Wednesday Wandering Mind – The Usual Nonsense But Mostly Health Stuff!

Now here is something interesting – I didn’t post on Monday. OK, maybe you noticed that, maybe not … but I sure did. While to an extent I could blame it on my busy anniversary weekend, or the sh!tstorm I knew I was walking into on Monday, or the kids starting band camp, or whatever. But none of it was true – the reality is I have 24 drafts in various states of completion, yet I just came up blank. So I let it go … but given how easily things have flowed lately I found it interesting. Apparently whatever was ‘stuck’ broke free …

1. Food Pyramid for Runners

I really love the food pyramid from Runner’s World, one of those classic ‘what they think, what I think …’ things, but with a twist.

The interesting thing I have talked about in the past is that for many years I was in the “I run so I can eat whatever I want” camp, and while most of my food choices were good, I regularly dipped into the lower part of the pyramid. But as I ramped mileage past 40 miles per week back in 2012 my eating shifted much more into the ‘fuel zone’, and I became very particular about what I put into my face.

So it struck me the other day when a runner friend grabbed ‘one of everything’ from an assembled ‘carb overload’ table that resulted when a few different people had coincidentally brought items the same day. And he said ‘this is why we run, right’? For me, the answer was ‘no’. Homemade stuff? Sure – and I had a great macadamia nut cookie … but not any of the store-bought items. Just me … but the ‘run to splurge’ thing isn’t important to me.

2. Take Time to Celebrate Your Victories!

A while back there was an article at Runner’s World called ‘Bask Now, Analyze Later’, which emphasizes taking time to celebrate what went well – and particularly focuses on one thing: I crossed the finish line.

Then a couple of weeks ago Nicole had a great post called ‘Things I did right during my last race’, which celebrates some of the things she did well – and that is SUCH an important thing to do. And something we rarely do …

Think about your last race or long run – what comes to mind first? Probably how it could have been better. I look at my long run from just over a week ago – I did 18.79 miles. Two thoughts – I didn’t get to 20, and I under-fueled. But … c’mon, I ran almost 19 freaking miles! Can I not celebrate THAT for a second? Sure it is important to visit our mistakes – and I did, which helped me to a properly fueled run over 23 miles this weekend. But I never really took the time to celebrate what I had accomplished.

So that is my challenge to you AND myself: celebrate your accomplishments. And if you leave a comment – tell me something awesome about yourself that you are celebrating today!

3. Drink More Water, Gain Less Weight!

We all know how important hydration is, especially as we burn through the summer months as runners (though as we know, winter hydration is just as important!). An interesting study from a while back that was covered at Runner’s World showed that drinking water – and other non-sugary drinks – led to less weight gain.

After controlling for several factors that could affect weight gain, the researchers found that people who drank water, coffee, tea, and diet beverages gained less weight each four-year period than people who drank sugar-sweetened beverages and fruit juice.

Of course, we know that diet soda definitely doesn’t help with weight loss – and might even work against it due to how it confuses your body into expecting real sugar and when it doesn’t arrive it causes another hunger cycle to get back the resources it dumped before.

It all comes back to the basics – just like with foods, so too with drinks it is best to stick with things like water, infused water, coffee, tea, wine, and so on.

4. Reminder that ‘All Natural’ is Meaningless

OK, so I have gone on and on about how all of those ‘all natural’ protein powders and supplement pills and so on that people use and say ‘hey, it is all-natural, it must be good’ … is not guarantee. And recently on Buzzfeed there was an article about just how meaningless the ‘natural’ claim really is. From the post:

Can you spot anything actually found in nature in this product?
Ingredients: Citric Acid, Potassium And Sodium Citrate, Aspartame, Magnesium Oxide, Contains Less Than 2% Of Natural Flavor, Lemon Juice Solids, Acesulfame Potassium, Soy Lecithin, Artificial Color, Yellow 5 Lake, BHA (Preserves Freshness).

Though my favorite has to be the ‘all natural’ Cheetos … seriously.

5. Another Cautionary Thought on Anti-Oxidents

Yeah, I already went off on the whole Supplement thing, but it bears noting a more recent article discusses how some of the core thoughts behind the mechanistic workings of antioxidants could be wrong, and how we could be negating benefits of exercise by our ‘couldn’t hurt’ mentality:

“A supplement industry now worth $23 billion yearly in the U.S. took root,” he notes.

Taking antioxidant supplements before exercise actually negates some of the well-documented benefits of physical exertion.

And yet, antioxidant pills have proven to be a bust. In February, a group of independent US medical researchers assessed 10 years of supplement research and found that pills loaded with vitamin E and beta-carotene (the stuff that gives color to carrots and other orange vegetables) pills are at best useless and at worst harmful—that is, they may trigger lung cancer in some people. Just this month, a meta-analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that antioxidant supplements “do not prevent cancer and may accelerate it.”

And a 2009 study found that taking antioxidant supplements before exercise actually negates most of the well-documented benefits of physical exertion: That is, taking an antioxidant pill before a run is little better than doing neither and just sitting on the couch.

Again, I don’t consider this to be remotely conclusive science, but it is interesting – and gets back to what I keep saying: know what you are putting into your body, and when in doubt – don’t.

6. Debunking “Chronic Cardio”

Michele wrote a post asking ‘is running healthy’ which brought up a post from ‘Mark’s Daily Apple’ that claims that, basically, our current methods of exercise are ‘bad for us’. When I read the article, I had a few issues:
– The ‘summary’ block wasn’t a summary but a sales pitch. Anyone using an obvious ‘click bait’ title, then leading with a sales pitch has already hit an 8 on the ‘BS meter’.
– Looking to the end, it is clear that the goal is to make recommendations that align with the primal / Paleo ideals. Which isn’t surprising since the opening was a sales pitch.
– The intro claims that the ‘conventional wisdom’ is “45 minutes to an hour a day of intense aerobic activity” … but that isn’t true at all. The REAL recommendation is “150 minutes per week of moderate exercise or 75 minutes per week of vigorous exercise”. In other words – the basic assumption of the article is WRONG – and since finding the CORRECT information took me less than 5 seconds … it is not unreasonable to assume that the article was INTENTIONALLY MISLEADING.

