, 30 years worth. Sitting down and thinking that I'll be making payments on this house until I'm 59 years old is hard to wrap my head around. I realize that tens of millions of Americans are in the same boat, but to me, not being used to having a debt, it can be overwhelming.

While I've only made 2 payments so far, I've been strongly tempted to include extra money towards my principal, which will shorten the length of my mortgage and ultimately save me tons of money in interest. On the flipside though, I got a really great rate on my mortgage (5.5%), and it's very possible that I could invest that extra money and earn a greater rate of return that my mortgage, though obviously it's no guarantee. I'm already maxing out my retirement savings options, so putting extra money towards retirement, which would be an obvious place to put the extra money, is not an option.

I think after reading all of this, I'm even more undecided on what to do. I think my best option is to pay a little extra here and there, as I can afford to, but not to go overboard and send away every penny of leftover money each month.

My Prosper experience

2008-04-28T17:45:00.003-04:00

Over the past few months, I've been putting aside some money and sending it off to Propser.com, a site that has been described as the "eBay of loans". Essentially it is big kahuna of the growing peer-to-peer lending movement. Essentially, I am loaning money out to people who "need" it.

I know, the words "money" and "Internet" always sound suspicious when found in the same sentence, but Propser seems to be on the up-and-up from my limited experience. Basically someone posts that they need X amount of money @ Y% interest, and people bid with the lowest interest rate they are willing to pay. So if enough people are interested, and the loan reaches 100% met, the interest rate starts going down until the listing ends. So I might bid $50 at a 12% interest rate, but a bunch of people bid 11%, and my 12% bid is outbid. The interest rate is largely driven by the credit rating of the person asking for the loan. So someone who has a credit rating of D or E is likely to not get what they are asking for, and if they do, it might be at like 25% interest, because the lender is taking a lot of risk. Meanwhile, someone with an A or AA credit score, will often get an interest rate under 10%, since they are less of a risk.

The minimum bid on a loan if $50, so I've slowly been sending over money and picking up $50 loans. Currently I have 8 loans, each right around $50. Of those, 2 are to borrowers with a AA credit rating, 5 with an A, and 1 with a B. The average interest rate on my loans is 13.21%, which is a lot better than the less than 3% my money market account is paying right now. Obviously there is more risk involved, hence the premium, but I'd like to think that as long as I stick to loans with good credit scores, and spreading my money out across many loans, that I'll be pretty safe and come out ahead of where I'd be with just leaving all of my money in a money market account, even if a loan goes bad every now and then.

pay the man

2008-04-14T21:20:00.003-04:00

Today I made the dreaded trip to the post office to drop off some fat checks to the federal, state and local governments for my taxes. I sold a number of stocks last year to get cash for my down payment on the house, so my tax bill this year was not pretty. But ultimately it means that I made some nice profits, so I guess I shouldn't be too mad. I didn't enjoy the full parking lot and line out the door at the post office, though I'm sure it will only be worse tomorrow. I just hope that next year I'll be filing early so I can collect my fat refund that I am hoping my house has entitled me to.

I skipped the gym today to go the post office & library, so I came home and cooked dinner #2 from my new Ellie Kreger cookbook, The Food You Crave, a Black Bean Mexican-Style Pizza. It took me a while to get it ready, because I'm still a little slow in the kitchen (thanks to my anal-retentive exact measuring compulsion), though it was far from difficult. I enjoyed it, though was no super impressed, though Kristy on the other hand really liked them. So it looks like this recipe is a keeper as well.

I'd also like to share a new band I found over the weekend, Frightened Rabbit from Glasgow, Scotland. Very good stuff, with a new album that was released today.

crossing line

2008-04-13T20:18:00.004-04:00

A few weeks back I was at Borders wandering aimlessly, trying to figure out how to spend a gift card from a couple Christmases ago. Ultimately, I ended up in the cookbook section and stumbled across the new cookbook from the Food Network's Ellie Kreger, The Food You Crave. She is sort of the "healthy" cook on the Food Network, and since I'm always looking to eat a little better, I checked it out and saw some recipes that seemed easy enough that I could handle, given my slightly-better-than-beginner cooking skillz.

So today, I finally got serious and picked out 3 recipes and wrote down the ingredients on my shopping list and picked them up on my trip to the local Acme in Hudson. Tonight was recipe attempt #1, the Fettuccine with Creamy Red Pepper Sauce. After getting over my frustration that the jar of red peppers were not completely de-seeded, and the fact that I didn't know how to operate Kristy's food processor, things went pretty smoothly and we agreed that the recipe is a keeper.

It was a good way to cap off a lazy Sunday during which I watched the Indians finally pull out a win. Cliff Lee is looking like the #1 starter instead of #5 at this point. If it takes snow for the Indians to win like they did today, I'm totally willing to put up with a few more weeks of crappy weather. Thank goodness Detroit's awful start is taking off some of the pressure of our poor start.

over and over

2008-04-12T17:48:00.004-04:00

A number of months ago, I did what I said I wasn't going to do again for a while, and registered for another marathon. I think my hope was that it would prevent the wintertime hibernation that I have a tendency to go into. Well, unfortunately it didn't work too well, and now I'm trying to play catch-up and get my body somewhat prepared to run 26.2 miles.
This morning I experienced quite possibly the most boring 2 hours of my life. Since it had stormed last night, and the trails I normally ran on in the park would have been swamp-like, I had to use my backup training plan and head to the fitness center and run on the track. A 200 meter track. For 14 miles. So around and around the track, well over 100 times, in just under 2 hours. I'm surprised I didn't manage to fall asleep during it. But I managed to get it done, which is the important part. So now the plan is to get in 16, 18 & 20 mile runs over the next 3 weekends, and hopefully make it to the finish line on May 18th at the Cleveland Marathon.
Yes, it is a little strange that I ran 5 other marathons before actually attempting Cleveland, the one in my own backyard. I think a big part of it was it's springtime date. Up until the past few weeks, it's been really cold outside on the weekends, and my body is not happy running in the cold, so training has been really difficult. I only managed to do what I did today indoors because I knew it was pretty much essential for me to get this run in, or I'd probably be wise to give up on trying to run the race in 5 weeks. So while I might say again after this one that I'm not going to run another, I'm most definitely going to think twice before doing another one in the spring. The big reason for me attempting it this year is because I'm getting married in August, so after spending 10 days in Jamaica for my honeymoon, I don't think I'll be able to pick right up where my training left off.

Snowbound

2008-03-09T13:37:00.001-04:00

View from the driveway,
originally uploaded by thespacerace.

For once, a winter storm here in Northeast Ohio actually lived up to the hype. It snowed pretty much non-stop from Friday morning through Saturday night, and as you can see from the picture, we got dumped on pretty good.

I wasn't the nerd out in the front yard with the measuring stick, but it was almost up to my knees, and above the level of our front porch, so I'd say it's pretty close to two feet. Everything shut down yesterday including the airport, and yesterday evening they had a driving ban in effect here in Summit County. I haven't been out and about yet today, but it seems like things are pretty much back to normal, except for the huge piles of snow all over the place thanks to the NE Ohio snowplow army.

Screw Home Depot, Long Live Lowe's

2008-03-07T23:06:00.002-05:00

Now that I'm a homeowner, I find myself frequenting the home improvement stores just as often as I frequented malls when I was a teenager. Unfortunately, most of the things for sale here are a lot more expensive than the window shopping I mostly did at the malls back in the day. In the battle of the home improvement stores, I initially gravitated towards Home Depot since I have family that works there. But Home Depot has done it's best to turn me off.

When I was finalizing the purchase of my house, I picked out a washer & dryer, the only appliances the house did not come with, and purchased them 2 weeks before move-in day, and scheduled them to be delivered the day after I moved in (which was 2 weeks ago today). So come the day before move-in, the delivery company that Home Depot outsources their deliveries to, calls and says the washer & dryer are backordered and won't be available for another week and a half. So very reluctantly, I rescheduled the delivery for the next available Saturday, March 8th. So this morning they called to verify the delivery, so I thought I'd finally be able to catch up on my laundry this weekend. Well, this afternoon, on my drive home from work, I get a phone call from guess who, telling me they canceled all of their deliveries for tomorrow due to the snow storm forecast. So I would have to wait yet another week to do laundry with the appliances I had paid for a month ago.

I'm usually a pretty passive guy, but that was the last straw for me. So I got home, logged onto Lowe's website to see what they had to offer, and found I could actually get the same washer & dryer cheaper, and delivered the next day! So it wasn't a hard decision to make that I was going to go to Home Depot, cancel my order and swing by Lowe's and give them my money instead. Home Depot didn't try to talk me out of it, which is a little surprising. I would think they'd be trained to try to persuade a customer not to cancel a nearly $2000 order, but either they didn't care or no one ever told them they should.

So tomorrow morning, I anxiously be awaiting the delivery of my first washer & dryer. It has been a while since I've done laundry with halfway decent appliances that don't require me to feed quarters into them. But alas, if the "blizzard" they are forecasting lives up to the forecast (not very common around here, the bigger the hype, the smaller the "storm"), Lowe's actually delivers on Sundays too. Screw you Home Depot. I'm a Lowe's guy now.

home sweet home

2008-02-14T20:52:00.003-05:00

Long time no see. Things have been a little busy lately. Three weeks ago today, I made an offer on a house. Three very busy weeks later, I closed the deal and got the keys today. It was very surreal today to watch the realtor leave and realize I was alone in my own house. We had our first meal together in the house tonight, made another trip to our new most visited store, Home Depot, and got things ready to start doing some painting tomorrow. Moving day is in a week, so we have lots of packing and tidying up to do in the next few days. It feels good to know we are now putting money towards a house instead of sinking it into apartment rent. I realize that all of the real estate news on TV these days is doom and gloom, but we weren't looking to time the market. Getting married later this year, we wanted to be settled in a house first, and we came across this house and both loved it. And we don't plan on moving anytime soon. Hopefully not for a long time to come.

that right ain't shit

2007-11-26T20:47:00.000-05:00

Today is was back to work after 5 days off. We headed out to St.Louis this past Wednesday to spend Thanksgiving at my parents. It was the typical trip, with lots of cable television watching and eating. I watched my first MTV in about 5 months, catching up on "My Super Sweet 16", the best/worst show on TV. In a way, the show is produced to be a sort of mockery of the kids getting these insane parties because it highlights their whiney, self-centered, pathetic lives where they cry if daddy won't get them the Range Rover they wanted, but instead they have to settle for a Benz. But in the end, it's sad when you realize that hundreds of thousands of dollars are wasted on these parties, money that could have done so much more somewhere else.

Also on the subject of TV, I was very disappointed with "Man vs. Wild" which is a lame knock-off of 'Survivorman' (which I recently discovered rules). And after a few friends strong recommendations, I'm finally on board with '30 Rock' after watching about half of season 1 via Netflix's streaming video service the other weekend.

I also managed to score some tickets to the Cleveland Indians home opener over the weekend. So this year's game will make my 5th straight opener. I was hoping to see the Indians do more in the offseason than just sign a Japanese relief pitcher, but I suppose there is a long time between now and spring training. But when I read the Yankees re-signed A-Rod, and are now in talks to get Johan Santana, I start getting nervous.

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Tonight's blog post title comes from the song "That Right Ain't Shit" by The Books. Watch a live performance of this song here.

the commander thinks aloud

2007-11-15T19:48:00.000-05:00

Today was one of those extremely stressful days at work where you wish you could go back to the beginning of the day and chose to stay in bed. The lousy snow/rain/sleat mix, a day after 60+ degree temps, didn't help much either. And the last time I saw the sun in these parts? Can't remember.

So what does one do to try to erase the memories of a bummer of a day? Well, if you're me, you dive into one of your new interests, cooking. After attending the Fabulous Food Show this past weekend at the I-X Center, I was feeling ambitious with my cooking, which I've slowly been expanding on over the past year. Tonight's meal was Rigatoni w/ Turkey Sausage & Peppers, a recipe from Food Network star (and Italian beauty) Giada De Laurentiis. I'm not a big red meat guy, so I was lured in by the recipe actually calling for turkey sausage instead of having to sub it in myself. It was also my first time cooking with wine. I'm happy to report that it turned out very well, and will yield lots of extra meals since it's a pretty big recipe. And my cooking confidence increased another notch. Before you know it, I'll be on TV challenging the newly crowned Iron Chef, Cleveland native Michael Symon.

I feel like knocking back a few stiff drinks to get my mind off the day's events, but I'm not much of a drinker, and all I have on hand is some beers. So I'm currently enjoying a Goose Island Christmas Ale. Pretty good though I still prefer the Cleveland favorite, Great Lakes Christmas Ale, which is selling out at grocery stores around the area as usual for this time of year.

P.S. - Tonight's title is courtesy of the Long Winters song 'The Commander Thinks Aloud' (acoustic, from WOXY circa 2005), one of my favorite bands

just one small request

2007-10-18T17:47:00.000-04:00

Since today is my birthday, I think I have the right to make a request. I would like to ask the Cleveland Indians to fulfill this request, and I don't think it's too much to ask. I just want them to win tonight's game against Boston to earn a spot in the World Series. I feel good about their chances to win the series, but it would be really nice to do it tonight. I think I heard that they haven't clinched a playoff series at home in like 87 years, so it would be nice to have a party here for once. And it would make it a birthday to remember for sure.

