ad nauseum

sam elliott won't rest until every glacier melts and every polar bear is dead.

why else would he continue to pimp the biggest gas-sucking bunny-crushing truck-beasts american engineers can design? okay, besides the money.

sam elliott has a great, iconic voice. shoot, if he told me something ridiculous, like say, coors ("the banquet beer!") is fit for human consumption, i'd almost believe him. it is, after all, brewed with high country barley and pure rocky mountain spring water. which sounds good, in the abstract, if not in the actual beer.

but when he tells me the dodge ram 1500 truck can "move heaven and earth," and "bring the world to its knees" ~ while on screen a CG mountain explodes in a cataclysm of environmental devastation ~ i start to think maybe sam isn't the most credible, responsible spokesperson.

give the soulless marketing hacks at dodge credit ~ they know their target market. the dog-whistle language in this spot is like PBR for gun-toting climate-change-denying manifest-destinating hemi-hogs.

"take it all head-on ... shorten the distances, push beyond the possible, roar past convention, shift every course, defy the elements..."

earth-scorching parody can't mock much much harder than that. and yet, it's just the kind of talk that gets the most atherosclerotic viagra-dependent face-painters all tingly with...something. they can't quite remember what. simmer down there, bubba. you're just a few systolic points away from a hemorrhagic event.

sam, though, takes it one step further. he actually appears on camera here ~ a first in this scintillating series ~ lending his personal imprimatur to a marauding message of manly plunder.

"the road doesn't end here," sam says. "this is only the beginning. guts. glory. ram."

and with those last three words, delivered with the dramatic seriosity only a true professional can fake, excitable types all over the country explode, messily and in unison, in a truckgasm of monster proportions.

atta way, sam. environmental impact, if such a thing existed at all, is somebody else's problem. america's weekday warriors are gonna ram this road right up mother nature's avenue ~ and god help anyone who gets in the way. all the way to the job site where the really serious fracking happens. giddy. up.

afterward they'll fire up some of the beef council's finest byproduct, because as sam once intoned: "beef ~ it's what's for dinner. especially after you've just had your way with nature and you're ready to reload with a bolus of fat-marbled protein, rammed into your veins. defy doctors orders. guts. glory. meat."

three things ~ the economy, the environment, and the american habitus ~ are in rough shape. sam elliott's audacious advocacy ~ for fat trucks burning tons of fossil fuels and a flotilla of adipose americans ~ is ill-advised. in a nonfunny literal kind of way.

sam, the world is already pretty well brought to its knees, thanks. and you've done your bit to help put it there. so before you start pimping, oh-i-don't-know, high fructose corn syrup and genetically modified organisms and baby harp seal hunting ~ how about you take a ram 1500 head-on and, you know, push beyond the possible?

going dark

run to the light...all are welcome!
wait, not that light...

it's not winter yet, but the dreaded drizzling darkness is descending rapidly. this time of year, nightfall comes early to seattle. 

at 3:30 in the afternoon you can look out the window and think, "are we having an eclipse? did i lose consciousness for several hours? is it time for dinner?" but no, it's just a weak-willed sun too low in the sky to make any headway through the clouds.

it's a tough time to be a runner here. during the week, you either get out 

at lunch, or you run in the dark. quite often in the rain. or you stay inside, on the treadmill. either way, your time and distance usually suffer, unless you discover the eternal secret to enduring the treadmill. which i have not.

this leaves the weekends to get out for some extended miles, if your responsibilities allow for such a thing.

i confess, i'm embittered by these short daylight hours. we had actual summer in 2012, for the first time in years, and i got used to long, tranquil runs after work, with plenty of light left over for the drive home. at 9:30 p.m. or so we'd say, "well, it's starting to get dark. maybe we should head in and get some dinner going."

i'm greedy now for the warmth, the light, the lack of horizontal precipitation. i want to be someplace where winter doesn't last seven months. where the vault door of dreary and damp and dark doesn't close with an ominous, remorseless, echoing booooom.

trouble is, places like those are very popular, and very expensive. with the kind of jobs that pay just enough for you to buy a bus ticket someplace else when you've exhausted your life savings.

