Cool Pictures

Los Deets has cool aeriel photos of our neighborhood and some of St. Paul he took from an airplane. I wonder if I heard the plane as it was passing overhead.

Click here to see them.

Random Question #890321

Do runners drink more alcohol than the average American?

The Deets already posted about a pizza party Emily and I had at my house last Thursday. Click here for his report on The Battle of Longfellow Pizzas.

We had all this pizza at my house as part of the "closing ceremonies" to an annual workout we run on a track near my house. So there were 12 of us over at my house after the run. After everyone left, I gathered, rinsed, and put all the empty bottles together.


The close observer will note a few Coke and Gatorade empties, but also an empty champaign bottle, to go along with all those beer bottles.

So as I was cleaning, I thought about my non-running friends here in the Twin Cities, my college friends (those who don't run anymore or played other sports), my family, and my high school friends. If you put all those people together, I don't know if all those people combined would have had as many beers as the 12 of us did on that Thursday night.

And this was a very tame social event. No one was even close to being out-of-control. It's just that we all enjoy drinking beer.

So I'm not suggesting runners are drunks. In fact, in all my years of running and knowing runners, I personally know of only one person who actually had a drinking problem. And that was in college. And no formal diagnosis was made. And that dude was never going to be a scoring runner on our team, in part because of his drinking.

So beer is at the center of most running circles, and I don't think it is unhealthy or bad. But I do wonder, is this true for other subcultures? Chess enthusiasts? Bloggers? Cartoonists?

Los Deets

Los Deets tagged for a meme.

Click here to see his post.

Here are the expectations:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.


1. the Onion Ad Nauseum #13
2.Done, but it's hard to type with one hand (my left hand is holding my place in the book).
3. Done.
4. I quote:
However, the 46 year-old delivery for Tyson foods remains modest and somewhat bewildered by his gifts.

"I only graduated from high school and never went to college, so when people say I'm a hero or genius, I have a hard time believing them," Sullivan told reporters. "I did not have the advantages others have, so I am grateful to God for endowing me with this gift. I do not take it for granted, because I know how much it means to so many people."

Sutton then concluded his remark with his customary, keenly anticipated recitation of the 50 states in alphabetical order."

Thank God the meme instructions didn't have me type the first six sentences because the next sentence is the guy saying all the states up to Maine. Ugh, I wouldn't want to have to type all that out.

Anyway, that reminds me of Lower 48 by The Gourds.



Not the best video quality but the best sound quality I could get.
Texas reference at 4:25
Minnesota reference at 3:24
All the other states that don't matter: 1:46
5. And I will tag Fancy Kirk, Reuben Sandwich, Jocelyn, The Anginator, and Deb.

Stone Age Evaneglist

Ed over at Technology Evangelist has some questions he wants answered.

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! As a technology evangelist, Ed may be horrified that I still live in a world of paper (in fact part of the reason I am typing this entry is I am putting off all the paper shredding I have to do).

Here are the questions.

When was the last time you:

1. Watched a friend buy a newspaper so he could browse the classifieds? You got me on the one. September 1996. The "friend" was me. I had just moved to the Twin Cities and needed a job.

2. Heard a land-line phone ring at a friend's house? Again, that friend would be me. I answered a phone on my land line 30 minutes ago. Only it was an automated phone call with a recorded voice telling me to vote for Ron Paul because if he's President, he'll get rid of the IRS.

And about an hour before that, Emily got a call from Fancy Kirk on the land line. Now the reason for that is because Kirk knows I lost my cell phone again. And this is why I love the land line. It is a needed back-up for me since I'm always losing that damn cell phone.

3. Heard a dial-up modem connect? Yikes. That is a good one. We used to have dial-up about five years ago. Pre-blogging days. But I can't remember if it made the dial-up noise.

4. Watched someone go to a bank teller to withdrawal cash? That would also be me. The bank in Iowa City that I used had mirrors behind the tellers. So I would say the answer is I saw myself withdraw some cash to close out my Iowa City checking account in the summer of 1996.

5. Bought a book on a computing related topic? I personally last bought a book about anything computer related when I was in either junior high or high school. It was a booklet about how to make it through the 50 hardest levels of   Championship Lode Runner. Matt the Hatt you out there? Jones? You guys may remember how obsessed I was with that game. I think I even wrote a short story based on the premise of that game. Yeah I was pretty cool back then.

But Emily did buy Blogging by Biz Stone about five years ago, which got her and then me into blogging. I'm sure that book is so very outdated and altogether unnecesarry.

6. Used the printed Yellow Pages? I use the White Pages (business section) all the time at work because they are in my office. I am too lazy to log onto the computer to use the web to look up a number. But I did use the Yellow Pages over the summer to find a junkyard to take away my dead 1988 Accord.