I do have one other small request, that I'd like to be filled if they have the chance. That would be to stick a fastball in the ribs of Manny Ramirez. The Indians were for the most part dismissive of his antics from Tuesday night, when after hitting a home run, he stood and watched the ball until it landed before flicking his bat, raising his arms and proceeding to casually stroll around the bases and congratulate himself like he had just hit the game winner in game 7 of the World Series, seemingly ignorant of (or unable to comprehend) the fact that his team was still down by 4 runs. Like Indians radio announcer Mike Hegan said right after he did that, if someone had done that back when he was playing, next time up they'd be picking themselves up out of the dirt. I'm sick of everyone saying "it's just Manny being Manny". No one should be excused for continually being a moron.

Song of the day: "The Plot" by White Rabbits

lazier than usual sunday

2007-10-14T12:33:00.001-04:00

A special thanks to Trot Nixon for breaking the tie last night and leading the Indians to a 13-6 win over Boston, and allowing me to finally go to bed around 1:40am this morning. I sat around for 5+ hours and watched about 95% of the game (I nodded off a bit through parts of the 8th & 9th innings). These marathon playoff games are wearing me down. Last Friday, I was at the Indians 11-inning victory over the Yankees, and it was honestly a very physically and emotionally draining game. For almost all of the last 2 hours, we were on our feet, clapping, cheering and yelling, usually to seemingly no avail, at least when the Indians were batting. But I did get a second wind once they won the game, which helped me to survive the crush to get on the RTA train back to where we parked.

I'm anticipating a rough week coming up, With games Monday, Tuesday and Thursday night, I don't think there is going to be much sleep to be had. Though I'm not one to complain when the excitement of an Indians win makes it hard to fall asleep.

just like old times

2007-10-05T08:30:00.000-04:00

Last night was the first game of the ALDS playoffs, and the Indians crushed the Yankees, 12-3. So much for the Indians losing all 6 games to the Yankees during the regular season. I won't have to hear that stat again until the Indians win the series and the national media focuses on another Yankees meltdown, instead of their opponent's success.

I will be honest and admit that when the Indians traded to bring Kenny Lofton back a few months ago, I was less than impressed. I thought it was more of an attempt by management to bring back nostalgia instead of trying to ready a team for a playoff run. Lofton proved me wrong last night, leading the offense and knocking in four runs. I'm glad I was wrong about that move. I guess that's why I don't get the big bucks to make those decisions.

I'm taking a half day off of work today to head down to the game this afternoon. I have not-so-great seats, but it's just so much fun to be down there. Plus I don't have cable TV, so I can actually see the action today instead of staring at the radio like I did last night. I just hope their bats still have some spark in them like they did last night.

what a deal!

2007-10-03T20:39:00.000-04:00

It seems the music world is abuzz with news that there is a new Radiohead album coming out next week. While that is indeed an exciting story to me, it's the odd twist that is causing it to get a lot of attention. The twist, as you can read here, is that the band is bypassing the record industry and releasing the album, "In Rainbows", via their website, radiohead.com. Now it gets weird...apparently you can "pay whatever you want" to download the album. A little short on cash this week? Pay nothing. Feeling generous, give them $20. It's your call.

I'll believe it when I see it, and honestly I don't know what I'll do when I go to download it. They are solidly in my top 10 bands, and all the albums they have put out are great. But I'm still in the increasingly minority group of those who do not purchase music online. I've bought hundreds & hundreds of CDs over my lifetime, and I just never felt the desire to buy a digital copy of music. I've downloaded music online, but never paid for it. I just feel weird paying for a song that is just a file, as weird as that may sound.

So we'll see what happens next Wednesday, October 10th, when the album is released. I'm sure I'll get it, but how much will I pay? I'll let you know. Anyone else planning on "buying" it?

mistaken for strangers

2007-10-02T20:38:00.002-04:00

My body has finally healed itself, for the most part, from Saturday's marathon. Just yesterday when I was walking around at work my quads were super sore and felt like they might buckle at any time. Fortunately they didn't, and I'm about 90% back to normal today. If you're looking for a good laugh, check out my pictures taken during the Akron Marathon. Do they honestly expect me to pay $15.95 for a 5x7 of myself looking all sweaty and miserable?

I think tomorrow will be my first post-race run. I like running, I can't help it, and I've oddly missed it the past few days, despite my aching legs. Things will be a bit different this time though since I'm not training for anything in particular. Like I mentioned before, I think I'm done with marathons for the time being. My ultimate goal is still to qualify for and run Boston, but obviously 3:44 is a long ways from the 3:10 it takes to qualify. Over the past two and half years of my running ways, my workouts have consisted of running, running, and more running. Yes, there was the obligatory "I'm gonna start weight training!" workout every 4 months or so, but 95% of my workouts were just me, my shoes, and a bike. But this time around I'm really serious about trying to make the weights a big part of my workouts. I'm really happy with the progress I made with this past race, but it took a year's worth of work just to trim a few minutes off my time. I think stepping up the workouts and adding variety will help me keep making progress in my physical endeavors.

Thanks to Will for linking me up to the news that the day after my marathon record, a new world record for the marathon was set by a 34-year-old Ethiopian at the Berlin Marathon, setting the new bar at two hours, four minutes and twenty-six seconds. That's a mind-numbing pace of 4:44 per mile. I think I could keep that pace up for about a half mile, before keeling over from a heart attack.

P.S. - The title for tonight's post was taken from the song 'Mistaken for Strangers' by The National. Download a live acoustic version here from WOXY.

Marathon #5 in the books

2007-09-29T15:23:00.000-04:00

Today was a great day for a marathon. The weather was perfect, in the low 40s at the start of the race, at 7am, and it only got up to the mid 60s by the end. It was my second time taking on the Akron Marathon, and fortunately I fared much better this time than I did two years ago. Not to say that it was easy though. Running 26.2 miles is never easy, especially when it involves what seems like a lot more uphills than downhills.

Fortunately we made it down to Akron and found parking with a good 25 minutes to spare. I'm usually super-early, but Akron isn't a huge event and I know my way around fairly well. Which is a good thing, because the exit I was planning to take was closed for the race. I spent my 10 minutes in the line for the obligatory pre-race port-a-potty stop. In the starting area, I managed to get near the 3:40 pace runner, which I was going to try to stick around since that was my stretch goal for the race. But once the race started, I lost track of him and don't remember seeing him again.

I tried to avoid the "sprint out of the blocks" habit that I have in distance races, and managed to do fairly well. I found myself hitting almost exact 8 minute miles for the whole first half of the race. In fact, I hit the halfway point (13.1 miles) in 1:44:30, which is a 7:58/mi average. There were a number of interesting sites along the way, including a number of local marching bands, about 30 hippies of all ages hanging out in front of some house singing songs, and a group of old ladies hanging out in lawn chairs, one with a sign to wish her a happy 88th birthday, which I did. One thing I love about Akron is the people. Lots of people come out, many setting up chairs out front of their houses, and cheer on total strangers like they would their closest friends.

The fluid station coverage was good, averaging about one every 1.5 miles or so, and I made sure to grab something at each one to try to avoid dehydration & muscle cramps. I also choked down some GU energy gel about 4 times, to try to get some carbs in my system. My halfway point time was awesome for me, but things got a whole lot tougher shortly after that. Once we finished the 4 mile stretch on the towpath trail (part of the Cuyahoga River valley), it was time to climb out of the valley, from about mile 17 to 22 (see elevation chart). I managed to run the whole thing (well, at times it was slow enough to arguably not be running), but it took a lot out of me.

Miles 23 & 24, when we go out by Stan Hywett Hall & Gardens, I was pretty wiped out from the hills, but I kept putting along, barely. Fortunately, mile 25 is mostly downhill on Market Street, past Highland Square, and I was able to approach a more running-like pace. The last mile had some tough uphills mixed in with the downhill, but it helped that the last quarter mile, before entering Canal Park, was jammed with cheering fans. Once I hit Canal Park, I made a pretty good sprint from the outfield to the finish line, and I crossed the line in 3:44:57, a new personal best. That beat my previous best, from last year's race in Detroit, by over 4 minutes, and beats my 2005 Akron time by 22+ minutes. So needless to say, I was pleased.

About 30 feet after I stopped running, my stomach let me know it was not too happy with my end-of-race sprint, and decided to empty it's contents about 6 or 7 times. Not exactly what you want to happen at the end of race, let alone in front of a stadium full of people, though hopefully most of the them were watching the finish line instead of me. A volunteer was nice enough to grab me some water which made me feel a bit better, and after about 5 minutes I was up and ready to leave. Needless to say, I opted not to claim my 3 free Michelob Ultra beers. I did grab some food, but didn't end up eating until about 3 hours later. Of course by now, I'm super hungry and looking forward to a feast at the Chinese buffet this evening.

So despite my little situation after finishing, I was happy with how things went. While I did expect to beat my old Akron time, I didn't think there was much of a chance to beat my best time overall given the very non-flat nature of the course. I think Akron is a great event, and I've really enjoyed both my experiences there (other than the mass chaos inside Canal Park in the area where runners meet up with family, which took me like 25 minutes to claw my way through, while trying not to get trampled). Like after my last race, I'm contemplating stepping away from marathons for a while. Five seems like a good number to me. No matter what, I plan to keep running. I haven't lost my passion for that yet.

Last night of summer

2007-09-23T18:32:00.001-04:00

I spent the last night of the summer of 2007 doing my favorite thing I can think of doing on any summer night, going to a baseball game. Kristy scored some sweet seats to the Cleveland Indians game against Oakland, so we headed down to Jacobs Field. The weather was perfect, but the same can not be said for the game, as the Indians fell 9-3, so we missed out seeing them clinch the division title (which they saved for this afternoon...bastards). But the seats were great (we missed getting nailed by a line drive foul ball by about 3 feet), and the weather was perfect.

Hopefully it will not be the last game we see at Jacobs Field. Unfortunately, I read that the naming rights for the ballpark are up for sale to likely the highest corporate bidder. Hopefully it's something that doesn't sound as stupid as Quicken Loans Arena, though pretty much any name change is going to suck. I hate this trend of selling naming rights to big corporations. The stadium is completely plastered with hundreds of advertisements. Does the stadium name itself have to be one too?

I did manage to score tickets to the 2nd home game of the Division Series playoffs, so hopefully I'll get to go down and see them in action again in a couple of weeks. I was able to see them last time they made the playoffs in 2001, when they lost to Seattle. Hopefully the results are better this time around.

This morning, I did the final "long run" of my 16-week marathon training program. It was just a simple 8 mile run and it went well with no problems. The Akron Marathon is now just over 5 days away. Trying not to think about it too much.

A week to go

2007-09-21T12:14:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I finally registered for the Akron Marathon. I usually like waiting until the last minute for stuff like that in case an injury were to pop-up, but now I'm only about 3 runs away from completing my training, the longest of which is only 8 miles since I'm in "taper" mode. I would wait until the expo the night before to sign-up, except the price goes up $20 for waiting until then.
As you can see above, the current forecast (which from 8 days out isn't much better than a guess) is a low of 53 degrees and sunny. I'd prefer a bit cooler and not-so-sunny, but I don't have much of a choice in the matter. The race starts at 7am, so it will still be pretty cool at the start, and I guess the fact that it might get up to 70 degrees is an incentive to try to finish earlier, before it gets hot.
Although I've been training for the race for months, I haven't really gotten excited/anxious about it until the last few days. I just need to try to get a lot of sleep this week, eat my carbs (and not as much of everything else, since my training miles are reduced), and try not to worry too much about the hills. I've decided to put off buying 'Halo 3' until after the race, otherwise I'd be a zombie on race day from too many late nights in front of the TV. Let's hope the race is worth it.

care for an asterisk?

2007-09-17T20:41:00.000-04:00

I read today that fashion designer Marc Ecko was the winning bidder in the auction for Barry Bonds' record-breaking 756th home run baseball. Instead of just putting in a display class to sit on a shelf somewhere, he has decided to milk it for all the publicity it's worth (all $752,467 worth) and allow the public to vote on the fate of the (infamous) ball. By visiting this website, people can choose one of three options for the ball. Send it to the Hall of Fame, brand an asterisk in it (due to Bonds' questionable enhancement drug use) before sending it to the Hall, or to put it in a rocket and send it out of orbit.

As you can probably guess from the picture, I went with the 2nd option. I feel the ball does belong in the Hall of Fame, and the marking of it with an asterisk will force the Hall & baseball in general to acknowledge the steroid scandal that marked this era in the game, so that fans for generations to come will be aware of this moment in the long storied history of the game. While the era of performance enhancing drugs is one of the darker moments in the game's history, it needs to be acknowledged and remembered just like the Black Sox scandal of many years ago.

Akron bound, once again

2007-07-31T21:21:00.000-04:00

After running my last marathon this past November, I claimed to go into retirement from running marathons. As most of you guessed, my "retirement" was short lived, as I have now pretty much decided to run this year's Akron Marathon. It will be my 5th marathon, and 2nd time around in Akron (it was my very first marathon, back in 2005). I just finished my 7th week of training (of a 16 week program) with a 16 mile run this past Sunday. And I ran over 100 miles in July for just my second 100+ mile month ever.