So it is simple enough to discount the entire article, and quite frankly it undermines the credibility of the entire website. But someone took the time to actually debunk the points that were made in the original article:

One of the main reasons that Mark is against running – it decreases fat metabolism – isn’t supported at all. In fact, this study shows that aerobic training like running burns more visceral and liver fat than resistance training.

And this study shows that running is better than strength sessions for weight loss. This isn’t to show that you have to choose between the two – both have an important part in any healthy exercise program – but aerobic running is actually better for general weight loss.

Now one thing that came up with Michele’s post and in the comments was the ease of over-doing things. In other words, if you tend to be an extreme person who refuses to recover and just does extreme exercise all the time … well, maybe you will see negative effects.

Sure – but I have two thoughts: first, you will likely be injured well before any of the stuff in Mark’s article is a major concern … and second it is pretty much like arguing that water is bad for you if you choose to drink 47 liters per day. Um, yeah. Stick with reasonable training and exercise programs, folks.

tl;dr – running isn’t bad for you, anyone who says it is probably is selling something.

7. Could ‘Intermittent Fasting’ be Good For You?

This one is pretty far out there – and the general thought could be a trigger for those already dealing with restriction and with a history of restriction and other food-related issues (i.e. me).

You can see some of the articles here and here and here and here. From one article:

The human metabolism does not grind to a halt if you skip a meal (or three). For it to slow down by even ten percent, one would need to fast for 72 hours straight (don’t worry, no one’s recommending giving up food for three days)[1][2][3][4]. In fact, even 48 hour fasts have been shown to have no negative effect on metabolism, cognitive performance, or fatigue[5][6]. That’s not to say fasting can’t be a little uncomfortable — we’ll get to that later.

But why would anybody want to fast? For starters, IF shares many of the benefits of following a low calorie diet, such as a lower risk of stroke and cardiovascular diseases [7][8][9]. Fasting’s effect on the heart is especially interesting: One study concluded just one day without food per month can potentially halve the risk of developing coronary artery disease[10].

8. Barefoot Running – It isn’t Bad For You, But Some Shoes Aren’t Good For You!

The whole debate over barefoot running has seemed like a he-said/she-said back and forth nasty debate since I got serious about running and shoes a couple of years ago. As I started back, I began with what are described as ‘minimal-ish’ and ‘ultra lightweight’ shoes. And I tried shoes that were lighter and thinner and dropped from 4mm to ‘zero drop’ … and eventually got to the Merrell Vapor Gloves which are zero-drop with 2mm cushion (compared to the 12+mm on most shoes) – and it was just too little shoe for me.

There was a big backlash, and last year loads of reports came out noting that the science for the backlash wasn’t there … and then a few months ago courts found that Vibram had mis-represented their shoes and the potential benefits in order to increase sales.

What is reality? I’m really not sure – there are articles about why barefoot-like shoes are ‘not best for most runners’. And I think that for people starting out, finding something with moderate cushion to start seems wise – and THEN working on different shoe drops and types to see what is optimal for you, consulting with people who can observe your stride and footfall pattern. Gradual, informed changes are always your friend.

9. FDA Closes the Trans-Fat Loophole

Have you heard about the 0.5g *per serving* trans-fat loophole? That loophole has now been ‘closed’ and if the rules go into full effect foods will no longer be allowed to claim ‘no trans fats’ if there are any present at all. Here are more details:

After thirty-odd years of everyone knowing trans fats are bad for us, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed measures to ban all trans fats in our food. The move comes after decades of research finding consuming trans fat is strongly linked to heart disease and obesity. The ruling is just preliminary for now, but when (or if) it comes into effect (the timeline is kinda fuzzy), there will be some big changes on supermarket shelves.

It turns out a lot of our favorite treats are laden with the stuff, even though brands often claim otherwise. This is thanks to an egregious loophole that allows a product to be labeled “trans fat-free” if there’s less than 0.5 grams of the stuff per arbitrary “serving.” Right now, the best way to tell if a product contains trans fat is to check the ingredients: If there’s partially hydrogenated oil, there’s trans fat.

10. Psychological Effects of Exercise Deprivation

Pete Larson from Runblogger highlights a study at Science of Running that had athletes take two weeks off … from the article:

“Following the layoff, the athletes saw significant increases in feelings of tension, depression, anger, confusion and total mood disturbance. Additionally, there was a decrease in vigor. These changes in mood aren’t terribly surprising, but it’s pretty profound when you think about it. Just by taking someone outside of their norm of aerobic exercise for 2 short weeks, people’s mood states were significantly impacted.”

I think many of us can relate in some way to taking time off and really feeling like our overall state was altered. For those who have been injured, what is your experience?

What Health Issues Have Been Tweaking You This Week?

Take Care Thursday – Prepare Yourself Now for a Bright Future!

I have no idea why, but it seems that since I started this blog I have been collecting lots of ‘Things I wish I could tell my 20/30/40 year old self’ posts, as well as ‘Things The Don’t Tell You About’, and ‘Things You Should Do Before’ articles and more. So I figured I would just steal fragments from a bunch of them and pile it all together into a set of a dozen or so general ways to set yourself up for a happier life!

1. For real happiness, focus on how your life feels instead of how it looks.

It is easy when you are younger to see people who look happy and associate the outer trappings of what they have with the happiness they feel inside. But first, you don’t know if they are happy. And second, chances are it isn’t having a Mercedes or a nice watch or fountain pen that made them happy. Instead look at what drives you, where your passions are, and work on those things – that is how to be happy!

