Running on a treadmill is not the most engaging of occupations, so both Mer and I try to multi-task while we exercise. Meredith is going back through all 84 lectures on American literature from the Teaching Company, and she is well over half-way done (she gets in one lecture per day that she exercises).

I just spent the last three or four weeks in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I have had this book recommended to me several times, so I went to the library and got it on CD, and listened to about 30 minutes at a time when I ran. The reader was excellent, changing her voice for each character. This is important, because to my surprise, Middlemarch was about the town of Middlemarch, and had at least ten important characters and several minor characters as well. I’m not too bright when it comes to names, so it was helpful to have the different voices to get the characters straight. The book is very well written, and the plot lines are interesting, especially in the last half of the book (once the plot lines are fully developed for all the primary characters). I’m glad to have “read” the book, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a highly regarded book.

Having finished up Middlemarch yesterday (on Thanksgiving), I needed something new to listen to. I did download the entire radio program The Shadow from archive.org, but I decided to see if anything else caught my fancy there. So, I went back to archive.org, and I was delighted. They have lots of free (legal) music – concerts recordered by fans and posted online with the bands’ blessing. I made an entire (free!) CD of Eddie From Ohio songs that are not on any of their other recordings (songs they only did in concert).

I also discovered that archive.org has many public domain books online that have been read by volunteers. I commend the program, but the readings are good amateur recordings, which are a little hard to take after the professional recordings of Middlemarch, Animal Farm, and Jane Eyre that I have heard in the last year. I kept looking.

What I found that made me quite happy was archive.org’s listing of the Burns and Allen radio show from the 40s. I had always heard that George Burns and Gracie Allen were extremely funny, but my exposure to their comedy had been limited to just a few clips here and there. Archive.org had (for free!) several years’ worth of the show online. I downloaded three years’ worth of programs and converted them to iTunes (they come as mp3s). I got my first listen this morning.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Gracie is a master of one-liners, and they are delivered flawlessly. I was laughing out loud on the treadmill, even after running for over 20 minutes. The humor was all clean, and the things that Gracie said were always funny, even when I knew what was coming (which was not often). George plays the stright man perfectly, never laughing or seeing anything unusual in what Gracie says. Beautiful.

My only complaint from the program that I heard was that the ads were placed in the show, as part of the show. There is no way to do subtle product placement on radio. Having someone come in and randomly start extolling the virtues of “Swan Soap, the soap doctors recommend for babies” in the middle of the scene was awkward and irritating. My best guess as to why they chose to advertise that way was to make sure listeners heard the commercial – you could not get up for a drink during the ad because it was part of the show.

Still, even with the odd ads in the show, the Burns and Allen show is worth downloading from the link above. It is good, clean fun, and it sure helps move 25 minutes of running right along.

Oh – for history buffs out there, it was interesting to hear Gracie encouraging Americans to save all the paper they could for the war effort.

Exercise – funny stuff!

Meredith and I had another fun Saturday, and I even was a little productive. I went to bed Friday with a slightly sore throat, and I woke up feeling a little blah (a medical term) and still had the slightly sore throat. So, I did what every sensible male Riordan would do – I punished my body. The thinking is that if your body starts to get sick, then you can make it so inhospitable to viruses that they will move out. It makes perfect sense. So, I ran for 15 minutes (about 2.25 miles) and then went out and mulched leaves for 30 minutes. That would show those virii!

After a shower, I took Mer down Canton way for a $2 date. Since we still have two mortgages, we are not supposed to be spending any money, but I figured Mer would be okay with the occational outlay if it was minimal. This assumption seemed correct. So, I took Mer to the nice $1 theater in Canton (clean, and the seats recline!) to see Ratatouille, a movie both of us had wanted to see. Ratatouille was charming – it took place in Paris, and (not surprisingly) Pixar did a nice job of creating Paris for the film. Since we were recently in Paris (including the sewers), it was fun to see it again in the film. A movie featuring food is also a plus for the Riordan household. The characters were much fun as well – the rat was sympathetic as a character, but most importantly, the movie pitted an obviously American character against a short and mean and stereotypical French chef. How can you not have good comedy out of that? Ratatouille was a good film, especially for just a $1 each.