Originally I had planned on focusing on improving my speed in shorter distances and eventually build up to another marathon in a few years, once I felt I could really improve on my past times. But in the back of my head, I could never shake the desire to train for another marathon right away. It would be like for a climber to climb Mt. Everest and then try to go back to doing smaller mountains again. It's just not the same. Unfortunately, I don't honestly know if I'll be able to beat my best time. It's a challenging, semi-hilly course, and most of the other marathons I've run were rather flat in comparison. Also, I've run 2 races this year in which I failed to beat my times from the previous year, but also I had 2 races where I did beat my times from the previous year. So who knows what will happen come September 29th. I do know I'm looking forward to another pre-race dinner at Luigi's!

running (and crawling) around ohio city

2007-06-17T21:48:00.001-04:00

Bar "bowling",
originally uploaded by thespacerace.

Last night was the 2nd annual Ohio City Run & Crawl 5K. It was my second go-around at this race, and my first 5K since last year's event, though this year I was very glad to be joined by my fiancee, Kristy, who was running the event for the first time. The weather was a bit warm, but not unbearable. There was a very nice turnout this year, with about 470 runners, compared to last year's 310. The course, which mostly winds around Ohio City, was a little different this year, but was still very comparable to last years.

The starting line, on Market Avenue right in front of the West Side Market, was pretty crowded since the street is narrow, so the first quarter mile was a lot of trying to run around people. After that, it was pretty sparse. I honestly don't think anyone passed me beyond the first half mile, which just about never happens to me, and I was able to slowly pick off a number of people during the 3.1 miles.

I hit the one mile mark at 6:30, and knew I had a good chance of beating last year's time if I could keep it up. I was huffing and puffing pretty hard the whole time though, and wasn't sure if I was going to be able to maintain my pace. It was very encouraging to see my friends, Josh and Amanda, helping to man the water stop halfway through.

Luckily I still had some gas in the tank near the end and was able to kick it into high gear for the last tenth of a mile, though I was almost taken out by another runner I was passing as he was cutting a corner very tight. But I got past and was able to sprint to the finish line to clock a time of 20:35, which is 40 seconds faster than my time from last year, which was my previous best for a 5K. Kristy meanwhile knocked a number of minutes off her previous 5K best, finishing much faster than she had anticipated. So we both came away happy with the race and our results.

Afterwards, we met back up with Josh and Amanda, who were our guides on the pub crawl portion of the event. First we hit up the Garage Bar, and continued to enjoy the nice weather on their outdoor patio. We then hit up the Old Angle Tavern for some really good food, and then capped off the evening at the ABC Tavern, where much fun was had playing their "bowling" machine (as pictured above). I never knew so much fun could still be had these days with only a quarter. I had some beginner's luck at first, but Josh turned out to be a pro. All in all it was a great night and made us wonder why we don't head up to Ohio City more often.

come out and run

2007-06-13T08:36:00.000-04:00

This coming Saturday evening, I encourage anyone in the Cleveland area to come out and participate in the 2nd annual Bier Markt Ohio City Run & Crawl. It is a 5K run/walk through Cleveland's historic Ohio City neighborhood, which starts right out by the West Side Market, just over the bridge from downtown. Following the race, which starts at 7:00pm, there is a pub crawl in which local restaurants and bars typically offer specials to race participants. You even get a t-shirt and goodie bag for participating. You can register at the race, or online.

I ran the inaugural race last year and had a great time. The course is nice and flat, all the streets are closed off, and the bar is just a short walk from the finish line. Last year, the Bier Markt gave a free beer out to all runners who stopped in after the race.

Saturday's run will actually be my first 5K race in a year, when I ran in last years event. I ran a personal best 21:15 then, and am hoping to come in under 21 minutes this time. I've had some good training runs lately, and some bad ones. So let's just hope that Saturday my body decides to have a good day and be cooperative.

four more years!

2007-06-08T09:52:00.000-04:00

Last night the future Mrs. and I went out to celebrate four years together. It's a little odd to think of being together that long, seeing as how we have friends that are married, some of whom even have kids, that have been together less time than us. But we are both happy with the pace our relationship has moved along at, and in a little over a year we will at last be married.

So to celebrate, we went out to dinner at Moxie in Beachwood, OH. It was our first time there, after hearing many great things about it, and we were not disappointed. The large open dining room is very tastefully decorated and despite being crowded, it was not overly loud. Also, the kitchen is in plain view of the dining room, though thankfully there was no shouting like there are at many restaurants that have this setup. The menu is limited, with a handful of seafood options and a handful of meat options. I went with the roasted pacific halibut which was excellent. Kristy got the blue crab and artichoke, which she really enjoyed. For desert, we chose the baked hot chocolate, which was quite possibly one of the best desserts I've ever had. I'm not entirely sure what all was involved, but it was served in a mug and it seemed to be a very rich chocolate cake on the inside with a cream poured over it, with whipped cream and seasoning on the top. Very very good. I'm lucky we made it home because I felt a food coma coming on.

We got home in time for the start of the Cavs game, of which I could only make it through the first half before calling it a night. They didn't look bad, but Tim Duncan and Tony Parker looked very good. I sometimes forget how good Duncan is, until I see a game like that. I got a bad feeling when the Spurs made that 3-pointer to close out the first half, and unfortunately it turned out not to be the Cavs night. But hey, we lost the first two against Detroit, and look how that turned out for us. Now we have to wait until Sunday for game two because the NBA is stupid and drags out the playoffs so incredibly long.

marquee moon

2007-06-07T09:28:00.000-04:00

Things have been busy lately and writing here has taken a low priority. There seems to have been wedding planning stuff going on every weekend for the past month (both for our wedding and our relatives), but that is finally winding down. Then there has been the Cleveland Cavs battling through the NBA playoffs to the Finals. I'm excited to finally see them on TV again, since the Finals are on "free" TV, though we did get to catch the last game against Detroit at a local bar with a couple hundred other screaming fans. And of course there are my beloved Indians who I try to listen to at least part of their game each night.

In addition to all of that, I've tried to take up reading again. I had lofty goals to read more last year, but I think in the end I only made it through a single book. Well, I've already doubled that total this year, having recently finished two books. The first one was "Heart-Shaped Box" by Joe Hill. I won't deny that I was interested in this book because the author (whose full name is actually Joe Hillstrom King) is the son of one of my favorite writers, Stephen King (a fact that slowly came out after the book's publishing). The book itself was quite good, and not much different than one might expect from a King family member, which includes being well written and a page turner. The basic premise is that aging rock star, Judas Coyne, buys a suit over the internet that is "haunted" by the ghost of it's former owner, who is out to get revenge against Judas. The book moves along at a good pace as we follow Judas's efforts to rid himself of this ghost. This book gets my recommendation.

My second read of the year was "The Raw Shark Texts" by Steven Hall, another literary newcomer. This book is a little out there and borders on being science-fiction (a dreaded label unless you're nerdy like me). The narrator, Eric Sanderson, awakens one day with no memories, just a note referring him to a doctor who informs him of his recurring bouts of memory loss, an aftereffect of losing his girlfriend during a vacation in Greece years earlier. The story follows his efforts to stop his memory loss cycle and regain his life, though it turns out to involve teaming up with a mad doctor and fighting off a seemingly otherworldly creature. This book has generated a lot of buzz, and both very positive and very negative reviews, and the movie rights were sold after a brief bidding war. Ultimately I found the story pretty good, though quite confusing at times.

The next book up for me is "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, which is my first taste of atheist literature. Should be interesting. You can read an excerpt of the book here.

Win some, lose some

2007-04-29T16:37:00.000-04:00

Even though I have fell way behind in keeping my running blog up-to-date, I am in fact still running. As of yesterday, I've run about 240+ miles year-to-date. I've also recently competed in my first two races of the year.

Two weeks ago, I headed down to Columbus, OH to run the Columbus Half Marathon for the second straight year. Even though it was a good two hours south of Cleveland, it seems that none of Ohio recognizes that it is spring until later in May, because the temperature was only in the upper 30s. It started off pretty well, maintaining a sub-8:00 pace for each of the first 8 miles before my legs started to tire and my pace slipped a bit. But I was still holding up fairly well until the mini-cramps in my calves turned into a serious cramp in my right calf, with just about a half mile to go, which forced me to hobble over to the side of the road and attempt to stretch out my leg. It seemed like an eternity before I could get it straightened out and get going again and try to finish. I'm sure I looked as awkward as I felt, but I was determined to keep running and not have to walk the rest of the race. I finally managed to cross the finish line, though my time suffered as I finished in 1:45:44, which is almost 2 minutes slower than my time in last year's race, and 5 minutes off my personal best for a half marathon. My time put me at 48th out of 209 in my division (Men, 25-29) and 368th overall out of 3,106 participants.

Yesterday, I hit the pavement again for my second race of the year as I competed in the Hermes Cleveland 10 Miler for the second time. Even though the weather was great yesterday, that was not the case at 8:30am, when it was mid 40s and rainy from start to finish. But the weather didn't dampen my performance, as I broke my streak of sub-par performances by besting my time from last year by nearly 3 minutes, finishing in 1:16:09, for an average pace of 7:37 per mile. This put me 12th out of 52 in my age group (Men, 25-29), and 146th overall out of 780.

I might sign up for another race in May, but right now my next scheduled race is the Ohio City Run & Crawl 5K on June 16th, an event I really enjoyed last year which is also the last time I ran a 5K race.

In 3's

2007-04-05T21:30:00.001-04:00

Brandywine Falls,
originally uploaded by thespacerace.

The old saying is that good news comes in threes. And for once it finally proved true for me. This past Friday, I proposed to my girlfriend of nearly four years, who accepted. I proposed at Brandywine Falls, a waterfall located in Sagamore Hills, Ohio, which is part of the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area. We then capped off the evening with a great meal, a bottle of wine and some complimentary champagne at Light Bistro in Ohio City. So now I'm officially engaged, though I'm still getting used to saying "fiancee" instead of just "girlfriend". I feel kind of awkward going around and telling everyone I know (like most people do), so the news has been slowly trickling out. So I apologize to anyone who finds out from reading this that I didn't get to tell you in person, but I'm not good with that stuff.

Anyways, that was obviously the big news. But a couple of good things have also happened in the past few days that I think I can lump together into a trio of goodness. The second item is that we also found out Friday that our obnoxious and threatening neighbors did not have their lease renewed and are scheduled to vacate the premises by the end of April. Obviously not as soon as we would have liked, but better than nothing. We were pretty much to the point where we hoped the apartment managers did nothing so we'd have grounds to break our lease and move, but ultimately this seems like a good resolution. The third and final piece is that I received a promotion at work. I had been a little bummed that I didn't get one at the end of year review time, but this worked out better because just three months later I'm getting another raise on top of that one.

So obviously I'm very happy at the moment. I'm a constant worrier, and to have 3 pretty major concerns in my life get a sort of resolution in the same week is huge. I just hope that I didn't use up all of my good luck at one time, because it doesn't seem to come around that often.

Just say no....to plastic bags

2007-03-28T18:20:00.000-04:00

It's funny how back in the day I used to call anyone who showed any sort of care for the environment a "hippie", because these days I'm as big a "hippie" as almost everyone I know, and continue to move in that direction more and more.

For instance, I was very happy to see this news story today that San Francisco is passing a law to ban plastic grocery bags. Supposedly the ban would save nearly 450,000 gallons of oil each year from being used in their manufacture. I realize that is a literal drop in the bucket, but it's something. I'm glad to see that some environmental causes these days can be marketed to garner the support of the "right wing" by pointing out how something can "reduce our dependency on foreign oil" (one of Mr. Bush's favorite lines). Nothing more patriotic than that!

While none of my readers live in San Fran (that I know of), we can all take a similar step. Last year I purchased a couple of canvas bags from my local grocery store (Heinen's) for literally a couple of dollars, and just take them in every time I shop instead of using up new plastic bags. And at Heinen's, they actually credit you a few cents each time you use your own bags, so after a few visits to recoup the initial bag expense, you're actually saving money. I also have a bag from Trader Joe's which enters your name in a monthly raffle for free groceries every time you use it.

If you're really cheap and don't feel like shelling out a couple bucks to buy a reusable bag (hey, I'm famously cheap but even I bought some), some stores, such as our local Heinen's, has a recycle bin at the store entrance where you can recycle your old bags. I'm not sure if all bags from all retailers are recyclable, but we save all of our bags at home and take them up there once a month. It's very easy and doesn't cost anything. I can only hope that other cities, such as Cleveland, will follow San Francisco's lead and help push along global recycling efforts.

Tax time

2007-03-18T22:00:00.000-04:00

I used to look forward to tax time every year, and couldn't wait to get all of my statements in the mail so that I could get my taxes done and wait for my big check from Uncle Sam. That was until I started investing more. Now, I tend to hold off until March, fearing that instead of receiving a check, I'll be writing one. I figured that would be the case this year, but to my surprise, I'm actually getting a return. A whole whopping $55 from the Feds.

Unfortunately, I'll be taking that return and adding a little extra to it to send to the gang down in Columbus, because I owe the state of Ohio. You win some, you lose some. I guess I should be happy though, because according to the financial "experts", I came pretty darn close to "break even", meaning that I didn't give the government a big interest-free loan by letting them hold onto my big return for a year. I don't imagine they were able to make much off my $55. Maybe someday, especially once I take on a mortgage, the government will get back into the habit of writing me those big checks like they do for a lot of other people.

