10 Days.

2009 Baltimore Marathon Course

131 Days, over 500 miles, and a pair of shoes have led me to this point.  I’m finally just 10 days away from running the Baltimore Marathon.  Just 19 weeks ago, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

This has been one of the most painful, challenging, and time consuming journeys I’ve ever been on.  I have given up soda, avoided junk food, and in these last weeks even put down the bottle.  Icing has become a regular part of my evening, and blisters no longer seem to gross me out.   But it has been so worth it.

A few days ago I was talking to an old college buddy who ran a marathon last year.  He told me, “Congratulations.  You have done it!”  And I think he is right.  10 days from now I’ll run the race.  God willing, I’ll finish without any worse than usual issues, and it will be awesome.  But that will be just about 4 hours of this trip.  The countless hours, the self motivation, early mornings, painful knees, and maybe even a few tears, is really what this was all about.  I set out to do something.  A kind of commitment I have rarely had in my life, and now I’ve completed the worst of it.  It might not be over until I cross the finish line, but the works is done.

Last night I went out for a quick 6 miler.  I was thinking about how many times I’ve run down that hill, and past those apartment buildings.  All of a sudden a biker on the sidewalk comes flying by.  I mumble my usual response to bikers, “It’s called ‘Share the Road’, not ‘Share the sidewalk,’” he turns to look, and we both keep going.  That got me thinking, “wow, I can’t believe nothing serious has happened to me.  I really hope I don’t get hurt by something dumb in the last few days of training.”  Seriously, not 15 seconds after that thought passes, I find myself laying face first right smack dab in the middle of 11th and U st.  I look up to see people jumping from their seats  in the outside seating area of Solly’s and a man running from the sidewalk to help me.

I got up with nothing more than a few scratches, my “10 days” bubble burst, and a red face, but left thinking that it could have been a lot worse and at least 20 or so people had something to laugh about!

10 days until race day.  The work is over, but the stories have just begun.

Weather looks perfect

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Because I’m Not Too Cool: Beatles Rockband

I hesitate to post the Beatles Rockband in the “Because I’m Not Too Cool” series, because darn it, it is just so cool!  I’ve never been much of a video game guy.  I’ve never owned a system (well, I did have a hand-me-down original Nintendo for awhile), and never really got into any games.  That is, however, until my friend “JH” got rockband.  Holy crap did we rock the hell out of that game.  JH, Spud, MS, Kareem and I, aka “The Bikini Monkeys”, have rocked our way through Rockband 1 and 2, as well as all of the track packs to date.   So it came as no surprise when I got a text from JH the day the Beatles Rockband was released.  “Just got Beatles Rockband, must Bikini Monkey soon.”

Opening day of our next “world tour,” I could hardly sit still.  Beatles bumped through the earbuds all day at work and on the trip to JH’s rock castle.  When the plastic guitar’s started strumming, and the drum sticks started pounded, I quickly realized this new game was everything I wanted, and more.  Nearly all of the major hits were on the playlist, and the background images really set the mood.  As you play through the songs, the game plays through the life of the band.  Starting with the oldest songs and animated video of the young band, and continuing on through the more psychedelic tunes and some very gnarly footage.

No question this is a blast for any Bealtes enthusiast, and a good time for those who are not.  While it may not have the wide range of hits as the other games, it clearly has jams that anyone would know.  We played our way through the entire disk the first night.  Not real sure what that says about the Bikini Monkeys…

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Does Southeast Texas even have public transport?

Tea Bag Protesters at the 9/12 DC rally

I wasn’t going to go there. I wasn’t going to bring back up the Tea Party crew, or their recent march on the Mall, but post protest news has just been too weird to pass up.  I mean, you can ignore socialist/Muslim/Hitler claims, brushing them off as crazy talk, but then came recent news from one of our very own U.S. Representatives.

It turns out that Texas Rep. Kevin Brady (R) made The Wall Street Journal today after he released a formal compliant to the Washington Metro.  He claims that the system didn’t prepare properly for the number of protesters.

“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration.  These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”

Rep. Brady, hundreds of thousands of people use the metro to get to work, play, home, and school every week here in the district.  We miss trains, deal with delays and overcrowding nearly every day.  So please tell me, why didn’t you stand up for the District when you voted against additional funding for the Metro system when we really needed it?  Probably because you assumed our representatives would take care of that.  Oh. Wait. We don’t have any.  You and your colleagues voted against THAT as well.

