Dusting

Every once in a while, you might notice the dust and cobwebs in the top corners of every room. The problem is that you notice it when you are laying in bed just before turning off the bedside lamp and going to sleep. By morning the issue is long-forgotten with the demands of the new day.

This weekend, it being rainy and unsuited to any other pursuit, I finally got this job done. Not with an auspicious start, per usual. I looked in our broom closet for the fox tail and it was not there. So, I figured it might be down in the basement because I use it there to clean sawdust off of woodworking projects. I spent around half an hour in the basement poking around and eventually gave up and thought of looking again in the original closet, but more thoroughly this time.

It still wasn't there. I finally gave up and was in motion to shut the closet door...there it was, hanging from a hook on the inside of the broom closet door!

Progress was rapid until I came to a ceiling fan. The amount of dust and grime was shocking. Even worse was a bathroom ceiling vent grille. That had to be disassembled and cleaned in the kitchen sink. The three regular ceiling fans were so bad that the floors, which had already been vacuumed and mopped, had to be redone.

Most satisfying was the girl's bathroom. It had had specks on the ceiling ever since the day I repainted it (a while ago). These spots were, I believe, some small insects who had landed and somehow got stuck there. They wiped away easily and that bathroom looks more pristine than it ever has since we've been here.

You wouln't believe me if told the truth of why I thought of this song...

Ozymandias

By, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Here is a more up-to-date version.

Sunday, the whole day spent watching the French Open

Saturday I got burned: I intended to watch the woman's final, but between my wife having to leave early for a girl scout encampment and having to procure goods from the store for breakfast and having to make said breakfast for the other two girls. I turned the TV on at around 10:30 and the match was OVER!

Sunday, I got the match on in time and watched the first two sets. Incredible tennis! We planned to go to Mt. Monadnock and hike it since it was a rare weekend day when nobody needed to be anywhere. Surenna needed to get some homework done, so I got to view the first two sets and I had the DVR record the rest for later.

6 hours later: 1 hour each way to the mountain and four hours of hiking and we were home. The plan was for everybody to get cleaned up and then we would go out and grab some dinner. I showered last and managed to see Federer make a good run at the third set, though it was not over when I had to tear myself away again. Federer had been up early in the first set but then lost game after game to loose that set, then set number two came down to a tie breaker. Really, he could have won both of those sets and now he was up in the third. So what could I think? He could still blow the 3rd and the Open is done, or he is finally seeing his efforts pay off and he could take the whole match.

Dinner took a while, but the delay did not dampen my desire to see how it all came out. Federer did go on to win the third set, but he was really never in the fourth and Nadal wrapped the match up in good order.

It was a great match, but somehow it wasn't that aspect of it that made such an impact. On a very eventful Sunday, the match intervened between each part so I was sort of mulling it over or actually watching it all day long. It became the unifying theme for the day.

Great pix from the hike, but I will post them once I get the chance.

Metal, old and new, put to use.

Memorial Day: I was getting the grill ready by scooping out the ashes, when I noticed that the ash pan was rusted and ready to give out. This would not do. Without the bottom piece; ashes, grease and hot coals would exit onto the deck while air would rush in unimpeded. Luckily I had a piece of leftover galvanized sheet metal laying around. It turned out to be the perfect size once it was folded in half and the edges turned up to form a new catch pan.

Earlier that weekend I finally got new tires for my bike. I have had the thing for 30 years. It was a high school graduation present--which meant that I only had to kick-in half of the price. My brother had gotten a bike for his graduation too. His was a grey/silver Motobécane while mine was a beautiful light green Peugeot. I think mine was both prettier as well as more sporty looking, but his was a thing of mechanical beauty. When I would move the bikes to clean the garage, I could just set his bike in motion and it would roll along--perfectly balanced and fantastically light.

Slightly shocked at the cost of new tires and inner tubes, I decided to make a point of using my bike. I brought clothes up to work earlier in the week so that I could ride in without wearing a backpack full of gear (there are showers at the office). Today I made the commute, which took about 35 minutes each way. MapMyRun made the distance as about 9.5 miles, but my car odometer gives slightly more than 10 miles. Maybe next time I will use my GPS watch and let it be the deciding third vote.

Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin

The LORD has counted the number of your days and brought them to an end.
You have been weighed on the scales and found lacking.
Your kingdom is divided and given to your enemies.

The Old Testament explanation is here:

Two versions of Dahlia at Barnes and Noble

The TenThousand

This blog has been going since 2004 and I am on my second counter. The first one crapped out when I had several thousand hits, so this occasion is certainly dubious. Still, I hit 10,000 today. This counter has been going since July 3rd 2008, so it took almost three years and gives me an average of nine or ten hits per day.

