These were not enjoyed on the same night

Not that it matters, it just happens to be the case.

Last night I had this home made Limoncello which has been steeping for about 2 years in the freezer. Strong in more ways than one and really appeals to my Southern Italian heritage.

Last Sunday was the first warm weekend day in a while--that we were home for--and so I fired-up the outside grill. We have a little hibachi that we use year-round in the fireplace. The short ribs of beef, thinly sliced and with Korean marinade are great, but do take up a lot of grilling real estate. So, they only get done on the big outside grill.

We finally had the last of these sausages, stewed in spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight.

New Hardware, Old Textiles

Back in the day, if you finished a race the prize was a race t-shirt. Now you get the shirt just for signing-up for a race and that is that. Marathons now usually give medals for completing the distance.

The first t-shirt is from 1980 and may well be the oldest garment I own. There is a 28 year gap between the first and second shirt.

Sideways Smoke

After roasting some coffee in the oven I noticed a sunbeam. I did not realize at the time that I lack software for rotating the image.

Sorry

You can see a little turbulence from the cold air entering the room through the open window.

Gathering up and spreading out...

I spent the first half of this beautiful sunny Saturday spreading 30 bags of topsoil onto a part of our front yard that has settled. After I finished that, I gathered-up the firewood I had earlier made out of one really large branch that fell and one smallish dead tree I had felled a few weeks back.

My wife had the harder job of taking our three daughters + one friend to "The Mall" for most of the day.

Further update...

I would have never thought that a cramp in my calf would result in a bruised appearance the next day on my shin. The front of my leg didn't hurt at all, even though it looked as if I got whacked with a 2 X 4.

The 20 mile mark, so part of the way up "Heartbreak Hill".

Photo by Ted and Mary Tyler from Cool Running

Marathon After-Action Report:

Everything was going great for about the first three miles, then suddenly I got a giant cramp in my right calf. I had to stop and massage my calf, then when I started back up, it hurt just as bad. I didn't want to quit but didn't see how I could keep running when I couldn't even walk. On the other side of it--how could I quit at three miles? Anybody can run three miles and I trained like a dog for this.

I got back out there and just tried to adjust my stride: In stead of landing on my forefoot and then springing forward, I landed on my heel and pushed-off with it. It was still painful but I could move.

Normally, I will run 20-30 seconds per mile under 8:00 for the first half to two thirds of the way, in order to build-up a cushion of time for when I get tired and have to go slower. The problem with this inefficient stride is that I was putting-out 7:30 - 7:40 effort but only making eight minute miles. So, I got tired out more quickly and at the end of it had no time saved-up. I took about 20 minutes more for the race than I had last year.

So, what happened? I cannot say for sure. I do not usually get cramps in my calf except maybe toward the end of a marathon and then one can get cramps anywhere due to lack of fluid and electrolytes. I normally tie my shoes fairly loosely in races since it is uncomfortable to spend over 3 hours with tight shoes on. Possibly I overdid this. Also, I put glide onto my toes since I had gotten a giant blister in the New York City Marathon. Either of these two things may have caused me to tense-up my calf. I did notice that my feet were sliding around in my shoes and this would be consistent with my theory.

My last marathon before this was effortless (to the extent that a 26.2 mile run can be), so I suppose I was due a hellish one just to even things out. When I resumed running back at the three mile mark, I didn't expect to finish: I figured that I would just get myself closer to the finish and thus make reuniting with my family a little easier.

Checkpoints 5k 10k 15k 20k Half 25k 30k 35k 40k

0:23:46 0:49:02 1:13:50 1:39:43 1:45:23 2:05:48 2:33:39 3:03:00 3:34:00 0:08:43 3:48:20 11995 8291 1685

In which I commit heresy

Just before the 2 minute mark on the Fleetwood Mac song and just before 1:50 on the Pink Floyd one, there is a strong similarity (these are not the best videos--but the best ones I could find that were embeddable) in the musical progression. Both cases have low, wispery, chant-like lyrics and then the main motif of the song bursts-forth. I'm sure it has been done a million times, but Fleetwood Mac's version was done in 1979 and Pink Floyd did theirs in 1982. I won't deny the obvious differences--Pink's has their usual sinister undertones compared with Mac's sunnier sound. But still, I found it interesting. Until today I couldn't have said for sure which one came first, though I suspected that Tusk came out before The Wall.