My first police report

2007-03-13T22:09:00.000-04:00

Today was a day of firsts for me as I filed my very first police report for menacing. It all started when I got home from work and the drunken seemingly unemployed asshole downstairs was rocking out like he enjoys doing from time to time (like on this occasion). I enjoy music, but not when someone else is playing it to the point where it shakes my floors. So we called the apartment maintenance department (for about the 6th or 7th time now) and they sent a guy out to tell him to turn it down, which he did. Seemingly a happy ending. But not quite.

About 10 seconds after maintenance guy leaves, drunken asshole starts pounding on his ceiling and yelling. It was hard to understand what he was yelling most of the time, but he remedied that by going outside and yelling at us through the porch screen door. Among the snippets I caught were him calling us "punks", beckoning us to come downstairs so that he can "kick the fucking snot out of you", and even going as far as to say he'd kill us, which was the pinnacle of his 30-minute temper tantrum, at which point we called up the police department, who were already on their way because the maintenance guy asked them to come out.

After that, there were no further problems, besides us being scared this psycho below us would live up to his word if he saw us. I've seen him before, and I know he's seen me, but I'm not sure if he's smart enough to put together whether or not I'm the guy that lives above him since there are three other apartments on the second floor. Either way, it's not really something I look forward to finding out. So after a while, we decided to head out and go to the police station and file a report, so in case this psycho ever decides to actually do something, there will be a record of it happening before. In addition, we hope this gives us some ammunition in going to the apartment owners and having them evict this asshole, and if they refuse, give us grounds to possibly break our lease, which unfortunately runs through the end of the year, and find somewhere better to live. After filing 6 or 7 noise complaints with the apartment and now having a police report for menacing, I think that gives us more than a leg to stand on in court, if it were to come to that.

I Survived!

2007-03-13T12:07:00.000-04:00

I am writing this to let all of my hundreds of concerned readers know that I am OK following yesterday's earthquake here in Ohio. I was sitting at my kitchen table on my laptop with my headphones on, and then I heard a big bang and felt the floor shaking. I had assumed something big had fallen over in one of the bedrooms, or a nearby meth lab had finally blown up. It only lasted a few seconds, and I was left more confused than anything else. Some people in the building walked outside to look around, as I think no one knew exactly what had happened. I think the noise threw most people off of the idea that it might have been an earthquake. But 40 minutes later, one of the local news websites confirmed it was a minor 3.6 earthquake, with an epicenter just a little south of where I live. So apparently the meth supply of Northeast Ohio is safe, for now.

13 Tzameti

2007-02-21T20:24:00.000-05:00

Last night I sat down and watched a small black & white French film called '13 Tzameti'. I had seen a recommendation for it somewhere, so I put it in my Netflix queue and it finally arrived yesterday. I knew next to nothing about the movie before watching it, besides that it was foreign, but I came away sold on it. To actually discuss the movie, which was quite interesting in my opinion, I have to give away the main plot line (though it's not really anything the trailer doesn't already give away). So stop reading this post if you intend to watch the movie (which I'm sure none of you are...)

So the story is there is this young, poor roofer in France who is working on a job for a guy who dies. Before the guy died, the roofer overheard him talking about traveling somewhere to potentially make a lot of money. Well, low and behold the guy's travel tickets fall into the roofer's hands, so he blindly decides to follow this lead and travels to where this guy was going. Well, it turns out this guy was going to play a game.

This is not your typical sort of game though. It is a game where 13 contestants play a form of Russian Roulette. In the first round, the 13 stand in a circle, each is given a single bullet to put in their 6-shooter gun. They then spin the shooter, point the guy at the back of the guy's head in front of them, and all pull the trigger when ordered. Whoever is left standing (i.e. didn't die), gets to go to the next round, and this continues until there is a winner. Meanwhile, a group of very wealthy men are each sponsoring a contestant, and place very large bets, so it's basically a big gambling operation, though quite a bit different from any I have ever heard of. There are men betting on the lives of other men.

The movie was entertaining, though at times hard to watch. It is very dark and emotionally intense and left me on the edge of my seat. The poor roofer had no idea that this is what he was getting himself into, and there is no way out of it once he finds out what it's all about, and he is in no way prepared for this like the other contestants (if one can ever actually be prepared for this sort of thing).

What I found most surprising of all though, after watching the movie, I watched one of the DVD extras, which was an interview with someone who had actually taken part in this sort of "game" before, on a number of occasions. The man is in his 60s and seems out there, but in no way crazy like one would expect of someone who actually voluntarily does this. He said that he has done it in countries besides France, and it's literally like the movie portrays it. He says he likes to take risks, and his life is something he feels OK with risking (though he admits he wouldn't risk it if there wasn't money involved). While I'm sure this type of event is not that widespread (or at least I'd like to hope not), it's just one of those things that I would never have suspected that people are actually willing and capable of doing. It blows my mind.

digging out

2007-02-18T20:11:00.000-05:00

I realized today that almost an entire month has gone by since I last posted. So I figured I should let the 10 or so readers that I have know that I am still alive. Despite the time that has passed, I don't have any really exciting stories to share. There are about 2 feet of snow on the ground outside that I cannot wait until it disappears. During my 2 1/2 hour drive home on Tuesday evening, I questioned again why I stay here, only to realize that I'll probably be around a few more winters, at the least.

I've also gotten back into the running thing. So for everyone who thought it was just a passing interest, it's not. Well, at least not for now. At this time though, I am not planning on running any marathons this year. After doing 3 last year, I'm kind of over the whole "running a marathon for the sake of running a marathon" thing. I've proved that I can do it, and I don't see the point in doing another one until I can push myself harder. While the original goal was to get under 4 hours, after doing that in the last 3, it's time to raise the bar. So for now, I'm sticking to shorter races and will just see how I feel about doing any more in the future.

So for now, I only have one race on my calendar that I am registered for. The Columbus Distance Classic, a half-marathon I ran last year in Columbus, that goes down on April 14. I signed up for it a few months ago, though now I almost wish I had not. After coming down with a nasty bout of stomach flu last month, which led me to take almost 2 weeks off from running, I really haven't gotten back into a good running groove. I can get the miles done no problem, just not with very good speeds. I hope I can get into gear in the next month or so, but it looks at this point like my time might end up slower than last years, which doesn't make me very happy.

germ farm

2007-01-23T12:27:00.000-05:00

I recently realized that I'm becoming a bit of a germophobe. I've taken to washing my hands many more times a day than I was previously used to, started using those cleaning wipes on stuff at work, and even bought my first tube of hand sanitizer. Despite all of this, I still managed to acquire a very nasty virus this weekend which left me laid out except for frequent trips to the bathroom.

I blame it on work. Despite the fact that a lot people at work seem to be hoarding enormous stockpiles of time off, there are always a number of very obviously sick people that show up each day. Couple this with the fact that the only thing seperating us from people on both sides is about 2-3 feet of air, and it's not a good situation. Add in the mounds of food that magically seem to appear each day that everyone hovers around and manhandles, and things look even grimmer. At this rate, I think I need to start coming in with a mask and gloves, at least during the winter.

Five things

2007-01-14T17:43:00.000-05:00

I was tagged by James, so here is my attempt at compiling five things about myself that (most of) you don't know about me:

- Despite being a big computer nerd, I actually minored in Business Management in college and am planning to return to college to pursue my MBA as early as this fall.

- If you count the first job I technically had after college (a stint at the now defunct Arthur Andersen in which I never actually spent a day at work, yet was paid several months salary), I am on my 4th job in a little over 5 years. Some of it, obviously, was bad luck and the other part is the fact that I'm a malcontent who always sees the grass greener on the other side.

- Prior to starting to run marathon in 2005, I despised distance running. In 8th grade, I was the fastest sprinter on the team, and only ran the shortest distances possible (100m, 200m, 4x100m relay) and complained about any running that I had to do beyond that distance. Despite my success, I only ran the one year because I didn't enjoy it and all the training that went with it.

- Since many people might consider me to be somewhat of a music snob, it should be surprising to hear that the first concert I went to was to see soft-rock radio favorites the Moody Blues at Blossom Music Center way back in the early 90s when I was 13 or 14. My brother's friends had an extra ticket and swung by to see if he was interested, which he wasn't, so I got to tag along instead. It was awesome.

- I am a huge baseball fan and hope to one day attend a game in every major league stadium. So far, I've seen games in 9 different stadiums (Cleveland (2), Detroit (2), Cincinnati, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago, Kansas City), 4 of which are no longer in operation.

I tag Will, Ken, Josh, Erik, Kelly & Jose.

still amazed

2007-01-03T22:40:00.000-05:00

Even though I'm getting a little older, there are still things I encounter every day that amaze me. For instance, today the CEO of Home Depot resigned. His reward? $210 million dollars. And that's not even for a job well done. In the six years that he was in charge, Home Depot's stock actually went down about 3%.

I could only hope that my company will do the same for me when I decide to hang them up. Heck, I'd be happy with just a half a million. But I'll probably just settle for a nice cake.

Sleeping lessons

2007-01-01T21:00:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year everyone. Typically I am one that spends this time doing a lot of introspection and resolution making for the new year ahead. But this year, I decided to avoid all that stuff. Looking back at last year's resolutions, I realize that I feel more regret about the resolutions I was unable to keep than I feel good about the resolutions that I was able to keep. Doesn't seem like a very good formula, does it?

As far as retrospectives, this is something that I've gotten very used to doing at work though I still fail to see their usefulness most of the time. Looking back at what could have been done better is a good way to create a list of things to improve upon. But what happens with that list is the real heart of the matter, and unfortunately that list rarely ever turns into anything useful, at least in my experiences. It's all about follow through, and I am admittedly as bad at that as everyone else.

I am looking forward to the start of the new year. I always feel the sense that it is a new beginning and things can change, even though it rarely does. It's all about possibilities. But unfortunately, it also means that the gym is going to be very busy for about 2 months. My fellow gym frequenters and I dread this time of year. Hopefully this amazing Cleveland winter weather keeps up and I can get in more outdoor runs before hibernating for the winter.

lively and refreshing

2006-12-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

This evening I went out to dinner with my parents and a few of my cousins and enjoyed one of my favorite Missouri things, a Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat Beer. Even though Boulevard Brewery is actually located in Kansas City, it's pretty easy to find places across all of Missouri that have their beer on tap. The Boulevard Wheat is a citrusy beer that is very light in color, though cloudy in appearance, and is supposedly the "top selling craft beer in the Midwest". It is also noted that it is reminiscent of turn of the century wheat beers that were produced before the advent of modern filtration. All I know for sure is that it is good stuff that I wish I could find easily in Cleveland.

I don't claim to be any sort of beer expert, though I think I could be classified as a bit of a beer snob. I rarely drink much alcohol at all, but on the few occasions I do, I always try to find something other than the standard Bud/Miller/Coors fare. I'm a huge fan of Cleveland's own Great Lakes Brewing Company which is always the safe bet for me. My favorite is their Burning River Pale Ale, though the Holy Moses White Ale, Dortmunder and Christmas Ale aren't far behind, though I've never tried one of their beers that I've actually disliked. I'm always a big fan of Woodchuck Draft Cider, Bell's Amber Ale (out of Michigan), Brooklyn East India Pale Ale and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember at the moment.

So when it comes to choosing a beer when I'm out, I'm usually somewhat picky, but I'm always open to new things. I know what I like (IPAs, wheat, ciders, rice, hefe weizen), and what I usually don't prefer (dark - anything I can't see through, fruit-flavored). So I usually try to pick something within those guidelines, and I always try things from local brewers when I'm in new cities. If the pickings are slim and I really want a beer, the safe, more mainstream beers for me are Sierra Nevada, Samuel Adams seasonal, or Heineken.

the end of holidays

2006-12-25T23:49:00.000-05:00

Christmas Day is now in it's final minutes here in the Central Time Zone, and overall it was a good day. It's the first Xmas I've been away from the Cleveland area in a long time, which is a bit weird. Even though I'm at my parent's new house, it doesn't quite feel like home. But it's nice to see all of my family, including extended family, who I only get to see a few times a year now. A little snow would have been nice, but near 50 degrees and sunny is good too.

The trip has been pretty relaxing, with the exception of the flight in which was over an hour late in leaving Cleveland. We then spent 30 minutes sitting on the plan and wandering around the tarmac in St. Louis after landing, trying to find a gate to pull up to. I've been lucky to have good flight experiences for the most part over the years, so I guess the laws of odds say this was bound to happen. I spent a few hours on Saturday being overwhelmed by the 100+ channels at my fingertips thanks to satellite TV. At times it makes me want to get cable, but it also makes it painfully clear that it would easily become a vacuum for my free time. I managed to find a very interesting series on the Discovery Channel, entitled Everest: Beyond the Limit. The series follows a group of climbers trying to scale the toughest mountain in the world. It really sucks you in, in part because you want to see if something will go wrong, and in part because you want to see if these people can actually do it. Definitely worth checking out.

I also finally went to a St.Louis Blue hockey game. I've been a Blues fan since I was in college, and have been to 2 NHL games previously, in Detroit and Dallas, but this was my first time seeing the Blues in person. My brother scored some great seats and it was a great game, as the Blues won 3-2 in OT. I'm hoping to make it to my first Cardinals game in the new Busch Stadium next time I'm in town. I saw more games in the old Busch Stadium than probably most people in St. Louis.

today is tonight

2006-12-17T20:05:00.001-05:00

The blog is looking a bit different today. Blogger told me I could update my blogs to their new beta software, so I did. However, it seems that the custom template I had created is not compatible with their new software, because upon conversion my blog was complete barren except for the background color. So for now, I have adopted one of their cookie-cutter templates until I bother to find something better.

