Three Months And Nothing Here

It's nearly 2am Pacific Time, and I decided to check the news.  Unfortunately, there was a 7.4 earthquake near Acapulco, but it sounds like no one was hurt.

I did find this memorable bit in one article:

In Oaxaca, Sylvia Valencia was teaching Spanish to five adult students at the Vinigulaza language school when the earthquake hit.

“Some of us sat down, others ran out,” she said. “It was hard, it was strong and it was long.”

Just wanted to make sure this blog maintains its integrity in 2012 if it continues at all.  While we wait to see what happens here, please visit the fine folks in the Links portion of the sidebar.  Hope 2012 is off to a good start for all of you!

News To Me

Long time no update.  Again.

Well, at least in my absence I signed up for my first half marathon.  I just received an email from the race organizers telling me that 70% of the course will involve trails.  With switchbacks.  This on top of the elevation changes that I already knew of.  Holy shit.

The good news is that I'm six and a half weeks into training.  My throat feels a little uncomfortable today, but I'll still jog the 5 miles today unless I decide that beer is a better course of action.

Below is the info given for the Rose Bowl Half Marathon.  Yikes!

Course Description

This years Half Marathon will race on over 9 miles of trails all surrounding the historic Rose Bowl Stadium before leading you onto the field to finish on the 50 yard line!
Starting Line: North Arroyo Blvd in front of the Rose Bowl
The race heads South down North Arroyo Blvd for 7/10ths of a mile before hitting the trail head for the lower Arroyo Trail System. On the trails run well below the Ventura Fwy Bridge as well as W Colorado Blvd which closely marks the first mile. After passing under Colorado Blvd, the course runs along side the water run off culver, passing the Casting Pond before reaching the stable just over two miles into the course.
At the North end of the stable all the 1.2 marathoners will cross a foot bridge onto the West side of the Culver before running North along the opposite side of the trail system. 2/10ths shy of mile four, athletes will cross back over onto the East trail to retrace the opening steps of the run.
When the trails return to N Arroyo Blvd, the runners will stay on the trail that traces the road as it shoots directly towards the Rose Bowl. Once the trail reaches Seco, all the athletes will make a right turn onto the Westbound side of Seco St running East to Rosemont Ave.
Once on Rosemont, just passed mile five, runners will head North towards the Upper Arroyo Park. Around 6.5 miles the course returns to the trails running along the golf course, passing under I-210. Just after passing under the Interstate, the runners will be faced with a slight water crossing and a small bridge. Some athletes may choose to run straight through the water some will take the small bridge to keep their shoes dry. As each athlete crosses the water, they will be faced with a tricky up hill, steep switch back section that will get everyone’s hearts jumping!
Immediately, at the top of the switch backs, runners pass under Oak Grove Rd and day light out of that tunnel onto Devil’s Gate Damn before running straight ahead into the Hahahamonga Water Shed Park for miles 7 through 10.  This trail runs North before entering a small Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) parking lot, turning left as if you were entering JPL and then quickly dropping down onto the trails on the opposite side of the water shed.  At Mile 10 the course crosses another bridge that crossed back onto Devil’s Gate Damn and  back into the tunnel under Oak Grove Rd. The course then sharply makes its way down the switch backs, an area of the course for all the athletes to be mindful of.
At the bottom of the switch backs the runners will hit the shallow water crossing before heading under I-210 once more, heading back along the golf course and exiting the trails back onto Rosemont.
Once on Rosemont the runner quickly head South, turning right onto Washington Blvd just past mile 11. From Washington Blvd, the runners will turn left onto West Dr passing mile 12 at the cross streets of West Dr and Salvia Canyon Rd. as the run continues South on West Dr to make a left turn onto Seco St.
Once on Seco, athletes make another left turn for the final leg on Rose Bowl Dr, from there heading straight through the main gates, through the Stadium tunnel and onto the field of the Rose Bowl Stadium finishing 13.1 mile at the 50 yard line!

11.11.11 Approaches

This blog is in limbo again.  Will I move it to Tumblr under a different name?  If I had a Magic 8 Ball, I'd shake it, and it would probably say, "Don't waste your time.  Write your silly garbage here."

Elsewhere on the internet, it was nice to see some changes to Google+, especially the addition of public pages like The Muppets and...well that's about it.  They even had a hangout with those loveable characters yesterday which I was unable to attend because of exercise commitments.  Even International Beer Day has a page here!

Lastly, I'm thinking of doing the Rose Bowl Half Marathon in January 2012.  I just found a training schedule that would give me 11 weeks to get ready for it, and I'm sure my legs will cooperate this time if I don't try to go faster than I should during training days.  

Five Months Ago Today

Just a reminder for those of us who couldn't stop watching the devastation in Japan after the tsunami hit.  It's easy to forget once television and other media have slowed down on coverage.

Saw this article from SFGate from a few days ago after doing a search on the topic.  Also this one--"Fears of Suicide Surge in Japan's Tsunami Zone."

Most online news sites are covering stock market problems, London riots, famine in Somalia, etc., which all need our attention, too.

I think most of us, especially those looking for work (& spending time at happy hours, and watching animation) are stretched thin as it is, but I know I have it easy and hope that those out there in the world who need help get it.

Hey, WBNI! It's August 2011 already.

I was driving home from the gas station, and I thought of this blog for some strange reason, and stranger still was I had a topic in mind to write about. I no longer remember what that was.