Do you want less government involvement or not?  You can’t have both.

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Maryland Seafood Festival

Maryland Seafood Festival

Last weekend I had a friend from school come into town, who we’ll call ‘J’.  Trying to avoid downtown on Saturday, I thought we would head a little north to the Maryland Seafood Festival outside of Annapolis.  The two of us, plus friends Kareem and ‘G’ loaded into the car and hit the road around 1:00.  I had no idea what to expect, but I thought we’d at least have a beer and a delicious Maryland crab cake or two.

After seeing the schedule of events, one thing stood out above the rest.  The Crab Cake Eating Competition.  When we heard that it was just two hours away, all of the boys looked at each other, then looked at Kareem.  Oh man did I want Kareem to dominate that competition.

He, on the other hand, didn’t seem as excited.  It was clear that if anyone was going to participate, we all needed to participate.  So we signed up.

Maybe not the smartest thing we did that day, but about an hour before the competition, the four of us grabbed some sort of seafood plate.  Knowing that I would soon be stuffing my face with crab cakes, I decided to go for shrimp.  They were delicious, satisfying my hunger, and making me ever anxious about the race.

After taking a few laps around the grounds and sipping on a black and tan, it was time to head over to the main stage.  Here were the rules:  you were given 6 crab cakes, and had 3 minutes to finish as much as you could.  After the announcer said go, it only took about 45 seconds for J, Kareem and I to have totally different strategies.  Announcer yells, “wow, this woman is really taking off!”  We look up, and she has already had 2 crab cakes to our one each.  This was when Kareem said, “no way am I going to win.”  He slowed down and enjoyed Maryland’s finest.  J and I continue on for about another minute.  I begin to catch up, following her nearly bite for bite.  Unfortunately, J has started to slow down.  He looks at me and says, “you’re alone on this one, go for it.”  I take a deep breath and dive in.  4 cakes, 5 cakes, and with about 25 seconds to go, I began my 6th cake.  At this point I’m really starting to sweat, knowing not much more was going in that mouth.  The announcer yells “5 seconds” and all I hear is Kareem, J, and G all yelling “GO! GO!”  I shove as much as I can in my mouth and close it tight.

Kareem (left) looking at my scared, J (middle) nervously laughing, Me (right) doing everything I can to hold it in

All I have to do is swallow.  Sounds easy, right?  Well…wrong.  I can feel the blood rushing to my face, sweat is rolling down my cheeks, and tears forming below my eyes.  I look up and see J scoot his seat as far away from me as he can.  Kareem just keeps yelling, “oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…” and I look back down to the bucket.  As a camera is being shoved in my face, I hear someone from the crowd yell, “I think he is going to blow!”

I don’t know if it was luck, skill, or some divine force, but I didn’t end up wear those crab cakes after all.  I swallowed it down and looked over at the woman that had been leading.

I kid you not, she took the win with no more than one bite more than myself.

All in all the festival was wonderful.  After about 30 minutes of post-cometition digestion, I was pretty much over the loss (both physically and mentally).  The four of us had a great time sampling some more food and tasting what a few local vineyards had to offer.  I’ll definitely be back next year, but I believe my competitive eating career may already be over.

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Waaaaaaatch Nancy

On this week’s segment of “Watch Nancy” we take a clip from last night’s address on Health Care Reform by President Barack Obama.  The facial expressions of Nancy Pelosi when Rep. Joe Wilson yells out, “You Lie!” to the president in the middle of his address are priceless.  She looks like she’s about to cut somebody.

So, are you ready?  Waaaaaaatch  NANCY!

**Side note:  As I’m sure you could guess, I believe that Rep. Wilson was completely out of line.  I know that he has given his apology to the President, but this is a perfect example of how out of control partisanship has gotten.  When the far right no longer respects the office of the President of the United States enough to let him speak freely, be it to school children or Congress, things have gone too far.  Question, protest, debate, but do it all respectfully.

Don’t let another vacation be ruined!

Oh Ted…

“And this is the cause of my life — new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American — north, south, east, west, young, old — will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.” – Sen. Ted Kennedy (Denver DNC, 2008)

Yes we can, and yes we will.

What do they really want to fail, Health Care Plan or Obama?