Some change seem to be pointless--at least to me.

A couple of days back our dishwasher STB and we needed a new one--we heard it coming since it had started making an unprecedented noise for the last month or so. One remembers quickly how much of a pain it is to wash dishes by hand and we create a lot of dirty dishes. I figure that over the life of the last machine (7 years) we did 10 loads per week, so figure 3,500 loads total.

We ordered a new one yesterday and it came today. I had earlier today removed the old one and especially remembered to salvage the L-Connector/adapter. You see, rather than just having the inlet to dishwashers be a 3/8" pressure fitting like what everyone has, they require you to buy the adapter. So, I was ahead of the game since I saved the one from last time. Nope! They changed the inlet to a 3/4" hose connection. Wonderful! The local hardware store didn't even have it but the next town over did,-so I blew an hour going out there, getting it and returning home.

What was sort-of my fault was forgetting that dishwasher makers do not include a wire clamp on the electric box. This is something I could have salvaged off of the old one, except that the delivery guys had already hauled it off. Luckily I had one, though it did take a while to find it.

The last irritant was with the mounting brackets: They used to come already attached to the machine. Now you have to do it yourself and it took me an extra ten minutes to decipher how.

A job that should have taken me an hour was stretched-out to 3-4. It is done and hopefully will not leak, short-out or give any other problems for a while.

Last Training Run, till the big race.

But it felt like the last run I ever want to do: I did about 6.5 miles and at the 9 minute mark began to do intervals: 90 seconds of sprint followed by 90 seconds of recovery. I did 14 of these cycles by the time I got to the end and I was wrecked. Then, my wife was just heading-out for her lunchtime walk with the dog. She got me to join her but 1/4 mile into it she revealed her plan--to run with the dog. She ended up jogging pretty much the whole two miles. It was not fun, though probably good for me as a cool-down. Of course the company was welcome and she set a new PR for making it all the way up a big hill at a run.

The big race is large for a couple of reasons: There will be around 25,000 (official) runners, about 1,000,000 spectators and not least--the darn thing is 26.2 miles long.

Note: I may in fact go for a jog between now and the race but it will not be any great distance or speed--just a kind of stay loose thing. Also, I am number 11442 and you can set-up free email or text updates here

The Drum

In a more perfect world, the drum would have been on a pallet and I would have had a pallet jack. As it was, there was a 55 gallon steel drum of what we called, "green" in the basement of the Sun Valley Lodge and I needed to get it to the loading dock.

We used pretty much only two kinds of cleaner in Sun Valley: "Pink" was more or less like windex and "Green" was for everything else. Both were highly concentrated in that you would fill your spray bottle with 2 oz of cleaner and then the rest of the way with water. The green was a great cleaner, but you had to rinse your hands soon after each time you used it or your skin would peel. One could wear rubber gloves but most found it difficult to clean quickly with gloves on.

We had gotten a delivery of these cleaners and it all came to the Lodge, but one of them was needed over at the other hotel, the Sun Valley Inn. Now, I could have rounded-up some of my housemen, but we were fairly busy and I didn't want to take them off their normal duties. I would at least try, via my mind and modest strength,- to move this drum.

I figured the drum weighed around 500 lbs, but it is not as if I planned to just pick it up and carry it out. I had a dolly and an elevator, so all I really had to do is figure out how to get the drum from the floor to the deck of the dolly--maybe 3-4 inches high. I found that I could--just barely--tilt the drum onto its edge and then maneuver it around. I wedged the cart against the wall so it wouldn't roll away and then got the edge of the drum onto the cart. Finally, I took a run at the barrel and tilted it to level, enough that it slid onto the dolly. Wheeling it out to the loading dock was uneventful. I was rather proud of myself and planned to brag heavily at lunch time.

Later, a bunch of housemen and supervisors from the Lodge came over and picked-up the drum. Soon after they drove-off with it came word that there had been an incident. They had been wheeling the drum into the Lodge on its edge and the drum got away from them. It badly lacerated one guy's leg.

