My new favorite Christmas card: Santa running with milk and cookies….
If you’re interested in this Christmas card, or any of the rest in their line, see TriSanta
Watching the Numbers
The Washington Post’s website is currently reporting Bush as having 190 electoral votes and Kerry as having 112. Bush with 51% popular vote, Kerry with 48% of the popular vote. Their map shows blue versus red states. Blue states are basically the Northeast, plus Illinois. Red states have a bingo run from North Dakota down to Texas. Just looking at the map, Kerry looks like he’s gotten swashed with a red paint brush. I keep refreshing the map, though, looking to see when Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Florida turn colors. They’re still holding out.
In full disclosure, I voted for Kerry. Bush’s record on too many things comes up negative, and his tax cut plan just ring true for me. Folks who earn more money should pay more taxes, plain and simple. Kerry’s boundaries for where he’d roll back Bush’s tax plan don’t go far enough, in my opinion. We have a budget deficit. A Social Security morass. A war, for gosh sake. Cutting taxes isn’t stimulating the economy, particularly in a climate where the job outlook is cautious. Jobs are there, but the market isn’t booming, so you don’t have that same sense of self-confidence that you’d find something immediately, that you don’t need as much of a cushion to tide you over. So, a little more money goes into the savings account rather than into my taxes. Locked away, not to be spent by me or anyone else to stimulate the economy. No one benefits (not even me, given the lousy interest rates given our various deficits) from that money. No economic stimulation. And no social programs funded to help someone else bootstrap. Seems wrong all the way around.
Map’s beginning to show a bit more blue. Bush lost California (that’s gotta smart to Ahhh-nold) and Pennsylvania. Count’s 210 to 188. Better than watching the stock ticker scroll. No down numbers – only up, up, and up.
Boobah boo…
After rounds of negotiation, Cora and I have come to terms for her Halloween costume. First she wanted to be a zebra. Then a giraffe. Then a turtle. In the animal theme, did find an elephant costume, but of course, couldn’t get Cora to try it on.
She wanted her sis to be a giraffe (easy, since that’s the costume we couldn’t get Cora to wear last year), her daddy to be a lion, and Mommy to be a… hippopotamus. Luckily for me, anyway, the animal theme has gone by the wayside. Her new pick is to be a Boobah (for those not familiar with this relatively close relative of Teletubbies, check out Boobah Zone. She will specifically be the Blue Boobah, who I understand has a name, though I’m not certain what it is.
Oh, and Cora’s new plan for Daddy’s costume: she wants him to be the pink Boobah. Guess I’m off the hook for the hippo thing. 🙂
Half!
Ran the Baltimore Half-Marathon this past Saturday. Posted a non-inspiring time of 2:35. For the non-runners, a half marathon is 13.1 miles. And the 2:35 would thus be 2 hours and 35 minutes by my non-official time from my watch. I think official times include that point at the beginning of the race where the race has officially started, but those of us near the rear are just sort of waiting to go across the starting line. I started my watch once my feet actually crossed the starting line – no fair cheating me out of the literally minutes waiting for the hordes in front of me.
I’d been told it was a runner-friendly course. And I had seen the maps and elevation charts of the marathon. The map of the half was posted, but the elevation chart never was. Turns out, that’s ’cause the half marathon was significantly more hilly than the full one, at least at the start of the race. The race was laid out such that there were several sections where one street equaled a mile. Those mile-long streets at the beginning of the race turned out to be uphill. So, at the bottom of the street, you can see the full mile laid out ahead of you, and it’s all uphill. Conquered the first one, grumbling a little. Conquered the second one, mildly cursing. When the third and fourth ones hit, my legs just plain oomphed out. Ended up doing a mixture of running and walking. Hadn’t planned on walking at all, but, ya gotta do what ya gotta do, and there was no way I wasn’t going to make it to that finish line.
Just to give you an idea of the shape I was in when I got done: the last couple of miles were downhill, for the most part, except for a major hill across the Howard Street bridge. I just walked that entire thing – didn’t have any gas in the tank, either physically or mentally, to power up it. When I crossed the finish line after running through Camden Yards, I was so tired that I had trouble sitting on the ground to stretch. Discovered my arches were cramping, the tops of my feet were cramping, the muscles along my shins and calves were cramping… When I tried to stretch all of that out, I got a muscle spasm along my rib cage so bad that I was concerned that I might have done some major damage (it seems I hadn’t: I’m fine today).
Today I’m more than a bit sore. I’ve had worse days after sports: playing the first game of rugby of the season would usually kill both my upper and lower body for up to 4 days afterwards. Today just my legs are in pain. Stairs are something to be contemplated carefully. But my feet are fine: very little blistering. I think I might even try a run on Tuesday.
I’m not sure when the next half will be, or when I’ll go for the full marathon (26.2). But I’m looking forward to them, and to building up my endurance (particularly on hills!) so that the next go-round, I win more decisively. Wasn’t sure in parts of the Baltimore run whether I’d have to cry uncle or not. But I now have a medal that says I beat the dang thing. And the muscle aches to prove it.