that, or they're so inhospitable on the other end of the thermometer that even the gila monsters don't want to live there.

i know. no one ever said life was easy. running certainly is not easy for me. but i'm learning that "real runners" adapt to the environment and keep going. so that's what i'm trying to do. to that end, i've been accumulating gear. a couple LED headlamps. a breathable waterproof jacket. reflective gloves. a waterproof baseball cap. knee-length compression shorts. ankle-high smartwool socks. and some winterized trail running shoes with burly vibram soles.

fortunately i already owned the snorkle and scuba mask.

i can now run, as comfortably as possible, in the cold, dark and wet. people who do so report feeling exhilarated and vibrant and powerful and fully alive like never before. in such conditions i feel pretty good sitting bundled up indoors with a glass of wine, but admit to a twinge of...envy? admiration? when those people run by.

part of me thinks, "y'all are crazy." part of me says, "you need to gear up and

go find out. or one day you'll wish you had."

that last thing, the finding-out part? it's winning. in fact, it's already won.

i'm going.

***********

there's a new running store in our neighborhood, called seven hills running

(there are seven hills surrounding seattle, see). each week they sponsor a

saturday morning group run ~ rain or shine. today they headed out in pouring

rain, the perfect chance for me to test my new gear, and my resolve.

instead, i headed to the airport, to new orleans, for a conference. weather dot

com predicted 66 and sunny for the short duration of the trip. i packed

accordingly.

***********

the weather in nawlins was perfect. i put in eight miles one day, five miles another.

then i headed back to seattle, where the forecast called for rain. every day.

for the next several months.

it won't be getting lighter, or drier, any time soon. but, at least there won't

be any frankenstorms. theoretically.

time to dive in.

happy trails, hawaiian-style...

"if we run, we can make it before dark,"
he said. that's when the dinosaurs attacked.

the pre-race briefing was simple.


"follow the blue ribbons out, and the pink ribbons back. everybody got that? blue ribbons out, pink ribbons back."


yeah, i got it. everybody got it. trouble is, the pink ribbons lied.

***********


a half marathon is plenty challenging. a half marathon trail race is half an order of magnitude more challenging. ("this one will seem like 16 or 18 miles, everyone! have fun!")


a half marathon trail race on the toughest course i've ever seen ~ with another 2.6 miles of steep up-and-down tacked on because someone mis-marked the course ~ is awesome.


i was not prepared to run 15.7. i certainly didn't train for 15.7. in fact, i wasn't really prepared for 13.1, since i got hurt and lost two weeks of training right before the race. instead of piling up the miles, i hobbled up and down the stairs. i saw a chiropractor and an MD and a sports medicine specialist. their diagnoses ranged from a strained soleus to shin splints to a stress fracture.


prescribed therapy, in every case, was rest. three to six weeks. which i obviously didn't have time for. doctors, did you not hear the part where i said i was going to hawaii? to run 13.1? off-road?


i needed, like, robotic laser hyperbaric cryo-micro infusions, stat. 


unfortunately there's no such thing as robotic laser hyperbaric cryo-micro infusions. so i got compression sleeves. for both legs. i got double doses of NSAIDs to combat the inflammation. i got slow, shuffling, two-mile "training runs" that ended with me walking back in. it was pitiful (except when compared to things that are actually worthy of pity, of course).


and yet somehow in two weeks (not three or six) i experienced a recovery i had no reason to expect. the pain gradually became more tolerable, and i was able to put in some longer training runs. with a week to go before hawaii, i ran a 12k race and put up a time that was five minutes faster than the previous year.

it wasn't the 10 or 12 miles i needed do ahead of a half marathon, but it was pain-free and therefore cause for great gladness and gratitude and oh-i-don't-know, godzilla. ("look out, it's godzilla! run away with speedy rapidity!")


i flew into honolulu the thursday before the race, and ran five miles to get acclimated. no pain. the next day i ran three miles to pick up my race packet. no pain!

the next day, the day of prevaricating pink ribbons, there were other kinds of pain ~ but i didn't think about my legs once.