We got back home in time for me to make ham calzone. While that was rising, we listened to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me! via the computer, a favorite pastime for us on weekends. We just mellow out and listen to the show for an hour. This weekend’s show was good, including a tear-inducing moment with trying to give comedian Paula Poundstone a clue about Santa (listen to the Nov. 17th show, Panel Round Two, if interested). We then sat down to watch a Quantum Leap episode while eating hot calzone followed by a brownie/pudding dessert. Yum!

We then drove (it was raining) the arduous .25 miles to CVCA to see the fall play, which this year was a double-bill, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever followed by It’s a Wonderful Life. If you have never read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, you should – it is a quick read, and it is really funny. The dramatized version held up well. There were a number of quick transitions in the play (scenes that were only a minute long or so), but they were handled well by the narrator. Seeing the terrible Herdmans running around live on stage was fun. I was amazed at how well one of the leads did in the play – the actress playing the mom carried herself well on stage, and she looked to be much older than 17 or 18. One of the fun things about working at CVCA is getting to see students you know up on the stage.

Mer and I missed the first few minutes of the second play – we were helping out the Diakonos service club do fundraising for the spring Habitat trip. The club sells “stargrams” where for 50 cents people can send notes to the cast or crew, and the proceeds help students defray some of their costs for the Habitat for Humanity trip in the spring (it costs about $250 to go). I  was put in charge of the table handling the cash, and Mer helped with running the stargrams backstage.

It’s a Wonderful Life is a great story – I love the film version of it (I have seen it at least 5 or 6 times). I love Jimmy Stewart – he is one of my favorite actors. So, I was very pleased when the student playing George pulled it off – he made a convincing George, and his wife, Mary, was played very well by a student as well. Both George and Mary looked great in the period clothing (the 30s and 40s had wonderful clothes that look great on people). Clarence was played by a Norwegian exchange student, and that worked well – his accent helped make his sound otherworldly (or at least different from the townspeople of Bedford Falls).

Mer had over twenty of her students involved in the play either on stage or as part of the crew, and I had at least five Fools or Ceili Club members in the productions as well. It was fun seeing the results of their hard work.

Another very fine Saturday!

Oh – the body is hanging in there. I still feel a little run down, and the throat is acting up a bit, but I feel a little better as of Sunday afternoon. More empirical evidence for Riordan medicine!

Today saw a couple of sporting moments for me. Once my half-marathon was over, I switched back to training for speed for a 5k race. I do not remember my 5k times from high school, especially from my sophomore year when I was relatively fast, but my fastest post-high-school time for a 5k is 18:57, which I managed to get when I was in college (around age 21 or so). My current goal is to break that time, and thus set a new personal record (a PR in the racing world), at least as far as I remember. I think it would be pretty spiffy to be in better shape at 37 than I was when I was 21.

To realistically pull off an 18:50 5k or so, I need to be able to run at 10 mph on my treadmill, which is an 18:36 5k time. Treadmill running is slightly easier than road running, so I need to be able to do better than my race goal in order to achieve it. My plan is fairly simple – run on the treadmill for 25 minutes, and increase the speed by 0.1 mph per week. This seems to work pretty well (at least until 9.2 or 9.3 mph, when it starts getting hard).

Well, as of this morning, I got back to 9.0 mph. That is about a 20:40 5k time, and is still a full 1.0 mph below my goal, but I’m still pleased with how things are going. I’d like to be able to try to get my sub-nineteen time by around St. Patrick’s day if possible, about 18 weeks away. So, I have 18 weeks to increase my speed by 1.0 mph. I’m hopeful that I can do that.

The second sporting moment was that I finally ranked at “pro” level on Wii golf. To be a pro in Wii sports, you need to rate at a level of 1000 or higher. As of this evening, I managed to get to 1047 in golf. I find I like golf on the Wii – I seem to be able to play the wind and to get myself out of holes (ha!) that I get myself into. It is much fun.

I’ll try to keep running updates coming as they come. Running gets much harder around 9.2 mph or so, so I do not expect to get to 9.5 mph until around Christmastime at the earliest, and more likely around New Year’s.

The alarm went off early for a Saturday. We needed to be on the road by 8:15 or so in order to be in Columbus by 11:00. While the reasons for going to Columbus should be obvious and numerous, this morning we were taking the 2+ hour drive to go see the CVCA boys’ soccer team play for the Division II state championship.