By the way, the 2004 results are posted at http://www.bkbltd.com/2004/baltimore3.htm. Apparently, I came in 1231st of the women entered in the half-marathon. Of 1530. Not great, percentile-wise. Plenty o’ room for improvement. But if I had been able to keep running at my 10 mile per hour pace (which I did for the first couple of miles), I’d have come in more around a 2:10, or 730th place. Looks like I need to do more hillwork. Given that I was doing 8 1/2 minute miles for the 5K last weekend, 10 seems within the range of reasonableness. Something to shoot for, regardless: I’ll test it out on the trail in the coming weeks at shorter distances and then build up to the 13.
Is Poker the New Golf?
Noticed a trend in the spam on my website of late. Instead of pharameceutical ads, or sex life enhancement ads, I’m getting more and more poker site ads. Texas Hold’em seems to be particularly popular.
Then I got the latest copy of my campus newspaper in my mailbox. At my Jesuit university, just a couple of entries below the one talking about students parking at the cathedral, is an announcement of a Texas Hold’em tournament on campus.
I’m particularly attuned to this poker thing of late due to something I’ve noticed at work. Used to be, the guy talk around the office centered around the football pool and the latest XBox or Nintendo games. Football’s still big (and, unfortunately for my conversational options, still not high on my personal interest list), but electronic games have been dropped as a topic in favor of poker. Seems there’s a regular game, rotating amongst various folks’ homes, that lots of the guys here are in on.
Note that I say “lots of the guys here”. I’ve yet to run across a woman here who’s been in any of those conversations reminiscing about who’s stash got taken at the last game, or who’s set to lose their shirt (so to speak) at the next one.
Curious. Used to be the golf greens were the place to socialize with the guys while the women weren’t around. At least the guys could claim to get some exercise that way, little though it may be for the majority of golf-cart renting golfers. Building business relationships out in the open air, learning how the other guy approaches the shot – is he overconfident? Risk averse? Does he cheat on his score card? There’s a lot to be learned from observing a golfer, I hear. I assume the same’s to be said of how a person plays poker – how high does he bet? Does he bluff often? Can he keep a poker face? How big a pot does he come to the table with? When’s he tend to fold?
Again, just curious. Interesting dynamics in the study of work.
Interviewing Advice
When you’re an interviewee, interviewing for a position that will involve programming, interviewing with a guy who does programming for a living… don’t tell him that programming is easy, and that there’s no point in asking you about that stuff because you’ve done all of these other “harder” managerial things. Probably a poor move, if you actually want the job.
Cat Fart
Working on my portfolio paper describing the defense industry for my class in ‘The Legal and Regulatory Environment’. Glass of Marsala wine at my side to “ease the creative writing process”. Feeling smart as I purvey Hoover’s online database, cross-referencing information with DataMonitor. The computer’s subwoofer is pumping Grease and ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll is Here to Stay’. The paper’s coming together and I’m feeling pretty smart. And then…
Wafting from the litter box side of the basement comes the distinct aroma of a cat fart. Since the big cat snuck outside earlier this evening, this has to be emanating from our little cat. The little cat who weighs all of 10 pounds (or did, anyway – she’s a prime candidate for Atkins of late) has dropped a nuclear stink bomb. All brain activity ceases, as my nose fights for survival.
Joy and Thanksgiving
And there was joy in Mudville – the mighty spammer did strike out. From the activity logs of Convinced She’s Write:
2004.09.07 19:49:18 211.18.204.253 MT-Blacklist comment denial on Convinced She’s Write: slots-w.com
2004.09.07 19:50:26 217.160.250.160 MT-Blacklist comment denial on Convinced She’s Write: .gb.com
2004.09.07 20:45:01 65.107.36.140 MT-Blacklist comment denial on Convinced She’s Write: slots-w.com
Thank you both to the author of MT-Blacklist (thank you, Jay Allen) and to my dear hubby for having installed it. And yes, my intent is to follow up that thank you with specific financial renumeration to Mr. Allen. Support your local spam savior!
Office Space Moment
“Tina – If you can write this up, that would be great.” – from email from someone up the management chain from me, in an email sent over the weekend, referring to work that needs to be done by Monday. “Heard” as the boss from the movie Office Space. “yeaaaaah… that would be great.”
World Blog-hopping
Spent a few minutes hopping along the set of ‘Next Blog’ links at the top of Laura’s eBlogger blog. Not sure what the algorithm for blog presentation is, but the first few blogs were all blogs with one entry on them, which had all been posted today. (Technically, yesterday, but I haven’t gone to sleep yet, so, today, darn it.) That was my first surprise. Second surprise was to run across blogs in different languages. Why that surprised me, I assume, is that my bias is to think that things on the ‘Net happen in English. If I examined the pieces of data, I know that, even if it once was the case, there’s no reason for it to continue to be the case. Much of the world has Internet access and presumably believes it has something to say. But the final surprise point was this blog: I think it’s written in Arabic, I have little insight as to anything about the author other than what part of the world he’s from (Iran) and whatever else I can attempt to deduce from his ‘About Me’ picture, but the sole other picture on the page just makes me stop. That little baby, smaller than the hand laying beside it, wrapped in tubes and wires… no language translation necessary to have that post speak to me.
Odds are, friend, that we don’t worship the same God. But I offer up a prayer for this little baby, regardless, and pray that soon the wires melt away and this baby grows well beyond the size of that hand.