After all the fluff has settled, here's where we're at

 Hm.  For some reason, Blogger's flipping my picture sideways.

As to my scientific methodology: I grabbed my four foot ruler, walked out to the nearest undisturbed spot in the yard (to my front door) and pushed the ruler down into the snow as far as I could.  I didn't sample more spots.

So there.

The computer thermometer tells me it's 14ºF out.  Warming up a bit.

[My character map calls the degree sign a "masculine ordinal indicator."  What the hell?]

I wonder if there's anyone around here taking pictures

like this guy. 

Awesome pictures, man!  The nature pictures, I mean.  The people pictures are fine, too, but they don't blow your doors off like the plants & critters.

Dennis Curtin is his name.

I thought it was good of my camera to take this good of a night picture for me

I thought this one was OK too.

The first one's looking South from my front step, the second one's from about thirty feet closer.  Real photographers like to know details about the equipment, so I'll tell you that it's a Canon PowerShot SX110IS and I turned to knob/dial to SCN, whatever that means.

You know, I'd probably post more here

If I'd called this blog "The Sober Epicure" or, perhaps, "epicurean".  I swear to god, when I think of the limitations those words imply, I can't think of a thing to write, whereas "The Sober Epicure(an)" is much more descriptive of me.  I want to get high-falutin' now and then, and I have here, so I've let the name and the promise down.  But limiting me let's me down.

I chose bourgeois philistine because there are a lot of enjoyable things that fall within the clichéd, mundane, trite realm...and I wanted to defend those things.  Funny thing is, that having chosen then path, suddenly it seemed that I couldn't find any attcks on them.  There are some, yet, but they just seem to be jokes and I don't want to be a stuffed shirt attacking comedians.  As long as they're funny.  The jokes I don't think are funny are usually political, and I have another blog for dealing with those.

"Sober Epicure" also wouldn't have been very descriptive of me when I started this blog.  I suppose I could have discussed the qualities and tastes of the various cheap beers and malt liquors and the value of swilling them down in great quantities, but I guess I never really felt proud enough of doing that to want to brag about it.  I was quite the master at sneaking off to the liquor store, hiding my beer and hiding the empties as well.  The pride in those great accomplishments didn't last any longer than it took to do them.  Then it was time to drink.

But I have learned, quite literally to smell the roses and to really deeply feel a cool, crisp glass of water.  To sense enjoyable things with as many senses as possible at once.

And, now it's time to enjoy the sensation of my blankets and pillow as I slowly dive into my unconscious mind.

I had a couple more pix I thought were worthy of posting

The bottom is just a detail of the top.

Big Race Next Sunday.

I only have to run about 10 miles between now and then. I ran 11 today. i managed to maintain a speed of 6.5 miles/hr the whole way. I think I was pretty steady. 48-55 degrees and cloudy helps a ton.

I was thinking about running a 5K a couple weeks after the big one. It'd be like a balls to the wall sprint after all this distance running. There's one down in south Minneapolis the third weekend of October. They're not quite as easy to find as I'd like them to be.

I wonder if there'd be any money in gathering info on races all into one website. I think I could get into that. Do research, google around, call people - post it to the web.

I've been wondering what my "passion" is. That pretty much describes it.

Googling right now, the first one in the future is MTCM's on Saturday. I'm sure you could still sign up as of now. I won't be running anything that day.

Here's the answer to my question: nope, there's no money in it.

I'm starting to get into some distances that I'm proud of in my running.

So, I may just be blathering on more about my workouts than I have been. Today I ran, according to Map My Run, 19.2 miles in 3½
hours (3:29:30 to be exact). That's at least half a mile farther than I was estimating during the run, and at an average speed under 11 minutes/mile, or 5.49 mph. I was doing better than 6 mph at least through mile 12.
Map My Run also tells me that I burned 2926 calories doing it.

Now, the temp didn't get above 65° F, so that, no doubt, had a considerable bearing on my results. Once again, it was sunny and dry. Absolutely gorgeous day! September is a wonderful month. And, I've got to praise my new New Balance shoes for keeping my feet comfortable. That's the same brand as my old shoes, but they were breaking down and causing me knee pain.