I'm dreading the start of the new week, mainly because it appears to be the end of the miraculous weather we've been having. Today we almost broke a record high as the temperature was near 60 degrees. I went out for a run on Saturday along the towpath in Brecksville and it was perfect running weather. There were a few people out biking, but it was pretty dead which made it very peaceful. Saturday's run pushed my total for the year to 910 miles run. So unless I go crazy and run 90 miles in the next 13 days, I'm going to fall short of my goal of 1,000 miles for the year. But I'm happy with my current total. I'm still going to shoot for 1,000 in the coming year, but at this point I'm more interested in setting new personal records in various races instead of merely logging large numbers of miles.

On the positive side, I'm heading down to St. Louis on Friday evening to spend Christmas with my family and take a few days off from work. Hopefully all of the presents I ordered arrive before I do. I was big into the online shopping this year, mainly because it was not feasible for me to load up on gifts and haul them on the plane with me, so I just had them shipped down there. This will be my first Christmas on the road in a while now that my parents have moved. Hopefully it's not as stressful as everyone makes it sound. I'm thinking I might get lucky by sneaking out a bit early by going on Friday night instead of waiting for the weekend.

can't always get what you want

2006-12-03T17:04:00.000-05:00

Today I got to experience one of the many joys of apartment life - noisy neighbors. We have a middle-aged lady in the apartment directly below us who still enjoys rocking out every now and then. Her album of choice? Some live Rolling Stones. We almost never hear her, but when she decides to play music, she turns it to about 11 to where you can very clearly hear every note and word sitting in our apartment, and stepping out in the hall sounds like you are actually at the concert, so I can hardly imagine how loud it is actually inside her apartment.

We have called and complained in the past, but today was the best. First, the guy from the rental office came over and pounded on the door for about 5 minutes, with no results. He tried to call her then, but her phone number is disconnected, imagine that. Then, about 15 minutes later, the head maintenance guy came over and literally pounded on her door (and yelled 'Maintenance') for a few more minutes. The lady never answered the door, but did turn the music down a bit, so apparently she is not totally deaf. The maintenance guy then called me to say he will call the head of the apartment complex tomorrow and they will deal with her. I don't know what that entails, but hopefully it will mean the end of free Stones concerts in my apartment.

Marathon #4 - Philadelphia

2006-11-20T21:37:00.000-05:00

Hey, Rocky!
Originally uploaded by thespacerace.

Yes, it's true. I snuck off to the east coast this past weekend and ran yet another marathon. Yes, the Detroit one was only 3 weeks ago. But I really wanted to get visit my friend who now lives in Delaware, so I figured running the Philadelphia Marathon was a good excuse for me to do so.

My girlfriend and I on left Friday morning for the roughly 6 1/2 hour trek out east, suffering for rain for most of the first half, along with mountains and semis going way too fast. But we finally made it there and quickly left again to head for Philly to catch the marathon expo and some dinner. Well, traffic had different plans as we spent about 45 minutes sitting in the same spot due to an apparent accident on the bridge ahead of us. So the expo plans were moved to Saturday, and we had some tasty Greek food after we made it to Philly, before checking out one of my favorite singers, Eric Bachmann, perform at a cool little place called the North Star Bar.

On Saturday morning, we headed back to Philly and picked up all the necessary race stuff (bib, chip, shirt, free stuff) at the expo and did a little bit of exploring of Philly which seems like a very cool city. After watching the big OSU/Michigan football game, we had a very tasty homemade pasta dinner before heading to bed early.

Sunday morning, I was up at 5:45 and we were back on the road to Philly at 6:30. We got there just in time to follow some others in hopping the curb and parking on some innercity baseball field just a few hundred feet from the marathon area. The weather was cool, though not as bad as Detroit was, and there was not much wind to speak of. So, I opted for the shorts instead of the tights, though I stuck with the long-sleeve shirt which turned out to be a pretty good idea.

The race started about 8:05, a little behind schedule. I managed to secure a pretty good spot in the crowd, though it still took me a little over 2 minutes to cross the starting line (thank goodness for chip timing). I managed to keep up a pace of about 8:05 per mile for about the first 8 miles or so. But during mile 9, we went up a good sized hill for about a half mile and I was hurting by the end of that and I don't think I ever fully recovered from that. The first half of the race was pretty awesome. Running mostly around the city and little neighborhoods, there was a lot of crowd support and interesting sights to be seen.

At the halfway point, we crossed back by the Art Museum where the race started and headed north. At the 14 mile mark, I was at 1:57:02, which is an 8:21 pace. I actually improved on my pace between mile 10 and 14 as my average pace at mile 10 was 8:32. Unfortunately, the second half of the race was not so great, both course-wise and performance-wise.

For the second half of the race, we ran north of the museum along the Schuylkill River. It was scenic if you're into the whole nature thing. I train a lot in the park and enjoy the nature scenery, but when it comes to marathons I like the more urban settings with fans. The fans along the second half of the marathon were pretty few and far between, with the exception of the turnaround point at mile 20 when we ran through Manayunk. The crowds there were the best of any along the course. I hit the 20 mile mark at 2:52:51, so my average pace had swelled to 8:38. If I had managed to maintain that, I would have set a personal record. But, I didn't.

The last 6.2 miles of the race took me almost exactly an hour, or an average pace of 9:41 per mile. I guess it's safe to say that I "hit the wall". The only positive that I came away from it with is that I did not walk at all during that last 6.2 miles, or any of the 26.2 miles overall, which is a first. I walked in Detroit a bit, only because I had some cramps. But in Philly, I had no cramps, and no walking. Just slowness.

I managed to pickup my pace a bit during the last half mile as we finally encountered crowds of people again. I officially crossed the line in 3:52:55. Not my best time, but a time I am content with. Running two marathons in three weeks is not something I recommend if you're looking to break personal records. But I'm glad I drove out there and did it. I visited a new state for the first time (Delaware), got to hang out with my friends, explored a new town, and got a bit of exercise. And having a four-day weekend was an added bonus too.

Weekend on the go

2006-11-12T23:10:00.000-05:00

Lebron shooting free throws
Originally uploaded by thespacerace.

Another Sunday night, mourning the end of the weekend. A very fun weekend it was. We spent most of the day on Saturday at the Fabulous Food Show at the I-X Center, taking in lots of free food, wine tastings, and cooking demos from various "celebrity chefs", including "Iron Chef" Cat Cora (who is much more attractive in person than on TV). It was a good day to spend indoors as it was very rainy and grey outside, as is typical in Cleveland this time of year.

Saturday evening, we headed downtown to watch the Cleveland Cavs take on the Boston Celtics. Kristy scored some primo tickets which put us only a few rows behind the Celtics bench. It was the best seats I've ever had for a basketball game (by far), and it made the game all the more interesting. Well, that and the fact that the Cavs made an amazing comeback from being down 25 points to win the game, 94-93. It was probably one of the most exciting games of the year even though things didn't start looking remotely good until late in the 3rd quarter. I'm very glad that we stuck it out. The atmosphere reminded me of the Indians games back in the late 90s when they used to sell the place out every night and people spent almost as much time on their feet as they did sitting. And to top it off, the Browns and the Steelers both won today in good games.

Today I went out on a 12 mile run in the Metroparks. A little bit chilly, but it made for a nice, quiet run. And for those who think I'm a little crazy with all this running stuff, check out Dean Karnazes who just last weekend finished doing 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days. And what does he decide to do to follow that up the very next day? Start running back to his home in San Fransisco.....from New York! Yes, this 3,000 mile odyssey (follow it here) is very Forest Gump. Seems a bit much to me. But then again, I've never enjoyed minor celebrity and had to figure out ways to extend my 15 minutes of fame.

Marathon #3 - Detroit

2006-11-02T19:10:00.000-05:00

My third marathon is now in the books. This past Sunday, I ran the Detroit Marathon. Overall it was a pretty fun race that took us into Canada for a few miles along with numerous little neighborhoods throughout Detroit.

On the drive up to Detroit on Saturday afternoon, things were not looking so great as 50+ mph winds were blowing the Vibe all over the highway, along with occasional downpours. But we made it there in the afternoon and met up with my friend Ryan who was running the half-marathon and was kind enough to put us up for the night. We went to the less-than-impressive marathon expo to pickup our required gear and then headed off to a big pasta dinner with some other friends before going to bed nice and early.

Race day started with a 6am wakeup to eat a bagel and an energy bar before driving downtown. The starting area was a sea of port-o-potties (well over 100) and long lines, though I managed to find one with almost no line. I then spent 5 minutes squeezing into the overcrowded starting coral for my pace about 10 minutes before the race started. Temperatures were only in the upper 30s so I decided to go with the leg tights under my shorts, long sleeve shirt, gloves and a knit hat. I also took along my iPod, which allowed me to track my run (see here).

The race started off well, as most of my runs do, with a first mile time of around 7:22. The first real challenge (course map) was during mile 4 when we crossed the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, Canada. The bridge is super long and the first half was a pretty steep incline. The coolest part of the run was the run back to the States via the Detroit-Windsor underwater tunnel. My "underwater mile" time was 7:46, very good for mile 8. I then made it to the halfway point at 1:47:01, for an average pace of just under 8:10 a mile.

After that, things were pretty much downhill (in a figurative sense). The wind started picking up, and was really bad during the 3-mile run out to and around Belle Isle. During mile 18, I started getting cramps in my left calf muscle and had to stop to stretch a few times. The last few miles, which are always the worst part, was made even worse this time because of the wind. When we made the turn onto Lafayette Avenue for the last 3 miles, we started running into a headwind that was brutal. I ran my slowest mile in mile 24 with a time of 9:22, which is probably because of having to stop to stretch both calves which were now both cramping.

When we made the turn to head for Ford Field, I managed to pick things up, which was helped by a large crowd of fans that had been absent for most of the last 10 miles. We entered Ford Field through a big entryway that led into a downhill tunnel that led down to the playing field. I managed to sprint the last minute or so and finish strong, and finish in under 3 hours and 50 minutes, with an official time of 3:49:18, which is just under 3 minutes better than my personal best that I set back in Cincinnati in May. I had hoped to do a few minutes better, but given the conditions I should be happy that I did as good as I did.

After crossing the finish line, I crashed on the field for a bit. It was cool to be out on the football field with a bunch of fans in the stands, but I was too tired and dazed to really enjoy it. I felt pretty lightheaded, which I credit to dehydration and had to stop and sit down a number of times before grabbing some food and heading outside to my waiting friends.

Overall it was fun and I'm glad I ran it. I wish the weather had been a little better, but I guess I shouldn't have expected much better this late in the year. Next fall I'll try to run something earlier, if I do run one. I haven't decided what is next for my running career, but I don't plan to hang up my shoes quite yet. After all, I just bought a new pair on Monday.

the great Ohio smoke screen

2006-10-19T22:16:00.000-04:00

With the election just weeks away and most people being completely overwhelmed by information and attacks ads from shady politicians (regardless of which party they represent), the other stuff on the ballot is easily overlooked and lost in the shuffle. So in order to help clear up some confusion, I thought I'd write up about one of the important issues on the ballot here in Ohio.

Issues 4 & 5: These two are always mentioned together since they both have to do with smoking, and both proclaim to be anti-smoking, though that is really not the case. One would actually overturn existing smoking bans in over 20 cities across Ohio, such as Columbus. So here are the real simple truths about Issues 4 & 5:

ISSUE 4: This issue, if passed, would amend the Ohio constitution to allow smoking in many public places such as restaurants and would overturn the 20+ city bans on smoking (including the one in Columbus) and prevent future bans from being put in place, and would overrule Issue 5 even if it passed. This issue has been almost entirely funded by the tobacco and alcohol industries.

ISSUE 5: This issue, if passed, would ban smoking in restaurants, public places and workplaces throughout Ohio. This issue is backed by the American Cancer Society and over 500 organizations and businesses.

So hopefully that clears up a bit of the confusion, most of which is being intentionally created by the big corporate backers of Issue 4. To read more about Issue 4 from it's supporters, visit SmokeLessOhio.com. To read more about Issue 5 from it's supporters, visit SmokeFreeOhio.org.

don't take my sunshine

2006-10-17T21:10:00.000-04:00

I will be going to bed shortly for the last time as a 27 year old. So I guess I'm officially entering my "late 20s" now. That term actually has a nice ring to it. Kind of like having a bit of a distinguished air, yet still young enough to be sort of cool. But it's what is lurking just around the corner that is the scary part. Hopefully the late 20s go by a lot slower than the rest of my 20s have so I will have time to enjoy it.

Things have been pretty busy lately and I'm begrudgingly adjusting to the fact that summer is over. Normally I am a big fan of fall, but the early cold weather always arrives like a sharp slap to the face, along with the first snowflakes of the year which were witnessed last week. Besides that, I enjoy wearing sweaters again and the changing colors of the leaves.

Another thing I like about this time of the year is the awesome running weather. I did a 14 mile run through the park this past Saturday and it was probably my best run of the year. It was nice and cool and the scenery was great. Hopefully I can keep the running momentum going as I am now less than two weeks away from running the Detroit Marathon.

