After the half marathon last year (read all about it here), I kept running some distance, but I slowly turned my attention to speedwork on the treadmill as the winter came in (I don’t like running when the temperature gets in to the low 40s). I got serious about working on my speed after I got back from Christmas Break. Starting in early January, I have been moving up 0.1 mph per week on the treadmill, running for 25 minutes. I have mostly stuck to that schedule, taking time off for a cold and for spring break. My goal was to break 20 minutes for a 5 k distance, and then maybe to look at breaking 19 minutes.

As of today, I made the first part of the goal. I have worked my way from 8.0 mph to 9.4 mph. That is going from a 23:15 5k time to a 19:50 5k time, and I still feel pretty good. Granted, it is on a treadmill. I am suspicious about treadmills because they are flat, there is no wind, and the “ground” is moving backwards when your foot hits it. On the positive side though, I run that speed for 25 minutes, which is almost 4 miles. It is my hope the extra distance will help me compensate for training on the treadmill.

I’ll continue working on speed for another 5 weeks or so. If I can maintain the 0.1 mph/week increase, I should have a decent chance of breaking 19:00 in a 5 k by early June. I go on vacation in June, and after that I have to switch back to distance for a half-marathon in October. Still, I’m hoping to find one or two races over the next month to see how I do in a real race.

Tonight was the last Fools show of the year. It was a good show – we had solid games, and a good crowd of about 45 people, including several Former Fools. It was a good time. We had three solid shows this year – I am very pleased, especially where we only had 5 people in the group, which is small. It was much fun to be in the show tonight (I was in 4 games), and it was great to see the Former Fools back out supporting us (and joining in the fun for Audience Participation Freeze!).

Now, off to bed….happy!

My manager has made me pitch in Wii Sports baseball two nights in a row. I’ve thrown two no-hitters in a row, but I have a slightly pulled groin muscle from pitching. I’ve heard rumor that some people can pitch sitting down, but where is the fun in that?

On a rating scale where 1000 is pro, I’m a 322. If I keep going, I might make The Show in another 10 games or so.

I am a spendthrift. I never see why I should save a penny when I could spend it. Every time I try to save money, it either backfires and makes me mad, or the fates conspire to make me spend more money.

Saturday was a beautiful day. I was working outside cleaning up sticks and branches. Mer had a chance to go to a musical with Aunt Mary (Thoroughly Modern Millie, I think), so I decided I was going to paint the porch railing.

Almost two years ago, I noticed the porch was peeling. I had two painters out to do some work on our library, so I asked them to paint the porch. They primed it, but did not finish it (because I did not have the paint). Anyway, for the best part of two years our porch was white primer and greenish-blue paint. I decided the time had come to change that.

I got in my car and tooled off to Hartville Hardware to get some paint. Hartville is about 20 minutes away, but it was a nice day, so I did not mind the drive. I looked over the color samples in the store, and found the color that the porch was. I had them mix up a gallon of it. I smiled to myself at the sign behind the counter that read “No husband is allowed to buy custom color paint without a note from his wife.” Pretty funny, I thought.

While I was waiting, I looked around at paint supplies. I asked about compressor attachments so I could spray the paint on, but found out my compressor would not work – it was too small. The store recommended an “airless” sprayer – an electric pump paint sprayer. I looked at two models. There was the $85 version that looked okay, but the sales guy did not know much about it, and the $180 version that everyone raved about. I thought long and hard about it, and I decided I could paint the porch with a paintbrush, and Mer would be proud of me for saving money (something I do not do much). I passed on the sprayers; I got my paint brush, and my gallon of paint, and I went home.

When I got home, I put the paint can and brush on the porch. I went and got the CD player and a Dougie Maclean CD to listen to. Then I went to get a ladder so I could reach the top of the railing. I discovered I did not need a full ladder, so I went to get a step stool. That would work fine. Then, I realized I would have to open the can of paint, so I went to get a screw driver. I opened the paint, and decided I needed a small container to put the paint in so I would not spill the whole gallon. I went and got a 16-oz. plastic cup. That was fine, but I could not get paint in it easily, so I went in and got a small plastic cup to scoop paint out with. Well and good. Then I needed some cardboard to keep the paint off the porch and walls as I was painting. That was not working too well, so I had to go and get rags. Finally, I was ready to paint. Imagine my surprise when I discovered my paint was a little, well, greener than our old paint. Who knew? (Mer did – she mentioned something later about “teal.”) Okay. No problem. Our house would be festive Christmas colors now. I continued to paint. Dougie kept singing. I painted. I looked at my paint job. It was not coming out as nice as I had hoped – the paint was streaking, the brush strokes were obvious, and the job was going to need a second coat. Sigh. Okay. I kept painting. Dougie kept singing. After about 20 minutes, I had done about 3/4 of one post. I realized it was going to take days to paint the porch at this rate. I had a “Eureka!” moment that sounded strangely like “screw this!” and off to Hartville I went.