With Twitter, the art blog, reblogging pictures of ladies and geek stuff on tumblr, along with other things, it's no wonder this blog is feeling like a middle child.  "Shut up, and feed your sister.  Then do your homework!"

In other good news, LM and punkcichlid are reading Game of Thrones.  They've watched the show, but I only watched the first two casually at the Coobros Farm, and I honestly don't remember much because there were some snacks, beer, and frenchies to tend to.  I still have to thank Riv for telling me to read Martin's epic-in-progress years ago.  I ignored the recommendation for a couple of years and probably read Book One around 2005/2006.  I'm rereading Clash of Kings now and will hopefully get to A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows this year.  They wait on my bookshelf.

That's it.  The fate of this blog is up in the air, but it'll probably get some more attention before the year is over.

Since the first Cars wasn't my thing

I'll just hold off and see this:


 
Part of me hopes there's a mystical sword and cool monsters. I'm sure if I just dig around the internet, I'd find more information on what kind of story it's going to be, but I'd rather not.

Watch in full-screen HD...

Good Reminder

More on this in the coming weeks...  Food is good.

Not Going to Complain This Time (Gasp!)

A couple of friends and I went to a bar a couple of weeks ago that some of our other friends discovered way back in 2000 or 2001.  It's just not the same (but neither are we), but it was fun nonetheless.

While waiting for the bathroom, I started talking to the cute girl behind me and found out some interesting things about her (people were taking their sweet time in the two unisex bathrooms).  When another girl came out of the bathroom on the left, she said something like, 'Make sure you use this one because the other one is in bad shape.'  I let cute girl go ahead because I'm a gentleman, and I was wearing my top hat and monocle.  When she was done, we exchanged names, and "C" was nice enough to invite me to the birthday party in the private room in the back to have a drink.

I'll make this short, and I will say that I can be pretty cynical and grumpy about the state of San Francisco's social scene only because there have been too many times where people have either been rude, pretentious, or just downright unwilling to engage in normal human interaction.  I should elaborate, but there must be others who have had the same experiences.  So, this is basically, a "Thank You" to those people at the birthday shindig for reminding me that there are nice, down-to-earth people out there.

Of course, "C" eventually started talking about her ex-boyfriend not being able to take care of her house cat anymore because of her new boyfriend... who materialized out of thin air 20 minutes into our conversation.  Thank goodness a friend/coworker of hers had joined the conversation earlier, making that situation a little less awkward.  I could see the tall British (accent gave it away) boyfriend taking a few glances at me with thoughts like, "I wonder who this new guy is.  I've never seen him at the office... Is he hitting on my lady?"  It was never actually awkward, and the boyfriend never really gave off any vibe that he wanted to punch me in ribs.

At least, I can say my luck and timing with the ladies are still the same as they were when I first stepped into that bar 10 or so years ago.  Oh, yeeeaaahh...

ps: this is one of many posts that were just sitting around as drafts.  Lazy, I know...

Can't Wait

I really want to read some new Paul Pope comics.  This post and this one about Battling Boy were from last December.

 

© Paul Pope and First Second

Didn't Really Work. Again.

Went to sleep early at 9:45pm last night only to wake up at 1:11am, so here we are.  At least, Friday and Saturday night were eventful, and the world didn't end.

I guess breakfast is up next.  Damn this sleeping schedule.

One Thing I Don't Miss

I was just pulling some laundry out of the dryer, and I remembered the shared washer/dryer combo at my Japanese apartment in Kita-Matsudo.  It sucked because there was only one of each, and I'd sometimes have a day off where I would need to wash some clothes, and someone had left their stuff in there. 

I also didn't like the idea of sharing a machine, too, because my next door neighbor, Taito-san, was a slob.  The smells coming from inside his apartment were some of the worst, and he'd often leave his door ajar especially on hot days.  I don't think the man was right in the head, and I'm not being over dramatic.  Either that, or he just didn't give a shit about hygeine…or paying his gas bill.  See, that's how I learned his name.  The gas man would come by once a month or so, and knock on his door saying, "Taito-san...  Taito-san..."  He'd eventually give up and leave the bill on the front door.

Needless to say, there was one time where I bought a cleaning packet that I dumped into the washing machine hoping to sanitize it.  Here's to you, Taito-sama, wherever you are, you crazy bastard.

I told you to watch In Bruges, but did you listen??

Ladies came pouring in.

On a friday night in Walnut Creek, CA, three of us guys and one lady went to go see "Bridesmaids" which turned out being such an entertaining and funny movie. The interesting thing was that it looked like a flight to Las Vegas in that theater with all the ladies dressed up.  Some whole rows in front of us were groups of friends seeing it together. And for the four of us, it was the first time that we saw a party of 10 or so taking pictures after the movie was done. These weren't teenagers, but women between the ages of 21-35. First six of them, then in pairs, some with cell phones and others with a compact point & shoot. Outside of the theater, in the lobby? Three women wearing what looked to be evening gowns. Did they come from a show at Lesher Center for the Arts? Or an actual wedding?? Very interesting night that ended with a Kahlua coffee chocolate cheesecake.

I'd better start studying, too.

 
Punkcichilid says he's getting lazy with writing, only posting videos on his blog. Well, me, too, sir.

My Hometown

The video below has imagery better viewed full screen.  I wonder if how much more audio was recorded, how many others were interviewed.

Found it on the AARP site here.