marathon training (non) progress
i haven't been able to run or jog or even turn my head fast for about a week, since i pulled or strained a muscle in my neck pretty painfully, and i haven't been willing to risk aggravating it.

sitting on planes and in airports waiting for the idiots at SFO air traffic control to let my people go didn't help, either: after several days of basically feeling better, it felt as bad as ever when i arrived in Saccaminnow friday evening, six hours behind schedule.

moan, piss, moan.

i was writing this to the good senator:

ha! ha!
i LOVE it when you start out an email with:

> JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!

the reason itself was fairly uninteresting, but the lead in was a beauty.

tonight i meant to come over a couple of hours ago to the internet cafe where the free wifi regularly drops at the most critical moments and gobbles up my emails. but then the 2004 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions was on television, and so, of course, i HAD to watch it until the end.

a further complication arose when, playing a silly little free word scramble game on my laptop, i was running down the battery, and this cafe only has ONE working outlet for laptops, and only within reach of ONE table at that, so i was potentially SCREWED given that my mom's house DOESN'T HAVE POLARIZED (3 prong) outlets in most of the house. jesus christ, welcome to the late 1970's!

all is well, though, since i got the one good table, and not only that, got a free shot of decaf espresso in my decaf coffee, 'cause the really nice barista felt bad when the airpot of decaf killed at the "room for cream" stage.

oh shit. i think i need to post this whole piece of nonsense to my blog. hang on a second.

(by way of which attempt, i just noticed that blogger.com can be easily typo'd as booger.com. wonder where that resolves?) oh well: nowhere good.

marathon!

i've long been a recreational runner, but i've wanted to run a marathon for a long time. now, people's reasons for running marathons are varied: some want to do it to prove they can, some want to lose weight, some want to punish their bodies for the real or perceived sins of their brains. i guess i fall into the "just want to do it" category. here is a good article on "The Marathon Mystique": http://www.runningtimes.com/issues/01julaug/mystique.htm

we started training today, as J has decided to train for a half marathon. (which is the longest distance i've done myself up to this point.) the target is for a may marathon, perhaps San Diego's Rock 'n Roll Marathon on June 5, 2005; or Anchorage's Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon on June 18, 2005.

if you want a good page with helpful comments about different marathons, here it is:
http://www.marathonguide.com/

and if you want a fantastic, free page with training programs for all lengths of races and all levels of runners, check out the amazingly helpful Hal Higdon .

gone, and forgotten

sadly, i had several posts in december that seem to have been eaten by the BloggerMonster. maybe i'll try to make up with sveeral posts in one day. yeah, that'll make up for my ongoing flakiness, won't it? here's a neat page linked to on that last blog i posted (Abandoned Bicycles of New York), which is at http://jschumacher.typepad.com/:

http://www.newyorkcitywalk.com/.

this guy walked every single street in manhattan. it's not (yet?) a very deeply developed web page, but it's pretty, and his effort deserves some advertising!

favorite new blog: Abandoned Bicycles of New York

what a GREAT page. great photography, pithy comments that avoid being obnoxious. check it out: http://jschumacher.typepad.com/photos/abandoned_bikes/index.html .