***********

the 2012 gunstock trails half marathon course ranged over a working cattle ranch, complete with uncorralled horses, free-roaming cows and wide-ranging cow pies. the trail was rocky and dusty and steep and narrow and completely unsuitable for running. which is to say, it was fantastic.


the scenery, what little i saw of it, was beautiful. the blue pacific ocean, lush green valleys, galloping horses...i really wish i could've looked at it. if i had, however, i would've tripped and broken my head, immediately and a thousand times over. with rare exceptions, i was constantly looking down, watching where my next step was going, thinking, "quick feet quick feet quick feet" (which was kind of funny, given how rarely in this life one has a real need for such a thought).


on the way out, we all followed the blue ribbons and the painted arrows and the helpful locals telling us to go this way and that way. on the way back i remember thinking i was going to beat my goal time by a good ten minutes.

under two hours? on this course? after being hurt and undertrained? this was going to be a hell of a race, by golly, for an aging, aspirational running person.


everything was going perfectly!

i went off course mile ten-ish, i think. one minute i was feeling good and proud and fortunate and the next i was milling around with a pack of people (including the leaders) wondering where the finish line was.

"we went to the top of that ridge," the leaders said, pointing to a ridge way up thataway. "the trail just kind of fizzles out. so it's gotta be back the way we came." the thing is, there were pink ribbons all along the path we were on. and the woman definitely said, "blue ribbons out, pink ribbons back." at no time did she say, "oh, but not THOSE pink ribbons."


"this is just like an episode of 'lost,'" i said to no one in particular. a couple people laughed. i was grateful.


at that point, our options seemed limited. we could've waited for the rescue chopper, ("get to the choppah!"). we could've been chased by dinosaurs ("we can make it if we run!" "no, we can't...we're being hunted."). we could've floated to civilization on a bamboo raft ("wilson! i'm sorry!"). but no one seemed inclined to do any of those things.

so instead we saddled up, figuratively, and ran back down the long hill we had just climbed.
 we were met halfway by a race official on a trail bike, sent to find us. "sorry about this, everyone. head back to the junction and make a left."


we headed back to the junction, noting its ambiguous, ubiquitous ribbonage ("see? the pink ribbons go both ways!") and made a disgruntled left. with that, we were back on course. out of water, out of gels, out of our minds, but back on course.


the rest was uneventful, except for the raw, bleeding blisters on both my feet. those happened by mile five and did not improve as the race wore on, strangely enough.

people were cheering as we late-arrivers crossed the finish line. i think they were just relieved we weren't dead. someone took my timing chip and handed me a finisher's medal. it was a small dog-tag on a chain, reading "gunstock trails half (or somewhat longer if you follow the decoy pink ribbons. ha!)"


i milled about dazedly after that, eating sliced oranges and bananas, not really hearing the award presentations to people who had stayed on the course. i didn't want to leave, but after awhile there wasn't any reason to stay...except to make sure i wouldn't have a seizure while driving. it would've been a shame to survive the race but perish in a one-car collision with a hallucination.


i made it back to the hotel, showered off the head-to-toe red clay dust and cut away the flayed skin that previously had been part of my toes. i downed liters of water, and flopped into bed.
 later, i had a beer. and lots of pasta. 


the next day, i went on a seven-mile hike through a hawaiian jungle.


it seemed like a walk in the park.


***********


yes, i'd do it over again. i'd bring more water, mind you, and half a dozen more 
gels...but same deal next year? yeah, sign me up.


i know, it's a little nutty. 
but the thing is, after the event it felt like i had done something special.


almost (almost) like i'd run a marathon.


and wouldn't that be something?

off the clock

Hardwood floor-a-creakin'
Bedroom door squeakin'
She's standing in the kitchen
I thought she was still sleepin'
Kiss her on the forehead
Ask her how she slept
She says, "Honey it's so early.
We prob'ly shouldn't speak yet."