Last week I ventured out on a weeknight to check out two great comedians, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black on their current tour (dates here). It was a great show, despite the fact that I had to stand out in 30 degree weather outside the club for over a half hour waiting to get in, wearing just a long sleeve shirt. How is it that a club advertises a show for 7:00pm, but doesn't even start letting people in until 7:45? (I'm looking in your direction, Grog Shop). Anyways, once inside and defrosted, the show was very funny. I surprisingly actually enjoyed Showalter's set more than Black's. Showalter stuck to a very non-standard comedy routine like other more "indie" comedians, while Black's set was more along the lines of the average comedian. Still very funny, but just a little disappointing as compared to when I had seen him live before (as part of Stella, w/ Showalter & David Wain).

Besides that, I've also been enjoying:
- playoff baseball (go Cardinals!)
- East Coast Original Frozen Custard
- Last Call Cleveland (great local comedy group that performs at the House of Blues)
- Woodchuck Draft Cider

time for october

2006-10-01T22:00:00.000-04:00

Today was a mostly sports-filled day for me. I started off with a run this morning of 20 miles. Following that, I pretty much felt like laying on the couch the rest of the day, which is mostly what I ended up doing. I was flipping back and forth between a couple of early football games and the final Cleveland Indians baseball game of the season. They ended up winning, and in the process won like 9 of their last 11 games or something crazy like that. Too bad they couldn't manage that last year, when they did the exact opposite to miss the playoffs. I'm not sure what to make of their chances next year, especially since there are 3 better teams than them just in their division. But I will keep an eye on them over the winter and hopefully they add to the team, instead of subtract like they did last offseason.

After that, I ended up watching a good portion of the Cleveland Browns football game against the Raiders. I skipped a bunch of the 1st half after they got off to a very lackluster start (as usual), but the 2nd half was pretty good. I'm not a huge fan like I was when I was younger, but I like to see them do good. I just haven't been able to really get back into them since they returned back in 1999(?), but maybe that will change in time.

After that, I went out to dinner at one of my favorite places, Aladdins Eatery, out in Hudson, home to quite possibly the world's best hummus. Their menu is full of delicious Middle Eastern themed meals, and I have never had something there that I haven't really enjoyed, and tonight was no different. It's always good to eat knowing that you burned about 2,500 calories earlier. Takes away the guilt.

the future is not over?!

2006-09-23T22:48:00.000-04:00

While my previous post was to honor the memory of the recently departed WOXY.com, this post is to spread the rumor that it may soon return from the dead a second time.

On Tuesday, someone by the name of Bill Nguyen posted this message on the WOXY message board:

"Hey folks, we'd like to save woxy. You can learn more about us at lala.com, but we're very well funded and humbled by the great work the people here have done. Please tell the fab four at woxy to contact us."

Of course, that post alone is no reason for one to get their hopes up. But since then, Mr. Nguyen has posted at least a dozen other messages, including this one, which lays out a very detailed and ambitious plan for the station. Apparently he has been in touch with the station's operators, and is even planning to fly in and hold an open forum to meet with them and fans in Cincinnati this Monday. He has said he wants to get the station back on air ASAP (as in a week from now) and make it totally free once again.

I, like many others, am not quite sure what to make of this. It is all very odd that this whole thing started as a post on a message board just a few days ago. It's like it's too good to be true. So I guess I'd put myself in the camp of the "cautiously optimistic" at the moment. I'm very anxious to see if this gathering on Monday night in Cincy takes place, and what comes out of it.

As for Mr. Nguyen, he is apparently the founder of lala.com, which is a website for people to get together and swap CDs (yes, actual CDs) by mail. Sounds strange, especially in this era of downloadable music, but apparently it is growing in popularity.

So for now, I guess we shall just wait and see what becomes of this. If it turns out like it sounds, this would be quite an amazing development for ol' WOXY.

UPDATE: (9/26) - It now appears to be official that WOXY will be back on the air by (possibly) next week! Read here for the details. Hooray for reincarnation and strangers with lots of money!

the future is over

2006-09-20T21:39:00.000-04:00

I was very saddened this past Friday to hear the final broadcast of WOXY, my favorite radio station for nearly the past 10 years.

I was first introduced to WOXY when I started college at Miami University down in the quiet little town of Oxford, Ohio. Since 1983, the small little station played the best in modern rock, and boasted that it had the largest collection of modern rock music in the world. The station was literally the soundtrack to my college years at Miami. I always had the radio on around my dorm, and most of the stores and places around campus played the station. If I had to guess, I would say the number of hours I've spent listening to WOXY is easily in the thousands, even in this era of MP3s and iPods.

But in 2004, the station went off the air after the owners sold the frequency, only to re-emerge months later as an internet-only station thanks to some optimistic investors. It had broadcast online for years and was widely regarded as one of the most popular internet stations in the world, so it seemed like a logical progression. Things were looking good until earlier this year when they had to start offering the broadcast on a subscriber basis. Failing to make enough revenue to cover their expenses, they announced on August 31st that they would be going off the air on Sept.15th, a little over 2 years into their online-only existence.

So last Friday afternoon, I tuned in after getting home from work, just in time to hear the last hour they were broadcasting, just as I had done 2 years earlier when they went off the airwaves the first time around. It was sad, though not as much so as the first sign-off back in 2004. I had thought at that time, like many others, that we were hearing the last of WOXY. So when they came back a few months later, it was like gravy. Two years of gravy. It was good, but it never had quite the same feel as the old days. Hearing the ads for Jungle Jim's and getting the weather forecast from the good old "party patio" were just a few of the silly little things I missed from the old broadcasting days.

After a lot of goodbyes and thank yous, they played three final songs before going silent: "Acquiesce" by Oasis, "Fight The Power", by Public Enemy, and the final track, MC5's song "Kick Out The Jams". A pretty good representation of the diversity of music you could once hear on WOXY. The station, which touted itself as "the future of rock n' roll", has now found itself a piece of the past. But it will long be remembered by myself and many others, whether they be from Oxford, Cincinnati, NYC, or Europe. WOXY was a classic.

- For more on the history of WOXY, check out their Wikipedia article.
- If you missed the last days, go here to download WOXY recordings.

Movie Review - "The Last Kiss"

2006-09-18T22:48:00.000-04:00

Tonight we went up to the local movie theatre and watched the new movie "The Last Kiss". The movie is based on an Italian movie from a few years ago, that no one has heard of (self included). The basic premise is the almost 30 year old main character, played by Zach Braff, is in a seemingly perfect long-term relationship. But all is not perfect as he sees his life rolling out before him just as he had always thought it would, realizing that there were no more surprises to be had in life.

So what does he do? He goes out and finds a little excitement, in the form of another women. Meanwhile, the other characters in the movie (his friends and family) are having their own messy relationships that are falling apart in various manners. It's a little bit like watching assorted trainwrecks, though there is not much attachment to the characters since we just get brief snippets of their world.

Without giving away the entire plot, I will say that it takes a number of familiar turns that one would expect from a Hollywood picture. I can only hope that the original had a little more emotion and unpredictableness than this thing did. The love interest is a dumb college girl that you are left wondering how the main character fell for her. And the other characters in the movie are just one dimensional. I didn't really dislike the movie, but I just did not find it saying anything new or different. Thankfully I caught it on bargain Monday night, where $5 got my ticket and free popcorn. Gotta love that.

wincing the night away

2006-09-10T19:55:00.000-04:00

I'm enjoying finally being able to sit still today. I was up before the sun this morning for the River Run Half Marathon out in Berea. It was a 13.1 mile run from Berea to Rocky River via the Metroparks. I managed to get a personal best time of 1:40:45, though the race was tough for me and I was not happy with how it went. I posted a detailed race review here on my running blog. Just goes to show I have a lot of hard work to do these next 7 weeks leading up to the Detroit Marathon.

After a long drive home, I cleaned up, ate some lunch and we headed out the door for the quick drive over to Geagua Lake amusement park. My employer rented the place out today, so it was just open to employees and their families. I had not been there in probably at least 10 years, and it was pretty much an entirely different place than when I had last been. There were a lot of people there it seemed, until you went to get in the line for a ride. I think the longest wait I had was 10 minutes.

The best ride at the park, in my opinion, is X-Flight. It is like no other coaster I have ever rode on, and I have rode more than my share. It's like sitting in a seat, except you're facing backwards. And if that was not enough, when the ride begins, your backwards seat is lowered so that you are laying flat on your back looking up at the sky, going backwards. The ride features many twists and turns, including a number of sections where you're turned over, facing the ground, with only your harness between you and the grass. It's a pretty amazing ride that I would count in my top 3.

I came home and found I missed nothing by not watching the Cleveland Browns game, as it sounded pretty pathetic. I know New Orleans drafted a great player in Reggie Bush, but that just means they were even worse than us last year, yet still beat us this year. Looks like it is going to be yet another long year for the Brownies. Fortuntely, things are looking up for Notre Dame, my college favorite, who pounded Penn State this weekend. Hopefully they can keep it up and get their revenge on Ohio State in January, though I doubt OSU will last until then.

clock with no hands

2006-09-09T21:01:00.000-04:00

Spent my Saturday doing laundry, eating junk food, playing college football on the Xbox 360, and watching college football on TV. Not bad, except for the laundry part. Living in an apartment without my own washer/dryer sucks. There is one downstairs in our building, but despite there only being 7 other apartments in the building, it seems to constantly be in use. So I usually end up going down the street to the apartment's laundry center, which features four washers and four dryers. Of course the first visit there was only one open washer. So I proceeded to do my laundry, one slow load at a time. At one point, I returned just in time to find my still warm laundry sitting on top of the dryer as I must have missed the buzzer by a minute or so. So I had to start another load in the washer and let one sit for 50 minutes until another dryer was available. Apartment life sucks.

So, in the two weeks I've been away, not too much has gone on. I spent Labor Day weekend in St. Louis visiting my parents new place for the first time. It was nice, and much bigger than I expected. I think they are still getting used to living out there (having been in Ohio the past 32 years), but hopefully they will be happier in their decision to move by the next time I go to visit. I also spent time with other relatives and enjoyed quality time relaxing on the couch, watching really bad TV ("Project Runway", "Bridezillas", "Top Chef"). All in all, it was a nice break from the routine.

On the work front, I got to go to the zoo for a teambuilding exercise which involved a large scavenger hunt. It actually turned out to be more fun that I had expected. There were about 16 groups of 7 or 8 people, and unfortunately my team was not one of the winners. I also failed to win any of the supernice door prizes they gave away just for coming, such as iPod Nanos, Amazon.com gift certificates, portable dvd players, and the grand prize of a premium Xbox 360. Maybe next year.

As far as running, I've been slacking a bit as of late. Not very good considering I'm closing in on the marathon, which is now less than 2 months away. Tomorrow morning I get to roll out of bed early and head out to Berea to participate in the River Run half-marathon. It should be a good measuring stick of where I'm at with my running. I have not run a half-marathon since April 1, so hopefully I will be able to see improvement over that time.

No commenting on current events for me, as I'm pretty fed up with the news as of late. I hate that we now seem to spend almost an entire month building up to the 9/11 anniversary every year. Yes, it was a horrible tragedy, but I do not want to hear the same heartbreaking stories every time I turn on the TV or radio this time of year. Nor do I want to hear every so-called expert saying how we are better or less prepared for the inevitable next attack. Just acknowledge it on the day, and let's move on.

when no one cares

2006-08-24T22:43:00.000-04:00

While the entertainment world was riveted on the Tom Cruise being canned story, there was a very interesting TV announcement made by CBS. They announced that the upcoming season of their long running reality show 'Survivor' will feature four different teams. The big twist is that the four teams will be divided by race. There will be a team of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

Coming off the lowest rated season in it's 12-season run, CBS apparently felt the need to shake things up. So the obvious solution? Controversy. And what better controversial topic than race relations? I can't think of any. I talked to a number of people about this today, none of whom actually watch the show (I admittedly caught every episode of Season 1, but literally have not watched any since then), and almost everyone sounded like they might be interested in watching it given this new format. I guess it's like the car wreck that everyone slows down to see, even though they know they shouldn't.

I for one will not be watching the show, as per usual. I will admit being momentarily interested, until I realized how wrong and manipulative it is. It's a free country, and they can do whatever they want. But it just doesn't sit well with me.

One person that is excited about the show is conservative talk radio loud mouth Rush Limbaugh, whose comments regarding the show only further stuffed his fat foot in his oversized mouth. He stated on the air that the black team would be at a disadvantage because they are not good swimmers. He also called the Asian team the "brainiacs", said the Hispanics would "do things other people won't do" and said the white team might win if they allow "cheating" and "oppression". Very nice. Way not to hide your true conservative values. Too bad no one with half a brain listens to you anymore and could call you out on your extremely blatant racist remarks.

when the going gets tough

2006-08-20T21:05:00.000-04:00

Most political pundits across the country have their eye on Ohio as the key battleground in the upcoming elections. But besides being annoyed by seeing attack ads every commercial break on TV, I don't think most people in Ohio really care at the moment. And who can blame them? Our current Governor, one of the most crooked politicians ever to hold office, recently received a 17% approval rating, by far the lowest of any governor in the country. With people like that in office, it's hard to get excited about politics.

I for one though am pretty excited, or at least interested in the outcome. I'm not a huge fan of the Democratic candidate for Governor, Ted Strickland. But when faced with the alternative, it's hard not to rally behind the guy. His opposition is current Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell. Blackwell, with the loyal support of all the right wing religious extremists in the state, is trying to ride a wave of intolerance and hate into office. But thankfully, recent polls are showing that he's got an uphill climb, to the tune of 20%.