The CVCA soccer program is pretty amazing. We went to states in 2002 and lost in a shoot-out. We went back in 2004 and won the Division III title, but then we moved up to Division II (for reasons I don’t know). In order to make things really interesting this year, the playoff-caliber team from last year lost thirteen seniors from the team, and so we only had three returning players to the squad. Now, CVCA’s program is large enough that we have two “varsity” teams – a “white” team and a “blue” team. The white team plays the conference games and the blue team plays the larger out-of-conference teams. This helps the program have quite a bit of depth, but with losing so many players this year, it was not known how good the team would be.

Turns out our team was pretty good – they only lost one game all year. At 11:00 this morning, they started play for the state championship. Now, I know almost nothing about the game of soccer, but here are my impressions; it looked as if our guys controlled the first 20 minutes of the first (40-minute) half. Then, they appeared to back off a little (maybe tired? maybe a strategy?) and things were played more on our side of the field. In the second half, the guys played most of the game on the other team’s side of the field. Still, the game was a 0-0 tie until we scored off of a corner kick that slipped through the goalie’s hands with about 8:30 left to play. We then scored again with about 4:30 left to play on a break-away goal. That was the final score – 2-0, CVCA.

I was impressed by the skills of the CVCA guys – the footwork was impressive. They could stop on a dime and they could control the ball very well. If I tried any of that I would fall over. There were a few missed passes, but just a few – on the whole, the passes were impressive, especially when they were passing off of their heads. Well done!

The CVCA crowd thought the officiating was poor, but I have no way to know that. I don’t know the rules well enough to know what was wrong. There were a few missed calls that even Mer and I could make out. Still, I always take fans’ opinions about officiating with a grain of salt. It was enjoyable to be blissfully ignorant of the nuances of the game, at least in this respect.

The fans were pretty good. I admired the body-paint guys – it was only about 45 degrees out, and the sun kept coming and going behind clouds. Add a 5-10 mph wind across the field, and they had to be fairly cold. I was a little disappointed by a few CVCA fans. It is natural enough to groan when something unfortunate happens – that is a gut reaction, and I have no problem with that. But I was saddened by several adults hurling down genuine insults on the officials and even on a few opposing players. CVCA folks always need to be mindful that we are being watched as to how we act, and we should do better (in my opinion). Don’t get the wrong idea – the vast majority of the fans were great and supportive. It just makes be sad when a few Christians forget who they are and that people are watching.

So, a very good game, and a tremendous outcome for the soccer team for this year! Congratulations to the entire team and to the coach. Well done!

Meredith and I have very few traditions, and the oldest running one is that every year for at least the last 12 years, we have carved pumpkins at Halloween. This year, Halloween came right as grades were due for the first quarter, so we were really busy. Halloween came and went without us carving pumpkins. Still, a little detail like that should not stand in the way, so last Saturday I went to a local farmers’ market and bought two small pumpkins, which we carved on Sunday. We both independently went for simple designs this year, although mine was giving me fits until I realized I could use my thumb as a guide for each of the leaves. Between us, we cover fall and spring!

Mer’s pumpkin, 2007 version:

My pumpkin, 2007 version:

Ahhh. Yesterday was pretty darn nice. Last Christmas, Mer got me a gift certificate for an hour-long massage, and I finally cashed in on it yesterday. I had never had a professional massage before. It was very nice, very relaxing. It loosened up my back muscles (which get tight from my running and dancing), and put me in a nicely mellow mood. The massage place was a home-based operation near our old house in New Baltimore, so after I got my massage, I swung by the old homestead to check on it. All was well, and I got a pleasant and welcome surprise: I checked the propane tank (which is used for heating the house), and the tank was basically full. I had forgotten that the propane company had filled it late last spring, so the only propane that had been used was for hot water. That was a big help (it can cost $400 or more to fill the tank).

Then, I got home to my busily grading (school papers) wife, but she stopped to have lunch with me while we listened to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on the radio, which is one of our happy things to do. The show was fun (as usual), and my ham-and-cheese calzone hit the spot for me.

After a short nap (about 30 minutes) that I took while Mer took a quick shower, we drove down to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and walked on the old canal path. We went back to the boardwalk and sat and watched the big goose strut his stuff around the pond. It was a very nice day – about 55 degrees and sunny, and the path was pretty (although we both thought that the leaves probably peaked last weekend).

After the walk (which took about an hour), we talked about getting movies from the library (which are free). While Mer ran out to get a few groceries, I looked up the library hours. Unfortunately, the library closed at 5:00 and we got home about 4:45. However, the library offered downloadable movies, so I gave that a try. Everything looked like it was working, but when I checked on the download process later, the movies had disappeared. That was too bad.