~ lyle lovett

***********

the missus is on sabbatical.

mostly because she's too young to retire. and too stubborn to surrender.

she had a rough go, career-wise, the last couple jobs. all the corporate cliches were in play: the more she gave, the more they took. no hours were unreasonable, and no time was off the clock. just for fun, there was the persistent undercurrent of snide disrespect and gender discrimination.

she didn't believe it could happen to her. she thought, not unreasonably, that her intelligence and kamikaze work ethic would insulate her.

plus, she was raised to believe that if you did what you were supposed to do and followed the rules and sacrificed time at home, rewards surely would follow.

she was hugely mistaken. she learned you can be all that, do all that, and still wake up 30 years later beholden to a job you don't really want for its barely adequate salary and the healthcare insurance you can't go without.

the scope and scale of her mistakenness came as a shock to her.

but once that lesson is learned, there's no unlearning it.

you can, of course, continue to participate in the corporate kabuki, with full knowledge of the faustian bargain. if you can stand it. or you can say, "thank you, no. i'm out."

at that point you wail and throw things and beseech the gods of revenge.

or you go on sabbatical.

you seek universal truths and inner calm. you acknowledge the choices you've made and what they cost you. you go to classes. you go to france. you come thisclose to buying a little bakery. you breathe. you get healthy. you go to france again. months go by, and you realize there are many other things you could be happy doing.

that's when things start to look dicey at your spouse's employer. and you realize you might have to get back into the game. just in case. so your family doesn't find itself without the salary and healthcare it can't be without. you grit your teeth, update your résumé, and begin the process...

the missus is resilient. and restless. and relentless. soon she'll be back at it, improving efficiency, cutting costs, and increasing shareholder value. all the adorably business-y things the corporatocracy reveres. in its nonstop grinding masticating way.

that lesson is learned, and will not be unlearned. no matter how much good wine is ladled over it.

but for now...the missus is on sabbatical.

wells fargo's revenge

Butch: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful.

Guard: People kept robbing it.

Butch: Small price to pay for beauty.

***********

in its 162 years, wells fargo has endured numerous robberies. stagecoaches and trains and banks, oh my.

it must've cost the company, literally, thousands of dollars.

so you can't blame today's wells fargo for wanting to recoup its losses ~ with billions in interest.

multinational corporations are people, after all. they only want what's fair.

and what could be more fair than uncounted billions in taxpayer funded bailouts, bonuses and boondoggles? ninety-nine percent of the 99% are willing to ignore such things, most of the time. until it affects them directly. then folks get irritated enough to complain, a little.

thanks to social media, occasionally those complaints generate a desired response. not often, but sometimes.

in the "not often" column, there's the wells fargo role in the subprime crisis, racially discriminatory lending practices, and ravening foreclosure factories. the company has deepdeepdeep pockets, see, and no qualms about driving its customers to ruin of varying and permanent degree (and by permanent we mean death).

the company has been sued, to be sure ~ repeatedly. but such cases, when brought by individuals, rarely are decided against mega-billion dollar corporations. larger parties, like blue cross-blue shield of minnesota, and the cities of baltimore and memphis, seem to fare better. go figure.

also, wells fargo is not afraid to eat its own, if by "its own" you mean garden variety and therefore completely expendable employees...

Wells Fargo fires Des Moines worker over 1963 Laundromat incident involving fake dime

Richard Eggers, 68, was fired in July from his job as a customer service representative for putting a cardboard cutout of a dime in a washing machine nearly 50 years ago in Carlisle, Iowa, the Des Moines Register reported Monday.

Big banks have been firing low-level employees like Eggers since new federal banking employment guidelines were enacted in May 2011 and new mortgage employment guidelines took hold in February, the newspaper said. The tougher standards are meant to clear out executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes - such as identity theft and money laundering - but are being applied across the board because of possible fines for noncompliance.

Banks have fired thousands of workers nationally, said Natasha Buchanan, an attorney in Santa Ana who has helped some of the workers regain their eligibility to be employed.