I have some bizarre-ass feet, so what works for me might not work for you. If you're thinking about taking up running, you've gotta at least go talk to a professional running-shoe expert, or go to a lecture on it, like I did. It's made a huge difference in my shoe choices, both for running and wlalking/work. I no longer have the foot, knee and hip pains that I was contending with before. Or, when I do, I know how to fix them.

I invented a trick to help me pick up the pace when I catch myself dogging it: I start to breathe deeper, inhaling to a count of four steps and exhaling to the same count.

Whoa! Tighty Whities? Bad running gear!

17 miles in 'em - extreme discomfort.

Enough said, eh.

Training for the Half Marathon is done.

Now it's time to rest up.

I've got some painting to do tomorrow - on the house; nothing artistic, just painting the white highlights. Oh, and I need to mow the lawn and take the old garage door to the dump.

I'm on vacation.

1989-2010. Not a bad run for an appliance.

It's my fault the old Shop-Vac died.  I left it outside to dry after vacuuming up water that might have had sulfuric acid in it.  It rained cats and dogs the next day.  The watersoftener ran yesterday and reflooded the low parts of the basement near the floor drain I was trying to unplug.  I plunged out the drain, which runs fine now, and went to get the Shop-Vac to clean up the bathroom rug.  Then I remembered that I'd left it out under the eaves in front of the garage door. 

I poured about a cup of water out of the motor compartment.  I gave her twenty-four hours with the dehumidifier to dry out.  It wasn't enough.  She lasted about five seconds after I turned her on before the motor burned out.  I should have blown her out with a blow dryer first.

No time to mourn.  I still have to get that rug dry.

Whoops! The numbers don't lie

1:34:15

That's my time for the Manitou 15K. They don't use electronic chips, so that's my gun time, and I wasn't paying attention to anything but whose feet I was about to step on at the start, so I can't even estimate how long it took me to get to the starting line. Maybe twenty seconds - it wasn't that big a crowd.

Some were probably turned away by the thunderstorm predictions, but we only got a few raindrops during the race. It was raining pretty steady out last time I looked outside, but that didn't start until after noon sometime. Race conditions were cloudy and high sixties, with almost no wind. A little warmer than perfect racing weather, but pretty close.

For the first 5K I just hung with this group that seemed to be going the speed I wanted to go. The second 5K the crowd was pretty stretched out, so I just concentrated on breathing at the rate I thought would keep me at about a 10 minute mile pace. My watch verified that I was doing a heckuva job at it, though I was lagging a bit. The final 5K I pushed it a little more, though it started on a long upgrade - you probably wouldn't notice it in a car, so I waited on that until I got to the "top" before pushing. Then, finally I did a real kick for the last quarter mile, steadily accelerating through the finish line.

They probably haven't posted the results yet, but let's see anyway.

Nope. Not yet. They're supposed to post them on Apple Raceberry JaM by 6 PM.

I bet you're wondering how I feel now.

I've got a couple of raw spots - notably, one blistered toe, but other than generally tired legs, I feel pretty good. I mean, thank god it's raining and the yard work is all done for the week.

Oh, yeah. The floor drain in the basement is backing up so I've been hauling three gallon buckets of water from the clothes washer to the shower drain. Now we've knocked a hole in the wall between the laundry area and the bathroom and run a hose directly from the washer to the drain that works. I put the hole in a spot that wanted some work anyway, so no biggy there.

Ok, here are the official Manitou 15K results.  Apparently I lost a second: 1:34:16.

79 Mins for 7 miles yesterday

33 Mins for 3 today.

Just keeping track.

Let me start gathering notes for that spiritual autobiography

About Al
The name "Old Whig" comes from Hayek's "Why I am not a Conservative," in which he disparages conservative positions and places himself in the Lockean camp. He says some things in praise of Edmund Burke in that article...fortunately Burke once wrote a piece called "A Vindication of Natural Society," which makes it possible for me to continue using that moniker.