So what does Blackwell do? Just ratchet up the hate. In a recent speech, he called homosexuality a "transgression against God's law" that can be cured, and compared gays to arsonists and kleptomaniacs in that they can all be cured. How very tolerant. I guess that's what he reads in that Bible he is never seen without, and is a preview of what we can expect from the "government centered on God" that he hopes to put into place.

If you are interested in reading more about how religious extremists are influencing Ohio public policy, check out the new blog Happy Agenda, which is all about that very subject. Despite how Ohio turned out in the 2004 elections, it looks like the religious right isn't going to get it's way with politics in 2006. Thank God!

as days grow shorter

2006-08-16T20:15:00.000-04:00

The Flaming Lips @ Kuyahoga Festival - 5
Originally uploaded by thespacerace.

The last few weeks have been a blur. It seemed like every day and every night there was something going on. Concerts, weddings, dinner plans, gatherings, etc. Now as summer is starting to wind down, things seem to be getting back to a more normal (and manageable) pace.

After not going to many concerts this year, all of a sudden I found myself attending three in just over a week. First was the Black Crowes show at Tower City Ampitheater, which I hit up with my friend who is a huge fan. The show was alright. I hadn't listened to them in about 10 years, so I only recognized the songs from back in the day, which were still good. After that was the big Kuyahoga Festival at Blossom. Despite a lengthy downpour (which is not fun if you're cheap and sit on the lawn), I had a good time with the highlight being seeing the Flaming Lips for the 4th time (and they were better than ever). Then a few days later, I joined a friend for the sold-out Raconteurs show at the House of Blues, that blew away my expectations. That Jack White can play seem mean guitar.

Besides that, I've been out and about seeing a lot of people (which is atypical for me, the recluse). Went to an awesome wedding this weekend of two high school friends. It's very refreshing to go to a wedding that does nothing by the book. I can only hope that if that day comes for me that I can have something that other people can enjoy as much as I enjoyed this one.

Still doing the running thing. Last week I passed the 500 mile mark for the year. While I'm well behind pace for the 1,000 miles I had hoped to achieve this year, I'm happy with where I'm at. I've also back into following the Cleveland Indians. While it's disappointing that they had to unload a bunch of talented players, it is kind of exciting and refreshing to see the younger guys out there playing their hearts out. Went to the game last Thursday with a big group, sat in the bleachers, and had a great time. I'm going to try to hit up a few more before the season is over.

Thieves all around us

2006-08-08T21:56:00.000-04:00

I ran across an interesting news story today regarding a video spoof of Al Gore on the popular video sharing site YouTube. The video entitled "Al Gore's Penguin Army" was seemingly a simple spoof by some bored 29-year-old guy who didn't share Gore's opinion about global warming in his new movie "An Inconvenient Truth" (which I saw a month ago, and despite what you might believe, it is an excellent movie that stays very non-political while discussing the crisis we are facing due to global warming). But after a little digging by the Wall Street Journal, it was found that the movie was actually produced by a very well-funded Republican public relations firm, DCI, which also does a lot of work for oil giant Exxon (story here).

So this is yet another example of how major corporations are manipulating the internet into just another mass marketing machine. And in instances like this, it is very successful because most people are not aware that they are watching something put together by people with a lot of money for the sole purpose of shaping their opinion. Instead, they think the average viewer thinks they're just watching some funny video an average guy just like them put together in their basement. I don't know about you, but I get very upset when corporations, political parties, or anything other group with a ton of money, try to use this sort of guerilla marketing to try to shape my opinions without being upfront about it.

Another group that is infiltrating the web is the military. As if requiring schools to allow them to show up and harass their students into joining was not enough, the various branches of the military are now crawling all over MySpace, trying to by your "friend" and ultimately get you to join in on their fun (story here). There have also been rumors around for a while about record labels starting up their own blogs under the guise of normal music fans to stealthily promote their own bands.

So the bottom line is, as if you needed to be told, don't trust what you read/see/hear on the internet. That diary you've been reading might actually be funded by a huge corporation like Johnson & Johnson to try and sell you a certain kind of soap that the author might conveniently mention here and there.

Book Review - "The Brief History of the Dead"

2006-08-04T22:53:00.000-04:00

One of my new year's resolutions was to read 12 books this year, one for each month. Well, here we are at the start of August, and I just now finished my first of the year. Better late than never I suppose.

The book that got me back into reading was "The Brief History of the Dead" by Kevin Brockmeier. I happened to stumble across this recommendation on NPR which led to me picking it up at the library. I made it through to the end, but it got to be some tough sleding near the end.

The premise of the book is that when a person dies, they go to this sort-of parallel world, which is pretty much like the "living" world, and a person remains there as long as someone in the living world remembers them. So it's like a temporary afterlife. But once the last living person who remembers them dies, they disappear from this parallel world. Sort of sounds science-fictiony, but it's really not.

So the book alternates chapters between the "real world" and this other world. In the real world, there is a plague that is wiping out the population. So in turn, the parallel world is shrinking drastically as well and the people there are trying to figure out what is going on. A fairly interesting concept that kept my interest for about 2/3 of the book. Unfortunately, after that, things sort of slowed to a snails pace and the book just dragged along. It's a fairly short read (around 250 pages), but I almost didn't make it through because it got to be so dull. But ultimately I wanted to see what happens at the end.

The book was ranked three stars out of five on Amazon, which seems about right to me. It showed a lot of promise in the beginning, but it really dragged on at the end as if the author wasn't quite sure where to take things and how to wrap them up.

putting the days to bed

2006-08-04T18:25:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, been a bit busy. I'm sure you, my small handful of readers, have been hanging on edge to see how the move went. Well, I'm happy to say things have gone pretty well. Ask me that the day or two following the move, and I would have had a different answer for you. But this week was good.

The highlights of the move:

- Rain and humid weather during most of the truck packing
- Being unable to get a large computer desk out the door and not having the tools to take it apart.
- Driving the U-Haul truck literally .2 miles, filling it up, only to find the truck would not start. After two jump starts, we managed to get it rolling (adding onto the 171,000+ miles already put on the truck)
- Waiting nearly an hour and a half for a pizza delivery

And the following days only got worse as we realized we had more stuff than space. Also, a number of pieces of furniture ended up breaking and having to be thrown out and subsequently replaced. Also, mail is apparently still being delivered to the old address despite a call to the post office where they acknowledged having received the change of address notification two months ago but could not explain how it was not being enacted.

But all is not bad. The cats seem to get together OK. They chase after each other a lot and roll around fighting, but it seems to be more playful than hateful (which is always good). We have managed to maximize our storage spaces and things are quietly disappearing from sight. We're still getting used to everything, but it seems like things will be alright in the end. We are planning to have people over next weekend, so the last things will most likely get picked up, organized and put away this weekend. Then hopefully things will get back to normal.

...and i feel fine

2006-07-21T22:40:00.000-04:00

As I am writing this, I am enjoying the final night of my "bachelor pad". As of tomorrow morning, my eightish months of living by myself will come to an end as my girlfriend Kristy will become my roommate. After dating more than three years and having to drive 45 minutes each way to see each other, it only makes sense that we do this now.

Actually, when I said I was "enjoying" my evening, that is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm sore & sweaty after spending the past few hours rearranging and cleaning things up for the move. When one (particularly a guy) moves into a too big apartment by themselves, they tend to sort of "spread out". That is what I did, and I am now in the process of unspreading out (umm...you get the point).

I am sure it is going to be a big headache for a few weeks, but after that hopefully it will be smooth sailing. We have our fingers crossed that the bringing together of our cats, Walter & Oscar, will go smoothly. They have only met once, very briefly, and there was quite a bit of tension between the two of them. Sometime this weekend they will meet again...under very close supervision.

fun in the sun (and rain)

2006-07-16T17:59:00.000-04:00

Cedar Point in the evening
Originally uploaded by thespacerace.

Friday's day off to go to Cedar Point turned out to be a day well spent, for the most part. We arrived at the park around 11am and got started right away with the rides by going on one of my favorites, the Raptor. From there, we hit up various rides as we came across them. The park was surprisingly not very crowded, and the 40 minutes we waited for the first ride was the longest wait of the day.

The highlight of the day was riding the Top Thrill Dragster. I had not been to Cedar Point in over 5 years, so I had quite a few new rides to check out for the first time, this being among them. This ride, while only about 20 seconds long, is the best ride I've ever been on. You start at a standstill, and then these lights countdown (like at a drag race), and you go from 0 to 120mph in 4 seconds. From there, you race stright up 400 feet in the air, twisting 90 degrees. Once you reach the top, you zoom straight back down, twisting 270 degrees, before racing to the "finish line". It's short, but it is pretty amazing.

I also was finally able to check out the Millenium Force, with it's 300 ft drop at 93 mph. I will admit that it was a bit of a letdown having followed the Dragster, but it was still a fun ride. I rode the Magnum later in the day, and while it is now dwarfed by the Millenium Force, I actually still like it a little better. Ignoring the high & speed of the initial descent, the Magnum is a better ride overall in my opinion.

One ride I really did not care for was the Mantis, which I rode for the first time. It is a stand-up roller coaster, and is very uncomfortable to ride from the start. And during the actual ride, I don't know if I wasn't standing correctly or what, but there was a tremendous amount of force being applied to my lower legs that made it extremely uncomfortable and actually hurt quite a bit. So I will definitely be avoiding that one in the future.

Three other rides that were new to me, all of which I really enjoyed, were maXair, Wicked Twister, and the Power Tower. I was able to ride everything I wanted, but unfortunately the day was shortened by rain. It started the downpour for about an hour around 5pm. We headed inside for dinner and timed the end of the rain almost perfectly and were able to walk right onto the Magnum after that. But as we headed for our next ride, the skies got mighty dark and we decided to call it a day. But before we could make our escape, the skies opened up and it poured for about a half hour (as seen in the picture above). When it let up a bit, we made our way to the car and followed the storm all the way back home.

freedom isn't free

2006-07-13T23:58:00.000-04:00

I am very much enjoying my Thursday evening as I will be taking tomorrow off. My girlfriend's teenage sister is in town from Texas, so we are playing the part of the somewhat older (yet still young enough to be "cooler" than the rest of the adults) relatives. Tonight we stopped off at the Winking Lizard, mostly in part to pickup our race packets for Saturday night's 4 mile 'Shot in the Dark' run in downtown Cleveland. Since we were there, we grabbed a bite to eat. I'm always a fan of the Lizard because of their enormous beer selection. Tonight I chose the Glass of the Month special, which was a French beer by the name of Kronenbourg 1664. It came in a very nice 16 oz. glass (as seen above), and ended up being a very tasty beer. Unfortunately, I think that is the last time that glass will ever be filled with that particular beverage because that is not a very easy-to-find beer. I hope I won't do it too much disgrace by drinking Diet Coke out of it.

Tomorrow, we are taking a trip out to Cedar Point. Going there each summer was one of the highlights of my childhood, but I can't even remember the last time I was there. It has been at least 5 years. I'm really hoping one of them will ride the 120 mph Top Thrill Dragster with me, but it's not sounding good at this point. Looks like I'll be enjoying that one with a stranger by my side.

People actually watch this stuff?!

2006-07-12T22:34:00.000-04:00

I returned home from work and assorted errands late this evening, so after fixing myself some dinner, I did a rare thing and sat down in front of the television for something other than a movie or video game. I figured there had to be something remotely interesting on TV.

Little did I realize that it is the middle of summer and there was nothing but absolute rubbish on (I don't have cable, so my options are limited, though I doubt cable had much more to offer). On 4 of the stations there were reality competition shows. I thought a few years ago everyone said "reality tv" had hit it's peak? Well, it seems to have morphed into "talent shows", which almost seems worse to me. Here is a rundown of what I saw while flipping between shows, trying to decide which was worst.

NBC - What is seemingly the last network to latch onto these shows has what seems to me the worst of them all in "America's Got Talent". This unabashed "American Idol" ripoff has broadened the talent pool beyond singers to include dancers, comedians, jugglers (yes, jugglers) and even ventriloquists (I kid you not). Add in a couple of washed up celebrities (welcome back to TV David Hasselhoff and Brandy), and the critical British judge for us Americans to love-to-hate, and you apparently have the hit of the summer. Oh, and did I mention Regis Philbin plays the annoying host (anyone remember Ed McMahon hosting 'Star Search'? Why didn't they just bring that back?). Let's hope this show fades out as fast as "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?".

FOX - The geniuses over at FOX have reserved singing exclusively for their other hit show, so this summer they turn our focus to the next obvious show-worthy talent, dancing (what, that wasn't obvious?), with "So You Think You Can Dance?". I must admit that I have an extremely low interest in the art(?) of dancing, and even less tolerance for the types that appear on this show, so I really did not watch this more than 30 seconds total tonight. I just happened to catch a backstage interview with a couple of the performers who thought they should win based on their "hotness" (their words, not mine) alone. I think you get the point.

UPN/WB/??? - For some reason I thought these two fringe networks had merged, and I can't remember which one was airing reruns of "America's Next Top Model" tonight. I guess when you're a dying network, you don't bother to make new shows like everyone else for the summer, and you just rerun old ones. I just find it hard to believe they'd rerun a competition show like this. Gee...I wonder who is going to win? Oh, the suspense of it all. This show was not worthy of airing the first time, let alone a second.