"Banks are afraid of the FDIC and the penalties they could face," Buchanan said.

wait, banks are afraid of what? the fdic? penalties? do you think natasha said that with a straight face? or do you think she said it with a snort, rolling her eyes? good one, natasha.

as noted above, the purpose of the "guideline" under which mr. eggers was fired was "to clear out executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes ~ such as identity theft and money laundering."

unbreaking news: employees fired over a 1963 dime: one. wells fargo executives fired for their role in the subprime crisis, reverse redlining, and predatory lending: zero.

"thanks to social media, sometimes those complaints generate a desired response."

yeah, this is not one of those times. mr. eggers filed with the fdic to be reinstated to his job, but it'll be months before his case is resolved. this despite the fact that his story has gone viral, internet-wise. google it. eggers was featured in an abc news story, and was even contacted for an interview by the colbert report. that's almost as good as walter cronkite. better, even, since uncle walter is not currently alive.

"kid, the next time i say, 'let's
go someplace like bolivia,'
let's go someplace like bolivia."

upon a time, people robbed banks (and stagecoaches and trains) because it was sort of easy. pull a gun, blow open the safe, ride off with the money. then the people with the money got wise, and made robberies much more difficult. and dangerous. over time, and for the most part, the robberies ceased.

or, at least, they ceased to be a problem for wells fargo. which has learned the lessons of history and ridden off with the real money.

which, one might easily imagine, is the best revenge.

Butch: I couldn't do that. Could you? How the hell can they do that? Who are those guys? 

cool running

we ran on labor day.

and despite labor day generally happening during "summer," labor day in seattle doesn't necessarily feel like "summer."

let's face it, entire summers in seattle often don't feel like summer. they often feel like late winter, or mid-fall, or any day in northern canada.

anyway, we ran on labor day, the girl, the missus and i. we had to gear up a bit, because pre-race temperatures were in the low 50s. and by "gear up" i mean, "stand around in our running shorts, shivering."

that's not entirely accurate. i did have on a long-sleeve tech shirt. and i ran around the parking lot to stay warm. the missus and the girl did most of the shivering.

technically, the labor day half marathon is in redmond, wa., home of microsoft and a couple other things, i'm sure. let's see, there's...um...redmond ridge winery! and the famous black raven brewing company. (full disclosure: i've never heard of either of these establishments, and if you have, you're thirstier than i.)

the girls were running the 4-mile event, which was notable in that neither of them had ever run four miles consecutively. they were game, nevertheless, and i'm pleased to report that both set a PR for this distance! which, really, they couldn't help but do, even if they had staggered across the finish line the next day.

they had fun! they had respectable times! and about the time they finished, the clouds parted and the sun broke through, as if in celebration of their achievements! glorious.

meanwhile, i was still running, and no longer cold. i was, in fact, overly warm. i remember thinking, "it's hot now," even though it was probably all of 68 degrees.

all the while, the girls were filling their swag bags with a plethora of nutritious gels and bars and drinks and having a big ol' time. laughing, listening to music, enjoying the not-so-hot sunshine. la ti da.

meanwhile, i was still running. i had a goal in mind, and the only way to achieve it was to continue this way until the finish line, at which point i would stop running for a while.

i glanced at my watch at about mile 7 and thought, "you're running too slow. if you're going to make that goal time, you'll have to run faster than this." so, miles 7 through 13.1 i ran faster.

the people i had been following, i began to overtake and pass. this is difficult, i have learned, because late in a half marathon you've already expended a bunch of energy, and the runners ahead of you are often better runners than you. plus, they're usually quite competitive and don't feel like being passed.

i appreciate this fact, and felt a little bad for the people i was passing. i felt like i should apologize for passing them so late, since they undoubtedly trained hard and had run a good race thus far. then i remembered this was a race, and passed them anyway. next time, given the chance, they'll pass me. i won't be upset.

