Time for a bit of productivity.

I got back from my outing and the day was still young, so I hoped to get something done. How about finally chopping down that dead ash tree out back? I had just gotten my saw worked on, so it was in good shape. It would be easy to keep my eye on one child, rather than the usual three + one dog.

My aim was true...

The saw dust might make you think I hit those shrubs, but I didn't. The tree hit the middle of the concrete ramp to the shed and then rebounded toward the bushes.

Jemma helped me load the pieces of wood into the weelbarow and it is all split and stacked in the basement...

A saturday of odds and ends

I got the assignment of taking Jemma to a birthday party at the butterfly place since Vaishali had a cavalier king charles meetup at the same time.

Since I was over in Westford anyway, I figured I would go to the observatory and have a look around. It was a perfect Fall day--in the 60's, bright and crisp. I wish I brought my camera since there were lots of cool giant scientific instruments littering the site. Here is a picture from the website:

After wandering around the observatory for an hour, I zipped over to Marx Running and Fitness Center to see if they had any racing shoes. I'm not sure how much difference they really make, but I always had racing shoes in High School and it seems to have a psychological benefit if nothing else.

I was telling the guy who helped me at the store that their advertising with the Bay State Marathon is paying-off, since I didn't know about their store until I saw it on the Bay State site. He kind of chuckled a bit and noted that the relationship went beyond "advertising" as he was the race director for the marathon. I recovered by saying I was glad to meet him and really looking forward to the race in two weeks.

I guess they never took a philosophy course...

Yesterday I was in the waiting area while the J was doing jazz dance and I overheard some women talking.

One was helping her son with his homework and screeched, "What kind of question is this? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Of course it makes a sound!" The lady across from her, who explained that she was a HS chemistry teacher, was in full agreement. I was aghast.

Such sloppy thinking. Before jumping to conclusions they should have wondered about definitions. If sound is defined as vibrations in the air, then yes, it will make sound. If sound is defined as a person having a sensation caused by vibrations in the air, then it is nonsense to say there is sound. Put it another way: If I showed you a nice fresh strawberry and asked, "What does this taste like?" You would probably say, "like a strawberry". But it only tastes like a strawberry while you are eating it, it doesn't taste like anything when it is sitting in a bowl.

There is a lot more to think about with that question such as the whole mind/body issue & etc. Really the issue is that it should be assumed that a question like the falling tree one is meant to provoke thought. To dismiss it out-of-hand is to miss the point and to show yourself a rube--to anyone who isn't--Or in my case, at least is slightly less of one.

Added: In this Family Guy episode, Peter has a vision where the trees are talking to him; so he asks them if they make a sound if they fall down and nobody is around to hear. One of them answers that Steve fell down last week and hasn't shut-up about it since. I don't remember the exact quote and that is why I didn't use quotation marks above.

Random chance plays a big role in the acting biz

My wife and I have watched a couple of episodes of a new show called Fringe. It is sort of x-filesish and the creators seem to think that "Fringe" is a branch of science like biology and physics, so it has problems that may be tough to overcome.

What is kind of sad is that there is really a lot of talent which may not be rewarded if the show fails. It happens all the time, a show dies due to weak performances by the main stars, or poor writing while there are great performances by side characters.

I have really noticed the actress Jasika Nicole. She is an FBI agent, but so far they just have her acting like a lab assistant. This is too bad: She has incredible presence and I would love for her role to expand in an unexpected way. Maybe she and the son of the mad-scientist could get together. It would be a nice change from the two leading parts becoming involved and would open-up whole new areas for plots.

btw. I noticed when "researching" this that Jasika Nicole has a website and some pretty nice art that she has done.

Last LSD until the race

It was 20.6 miles done at a pace of about 8:33 and I have to say it felt much slower.

I left home under overcast skies and it was warm so I wouldn't have worn my raincoat even if I hadn't forgotten it at work. Two miles out it began to rain gently and kept it up for the next 10 miles. I lost some time because my wet t-shirt was irritating me and so I took it off and carried it. I have a million of these, so I should have just thrown it away--even though I wrung it out, it was still pretty heavy and prevented me from swinging whichever arm was holding it. Also, I waited a couple of minutes at two different busy intersections--I didn't deduct this time since in theory the rest it gave me allowed for a faster pace just after the wait.

I should be starting to taper and so today's workout is the last really long distance till the race.

Her posts are really good, but sometimes the commenters surpass

Paul Zrimsek said... "When the stock market crashed in 1929, Tyrannosaurus Rex didn't go on television and talk about the princes of greed. No, he went to Wall Street and ate the princes of greed." -- Joe Biden

From this post

Bluefish

A coworker went fishing and gave me this bluefish and another smaller one. It was delicious but a very hectic evening: I get home from work around 7:30 and I had to get the whole fish processed before cooking (the small part of it we had that night).

I cut it all into steaks and the spine was really tough to get through. I had to use chicken shears to cut through it.

It was a monster!

Surenna is so cute.

She IM'ed me after I left work yesterday:

rushgirl says: omg

rushgirl says: you got a picture of mccain and palin that had their signatures on them

rushgirl says: and it had YOUR name on it.

rushgirl says: it said to david b pecchia

rushgirl says: thankyou for your support and commitment to our party and candidates!!

rushgirl says: you are so lucky!!

rushgirl says: are you there or what?

A quote

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

--Nietzsche

Sunday marathon training run

There are three kinds of work-outs in the Furman 3-days per week training plan: Long slow distance (LSD), a tempo run of 6-8 miles at a pace faster than marathon goal pace and then an interval run--which is sprints designed to increase speed. My last hard workout was last Thursday when I ran 18 miles slowly. I didn't want to do another LSD today, but I did want a hard workout, so what I decided to do was run 10 miles with sprints built-in and yet try and keep a tempo of marathon goal pace (8 minutes/mile).

I thought from past running that today's course was 10 miles even, so the whole way I figured I was a couple of minutes slow. Once home, I mapped it out and it was 10.32 which I did in 1:22:47. This translates to pretty much 8 min/mile almost exactly. The only real concern is that I had to push pretty hard to make that pace and a marathon is more than twice as far. Of course the sprints took a lot out of me and I will most certainly not be doing that on race day.

Update: Monday 4.25 miles in 32:47

Update: Tuesday 4.25 miles in 32:04