There was no messing around this time – I bought the good $185 paint sprayer. I drove back home and got things set up. I found an old foam “board” (about 4 by 8) to lean against the back side of the railings as I painted them so that the paint would not go everywhere. I pulled the trigger on the ***caution-it-will-cut-your-fingers-off—3900-psi*** paint sprayer. I discovered that if you do not move your hand quickly, the paint will pile up and look like someone sneezed green paint on your railing. No problem. I fixed that with my brush. I soon got the hang of the sprayer, and all was great. The porch was sailing along. I finished the front railing in about 20 minutes, and it looked great. I went around the corner, and was looking to be done in another 20 minutes. That’s when I ran out of paint. Sigh.

I get back in the car. I drive the 20 minutes to the hardware store. No messing around this time. I had them mix up two gallons of premium $30/gallon paint. I was not going to run out this time. I drove home and kept painting. The paint kept flowing, and everything looked great. I finished the front of the rails, and then went along and did the backs and sides of the rails. Everything was great. I finished up. With 1/4 gallon of paint in the sprayer. And one unopened and unreturnable gallon of “hunter green” paint. Sigh.

I cleaned everything up (it takes about an hour to clean the sprayer out). During that time, Mer came home and was shocked and happy that I had done the porch. And not gotten her phone message that Aunt Mary had an extra ticket to the musical.

Feliz Navidad from the Christmas House.

Every spring that I have been at CVCA (6 years now), the school has put on a musical. My school in Maine did not have a musical; to my knowledge, we did not have a theater program (if we did, I do not remember it). So, I did not expect much when I went to see CVCA’s musical, State Fair, seven years ago when I was interviewing for my job. Imagine my happy surprise to discover that the musical was very good. Not just good for a high school – it was really good. I have been pleased with all of the productions I have seen.

Last Friday, Mer and I went to opening night of The Music Man. Somehow, I got it in my head that the musical started at 7:30, so it was good that I like to get to these things early; it started at 7:00! I took my seat just as the overture was playing (Mer and Aunt Mary were already sitting – I had one small tech thing to do for the musical, that I literally ran to take care of). What a fun musical – The Music Man has one of my favorite musical rhymes – it manages to rhyme “carrion” with “Marian” and “librarian.”

CVCA managed to field over 40 actors on stage. All in all, there were over 100 students involved in acting, the orchestra, the set crew, makeup, the tech crew, etc. That is better than 1 in 8 students involved for the entire school. They work really hard – rehearsals run about 3 months, and the late rehearsals can run until 10:00 or 11:00 at night. The students and advisers do all of this work for five performances (probably about 3,000 people). I admire that kind of dedication.

Anyway, The Music Man was great. It is fun to see students that you know in these roles (it kind of feels like being an insider). The two leads were well cast – when Harold Hill and Marian sing to each other on the bridge at the end of the play (hear a Broadway clip here) it is beautiful. Their version was better than the clip I have linked to. I found myself wondering how they could sing like that (I can’t!). The kids did a really great job.

A funny story about the guy playing Harold Hill. He is a handsome young man, and can really sing. A couple of years ago, Mer and I went to a fall concert featuring all of CVCA’s musical groups, including a group made up of mostly junior high girls and ninth graders. We sat next to them, and they were very chatty for most of the evening, but when “Harold” got up to sing a solo, you could have heard a pin drop. I thought that was pretty amusing.

Nice job on the musical, CVCA!

I have been out of the video game world for many years. I grew up when home games were just coming out. I did have the 8-game Radio Shack controller that played “tennis” and “Target practice.” Later, the Atari system was popular, and cool kids had an Intellivision or a ColecoVision. My brother and I had the Odyssey2 game system, which we got probably about 1982 or so. It was cool to us because it had a keyboard, and you could use that to extend the video game to a pseudo-board game by using an overlay on the keyboard. Granted, there was only one other kid in town who had one, so our game swapping was limited, but we liked it. It would turn out to be the last game system I would own for 18+ years.

Fast forward to college (circa 1990). One kid on the hall had a NES system, and we spent many hours playing baseball. Yes – the same baseball the grandson is playing at the opening of the movie The Princess Bride. I was amazed at the sound and graphics. Very impressive.

Once I got out of college, I more or less forgot about game systems. I was vaguely aware that my younger brother went through several systems (Sega and XBox for sure, maybe a Nintendo 64 in there somewhere). Out of curiosity, I would check them out when I was home. I was impressed with the graphics, but I was turned off by the multiple buttons and joystick pads. It seemed like it was too much work just to learn to play a game, so I never bothered.

Fast forward to January of 2007. I kept hearing about the Wii video game system. I had read about it out of curiosity, and I liked the sound of the motion-controlled system. Sometime in January, I decided it would be time to try a Wii, so I went to buy one. Imagine my surprise when I could not find one that day. Or the next day. Or the next week. Or the next month. Apparently, lots of folks liked the idea of simple and intuitive game play.