2. Treat Your Body Better (diet and exercise) … That said, your diet is not something you can lord over everyone else’s heads

As I have said, at 48 I am in the best shape of my life, and my body rewards me for taking care of it. We can’t control everything that happens in life, but give yourself the best chance to have a long life with the only body you will every have.

But when making choices, remember they are YOUR choices. So if you choose to be Paleo or Vegan or Fruitarian or a junk-food junkie (good lord have pity on you), enjoy yourself … but remember you are not BETTER than others for your choices.

3. Don’t be afraid of your own voice.

You are unique, special and important … and you only have one voice – so use it. I remember in college writing music for an electronic music class, and I had a thought in my head based on some works by others I had heard, but no matter what, it came out with a funked-up jazzy feel. I realized that was my musical voice, and no matter how I tried to compose a certain way it was coming through. The same is true with blogging, and even writing reports and presentations at work. Instead of trying to mold yourself after others, celebrate who you are.

4. Mortality is very inconvenient. It ruins a lot of weekends.

As I said on Instagram the other day, there has been a load of recent information about the deaths and health issues of friends that has caused me to reflect. We are all going to die, and generally aren’t sent an calendar reminder of when it is coming. So we have to live in a way that makes our days worthwhile.

5. Marriage doesn’t complete you.

Your validation comes not from another person or a legal institution … but from within. Celebrate the person you are – because YOU complete you. Once you realize that you are complete, you are better positioned to give yourself fully to your marriage or relationship.

6. What other people say and do has nothing to do with you. It is a reflection of them.

This has come up many times, most recently from Carmy, but it is important to note – that when someone says something harsh or judgmental or spiteful or otherwise negative, it comes from their own place of negativity that has nothing to do with you. But internalizing these things it gives them more power over you.

7. Falling down is a mandatory aspect of life. Getting back up is living.

We ALL fail … and pretty often, on anything from a very minor to very major basis. It WILL happen, even to people who don’t like to admit it. It is how you respond to these failures that informs on the type of person you are.

8. You don’t know everything, and that is okay

One of my pet peeves (wow, I seem to have a lot lately) is people who refuse to acknowledge that they don’t know things. Look – we ALL don’t know things, and sometimes we don’t know stuff we SHOULD know, and maybe even learned at some point. Oh well – forgot. It is just fine – and with smartphones you don’t even have to run back to your office/dorm to grab the book containing what you forgot.

9. The only person holding you back is yourself.

This came up with Michele’s post last week – and in posts both she and Hollie (and others)talked about the mental aspects of running. But it applies everywhere – once you have decided you cannot do something, it is done. If you decide you can it is no guarantee – but never underestimate the power of self-validation.

10. Everything in your life is a reflection of a choice you made. If you want a new outcome, make a different choice.

Basically, if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

11. You Both Have to Change to Make the Marriage Work

This might seem counter-intuitive since common wisdom is to never enter a relationship with a ‘fix it up’ mentality, but the reality is that change will naturally occur as two people meld their lives together as one. But it is also important to maintain your identity and individuality in the relationship.

12. Consider the other side of the story.

You are not the singular purveyor of TRUTH. Chances are your point of view is different than many other people … so listen, you might learn something. Also, be willing to learn.

13. The best advice is felt in your heart not directed from your head.

Do you ever notice how certain things people said to you echo across the years, remain mantras and fuel your passions? These are not just words committed to memory, but feelings etched into your soul.

14. The sooner you can like yourself, the easier life will be.

The old saying is you cannot be truly loved until you love yourself and realize that you are worth loving. SO get to it … because you are awesome just how you are.

15. Accumulating “stuff” is stupid.

Over a certain amount, getting more money doesn’t add to your happiness. And when you get more money the first thing that happens is more spending – so your effective ‘wealth’ remains pretty constant. And what happens with ‘stuff’? Either it is something that will need replacing when the new version arrives next year, or you will end up not caring about it in a while. Regardless it is all just stuff – perhaps it allows you to momentarily show off to someone … but exactly what benefit is that?

16. Communication is absolutely vital

In any relationship, hiding things is the express route to failure. Communication is critical if you want to have a successful relationship. And it isn’t just the basic act of communication – you need to be open and honest with those you care about, and find a way of sharing your feelings and things that really matter. Make a prioritized list if you need help doing this – no one will judge you if they actually care.

17. Do not waste your time on people and things you don’t absolutely care about

You know how many people can have 100 people in a room, and 99 say something nice and the other one says something critical … yet the voice they hear is that negative one? Yeah, WAY too many! Don’t rent out your mind-space to other people who you don’t care about, and don’t let them control your life. It just isn’t worth it!

18. Marriage isn’t hard if you like each other!

This is a simplification as all relationships have ups and downs, but when you are operating from a place where the first instinct is teamwork and shared solutions … you’re already halfway there!

19. Try New Things – Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

Find music or movies or games you hate, and take the time to experience them with an open mind. Maybe you will never like John Zorn or David Lynch or first-person shooters, but it is always better to make choices from an informed place. Here is some Anthony Braxton to help you along. 🙂

20. Make Time For Yourself – Always

No matter how busy you are with work and family and whatever else … remember to always find a few minutes each day that is only about you. Maybe it is on your run, maybe you sit in the car for 5 minutes before heading into work. Whatever it is, own it and make it your own.

21. Leave the Internet Behind Every Now and Then – Don’t Worry, It Will Still Be Here When You Return

My ‘mostly unplugged’ weekends have been incredibly rewarding. They allow you to be truly ‘in the moment’, and by allowing yourself SOME amount of connection you free yourself from that being a huge concern.

22. People will steal everything you do.

This is ironic because all of these points come from a dozen or so different posts I have been collecting in drafts for the last year! But don’t be so possessive of your ideas that you don’t share freely – because then you lose the joy, and will eventually lose exclusivity to the idea anyway.

What thoughts do YOU have for a brighter future?