(who am i kidding? yes, i will.)

confession: i've been kicking around the idea of running a marathon. just kind of daydreaming about what kind of time committment and physical torment would be required. and, rounding into the last half mile of the second half marathon in a row i thought with great sincerity, "thank god it's not 26.2." i'm not ready for a marathon. yet.

a couple hundred yards before the finish line, there was one more runner ahead of me i thought i could pass. i caught her on the turn into the parking lot, on her outside shoulder, and was a couple steps ahead of her before she knew i was there. i don't think she liked that very much. she kicked it up a notch and we ran neck and neck for a few strides. then i kicked it up a notch and beat her by several steps. "i'm sorry about that," i totally didn't say, because it was a race, and besides, i was busy looking at my watch and wondering if it was right.

if it was, i had beaten my goal time by more than three minutes, and my previous PR by nearly seven minutes. i chugged a couple bottles of water, found the missus and the girl, and we traded high-fives and smiles. they showed off their swag bags, and we wandered over to the post-race area near the vendor tents.

we stretched, we relaxed, we filled up my swag bag. free stuff! woo hoo! finally, i went over to the official timing/results tent and entered my bib number into the keypad. turns out my official time was faster than my watch-time.

don't get me wrong, i'm not fast. but in 2012 on a late, sort-of summer labor day outside seattle ~ the girls and i had the time of our lives.

oh, boy...



"one day i'll go off 
to high school and
make you second-guess
everything you've ever
said or done!"



"courage is fear holding on a minute longer."  ~ george s. patton

***********

i dropped the boy off at freshman orientation this morning.

he played it all cool and jaded and above the fray ~ but he checked and rechecked the visor mirror, and fiddled with his hair the entire ride over.

maybe he wasn't anxious and a little scared. maybe that was just me, projecting.

once upon a time this wary, weary boy was sunny and gregarious, all smiles, all the time. he changed ~ which is to say he grew up ~ as people often do. but because i so vividly remember the earlier version, i often have a hard time reconciling v.1 with v.now.

i miss that boy.

he still peeks out, every so often, like today. as he closed the car door and walked away, i sat and watched him go. as much as i think he may have been intimidated by the uncertain and the unknown, he still waded right into the thick of it. then he was through an open door, and gone.

just before he got out of the car, i didn't say, "i love you."

but i thought it.

me dislikey

i shouldn't do this.

it falls into the same category as drunk-dialing and angry-emailing and, oh-i-don't-know, searching for mitt romney's soul.

i shouldn't post while sleep deprived. nothing good can come of it.

therefore i will do it anyway, because my judgment is impaired.

***********

have you seen this? it popped up on my facebook page recently (originally posted by someone called "being conservative," which is a terrible name...what were his parents thinking?).

wow. you're dumb.

at that time the image had over 600,000 "likes" associated with it. i have to assume it has even more now, since several days have passed and there have been no reports of "conservatives" abandoning the internet en masse.

certainly they have reason not to "like" the internet. its existence makes it so easy to share stories about interesting people in strange places (or strange people in interesting places), like todd akin from missouri and frank szabo up in new hampshire and judge tom head from the great state of texas.

go ahead, read their stories. those are some wacky conservative guys "being conservative"!

but we stray from the all-important and heretofore unannounced points of order. which are really just casual observations anyone might make, about anything, anywhere. these points, however, are about the photo above and its terribly clever caption.

 

point of order #1: this bit of rhetoric is not the conservative viewpoint. the conservative viewpoint would be, "i pay for a social safety net as a hedge against being thrown out of work or disabled or some other random act of unkindness. the universe is full of unpredictability, so this preparation makes good, conservative sense. but you want me to take a drug test to use the safety net i helped pay for? no. or, put another way: you'll get my urine sample when you pry it from my cold, wet fingers."

 

see? "being conservative" is complicated!

point of order #2: who forced you to take the urine test referenced above? hint: no one. you willingly submitted your pee for the privilege of supporting someone else's lavish lifestyle and early retirement. yay! if you're upset about this insult to your integrity and personal liberty, please redirect your anger at corporate employers that treat you as suspect and potentially criminal as a condition of employment.

no one said "being conservative" was easy!

point of order #3: a massive drug testing program is unconservative in that it doesn't make economic sense. given the number of long-term unemployed in this country, testing them all presupposes a huge new government bureaucracy spending countless billions of dollars to save a pittance paid to people who are down so low that they can't help but fritter away their pitiful weekly "welfare check" on illegal drugs.