My Life

Milestones: My "best friend" punched me in the stomach three times in Kindergarten. (Maybe that shouldn't be listed first, but chronologically it's the first thing that disturbed me. It was the birth of a deadly rage, in me.) Dad taught me to fight and I "got even" with that sob. That was never satisfying. I wanted to be friends, or at least be left alone. Both of those were out of the question. He wouldn't leave me alone, and he couldn't take me. Beating him up became a grim, several-times-per-week chore. Nobody offered him psychological counseling or me a better solution. Christ! I was 5, 6, 7, 8 years old! People are telling me, "You're fighting too much," or "violence doesn't solve anything..." Funny that nobody seriously tried to stop us. Ever.

...

Age seven: accepted Jesus as my Savior and was baptized. We went to a Wesleyan church which is a fundamentalist offshoot of the Methodists. My mother was raised Missionary Baptist in Oklahoma, and occasionally we went to an Assemblies of God church in town. In college, I called myself a Baptist/Methodist/Pentacostal. The first and the last figure the other is a variation of Satanism. Ho ho ho!

Age eight: started beating the crap out of my enemies. It got to be a dull chore.

Age nine: Read the whole Bible. When I was done, I started rereading it, bogged down in Leviticus, skipped ahead to Numbers, bogged down again, skipped to Deuteronomy, bogged down again... No, I was good with the Books of History, plodded through the Books of Poetry and the Major Prophets (Daniel is good story-telling), gave up on the Minor Prophets, except for Jonah and went ahead to the New Testament. Most of the preaching and teaching I heard all those years was from the New Testament, though we did some OT Bible studies from time to time over the years.

I should talk about what a lousy witness for Christ I was at school. I'm sure nobody ever thought I was anything but a heathen there. If they knew I was a Christian, they were repulsed by me. I had a foul mouth, talked "dirty," ...and, most shameful of all, when I became a big jock, I bullied some people. There's a guy named Dave I need to make amends to.

College: German major, Math & Philosophy minors. Graduated a nihilist. Nothing was true unless it was right in front of my face. I went to the Grand Canyon to make beds. I was shanghai'ed to drive a delivery truck (because the boss was a racist and the other candidate was black).

I found that part out when I got to know the boss better. I was ashamed to look the other candidate in the eye after that.

I need to check something. Some part of me doesn't want me to describe my time at the Canyon. Or doesn't like the way I've done it, now, twice. I've discovered two ways to accidently delete a post.

Suffice it to say, I met a guy who was the quintessential Christian moron, rejected him, read Nietszche and enjoyed godlessness for a while.

Where I'm at right now:
We raised our kids Lutheran, though, lately I've been monkey-wrenching church attendance. I've just been absent when it's time to go, so nobody goes. It's not the right way to handle it, I'm sure.

It's hard for me to believe that my wife didn't get that I was an atheist until I said it flat out a couple of weeks ago. I guess she was working really hard at keeping two and two apart. I suppose the whole thing of rejoining the choir made a really effective smoke screen. (I like singing and I like the style of music we sang - and the choir director and members... But I can't help them spread that word anymore.)

I have three witnesses that prove there is no god: my brother, my stepson and the guy from the Canyon. They're the strongest Christians I know and all nutty as squirrels.

Moron running

Just so I don't forget, after the race last Thursday I jogged back to the start to get the girls, so there's two miles total that day. I ran 38 minutes Friday night - not sure how far, I cut across a park at one point. Saturday I ran from the house to and around Palmer Lake - seven miles in 80 minutes; and today I ran 75 minutes for an as-yet unmeasured distance. I'd like to think it was over six miles, but I haven't mapped it out yet. It'll be a good route to have in my Map-My-Run profile, because I'll be using that one again and expanding out from it.

I'm feeling over trained right now, so I'm going to rest tomorrow.

I'm feeling pretty cocky today

No, I can't say that I really kicked butt in the TC 1-Mile. I ran too cautious a race and finished in 8:09. I was slowed in the beginning by people who had no business lining up in the front. That's what I get for running in the "Family Wave."