Some Random Pet Peeves Annoying Me This Week

I can’t call this a ‘rant’ because none of this is stuff really makes me mad … but I have found a bunch of annoying things over the last week, particularly on runs and on our whirlwind college tour.

Speaking of which, I have an annoyance before I start with the pet peeves – I took an unplanned rest day today, slept in and didn’t run. Why? Because I have a decent cold, a combination of a weekend spent waking up at 3AM, driving nearly 900 miles, and scrambling everywhere … then coming home and running nearly 19 miles on Sunday and more than 9 on Monday surely didn’t help. So yeah, I feel like crap … which is annoying!

1. Reciprocal Blogging

OK, this isn’t anything new, and was in a post I never finished months ago, but playing ‘catch up’ after vacation and after this weekend I REALLY noticed it.

What do I mean by ‘Reciprocal Blogging’? I mean that a person only reads/replies on your blog when you comment on theirs. For example, I posted 7 times over vacation, including the weekends, and barely read or commented on other people’s posts. When I returned I commented on a number of blogs – and most of my friends had been commenting on my stuff all week long (and I always love reading comments … they ALWAYS make any post better!).

Anyway, with one blog, I posted a comment on a post that was nearly two weeks old, and suddenly within 5 minutes a new comment appeared on my most recent post. This wasn’t the first time – or first blog I’ve seen this person do this on …

Look – I get that commenting to gain visibility is a general practice, and also that we often see a comment and remember to check on a blog we don’t regularly visit. That is natural – we all have our first, second and third tier blog-follows. But this was different. It was all about the APPEARANCE of following to sustain the connection, like giving a dog a treat to get them to behave.

I don’t know if this makes sense, and I want it to be clear I am not talking about the normal daily interactions I see on my blog and pretty much everyone I follow. But if you follow someone or comment ONLY in order to keep the other person connected, or use someone else’s comment section ONLY to promote your own blog … YOU are the problem I am talking about. If you haven’t noticed … this is a GREAT community that is all too willing to help others and promote new friends. If you are a slime bag … well, interestingly on one of the blogs that did this I visited recently and have seen the comments and even contest entries really dwindle. So I guess it wasn’t just me.

2. Crappy Customers & Customer Service

For whatever reason, over the past month I have experienced enough crappy service, and have had to watch great employees deal with horrid customers that it has really come to annoy the crap out of me!

In one store where all we wanted to do was grab a drink, the fountain machine was out of order and the employees seemed to have no desire to deal with it, and when we presented a Canadian coin in with our other change they summarily tossed it back saying ‘this is no good’, and only noted it was Canadian when we said ‘what?!?’. Then as we were finding more change he actually told us to ‘hurry up’. Yeah … rude!

But there are plenty of buttheads on the OTHER side of the counter! Most of it was the usual stuff:

– Cell phone talkers in line who expect everyone to accommodate their conversation, hold up progress, stand in the wrong places, make employees repeat themselves and so on.

– Line jumpers – generally they will not directly cut in front of you, but will push from the side, pretend they don’t notice the queue, run to a newly opened register without acknowledging those who were already waiting.

Specifically on this trip there was a shuttle from the hotel to the subway, and we were waiting there already and a family came out and the driver was unsure how many would fit so we waited … they started piling in. There were 5 and ended up all fitting, leaving us for the next shuttle – and the driver had no clue when it might come (it ended up being less than 5 minutes later so it was all good, but still annoying!)

3. Store Aisle Cellphone Talker Hogs

Shopping stores are very often cramped, with customers browsing, moving slowly due to physical restrictions, more product crowding the space, and so on.

The there are the people talking on their phones, slowly wandering around looking at nothing in particular, generally oblivious that they are greatly inconveniencing others with their rude behavior … heck, I even had someone glare at me when I said EXCUSE ME after simply saying ‘excuse me’ failed to even register acknowledgement.

I did say ‘well thank you for allowing me to shop in the shopping store’ … not as loud as I might have felt at the moment … but hey, they were already talking and blocking the entire aisle again anyway so they didn’t notice.

Here is the thing – just like it has been shown that using your phone is a distraction in the car, so it is when shopping. So if you want to talk on the phone casually while shopping, get out of the traffic pattern and chatter to your heart’s content. But not loudly, because THAT is a general pet peeve for most people. We really don’t care about your ailments, or whatever over-sharing you are doing at the moment.

4. Emergency Vehicle Privelege Abusers

In New York the law is that you need to move aside for emergency vehicles, including when the police have someone pulled over to the right. This past week I saw two egregious and possibly dangerous misuses of these laws.

On Rte 88 in central NY, a driver was pulled over by the police with lights blazing, and all of the approaching traffic was in the left lane as mandated by law. Except for one Ford Explorer, who was in the right lane, and while not driving dangerously fast, was going fast enough to pass several care including ours on the right side – he came from behind and ended up several cars in front of us. The police officer stood by the passenger side of the car he pulled over and just gaped … I hope he got the license plate number!

And then there was another instance when an ambulance was coming along, and we were on a smaller two-lane highway, and everyone was pulled to the right to let the ambulance of by … except for one car who was using it as a personal gateway to get ahead of everyone else. At first I thought it might be associated with the ambulance, but no – the ambulance turned and he went straight. Imagine that – using the grave misfortune of others as a way to jockey ahead a few places in traffic. Sad.

5. Parents Teaching Kids Crappy Habits

One would think that the general rule should be that parents would know the rules of safety for critical things they teach kids – but looking at guns we already know THAT isn’t true! So I guess that bicycle safety shouldn’t be different. I already have a pet peeve about adults with small children not wearing helmets but having their kids wear helmets. Guess what – these are the kids who stop wearing helmets before they are 10, or when out of range of home. Sure they aren’t a cure all, but helmets save lives, period. The message these kids get is ‘helmets are for little kids … not wearing a helmet is a grown-up thing to do’. Absolutely false.