have you seen photos of meth addicts? do they look like they're out on a golf course somewhere drinking champagne and laughing in a harvard accent? hint: no, they look like they're ready to donate their bodies to the nearest cadaver lab.

no one said "being conservative" is actually conservative!

spiteful sidebar: if you're going to propose spending new billions on the unemployed, why not slap electronic bracelets on them so we can monitor their every move?  that, of course, presupposes billions more spending on welfare/urinalysis enforcement squads (think halliburton and blackwater/xe/academi. tagline: try to buy drugs now, poverty-stricken scum!).

liberal alert: or we could spend that money on mental health services and job training and actually putting people back to work.

useful factoid: in florida, where they've actually implemented a drug-test-for-welfare program, they discovered that just 2.6% of welfare recipients tested positive for illegal drugs. compared to 8.1% of the general population. go figure.

to sum up, corporations buy our elections and our politicians to rig the future in their favor, while we squabble like hens over barnyard scraps. we're informed we can't afford teachers or firefighters or cops, but authoritarian government and corporate welfare are okie-dokie.

"being conservative." hmm...i don't think that means what you think it means.

embrace change

my daughter has braces.

they're pink and yellow, and apparently they look like something worn by katy perry in some music video.

maybe so. i don't know.

to me they look like a future where time passes at an exponentially accelerating rate, and i'm helpless to do anything but watch as it races past.

this feeling doesn't suit me, so i'll not dwell on it beyond these few words.

just a couple years ago, it seems, this child was born to much fanfare, within the limited scope of our little family. hers was not a routine birth, in that when she was born she wasn't breathing. i remember, in the aftermath, the doctor saying something about a reaction to the pain meds mrs. spaceneedl was given during labor.

but in the moment, all i recall is the girl being snatched away by the nurse, multiple people hovering over her, a bag-valve mask, and someone saying loudly, "breathe, baby, breathe."

the missus and i both began crying at that point.

i remember a needle and an injection and then the girl was crying, too. i remember this like it was yesterday, even though it was almost a dozen years ago.

the time in between has passed in the blink of an eye. in the interim, this child has been fearless and ferocious and full of joie de vivre. hardly a day goes by that i don't quietly shake my head in amazement and avert my eyes  so as not to give away how easily i might be folded and spindled to her every whim.

she goes off to middle school in a couple weeks. i remember how i scoffed at the orientation meeting when the boy started middle school. "this is going to be a tough transition for you parents," they said. "you won't recognize your child, or his behavior, sometimes. but you'll get through it."

yes, it was tough. it still is, even as the boy gears up to start high school. i don't look forward to a similar transition with the girl.

in the meantime, she has braces. eventually the incisor that sticks out at a familiar, endearing little angle will fall into alignment and look like someone's idea of perfection.

me...i liked it the way it was.

shouting at butterfiles



butterflies hate to be yelled at.

after not very much contemplation, it's easy to leap to the conclusion that many things don't make sense.

upon further review, it becomes clear that nothing makes sense.

so, why fight it?

***********

92 isn't really hot.

but in seattle it is record-breaking hot. and people here can't handle it.

"it's so hot!"
"can you believe how hot it is?"
"when did we move to hell?"

it's summer, people. it's supposed to be hot. instead, we've had one day above 90. and one day above 80. this week? back into the low 70s.

the rest of the country, famously, is broiling. or burning. or poaching. half the counties in the u.s. have been declared disaster areas.

interesting, unsurprising factoid: july 2012 was the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous u.s. please don't think this is due to global warming, because lots of people insist there's no such thing as global warming, and we have to respect their beliefs. rather than try to do something about global warming.

92 isn't really hot. (still, i'm not going running in it.)

***********

in wisconsin, a guy walked into a house of worship and killed 6 people. he didn't use a knife or a pool cue or a garden hose. he used a gun. which made it easy for him to fire a lot of shots, killing and wounding many people in a very short time.

pat robertson blamed athiests.

the nra sent out fundraising letters in colorado three days after 70 people were shot in aurora, co ("the obama administration wants to confiscate your guns."). makes you wonder how soon the nice folks at the nra will try to cash in on the deaths in wisconsin.

please don't talk about gun control now. there's no good time to talk about gun control, but especially after lots of people get shot.