I was out running errands about a week ago – we had the day off for Good Friday, and our VCR had stopped working after 15 years. I went out to get another one, and while I was out, I stopped in at a GameStop store. Much to my surprise, there were two people in the store buying Wiis. I got in line, and I got the last one. They had sold out of all nine units in one hour in the middle of the day. Amazing.

Anyway, I am pleased to report that the Wii really is easy to use, and it is really fun. My shoulder tends to hurt the next day after I play, but that is okay. It turns out that Meredith is quite good at tennis – she has beaten me many times, and I have only beaten her once (and that was on a four-person team play, after four or five games). I hope to use the Wii to be social – I have four controllers, and most of the sports games can be played with four people. I have already had my friends Ron and Ken and Janet over to play, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

I have resolved (and stuck to it) that I am not allowed to use the Wii unless I have practiced my dobro or have practiced Italian. So far, so good.

I have been pretty good about practicing my shiny new dobro. I converted Mer’s old guitar into a practice dobro for use at school (on days where I am waiting for Mer to be ready to go home), in addition to my real dobro that I have at home. I have mostly been spending my time on exercises for the right hand – picking patterns and the like. I did get a little antsy at just exercises, so I have been working some on one or two melodies. Here is one. Sonotmu will be impressed. I apologize for the recording – I recorded it using a headset microphone.

Ever since late December, I have been spending several mornings a week with another woman. Most wives would be very upset, but Meredith approved of Jane, so all was well. Unfortunately, all things come to an end, and right after my run this morning, Jane had the last word, and the last word was finis. She broke it off!

During the winter months, I try to run for 25 minutes on my treadmill, several times a week. This is not the most mentally stimulating thing to do, so I have been listening to books on iPod. Since last December, I have been immersed in Jane Eyre. It is about 18 hours long, and with Christmas break and spring break, it took me over 3 months to complete the novel.

I recommend it. It is very well written. The prose is fluid, and the vocabulary is large and varied. My only word of caution is that you have to slog through 12 chapters of when Jane was a child. These are still well written, but are very melodramatic by today’s standards. For all I know, Bronte may have invented the type of the suffering orphan, and so it may have been fresh and original at the time. Now, it is necessary background for the rest of the novel. The pace picks up quite a bit once we get to Jane as a young adult. I had more than one morning’s run motivated by the need to see what happened to Jane next. There are still moments of melodrama, but I did not mind them as much with the adult Jane – for one thing, they are spread further apart, and so can be taken in the spirit of the novel.

If you are an avid reader, and/or have much time to read or listen, I recommend the book very much.

Last Monday, I went for a follow-up MRI on my brain. It has been about five months since my last one (for headaches), and if nothing has changed, all is well.

I offer, at long last, proof that I have a brain! (Shown in actual size):

Good profile shot!

I like this one on the right – you can see the optic nerves connecting to the brain, and you can see the blood vessels in the nose. How cool is that?

This one has a good view of my teeth.

Should I be concerned that the middle of my brain seems to be missing in the profile shots?

We ate very well on this trip. Since last year was good eatin’ too, I’m going to pronounce it a trend.

Lunch was roughly the same all week long. It was eaten on the job site, so it had to be portable. You could get one sandwich that was ham and cheese, or turkey and cheese, or you could get a pb and j sandwich. If you wanted a second sandwich, you could get one, but it had to be pb and j. You could get crunchy or smooth peanut butter, and strawberry or grape jelly. These lunches were fleshed out at the site with fruit and something sweet (candy bars or oatmeal cream cookies (dubbed “lard cakes” by the team) or nutty bars, and so on). The basic lunch was always the same, all through the week – I stuck with one ham and cheese, which I supplemented with whatever sweet was on hand. Breakfast and lunch varied:

Sunday: We had grilled cheese and homemade tomato soup (which was very good, and I am not a big soup fan).
Monday: Breakfast was “cold” – cereal and bagels and muffins. Supper was burgers.
Tuesday: Breakfast was eggs and donuts (and cereal was always available). Supper was beef and chicken gyros (yes, I know it has to be lamb to be a real gyro) and very good seasoned fries. I’m afraid I was selfish this night – I usually tried to let students go first and have seconds, but this night I was hungry, and I was third in line and first in second helpings. Not much of a servant that night.
Wednesday: Breakfast was pancakes. Supper was Mexican night – hard or soft tacos and very good enchiladas.
Thursday: Breakfast was “cold” again – cereal and bagels. Supper was white lasagna, pasta, and garlic bread. We also celebrated Craig’s birthday this night (even though his real birthday was Friday).
Friday: Breakfast was French toast. Supper was mac ‘n’ cheese and shepherd’s pie.
Saturday: Breakfast was “cold.”

We ate very well on the trip. Many many many thanks to Rachel who made all the meals, and thanks to the Thomases who were in charge of the nightly lunch crew.