Also recently – so far 100% coupled with non-helmet wearing parents – I have seen parents with very young kids biking AGAINST traffic. Ugh. I have seen it running as well as driving, and it can set up some unsafe situations. I even took a moment to call over to one parent to remind them to ride WITH traffic … and (again, with small children in front) they told me to go F myself in no uncertain terms. Nice.

As for runners … you know my pet peeve about running with music, and how it ABSOLUTELY diminishes your awareness (again, this is fact, not debate)? Well … add parent and child (about 10) running side-by-side with headphones on the wrong side of the road (WITH traffic) on a relatively narrow road with no sidewalk and only about 1 foot on the outside of the white line? Yeah, totally annoying – and forced all traffic on the 45MPH road to come to a halt to accommodate them. I beeped at them – because they were totally in the wrong. The parent waved as if I was saying ‘hi’. Um, no.

6. Ugly Early Morning Driving Habits

I have complained before about driving habits I see regularly in the early morning. It is as though people are so used to no traffic that they consider the normal rules optional … here are a couple that got to me this week:

– Stop sign jumpers: where there is extended visibility, these are the people who are second or third in line at the stop sign but have already scoped out traffic and go immediately following the car in front of them. I almost got nailed as I let one car go and started to run then had the next car just run the stop sign, and since they were turning right they were swerving right into me. They didn’t stop, and all I got out was ‘hey – stop sign!’

– Tailgating no-patience swervers: I have written before about how bizarre it is to see an empty road at 4 or 5AM with an extra-bright set of lights coming down the road only to realize that it is two cars, the second one so close that you can’t make them out from a distance. One of the roads I almost always run (6 of my 10 standard routes) was slightly widened recently, and what I have seen twice in the past week is people who were already tailgating see that the person in front is going to turn left at the intersection (no stop sign) so they pull out to the right to race past.

The problem? The road isn’t wide enough so they have to go a little bit onto the lawn of the house just before the intersection. The first time it happened I was running the opposite way and thought ‘that is dangerous’. Monday morning? Danger confirmed! The guy was just starting to pull to the right and I was in his headlights (I was already on the lawn because I feared it coming) – and threw up my hands and said ‘WTF’ (and not for ‘way too fast’ this time, Cori).

Bonus. Running Pet Peeves

Last month in the Globe, Boston Marathon race director Dave McGillivray wrote about his pet peeves as both race director and as a runner.

Here are a couple:

Participants taking a shopping cart load of food from the food tent, leaving nothing for the back-of-the-pack runners.

■ Doing the best we can to be environmentally responsible by putting out the appropriate recycling containers, but finding that no one is really paying much attention to any of it.

So what are YOUR pet peeves?

Monday Rant – Crap That Annoyed Me Last Week

Every now and then I start a ‘rant’ post, but never seem to truly get there. It seems that the act of THINKING about ranting is theraputic enough for me. Apparently not this time … if you are reading this, put on your fire-proof gear and get ready for as much of a rant as you’ll ever read here.

1. Why Do We Continue to Support Sexist, Misogynist TV Shows?

So I really had no intention of posting this until Michele had a great post mostly about running and nutrition, but a little about The Bachelorette at the end. Again, the main focus is on running and nutrition, but she talked about her husband having developed a ritual for watching the Bachelor/Bachelorette shows, and her hating them. The reasons she gave were mostly around the predictable and formulaic nature of the shows, but I had some different thoughts: these shows are racist, sexist, misogynist and show warped and unhealthy views of relationships that no one should emulate.

Here is my full comment:

As for Bachelor/Bachelorette … one of the big reasons I hate these shows is that they project an incredibly unrealistic view of people and relationships. This is NOT love, it is ratings manipulation tied into people’s lives … people who get addicted to the money and recognition. Worse yet, the shows at their core are incredibly racist and sexist … finding ‘comfort’ in that? Ugh … that bothers me quite a bit.

But ultimately what bugs me is it trivializes relationships (of course, in our disposible society it is FAR from alone) and continues to push the mantra that a woman is only as valuable as her looks and sexuality, and a man can escape such scrutiny with enough money … again, ugh. I guess I should just leave it alone.

And to those who would call it mindless and harmless … how is THIS different than the other unhealthy images we push on young women?

OK, let me make sure I am clear – I am calling THE SHOW “racist, sexist, and misogynist” … I am NOT saying that people who watch it are those things.

Some pretty strong stuff though? I mean, sure this isn’t the greatest show, but isn’t calling it “racist, sexist, misogynist” a bit extreme? Actually no. Hopefully the sexist angle and pooor relationship angle are pretty obvious … but if not take a look at what some people are talking about here. Pretty illuminating stuff … and sad.

As for racism, this is a bit tougher, but just look at the numbers: across 18 seasons of Bachelor, 9 seasons of Bachelorette, 27 main stars and more than 700 contestants … and 14 (fourteen) non-whites have been on-screen, and none have made it into the later stages. As one site put it, those who weren’t tossed in the first cut were gone soon after. The message is clear – what is attractive is white men with money, and women with fake boobs, fake smiles, and white skin with a fake tan.

And really, the unhealthy relationship angle DOES matter. We can start by how two people who have not had a single day of ‘exclusive’ dating are supposed to suddenly be in a place of getting married? Or that ANY of this stuff represents a healthy relationship cycle? I really don’t think we would want any of our kids to be in the ‘herd’ portion of the ‘contest’, nor really as the main star.

Finally, as I said before, just watching the shows doesn’t make you guilt of sexism, misogyny, racism and so on … let’s do some quick math: shows get funded based on making money; money is made by a combination of low costs and high viewership (or at least a reasonable profit margin). And since we have already agreed to the well demonstrated fact that young men and women are influenced by media images … having shows that get millions of viewers means having a voice in millions of homes. And that voice is saying certain things. So again, it isn’t a definitive statement about people, but it should be a reminder that by watching you are helping spread the messages about body image, relative relationship power, and self esteem that the show puts across.