7. Received a link from a friend with driving directions from MapQuest? This may be worse than receiving a link: Last Sunday we went to a party and the invitation was two pieces of paper, with the second page being a MapQuest generated map of where the house was.

In terms of actually linking to Mapquest, I personally linked quite a bit when I was coaching the MDRA marathon training program over the summer of 2007. I didn't use the "tinyurl" thing until Ed taught me how. That's how prehistoric I am.

8. Turned on the TV rather than going to the web for more information on a breaking news story? I-35W bridge collapse.  Or the Iowa Caucus, if you consider the results a "breaking news" story.  I did go on-line for New Hampshire primary results.

9. Watched a full hour of television with commercials? Wednesday night. Law & Order.

10. Bought music on a CD? Three months ago? But that probably will be the last time.

Another good question to ask, when is the last time you paid a utility bill, mortgage bill, or credit card bill by mailing in a check? 

Oh well, I should get back to my shredding.

The Deets Is As The Deets Does

The Deets suggested I'd be the most likely to follow through with his request to this...

JUST TWO THINGS
Send this back to the person who sent it to you and the rest of your friends!

Okay, so he received it as a chain e-mail and turned it into a post. And I feel obliged to do fill out the list, since he said I would. Plus, you know how I love my lists.

Two Names You Go By:
1. Rocco
2. Funny Mike

Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now:
1. A North Face jacket. Emily bought one for me last year and has one that matches mine.
2. t-shirt commemorating the San Antonio Spurs as champions of pro basketball in 2007.

Two Things You Would Want (or have) in a Relationship:
Either I'm not smart enough to answer this question or it is simplifies relationships too much. Either way, I can't answer it.
1.
2.

Two Things you Like to Do:
1. Run with friends.
2. Go out to eat.

Two Things You Want Very Badly At The Moment:
1. The swelling on my tongue to subside. I bit it so badly this morning that it looks bruised.
2. To be able to sleep in tomorrow, which I won't.

Two Things you did Last Night:
1. Hung out with a friend at the C C Club until it closed.
2. Made chocolate cookie bars, and as a joke spelled "S'UP BRAH?" in chocoloate chips on the bars. Then as I drove over to my friend's house with these bars I passed a car that had a vanity plate that read "SUP BRA." Weird, right?

Two Things you Ate Today:
1. Some of those "S'UP BRAH?" bars.
2. Leftover "Ropa Vieja." Cuban food cooked by aforementioned friend (not actually "old clothes").

Two People you Last Talked to:
1. My mom.
2. Nathan.

Two Things you’re Doing Tomorrow:
1. Working
2. Folding laundry

Two Longest Car Rides:
1.Iowa City, IA to San Antonio, TX in 1994 (driven solo)
2. San Antonio, TX to Los Angeles, CA 1980 (my mom drove that one solo). I sat in the backseat and acted like I was hosting my own version of Tic Tac Dough the whole time.

Two Favorite Holidays:
1. Thanksgiving
2. Grandma's Marathon

Two Favorite Beverages:
1. Beer (domestic)
2. Gatorade

Two Things About Me that you may not have known.
1. I was born in Illinois.
2. I was kicked out of Cub Scouts in third grade because I wouldn't take my bike helmet off during a den meeting because I kept insisting to the den mother, "It's my thinking cap."

Two Jobs I have had in my life:
1. US Postal Letter Carrier
2. Dude who kept the 60 foot salad bar at Souper Salad fully stocked with fresh fruit, vegetables, salad accessories, and dessert.

Two Movies I would watch over and over:
1. The Usual Suspects
2. Buckaroo Banzaii

Places I have lived:
1. New York, NY
2. East Liberty, IA

Two of my Favorite Foods:
1. Enchiladas
2. English Muffins

Two Places I’d rather be right now:
1. Next to Emily, who is in New Orleans until Wednesday for work.
2. In a time machine so I go back twelve hours and re-eat the croissant I was eating when I bit my tongue so badly. Only I wouldn't bite my tongue the second time around.

Two people I think will respond:
1. I don't think two people read this blog.
2.

Since this is a blog, copy/paste, and fill in your own answers in the comments. Let me know if you partook in the fun.

A Banana On The House

Someone very very closely associated with this site has a new website. He puts the name of your website on a banana, if self-promotion is your thing.

Luckily, I must have friends in high places. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across my very on blog being being publicized on a banana. Click here to see for yourself. It's more fun than a barrel of monkeys. You don't know how many times I have typed and deleted that lame joke, before deciding to include it.

Now before the good people at banananame.com come knocking on my door to collect some money, let me just say I have a plan to repay Mr. Deets for the free publicity. I have a specific idea in mind. But I need to be in the right place to do it. So I will find a way to return the free publicity. It's just a question of when, not if.