Mer did remember that we had an old VHS tape of the musical Bye, Bye, Birdie which our aunt had taped off of TV 12 years ago, and we had never watched it. So, out came Conrad Birdie and swooning girls. The musical was great fun – all fluff. Most of the songs were “beltable,” and since Mer had been in a production of Birdie in high school, she sang along with her favorites. She especially liked the song about the joy of being married to an English teacher, and the song about how wonderful it was to be a woman. For those not familiar with the musical, it is a story ripped off from the life of Elvis – a hot young musician gets drafted into the army, and his manager decides to make a big production of Conrad Birdie giving one last kiss to a girl from (where else?) Sweet Apple, Ohio. It is in no way a deep musical, but it was an enjoyable musical to watch.

After Birdie, I tried one last time to download movies from the library, and this time I tried shorter films (I thought maybe the longer movies were timing out). This time it worked, so Mer and I went with Rick Steves to Italy for an hour. It was a little weird to be watching something on the computer screen (one video was only about 5 inches across), but it still worked well enough.

On top of all of these things, when we got home from our walk, I discovered a gift card from Best Buy in the mail. Two very generous benefactors (maybe in the interest of having things to look at in my blog?) sent the gift card along so I could replace my camera, which I accidentally dropped a few weeks ago, which broke it. This was a very kind gesture, and I will try very hard to take better care of the new camera, which I should get in the next few days. Many, many thanks to you responsible – it really was very kind of you!

So, on a scale of 1-10 for Saturdays, yesterday was pretty darn good!

I just finished up listening to an audio book on the 1930s-1950s radio show The Shadow. The first disc was a 45-minute history/overview of the show, and then the book had 8 of the original shows to listen to. They were fantastic! Radio drama is really cool – it is especially nice when I’m running on a treadmill. Yes, the plots could be contrived, the dialog was not always sparkling, the characters could be flat, but it was still great! The medium of radio allowed for plots and lines that would not make it on TV. It seemed to be part of the flavor. The sound effects were fun, and the melodramatic music on the organ was great.

For those who do know much about the Shadow, he fought crime. He “mastered the art of clouding men’s minds so they could not see him,” and he would track down evildoers and find ways to bring them to justice. He only “appeared” to the villains as a voice, the baritone voice of the Shadow, with a sufficiently creepy laugh. Only appearing as a voice works really really well on radio, by the way.

The thing that continually surprised me about the radio shows was the level of crime. In most of the shows, someone (or someones) dies. The Shadow is also no Superman – sometimes the people he is trying to protect die, and sometimes the villains die. In all of the shows that I heard, the Shadow always found out what was going on, but he did not always save the victim and he never seemed too shaken up when the malefactors died. In one show, he forced two murderers to sign a confession – if they did not, he was going to turn them over to a mob of their possible victims, who would kill the two men. Not exactly legal, and certainly not nice. I always think that the 30s and 40s had fairly innocent diversions for entertainment. The Shadow proved me wrong.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows….

Check out some of the shows here!
You can even download 98 of the shows for your mp3 player (click on “Whole Directory”). How very very cool.

Mer and I passed a milestone a few weeks ago, and I forgot to comment on it! After SIXTEEN months of listening on and off in the car, we finished The Teaching Company’s lectures on classics of American literature, all 84 lectures (42 hours). We finished up the lectures on one of our trips to see theater in Cleveland. I give the series a thumbs up. I did like the Shakespeare lectures we have better, but the overview of American literature was still very good. A few surprises came out of the course – I really liked what I heard on Emily Dickinson. Her stuff really impressed me, and I am not much of a poetry guy. I liked that the teacher, Prof. Arnold Weinstein, was willing to talk about books that are not in vogue in universities nowadays (according to Weinstein) – Frost, Hemingway, some Twain, James, and others. He also threw in some works that he considered important that are not usually read or discussed, like Melville’s Benito Cereno, which sounds really interesting.

Meredith has started re-listening to these lectures on her morning walks, and she is already through 42 of them! At this heady pace, she will only take about three months to go through the whole course.

Not to let our brains atrophy too much, yesterday we started in on the 24-lecture (12 hours) course on the Life and Work of Mark Twain. I’m guessing that should only take 4-6 months to get through!