2. “The Pornographication of Fitness Needs to Stop”

The reality that young women are impacted by images in the media is neither new nor surprising at this point. But what has struck me is how ‘sexified’ the average fitness magazine has become. I get a ton of free subscriptions because of my work magazine subscriptions, and one was ‘Fitness’ … and honestly it is not a magazine I feel comfortable with in terms of content. The articles are pretty light and fluffy – but the bad part is they are interspersed with photoshopped images of young women posed not to show off their fitness level but rather how ‘hot’ they are. And really, many of the articles are more focused on ‘getting hot’ than ‘getting fit’.

I wrote about the thing earlier this year with a woman named Brooke and Shape magazine (if you haven’t read the resolution, check it out) … and in reality I feel that the outcome was more about Shape deftly handling the potential PR nightmare and throwing a freelancer under the bus, than it was a reflection of reality.

All of these things contribute to the ongoing body image crisis with young women. When body-builders and fitness-models in contests wear heels rather than shoes they might actually use in their workouts …

But I mean, none of this is NEW – here is a 2011 article about fitness magazine defining health in unhealthy ways:

With consistent content focusing on fast weight loss and the easiest way to get looking sexy, Shape and Self are challenging what “fitness” really means. Beyond objectification of bodies and the perpetuation of beauty ideals, these magazines are creating a new definition of health for women. I argue these magazines have re-packaged health and fitness in terms of thinness and sex appeal.

This week there was an article at the Huffington Post called “The Pornographication of Fitness Needs to Stop”, in which the author laments the images portrayed to women, saying:

The worry is that what women see in fitness magazines teaches them that what they are seeing is possible for them too. Women are desperate to be published in fitness publications, to be glorified into eternity through a photo. Women will do anything to get there. They will starve themselves to get lean enough to be able to see all muscular definition, they will experiment with recreational and pharmaceutical drugs, they will prostitute themselves to judges and more, just to make it.

She concludes with what we SHOULD be doing and the images we SHOULD be sharing:

Being fit in a functional rather than sexual way means you are entirely capable of being powerful no matter what your height, bust size, shoe size or hair color. You are empowered from the depths of your DNA because you did the work, you earned your place and you walk confidently because of it. A functionally fit You welcomes all sizes, shapes and colors, your boobs and butt are incidental. What we really need to build in the gym is a sense of self and what we are capable of. Believe it!

This summer I have seen more runners and walkers and bikers out and about than ever before – the cooler weather definitely has helped – and they have been in all shapes and sizes. A neighbor out walking last night told me to ‘get in a couple of miles for them’ – but they were doing great themselves. We are all out there trying to do healthy things, and SURE we want to look our best … I mean, who doesn’t want their exercise to translate into positive body changes. But that is secondary – and we certainly shouldn’t be judged entirely on whether we look like a swimsuit model!

3. Can We Just Stop Saying Stupid Things Already?

This is where I got started with my rant … because there seem to be SO MANY stupid and insensitive things begin said lately. From real life comments to overheard conversations to Facebook and more, it seems to be open season on saying stupid things … here are just a few:

– One person from outside the company hears another has been married about a year, and asks “when are you and your husband planning to have children?” The reply was very tactful “we haven’t decided if we will have children, but have looked at international adoption, and my spouse is a woman.” Considering the question was none of her business and presumptuous, and carried a tone as if some magical baby generator was available … I thought she did great … I was steamed inside of myself, but you already know that.

– Laura at Fit Fresh and Funny posted a heart-wrenching story, and she has talked before about how

– I have several real-life friends who are battling cancer, and also someone at work I know who is starting treatment again … and one of them shared this link about how to talk to someone with cancer. I thought it was great, but almost as if on cue, at work I overheard someone say about the person getting treated ‘are they STILL sick’. Ugh … when it comes to cancer, it is never REALLY gone.

There are more, but I am stopping here … because it is a theme: just stop and think before you talk. If you have no idea what to say, THAT is not a bad thing to say! Let people know you care, don’t be presumptuous about what you think someone else should think or feel, and never belittle someone’s feelings or life experience. M’kay?

4. Here’s a Shock – E-Cigs are Poisonous Crap Too!

I think I made it clear that I am not a big fan of smoking. It has been ‘interesting’ watching through my life as the tobacco companies have twisted and turned through the years, getting caught marketing specifically to minorities, then children, and then pushing hard into other countries that don’t have strict regulations.

As an interesting aside, as we are 50 years from the first surgeon general report on smoking, a NPR report reflects back on how smoking managed to stay so popular and widespread for so long after the report. Here is a comment from a woman who started smoking in the mid-70s (putting her close to my age):

“Because everybody was smoking. Mother and Father were smoking. Doctors were smoking. You were able to smoke in the movie theater, food shopping with Mom. Really, back then nobody knew what we know today.”

In large part that’s because the tobacco industry maintained for years that experts still disagreed about the evidence, Brandt says.

One of the most recent pushes has been in e-cigarettes, or vaporizers. Proponents claim there is no risk – because it is not smoke. I have always found that to be a silly argument – whenever you have a chemical reaction going on with transfer of material at the cellular level … there is risk.

Now we learn that e-cigs are NOT so safe after all … to the surprise of no one who ever really thought about it. Here is a quote:

while using an e-liquid with both solvents produced almost as much formaldehyde as a traditional cigarette. While the human body produces formaldehyde as a byproduct of normal metabolic activity in the cells, it is suspected of being carcinogenic when inhaled.

So yeah, take that e-cig out of public, away from others, and sure as heck away from babies and pregnant women. Because this isn’t the first report we’ve gotten … and it won’t be the last.