From the land of miscellaneous tasks...

--Emptied the dishwasher.

--Roasted Coffee

--Fixed the Mac Mini: It would not boot but the hard drive was fixable via the utilities disk.

--Took the wife to lunch. Not really a task, but still something done.

--Filled the pepper grinder which has been empty for a while because it is the one which holds a lot but is hard to fill.

--Put a new blade on the chainsaw, got it running and then chopped up two trees which were already on the ground Also felled and chopped-up, the bottom 30' of the tree whose top had blown-off and taken-out our power a couple of months ago.

--Took a girl to ballet lessons.

--Wrote this.

I feel like I must have taken a short cut.

I ran about 10 minutes per mile last Wednesday when I did a 16 miler, so I was not optimistic about Sunday's run. Plus it looked like rain when I left and indeed it did pour about 15 minutes after I started out.

This run has always been one that I have been able to do fairly quickly, so I figured that any PR would belong to the past rather than future. My best was 90 minutes and some seconds. Sunday I did it in 1:28:37 for 7:30 per mile.

It is not Eric Clapton

I so totally thought this was an Eric Clapton song. So much so that when I was in the mood to hear it, I went to my iPod and looked in the song list for Slowhand.

Well, it isn't him at all, though to be fair Romeo's Tune would not be out of place on that album.

Romeo's Tune - Steve Forbert 1979

Five, five minute tasks; one of which took two hours.

I was feeling late-morning onset of lethargy setting in, so I decided to do a bunch of small tasks that needed doing:

--I took the tap out of our sugar maple tree, < 5 minutes

--I coiled up the siphon tube that we used to drain the basement when it floods in the Spring, 5 minutes.

--Added windshield washer fluid to two of our cars (the in-laws have one of the three for a road trip weekend). 5 minutes only because I wanted to explore the engine bay of my new car. It has a horizontally opposed four cylinder engine and so everything is oddly arranged.

--Adjusted the swing set. This is a home made setup which is essentially a 16' beam between two trees. Since trees are not always perfectly vertical, there was some odd shimming needed to make the beam level and true. I won't go into all the details, but due to the decay of some components, a new arrangement had to be made. All in all, it took a dozen tools and two hours to get the thing in shape. While I was up there I noticed some rot in the wood but I think the set will last another few years and the kids will be too old for it by then anyway.

--I took the lawnmower blade out and sharpened it using my electric grinding wheel, slightly more than 5 minutes.

For dessert; a bowl of spicy pork rinds, a beer and a brace of mini-candy bars.

Plus blogging.

Mint Julep

I realized too late yesterday that I should have had a mint julep. We have fresh mint coming up in the garden and it was Kentucky Derby day.

Maybe I will have one today on the theory that it is better, when it comes to delicious drinks, to have one later than never.

Today is Mother's Day and most events were so themed:

I ran the The Medical Center 6K in Nashua NH. The event is held on Mother's day because it raises money for a breast cancer related charity. My wife went for a morning jog today too, she didn't do the 6K because she was taking her mom out for lunch and wasn't sure she would be back from the race in time to make her reservation at the restaurant. It turns out she would have made it since I was home well before she left on her lunch date.

The kids made their mom breakfast while I was out. I helped Surenna charge the coffee maker before I left and showed her where the bacon was, as well as how to open the package. I guess the second part stuck, but not the first: She found a different package in the freezer rather than the fridge and managed to get it open. She didn't cook it because it was frozen.

When I got home, I made a few pieces of bacon, from the package in the refrigerator and a pancake from left-over batter. Tres-good!

Just before my wife left, I gave her the box of Whitman's milk chocolate sampler that I had gotten on the way home from the race.

Now I am waiting for the race results to be posted on line. They had posted paper results at the race up to finish times of 25:36 and less--my time was 25:45. I could have probably waited for 10 minutes to see the official time and place, but I wanted to make sure to see Vaish before she left for her lunch date.

Maybe I should just make a mint julep and chill-out.

Update: 208 50/106 M4049 26:01 6:59 David Pecchia 48 M 442 Chelmsford MA GLRR

The timers did not deduct the 16 seconds it took for me to reach the starting line. As is fairly common in races like this, lots of kids and other slow runners cluster at the head of the starting pack and slow-down all the faster runners behind them. I probably lost an additional 10-15 seconds trying to get around all the slow-pokes in the first 1/4 mile.

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two

Hayek is rather obviously correct.