No, I had good reason to do that. The Master's wave started a half hour later, and I was headed back to the car by then. And that was good, because... Laurie was working late and I had the girls with me. I think they had a mildly good time. After picking up my race packet - number and chip and a pretty cool looking shirt - we had an hour to kill downtown, so we walked over to this sculpture park in front of an office building. Naturally the younger girl got us all yelled at by a security guy by climbing all over everything. Actually, he looked like he understood perfectly, but 'orders is orders.'

But, sorry, no death, destruction or great bodily harm ensued... No chases - per se - or slaking of wanton lust, for those who demand such things.

Cinco de Mayo? Aw, bleep! Missed it.

Misleading title alert.

As a follow up to the previous post, I found myself sending this message...yes, to someone who cares:

I'm signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon on Oct. 3, but I'm not asking you to include that. I'll need to do some races to train for it, so it won't be hard to get the numbers. I'm signed up for the Twin Cities 1-Mile next week. There's the Manitou 15K on June 5th I could be ready for, the Minnesota Half Marathon on Aug. 7… so 1+9.3+13.1 gets me 23.4… Just need to throw in a 5k.

So there's a basic outline of my training program for this summer (summer starts right after the snowstorm tomorrow night). 9.3 miles by June 5th is pushing it quite a bit, but I'll deal with it (I hope).

Now I've done it

I finally overcame my ambivalence about running another marathon and signed up for this fall's TCM. I certainly wasn't expecting any feeling of elation over it, but I feel downright euphoric. I'll be darned.

I had already signed up for the TC 1 Mile on May 13th, but I was having a heck of a time getting motivated to train for it. I'd done a few 2 and a half mile runs, but I wasn't working it into a habit. Now I walked 3 miles at lunch yesterday and ran 2 and a half last night and this morning. Last night I pushed a measured mile a little. I did it in ten minutes. This morning I dogged it a bit and did the mile in about ten and a half.

Sunny and 52 this morning. Kind of cool for a t-shirt and shorts, but I managed to work up a sweat. I took a "before" picture of myself, but I don't think I'll share it until I have a fairly impressive "after" picture.

I was surprised by how elated I felt after I filled out my registration. Apparently something inside me really, really wants to do that. I guess I don't just want to be "a guy who ran a few marathons." This'll be my fourth TCM. I took last year off to let my feet and legs heal up, but, emotionally I felt rotten all year. I didn't like not having the big goal out there to reach.

It's absolutely the peak of Spring here. There are pink, white and red apple blossoms all over everywhere, the lilacs are in bloom, the young leaves are neon green, the whole world smells like candy... What a wonderful time to be coming back to life! It was sunny and 52 during my run this morning. A bit cool for a T-shirt and shorts, but not too bad. Exactly the weather I'll want on October 7th, or whenever race day is.

I banged my knee on a chair last night. It's hurting pretty bad now, though since I managed a slow jog for two and a half miles, it probably won't screw up my training for the TC 1-Mile. It would if I were planning to win, I suppose, but I don't. I just want to get close to 7 minutes.

The wife's at Clutterers Anonymous right now and the kids are watching cartoons. I haven't showered up yet.

I just discovered Medici.tv

I'm watching Mozart's Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter" played by the Orchestre national de Lyon, directed by Ton Koopman.

It's Mozart, so naturally it's beautiful.

The Portal Credits song is about the prettiest song

I've heard in a long time.


If you ignore the subject matter, anyway.

You wanna hear a guy sing some good tunes

Check out Dave Kopp. All original stuff.

So, d'j' all celebrate the holidays appropriately?

The Ides of March, St. Urho's Day and St. Patrick's Day?

We fired up the hot tub for St. Urho's Day, but otherwise, we didn't do nuthin'.

I been bustin' my @$$ tryin' t'figure this crap out

and it's been in the accessories file all along. Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Character Map.

They got crap like this: Ωand ⅓, Ä... All kinds of stuff I want to use.