5. Time To Think About What Comes Out of Our Faces!

I grew up in a diverse area in suburban Boston and as a result I knew people of all different types and backgrounds and religions and so on … and even though things weren’t so ‘politically correct’ in the 70s, there were terms and phrases that WERE used (like calling me a Polack for my Polish background) and those that were NOT used (yeah, like the obvious ones). There were terms used as synonyms for other words (‘wicked queeah’ for weird, and ‘wicked retahded’ for stupid), but at the time most of the people saying things had no idea of the alternate meanings.

But through the years most of those terms have come and gone … thankfully. Being inclusive means not making others feel victimized for whatever my describe them in terms of race, physical situation, religion, cultural background, or anything else.

I remember being taken aback many years ago when we were doing wedding planning, being told that when having discussions with places we should ‘Jew them down’ … my initial reaction was a genuine ‘what?!?’ and after repeating I was just flabbergasted, and it is a moment that sticks with me to this day. It was an expression I’d never heard, and growing up with so many Jewish friends I was really taken aback. But there was never any offense intended – it was just a figure of speech from a different time.

Yet there are plenty of things that we STILL see all around, things like:

– Medical conditions: OCD / ADD / Bipolar / Depressed / Retarded and so on …
– Sexual orientation as a put down: ‘That’s so Gay’

There are lists here, here and here … but suffice to say that just like you would never see a couple of hairs in your shower and say ‘ugh, I’m a total cancer patient’ (I hope!), you should also remove all of the ‘I’m so OCD’ things from your litany of sayings.

So while I hate to use one of my fave bloggers as an example, but Suz used the expression ‘Indian-giver’ in a recent post, which is another expression I thought had been lost in the 70s … but apparently has stayed around without any regard for the origin of the expression (apparently the Kardashian klan makes a habit of native offenses). But here is a snippet of the meaning:

“Indian-giver” is a derogatory term for someone who gives something away and then asks for it back. It was coined during the struggle for land when settlers came to the new world. Many tried to “buy” land with trinkets from various tribes of American Indians, who at the time “had no concept of land ownership,” according to Waters. “[American Indians], in their conversations with settlers, did not understand that they were signing over the land.”

Now Suz made the great move to annotate the saying with a note and apology for possible offense – which is honestly much better than deleting it! And anyone who knows her knows offending anyone is about the LAST thing she’d want to do. So I mention it more as a reminder that sometimes we need to think about the things we are saying – this isn’t about ‘being PC’, but about showing our intelligence and respect for others by substituting out these lazy and offensive expressions.

To end this, there is an interesting article about sexism over at Medium, that says:

When you are a member of an oppressed group, it is difficult to recognize that you share some of your oppressor’s beliefs. But that’s why oppression works. These opinions become ours before we learn how to make our own.

That’s why we need to stop thinking about prejudices in terms of us and them. We are all sexist. We are all racist. Some more so than others, but still.

We are ALL guilty of saying things that offend others that we have no clue are offensive generalizations, or of passing judgments on other people, or otherwise doing or saying things that when brought to attention are not things we would choose to repeat. I can remember things from when I was a kid, I’m sure we all can. The trick is instead of getting defensive and complaining about the ‘PC police’, to just take a second and make a note to change a little saying or habit to make ourselves a better global citizen.

Bonus: Yeah, Enough Driving into Runner/Bikers/etc already

I have talked about this a lot, how we as drivers need to do our best to pay attention, and as people in general need to try to make the roads safe for everyone to share through whatever means possible. Because there was another case last week, this one local enough to me that members of one of the local running clubs were attending the funeral.

State police recently revealed that 33-year old Jason Townsend, of Nichols, N.Y. was arrested on Saturday as the suspect in a hit and run accident that occurred at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday. According to initial police reports, Daniel and Karen Manwaring were jogging along West Whitcomb Hill Road in the Town of Tioga when a blue Nissan XTerra hit them.

So what has been annoying YOU!?!

Inspiring Blogger Take 2, the Epic Story Edition!

Hey everyone! Happy Wednesday – yeah I know I skipped posting Tuesday, but when you see the length of this post you’ll understand why! haha

A few weeks ago I did a post based on nominations for the Very Insiring Blogger Award, and rather than the 7 things I chose to do a ‘TMI post’ … which was fun. Since then, I have been nominated 4 more times for the award! Yay! So I wanted to take the time to do another post to share more useless info about myself!

As a reminder, the steps for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award are as follows:

1. Thank the person who nominated you. Thanks again!
2. Add the Very Inspiring Blogger Award to your post-done
3. Share seven things about yourself.
4 & 5. Nominate a list of bloggers that inspire you and (5) Post on their blog about it.

I definitely want to thank Laura, Sara and Kate – two of my very favorite ladies and a new blog I am following!

I have decided to do ‘7 stories’ similar to Spiritual Creaminess … though not taking the ‘full post narrative’ approach! I decided to do a set of ‘small’ anecdotes … let’s see how it goes!

1. The Story of Our Dogs – And the Nearly-Fatal Cookie Platter

If someone ever told me I would pay $2000 per dog for pure-breeds rather than getting a dog from the pound … I would have laughed at you. Lisa and I had talked about it – we loved breeds like beagles and so on, but wanted the kids to be a few years older before getting a dog. As the kids started school we decided we were ready to start looking at dogs, but there were two fairly major things:

– Lisa had always had allergies (including significant dog allergies) … but after having kids they got worse.
– Christopher was already taking allergy shots, because if a dog licked him his entire face would break out with hives.

So we had to do some research, and find dogs that would work with Lisa & Chris’ allergies. We came up with a few breeds of terriers and poodles. The boys loved the looks of the small-ish terriers – Norwich, Norfolk, etc … not small and fragile like a Yorkie (more of a toy dog, really), but a classic ‘sporting’ terrier that was high energy and ‘sturdy’.