At lunch our manager asked me with a penetrating gaze, "David, how did you get that drum of green out to the loading dock"? "Um, oh I just used that cart that we always use. No problem."

Postscript: I did the math just a few days ago and found that moving the drum was really at the limits of my capabilities. It took 140 lbs of force to tip the thing onto its edge and since I only weighed about 130 lbs back then, it is about all I could do since the force was horizontal. It must have taken quite a bit more force to lift it onto the cart, but I could take a run at it. In this step, control didn't matter, so I could go all-out. In the tilting-up step I had to apply just enough force or I could have tipped the barrel onto its side. It might have broken-open but at the very least, I would have never gotten it back upright.

Here is the math...

Yesterday's run

I was a little ambivalent about how fast I should go on this last training run. On one hand, a really fast time would provide encouragement for the marathon, which is Monday after next. On the other, at this late stage it is probably best not to push too hard since there is only about a week to recover. I split things down the middle: Pushed hard enough to run the thing in sub-8 miles, but not by very much. I got good conditioning out of it, a small amount of confidence-boost and I should recover in time for the race.

One thing that helps about this course is that I expect to take around 1 hour and 45 minutes (this time 1:43:55) so the run can be divided into 7, 15-minute segments:

1. Home to Dahlia's friend Fanny's place (on the bike path just before the Westford line,
2. Then the end of the bikepath,
3. The start of curve road
4. The end of curve road, where it hits Concord road
5. The end of Concord road where it hits Rt 4
6. Rt 4 through town and to the bikepath
7. The bikepath back home through the swim and tennis club.

Grifters

Some years ago I was a housekeeping supervisor for the Sun Valley Company in Idaho. One day at work, I was in the house keeping office and I got a call from the front desk that a room was requesting extra towels.

We managed several condo complexes as well as two hotels and so most of the time I would call or page the supervisor in the area of the request and they would take care of it. In this case, the room was right around the corner from me and I always kept a few supplies with me in the office, so that I wouldn't need to find a maid's closet on the way to a delivery. So, I decided to grab the towels right next to me and hustle down to the room myself.

It couldn't have taken me more than one minute to get to the room from when I took the call from the front desk. I knocked on the door, "Housekeeping!, I'm here with your towels!". No answer. This was weird, but not too weird: I had found that customers often make a request at the front desk or just before leaving--possibly to avoid the need for a tip...but these guys had supposedly called the front desk and I got to their room very quickly plus, I didn't pass anybody on the way there and the way I came in was the only way out.

Our standard protocol when faced with a request and no customer is answering, is to key in, drop-off the goods and go. So I keyed my way in, put four bath towels on the foot of the bed and then immediately noticed an odd thing: There was a pile of cash on top of the TV. My instant thought was that these guests were trying to set up the poor shmoe who brought their towels. In retrospect I should have called security and had them take a gander at the room and then wait to see what shook-out of the situation. I left the towels--and the money and the room.

Sure enough, security called me a few minutes later and wanted to know who had been in the room: I involuntarily laughed and explained the situation to the security guy, who I knew pretty well and that was that. I think the company still comped the room, but everybody knew that the customers were scam artists. It was just lucky that I, a trusted supervisor, had gone to the room: A new guy would probably have been fired on general principles, or would have taken the bait and actually deserved to be fired.

A similar thing happened just a few days ago in Washington DC. I'll give you Mark Steyn's version from The Corner:

On March 20th, something truly extraordinary happened. On the eve of the health care vote, a group of black Democrat Congressmen (eschewing the private tunnels they usually use to cross from their offices to the Capitol) chose to walk en masse through a crowd of protesters, confident that the knuckledragging Tea Party goons they and their media pals have reviled for a year now would respond with racial epithets.

And then, when the crowd didn't, the black Congressmen made it up anyway. Representative Andre Carson (Democrat, Indiana) insisted he heard the N-word 15 times. He's either suffering from the same condition as that Guam-flipper from Georgia, or he's a liar. At a scene packed not only with crews from the Dem poodle media but with a gazillion cellphone cameras, not one single N-word has been caught on audio.

Grifters. All of them!

Home day.