Gaga for Bach

Or, perhaps vice versa...

He's been dead to me for years

I'm certainly glad that OBL has been disposed-of, but from a leadership standpoint he might as well have been dead for years. He had been hounded so pervasively that he had to keep a very low profile in order to stay free. His profile was so low that many people, including me, thought he was most likely already dead. Now he really is dead for sure.

OBL is dead and buried at sea but could we have taken him alive? At one end of the spectrum, he might have been located such that it would not have been feasible for a commando team attack. In this case, a 2,000 lb bomb would do the job and the innocents killed would be collateral damage. In this case, we could bring in a SEAL team; so why not capture OBL alive rather than dead? He resisted capture: Couldn't the commando have just shot him in the leg like he did to the wife who rushed him? Some say OBL is reputed to wear an explosive vest in order to prevent capture. If that is the case, wouldn't it have been roughly as dangerous to take his body dead as alive? My view, and one that is becoming popular, is that the administration did not want Bin Laden taken alive. If this is the case, then I believe killing him was deeply immoral. Not for the reasons one might initially think though: Not because OBL deserved some kind of due-process, no. He was an enemy combatant. Rather because alive, he might have given us useful information when interrogated. That it would be difficult and expensive to imprison and try him should not be a deciding factor--you don't kill people because it makes your life easier.

A few minor questions:

Why did we use Black hawk helicopters when the Osprey is much more capable? It has twice the range and speed and can hover just like a chopper.

If this was a suspense movie instead of real life, the following would be what actually happened:

The whole killing was a fake whose purpose is to disrupt Al-Qaeda and flush-out Bin Laden.

OR

We did capture him alive, but used Hollywood style makeup and effects to produce pictures showing his dead body. Now we can sweat information out of him and not have to worry about public relations regarding trial and imprisonment.

Of course this is real life and not a movie, but it is fun to spin-out scenarios.

Results

Bib Name Age M/F City St Ctry Ctz 11060 Pecchia, David B 48 M Chelmsford MA USA

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

0:24:31 0:48:22 1:12:17 1:37:02 1:42:22 2:02:04 2:29:35 2:59:40 3:31:58

Finish: Pace Proj. Time Offl. Time Overall Gender Division

0:08:40 3:47:00 12548 8733 1704

Ready or Not?

Key Quote from Dostoevsky's Demons

I had been looking for this for a while and finally found it:

“Your Excellency,” said a policeman, coming up to him, “what if you were to try the repose of home? . . . It's dangerous for your Excellency even to stand here.”

This policeman, as I heard afterwards, had been told off by the chief of police to watch over Andrey Antonovitch, to do his utmost to get him home, and in case of danger even to use force—a task evidently beyond the man's power.

“They will wipe away the tears of the people whose houses have been burnt, but they will burn down the town. It's all the work of four scoundrels, four and a half! Arrest the scoundrel! He worms himself into the honour of families. They made use of the governesses to burn down the houses. It's vile, vile! Aie, what's he about?” he shouted, suddenly noticing a fireman at the top of the burning lodge, under whom the roof had almost burnt away and round whom the flames were beginning to flare up. “Pull him down! Pull him down! He will fall, he will catch fire, put him out! . . . What is he doing there?”

“He is putting the fire out, your Excellency.”

“Not likely. The fire is in the minds of men and not in the roofs of houses. Pull him down and give it up! Better give it up, much better! Let it put itself out.

Groton Road Race

Came in 52nd out of 490 finishers

Net time of: 44:47 with a pace/mile of 7:13

44th out of 284 men. 22nd out of 104 men in my age bracket (40-49)

Photo courtesy of Cool Running.

Added: Interesting numerology...

49 369 Andy Richardt 44:20 7:09 44:30 40 41/284 M 19/104 M4049

50 475 Daniel Gill 44:27 7:10 44:33 44 42/284 M 20/104 M4049

51 259 Randal Parradee 44:43 7:12 44:45 40 43/284 M 21/104 M4049

52 388 David Pecchia 44:47 7:13 44:50 48 44/284 M 22/104 M4049

53 574 Kim Blair 44:48 7:13 44:51 52 45/284 M 3/52 M5059

54 495 Brandon Lund 44:51 7:14 44:57 25 46/284 M 7/32 M2029

55 498 Eric Niemoller 44:54 7:14 44:57 13 47/284 M 3/13 M-19

56 286 Jeff Druzba 44:53 7:14 44:58 35 48/284 M 12/67 M3039

4 in a row in their 40's followed by one in his 50's, then one in his 20's, then one under 20 and finally one in his 30's.