***********

eat at chick-fil-a. or don't eat at chick-fil-a.

i mean, avoiding fast food in general is a good idea if you want to be healthy and live a long time.

come to think of it, opponents of marriage equality should eat a lot of chick-fil-a. every day.

***********

this is a photo of mars, which happened while anti-sciencey people were denying climate change...

i bet this isn't even mars. it looks like utah.

***********

since may of this year i've participated in at least one running event a month. actual, official events, i mean, with sponsors and t-shirts and lots of other runners. turns out this sort of thing is kind of fun. so i've signed up for four more races between now and october 13.

• a 10-mile trail run through a rainforest (no rain no rain no rain no rain)
• a labor day half-marathon that starts and finishes at the redhook brewery
• "run the bluff," a 12k event held right in our neighborhood
• the gunstock trails half-marathon on oahu...pineapples yes, guns no

this will put me at 8 events in 2012. why? i have no idea. and really, if nothing makes sense, why look for explanations? it is kind of fun, though.

***********

uncertainty is an unhappy, uncomfortable feeling. but given a world where every second is an exercise in improbability, it's the only logically defensible state of mind. people filled with self-righteous certainty are silly, illogical people.

this morning on the freeway i passed a youngish man who was stumbling along against traffic in the breakdown lane. maybe his car was disabled, but it was nowhere in sight. and he was heading the wrong way to get to a gas station. cars were passing him fast and close.

one doesn't expect to see a pedestrian going the wrong way on a freeway at 7:30 in the morning. so i called 911. i have no idea if help reached him before something bad happened.

***********

late update: turns out the wisconsin shooter attended the same high school in colorado that i went to. i find this news disturbing.

nothing makes sense. and that's no fun at all.

************

here's a picture of cute animals...

dogs and fawns don't usually play together.



one small step



"he who falls behind will be left behind."

done.

the running event i watched in 2010 thinking, "i can do that."

i can. i did.

redirect: in august, 2009 i had an acl reconstruction on my right knee. in july of 2010 i was still rehabbing, still struggling to get back to where i was pre-injury. it was pitiful and sad, unless you compare it to things that are actually pitiful and sad. in which case it was just silly and self-indulgent.

as we sat on the curb waiting for seattle's seafair torchlight parade to begin, a parade of runners went by, part of the annual 5k/8k event. and as unfit as i felt physically, mentally i wanted to compete.

not eventually. immediately. right that second. i mean, there were old people and overweight people and children running, right there in front of me. "if they can do that, i can do that," i thought, sullenly. "why am i not doing that?"

the moment passed. and a year went by. in that time, i returned to playing basketball, got into basketball shape, then realized i didn't really like playing basketball any more. about then, i stopped playing basketball and started running.

fast forward a year and hundreds of miles and half-a-dozen races. oh, look, it's time for the 2012 seafair torchlight 5k/8k. "let's do this thing," i didn't really say to myself. but i did sign up for the 8k, because it was there.

a half mile into it, my stomach started hurting something awful. it kept hurting the next three miles, and i was pretty sure my time was going to be just as awful. i started feeling better the last mile and a half, stomach-wise, but by that time i was spent. i crossed the finish line, stopped my watch, and didn't bother to look at it. after walking and drinking nuun and eating some blueberries i finally looked and saw "36:30." at that moment i experienced a small but finite interval of yay.

my target time was 40 minutes~~and if everything went perfectly, i thought i might manage 35 minutes. things didn't go perfectly, or anywhere close to it, so 36:30 felt like a gift.

doesn't matter. what does matter is that i ran with the people i once watched. and i was faster than several of them. not that i'm competitive or anything.
**********

NO                1929
NAME            Michael Miller
AGE              51
SEX               M
DIVISION        M 50-54
OVERALL      187/3744
DIVPL            13/96
SEXP             155/1872
CHIP              36:30
PACE             7:21