Still a little sore from the exertions of yesterday, so I just did little odds and ends today:

• Let my wife sleep in by taking the dog outside for her morning routines.
• Cleaned up the kitchen from the previous night--basically emptied the dishwasher and refilled it...
• Made breakfast by experimenting with yeast risen pancakes. They were a hit with the kids, especially our guest boys. (Two neighbor kids stayed with us for the weekend while their parents went to NJ for a funeral)
• Made up a batch of spaghetti sauce.
• Made a batch of dough and four pizza shells--one for dinner tonight and the other three for the freezer. They will make for easy meals.
• Put Google Chrome on my computer--it was really easy to do and my browsing is easily 2-3 times faster than it was with Firefox, which was itself about twice as fast as IE.

A nice Saturday run

Many thanks to the Greater Lowell Road Runners! They got us to the start, encouraged us along the way with cheers and fluids, and got us back to Drum Hill safe-n-sound!

Two Venn

Okay, two can play that game...

Over the past year there has been a lot of misinformation spread around about health care reform. Plenty of fear-mongering, plenty of overheated rhetoric. Turn on the news, see the same folks are still shouting about it: it’s going to be the end of the world if this bill is passed. I’m not exaggerating. The leaders of the Republican party, they called the passage of this bill Armageddon! Armageddon. End of freedom as we know it! So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling. Any cracks opening up in the earth. Turns out it was a nice day.

President Obama yesterday in Iowa

So, following the same reasoning: There have been lots of meetings on how to deal with "Global Warming", but no actual steps taken to combat it. Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit came out in 1992. All I can conclude is that if HCR is judged a success after not causing Armageddon in two days, then AGW won't cause Armageddon either--since we haven't done anything about it for some 6,500 days with no ill effects. Or put another way: We are some 3,250 times more certain AGW is not a problem than we are that HCR is not a problem.

CAUTION!

Signs of Spring

All of these shots were taken today:

The flooded Patio

The first day I noticed these crocus blooms

This basement siphon has been running off and on (mostly on) since Sunday afternoon. The basement is more-or-less dry, but water is still coming into the sump-pit.

St. Patrick's Day fare

Plane Diverted...

The flight plan for the trip home was simple: Aguadilla (on the West coast of Puerto Rico) to Newark NJ, then a connecting flight to Boston.

Bad weather prevented us from landing in Newark, so the plane diverted to Boston! Here goes; we will sit on the tarmac for two hours then fly to New Jersey and I will miss my flight back to Boston.

No. It all worked itself out. Our Continental plane was able to use a Delta gate and they let-off all the people who had Boston as their final destination. Yeah! Home three hours early!

A Little Black Bug

I departed from Aguadilla PR this morning bright and early. I had a window seat just in front of the wing, so the engine nacelle was right next to me. As we started to taxi, I noticed a little black droplet on the white paint of the engine. No. It was not a liquid--it was a bug. The shape was the same as that of a lady bug, but it was maybe half as big and totally black.

I didn't exactly see that it was a bug: I figured out that it must be a bug by the way it moved across the surface of the engine. It traveled up to a seam between metal sections and then would back-away or follow the junction until it could find a way across. I watched this little bug and had two trains of thought: 1. I wondered how fast we could go before the wind blew it off. 2. I had metaphysical thoughts about the situation.

To me, insects are more like things than beings in that I don't think they are aware of their own existence. (Not counting a certain cockroach) Certainly to a bug, an average human such as myself is beyond comprehension. In terms of a meaningful existence, one could say that this bug accomplished more by being observed than the whole rest of its, quite possibly short, life. This lead me to thinking about God. By extension, wouldn't his thoughts about each of us, with his incomprehensible consciousness contain more meaning for him than our own existences are for us? A little mind-blowing! But if there is a god, it almost certainly has to be true--or not. I'm just a bug crawling around propelled by forces I don't understand.

Our little black hero held-on for the length of our take-off roll. Only when the plane began to rotate did it fly off. I was amazed that it held on so long; we must have been going at least 150 mph by the time of rotation. The bug was on the upper half of the engine nacelle and so when the plane nosed-up, this would have created a vacuum (or at least lower pressure) on the top of the nacelle. This essentially sucked the little black bug off the surface.