CBS - Finally, we have your grandparents' favorite station, CBS, trying to appear hip for the younger generation with "Rockstar: Supernova". I was apparently sadly mistaken in thinking that this show was a one-time deal last year when they set off to find the new singer for INXS. They are back in full force this year, trying to find a singer for a specially made-for-TV "supergroup" (lamely dubbed "Supernova"), which features Mr. Carmen Electra (Dave Navarro), the bassist who quit Metallica and is now seemingly trying to find his way back to fame & fortune (Jason Newsted), our favorite drummer turned porn star (Tommy Lee), and Cleveland's own brief Guns N' Roses rhythm guitarist (Gilby Clarke).
I would have to admit that this show was the most watchable of any, though by no means good. Tommy Lee looked awful and strung out. I guess he spent his time in the dressing room snorting some coke instead of putting on makeup. Jason Newsted took up way too much camera time, I guess so people could think harder about "where do I know that guy from?". But I guess that's better than Gilby Clarke who was the definite "who is that guy?" guy. They all sat around a table acting all chummy and praising the contestants while occasionally laying into them just to show them who is boss. I managed to see parts of 3 performances by the contestants, including covers of timeless rock favorites by Tonic, Evanescene and The Killers. Want to hear some of your least favorite rock songs of the past few years made even worse? Tune in each week!

not my cup

2006-07-09T21:28:00.000-04:00

With each passing week, I'm realizing more and more that Sundays suck. Yes, it is a day when I don't have to work (which is a good thing), but every Sunday for me seems to start off with so much promise and potential, and by the time Sunday night rolls around, I realize that I accomplished very little (if anything) that I had wanted to do.

Today I gave the World Cup another chance seeing as how it was the championship game. So I was sort of like that non-sports fan that checks out the Super Bowl each year to see what the hype is all about. And of course, I was disappointed yet again. The game ended in a shootout, which is such a cheap way to end a hard fought game. A guy stands like 20 feet from the goal, and gets to shoot on this huge net that the goaltender has no defense other than to pick a side to dive towards and hope that his body may somehow make contact with the ball. At least 9 times out of 10, he fails and the other team scores. The only reason a team won today was because someone on the French team hit the post with his kick. It seems like such a waste to end a game like this. I could probably make a goal given that chance. It takes a game of skill and turns it more into a game of chance. So, being the open-minded indivdual I am, I gave soccer another chance today. But it failed once again to make a fan of me.

I am somewhat looking forward to starting my marathon training tomorrow. I did not run much this week, mostly because of a lack of motivation. Despite the very encouraging progress I am seeing with my runs and races, I'm just not feeling the running right now. Hopefully that will change now that I'm actually in a training program again.

Also checked out the Brew Kettle this weekend, a brewery/bar in Strongsville, OH. I really liked it, though it's too bad it has taken me so long to find it now that I live nowhere close to it now. They have a constantly rotating cast of about 24 beers on tap, none of which are anything most people have heard of. I enjoyed one of their own brewed Ringneck Hefe Weizen (a Belgian-esque beer), and a Strongbow Cider, which tastes like a really good apple cider. I really liked it, and one of the guys we went with had their Pulled Pork Sandwich (a favorite sandwich of mine which I unfortunately skipped because I had eaten earlier) which Scene magazine called the best in Cleveland, and my friend completely agreed. I look forward to trying it out my next time through.

detroit rock city

2006-07-02T21:59:00.000-04:00

Headed off on a brief trip to Detroit, Michigan tomorrow for a wedding. I'm not a big wedding guy, so for me it's more of a people watching thing than anything else. It's usually amusing to watch a bunch of people and what they will do when alcohol is free. And while watching them, I wonder who will be "that guy" at my wedding if I ever get married. You know, the one who takes the drinking to another level and becomes the center of attention (for all of the wrong reasons).

This weekend, I also made plans for another trip to Detroit this coming October. That trip will be of a different sort, as I will be going to run in the Detroit Marathon. Yes, I registered for it this weekend so that I could secure the "early bird" registration discount. So for now, the plan is to make Detroit marathon #3. There is still a (small) chance that I might run the Akron Marathon again this year, as they are a month apart and I feel I could adequately recover in that time period.

The reasons for choosing Detroit? Well, the top reasons are the location, time of year, and the flatness of the course. It's only about a 3 hour drive, it's in the fall when I think I'll be ready for one, and the course is very flat. I am really interested in running a flat course since my first two marathons were hilly, so I'm very curious to see what sort of impact that will have on my time. I've read good things about Detroit. Going across the border into Canada and ending at the 50 yard line of the Ford Field football stadium make it sound rather interesting.

The race is on October 29th, so I'm right at that four month mark right now. So it's time to get training!

Restaurant Review: FATBURGER

2006-07-02T18:18:00.000-04:00

While I'm only down with having a hamburger once in a blue moon, I was excited when a new Fatburger restaurant opened just down the street from where I work in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. It is the first Ohio location for this California-based franchise, and on Friday I rounded up some equally excited co-workers and headed out there.

The inside is setup sort of like a diner, though the big exception is that you go up to the cashier and place your order, and then you're given a number on a stand which you take to your seat and wait the 10-15 minutes for your order to arrive. So I guess you can say it's not-so-fast fast food.

The first thing that struck everyone I was with was the prices. I was not in the mood for red meat, so I opted for the "Turkey Deal", which consisted of a 1/3 lb turkey burger, "skinny" fries and a "skinny" drink. This meal ran just under $9. I upgraded my fries to onion rings for $1 more, which pushed my meal over $10 (with tax). The "Chicken Deal" and "King Deal" (1/2 lb "king" burger) were priced the same, while the "Fat Deal" (1/3 lb "fat" burger) was a dollar less. Seems like they brought their California prices with them.

The food arrived in about 10 minutes, on a plastic tray and wrapped just like any fast food meal. The turkey burger was fairly good, and the onion rings were really good. But for $10, I can't really say I felt like I got my money's worth. Everyone else I was with felt the same. Good food, but too expensive. My friend ordered a chili dog that was $4! That was pretty outrageous.

So while the food is pretty good fast food fare, the environment is nothing to boast about and the prices are far from justifiable. Those prices might be OK in California, but Ohio is certainly no California. I can only hope that they drop the prices or my next review will likely be the restaurant that opens next in the space that will be vacated by Fatburger.

i'm not even supposed to be here today

2006-06-26T22:50:00.000-04:00

I am very jealous at the moment of my friend Will out in Kansas City who got to meet two cinema legends today (well, at least to nerdy guys of my generation), Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson? Not ring a bell? How about Dante Hicks and Randal Graves? Or just Dante & Randal? The Quickstop? Still clueless? Just stop reading then.

If you're still reading, you realize that who he met today were the stars of the classic Kevin Smith movie 'Clerks'. They stopped by KC to promote the upcoming sequel, 'Clerks 2', which hits theatres on July 21st. Being a very smart (and pretty small) guy, he was able to work his way through the crowd and score some really good pictures.

This year I have only gone to the movie theater a couple of times, which is pretty astounding given the rate I used to go in years past. I like to think it is more a result of nothing being worth seeing (rather than just me getting old and not wanting to go out). But with the good buzz on this movie, and the fact that it is a sequel to one of my favorite movies of all time, you can bet that I will be in line that first night along with a bunch of other late 20's, early 30's guys. Anyone care to join me?

A weekend at the races

2006-06-25T18:56:00.000-04:00

Racing action
Originally uploaded by thespacerace.

Winding down a very fun weekend. On Saturday, I went with a friend down to the Grand Prix of Cleveland. My friend is a HUGE fan of the Champ Car World Series of racing, so this is his big sports weekend of the year. We walked around and I got a very thorough history of the racing series, and learned just about everything there is to know about the series, the cars, the drivers, and everything else. It was all really interesting and I had a lot of fun. And it helped that the weather was amazing. Also, since it is not Nascar racing, the "redneck factor" was relatively low.

Today, I got up earlier and headed out to Cleveland Heights to run in A Most Excellent Race, which benefits Camp Cheerful which is for children with disabilities. Last year I ran in this race, and it was the first race I ever ran in. This year, it became the first race that my girlfriend Kristy would run. I did the 10K, she did the 5K, and both of us were happy with our results and had a fun time. I managed to cut nearly 15 minutes off my time from last year, finishing the 6.2 mile run in 46:54. You can go here for more details if you wish.

if it's green, it's golden

2006-06-19T23:03:00.000-04:00

This week I am embarking on another personal challenge. While this one is following up the whole "run a marathon" challenge, it is still sort of hand-in-hand with that. Basically, I just want to start eating better.

I think my current eating practices would best be described as "somewhat unhealthy". I never eat fast food, do not eat many fried foods or very much meat. But, I do have a soft spot for pizza, ice cream, and assorted overprocessed frozen foods. While I do not plan to totally cut myself off from the foods that I love, I need to mix in more healthy stuff and watch how much I am eating.

To help, I have visited the local library and picked up a number of books from nutritional books to cook books. I'm starting off by reading Runner's World "Performance Nutrition for Runners" (which is what ties this back to the running thing, as I'm hoping the new diet will also end up benefiting my running). In short, it summarizes healthy eating into four basic principles:

1. Eat natural foods
2. Eat a balance and a variety of foods
3. Balance your energy intake with your energy needs
4. Customize your diet to your individual needs

It all sounds common sense, but there are much more details behind each of these principles. I'm not really following any of them yet, though I started today with a nice big salad at lunch and a "healthy foods" shopping trip this evening. I still have a fridge full of perfectly good "not-so-healthy" foods that I still need to work my way through, but I'm starting down the right path.

Unfortunately, there is no real definitive end result for this challenge. I'm not really out to lose weight, just to get in better shape. So this is sort of an ongoing challenge. How long it goes, I suppose, will be what determines if it is ultimately a success, or not.

running through the OC

2006-06-18T20:44:00.000-04:00

Last night, Kristy & I headed down to Ohio City for the inaugural Ohio City Run & Crawl 5K. I was expecting to see low attendance since it was a first year event, but I was pleasantly surprised to see just over 300 runners were participating. The weather was great, as the 7pm start let it cool down a bit from the day's hot temperatures.

I am pleased to report that I ran my best 5K time to date (not hard seeing as how it is only the 3rd one I have run in) of 21:15, a 6:51/mi pace. That's just a few seconds shy of beating the pace from my first 5K by a full minute. So I was pleased with my performance. They finally posted the results online this evening, and I was surprised to see that I placed 21st overall out of 306 runners, and I was 7th out of 30 runners in the men's 20-29 division. And surprisingly, I even beat the women's winner who came in 13 seconds behind me.

Afterwards, we headed around the corner to McNulty's Bier Markt, the 5K's main sponsor who were giving a free beer to all runners. Normally I'm not down for drinking after running, but I wasn't feeling too bad, so I was happy to take it.

Next, we walked down the block a few more doors to The Old Angle Tavern for some food. We were seated by the owner who carried in a table from the basement to seat us since it was pretty crowded. I enjoyed a very tasty Falafel sandwich and really liked the place. Well, except for the service. Things got busy and we (and a number of other tables) seem to have been forgotten. So good food, nice atmosphere, but bad service. Seems like the same story for lots of the new places I try out lately.

rather ripped

2006-06-14T22:45:00.000-04:00

One of my top 5 favorite bands, Sonic Youth, released their new album 'Rather Ripped' today. The album is the band's 20th studio album released in their 25 year history. I know it sounds very cliche, but this band has gotten better and better with age. Sure, they weren't at the top of their game in the early 90s, but you're allowed to put out a few duds here and there.

The new album is certainly not a dud. I have not gotten to listen to it much yet, but I really like what I hear. Their previous album, 'Sonic Nurse', was one of their best albums to date, and I think this new one might give it some competition. The album is the first in a few years with the original lineup now that famous producer-turned-musician Jim O'Rourke has left the band.

Fortunately for us here in Cleveland, Sonic Youth usually make it a point to stop by our city when on tour. I have been fortunate enough to seem them twice in the past few years, at both the now closed Odeon in the Flats, and at Tower City Amphitheater along with Wilco, which was a really, really good show. This time they are part of the big Kuyahoga Festival at Blossom on August 3rd. The festival is being put on by radio station 92.3 who is bringing together a bunch of bands that strangely receive little to no airplay on their station. But I'm not going to complain. Being able to see SY and the greatest live band ever, The Flaming Lips, at the same show should be an excellent time.

The new album, 'Rather Ripped', can be streamed in it's entirety at the band's website here.

reeling in the big one

2006-06-12T22:16:00.000-04:00

President Bush continues to amaze me. No, it's not his 31% approval rating, a feat not accomplished since his father did it back in the early 90's. Nor is it his continued insistence that he can break the law, in the case of the domestic wiretapping, because of "inherent constitutional powers". Nor is it the amazing ability he has to take vacations yet still so effectively fulfill his role as the "leader of the free world". If I was out of the office on vacation 40% percent of the time, I wouldn't be able to get any work done and I don't think my employer would be too thrilled with me. No, usually the most amazing things come from his mouth in the form of words.

Recently when asked what the best moment in his more than 5 years in the Oval Office has been, his answer was:

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5-pound perch in my lake"

Five years of being President and your greatest achievement is catching a fish? Wow. What more can you say other than just 'wow'? His predecessors, Presidents Carter & Clinton, had answers such as historic peace agreements and major pieces of legislation. No mention of fish catching, or anything remotely related to something any private citizen could accomplish.