Lies, I’m so tired of them.  When I first heard that people were protesting the health care plan, I thought to myself, “oh good, now they can’t get mad when we protest their wars.”  I’m a firm believer in debate, I think it is wonderful to question your government, I completely understand concern about the Democrat’s ‘Health Insurance’ proposals, but I will not stand for hate, bigotry, and lies.

All over the news you can watch the opposition stand up in town hall meetings, crying, shaking, and yelling.  They are so upset about this proposal, but nearly everything they say is based on a lie!  It is NOT universal health care, it is NOT based on the Canadian or European system, you will NOT lose the coverage you already have, you will NOT be paying for abortions, you will NOT be paying for illegal immigrants, you will NOT need your treatment approved, you will NOT lose your choice of doctors, and you will NOT be asked to pull the plug when you are dying.  If only Americans did a little research before damning their senators to hell, maybe we could have a real debate.

The debate has gotten so out of control, that people are spray painting swastikas on senator’s offices and creating images of the White House flying Nazi flags.  Last I heard, the Nazi Health Care plan involved mass genocide of entire races and ethnicities.  I can confidently say, that is nowhere written in the Democrat’s proposal.  This has turned into less a debate on health care, and more a way for the far right to destroy OUR President.

If it was considered unpatriotic to speak out against Bush’s war to ‘fight the terrorists’ that would ‘kill American’s’, how is it now considered patriotic to speak out against the millions of Americans that are uninsured and dying because they can’t afford proper treatment?

Obama a Bud Man?

I thought there was enough commentary about the Gates v Crowley debacle last week, and I didn’t think that anyone really knew enough about it to write about it myself. But today’s report that the two of them were actually going to sit down with Obama seemed too good to pass up.

I could write about how crazy it is that Obama is involved in this incident to begin with, or how twisted it may be that people are taking sides on what seems to just be a huge misunderstanding, but I’ll spare you.  Instead I’m going to address how lame it is that Obama chose Budwiser as his  beer!  It may be the safe bet, ‘America’s Beer’ or the ‘beer of the people,’ but really?  When did the President start drinking like a frat boy?  More importantly, doesn’t he remember that Anheuser-Busch was purchased by the non-American owned InBev?

This seems like the perfect opportunity to relate to those liberal, beer loving supporters, like me and find some micro-brew located in a swing state.   Even better, what about a DC area Flying Dog or Starr Hill?  Local appeal, minimal impact on the environment, supporting a small business, hand crafted, and WAY more delicious.

The bottom line is that if there is one thing that I can count on with Obama, it is that he will be cool.  Obama, Budwiser isn’t cool.  You may wish to rethink.

Mesmerized by the Ellen Dance

Well, I made fun of everyone freaking out about the flu…so of course, I got sick.  Sunday afternoon I started feeling a little rough, and soon after things got a more than a little messy.  By midnight, and trip number 5 to the bathroom, I began to freak out.  It went from, “oh that pasta I made earlier must have been bad” to “Oh my God, I actually do have that damn H1N1 flu.  I’m good as dead!”

After a night of little sleep, some wild dreams, and hours of painful moaning, I called in sick.    The rest of the day my mind drifted from sleep to daytime TV, and boy was it awesome.  My TV enjoyment began with The Price is Right.  It has been years since I sat through an hour of The Price, so I was pleasantly surprised that Drew didn’t kill the show.  In fact, I would say he made it all the greater!  I don’t know if it was his dashing good looks, witty charm, or just the fact that it was Drew, it was great.  In his own way, he successfully made fun of himself, the contestants, and the show, all while making everyone have a good time.

Following another two hour slumber, I woke up to a little Ellen. Immediately I was mesmerized by the crazy.  In my flu hallucinogenic state, I could help but sway my head along with her moves.  Every word made me laugh, every guest made me cry.  This was my first full hour of Ellen, I have to shamefully admit, it felt like a cold brew on a warm day.  A nice refresher to a day of vom.  I don’t know who saw Ellen and thought, “I bet people would love to watch this middle aged woman dance around,” but I hope they got a raise.

As rough as it was, I made it back to work today.  This evening, as I sit here doing my post-flu-better-wash-everything laundry, reflecting on yesterday’s daze, and longing for more DrEllen.  If only tomorrow would bring more “come on downs,”  or just maybe one last shuffle through the crowd.  If only…