We found a breeder in our area and were able to basically ‘pre-order’ a puppy … basically we were on a wait-list depending on the size of the litter. We needed to sign a ‘no show’ and ‘no breed’ agreement, which was fine … and 8 weeks later we had our baby Rosie! She was all terrier – led by her nose and nearly boundless energy, she was mountain climbing with our cub scout troop at 3 months old, and has never stopped since.

Two years later we got Riley … by this point the breeder had closed their ‘shop’ and moved to central Massachusetts and focused exclusively on breeding and showing rather than being a full-service kennel as well. When we were getting Riley, they were still building out their house, yet had one litter of Norfolk Terriers, and THREE Weimaraner litters at once, with more than 22 babies all at the same time! Riley ended up with worms – they said they were having an issue – but even worse, we put Riley there to board because we were going on vacation a week later and thought it made more sense to board there … and he ended up with Lime’s disease, which deteriorated his vision. Yay.

But ever the indomitable spirit, that winter Riley taught us the value of crating. We used to have the dogs gated in the kitchen & dining room area of the house when we went out. They were too small to get over the gates, too big to get under or between them. It was holiday cookie swap time, and we had a big tightly plastic wrapped tray set for a party the next day … but since it was up on the counter, no problem – right?!?

Well … when we got home the platter was on the floor and there were NO cookies left and Rosie was panting and looking BAD … OH. NO.

What we surmised happened was that Riley got up on the chair, then to the table and counter, dragged the platter around and knocked it down … but then couldn’t get down to get at the platter. Rosie figured it out and ripped through the plastic and ate most of it before Riley jumped down.

Riley was fine – a little sick to his stomach, but no big deal. Rosie spent a week in the emergency vet center near us in a very bad state, really not good for a couple of days … but made it through. That week we went and bought a fold-up crate that goes everywhere with us, and they are in if we leave the house. As for Rosie, she STILL leads with her nose and with a ‘eat first ask questions later’ approach!

2. Taking a Pay Cut for a Better Standard of Living

I am not one to get into personal details such as money, but something Suz said about affordable beer reminded me of the learning experience I went through when job hunting back in late 2007. As Laura is talking about her upcoming move, Ange had a rather sudden move, and Sara recently moved as well. Whenever you move, you need to realize that you are getting into not just a different physical location – but perhaps also a different economic environment!

Before coming out to Corning, I had four offers – in Boston, Seattle, Charlotte and Corning.

Now anyone familiar with those locations can guess hat no two have the same standard of living (well, Boston and Seattle would be closest). That makes evaluating offers very difficult – and also meant a load of time making lists and using spreadsheets. Ultimately it came down to Seattle or Corning – much as I love Boston, I saw now future with the company and the economy was already flailing there.

Seattle and Corning are very far apart in terms of pretty much everything, but for us the main things were good schools, decent house, not a huge commute, and overall cost of living. In Seattle, the best schools were either in super-expensive areas or a long commute … and the more we looked, the more the compromise wasn’t going to work. But along the way we had to get past the $ number on the offer … and that went back to something I remember as a 23 year old sitting at a job fair with a guy who was about the age I am now, offering me unsolicited advice:

Don’t get so focused on the dollars that you lose sight of what goes into them.
Corning is pretty much a one-company town, so coming here meant committing to this company, because if things didn’t work out we’d pretty much have to move. But at the same time we were able to get an all-new house with more than twice the square footage as we had back in Townsend … and the schools are incredibly well resourced and equipped (so long as you are in one of two ‘Corning employee centric’ towns, that is).

So while the number on the offer might be smaller, that doesn’t mean you are actually getting less.

3. The Strip Club Story

Despite apparently being a creepy basement dwelling troll (according to GOMI, anyway), I really have never had an interest in strip clubs. In fact, one major thing I told my brother before my bachelor party was NO strip clubs; heck, I’ve never been to a Hooters! The whole thing … well, I shouldn’t have to elaborate on exactly WHY it bugs me at this point of my blog-life …

But I have been to a strip club … once.

It was the fall of 1985 and I was a college sophomore and an ‘associate member’ (pledge) in my fraternity, and one activity we had to do was called a ‘pub chase’. The drinking age was just shifting to 21 with everyone 19 and older when it changed was ‘grandfathered’ … so it was a different time. The rules of the ‘pub chase’ were that we had to find a bar and stay there from a start time until a finish time, and if we weren’t found we would ‘win’ and they would serve us dinner, otherwise we would have to serve them the next night. The interesting question you probably DON’T have is how we check in at the end of time? We call back to the fraternity house at the end, then the brothers check in to get our location. Ah the days before cell phones!

We were given an hour head-start, and since Saratoga is relatively close to Troy, it wasn’t a big deal to get there. When we did we hit a gas station and asked about local bars, then went to a ‘local’ bar (that was way too obvious) and asked some guys at the bar about the most off-beat bar they knew. One guy responded immediately and we said ‘no, that was too quick’, then another guy had an idea but the bartender shot that one down as too familiar for college kids. Then someone on the periphery said ‘ooh, I got it – Shooters’. The rest of the crowd was silent and puzzled, then a couple of nods started as they realized where it was and explained to those with no clue – we had our place!

So we head to the bar … a non-descript dive in a non-descript small plaza on a less traveled road way outside of the normal popular areas. And we waited … and waited … and no one showed up. Every time a car entered the plaza we thought we were done. But not – no one ever showed. So we won. And let me be clear – we were NOT supposed to win. This was SUPPOSED to be an exercise in futility, concluded with us buying drinks and then cooking dinner and serving MORE drinks the following night as the brothers had a laugh at our expense and we ‘learned’ something. Being honorable guys they followed through on their end … but were not pleased to have lost. But that is another story …

We called the house and let them know, said our goodbyes to the bartender (this was NOT a hotspot), and headed out.

As we were on a road none of us had traveled (I forget, maybe 9N?), we got directions back to Troy from the bar, and headed out. A short distance down the road there was another bar, but as we got closer it was clear it was a really awful looking strip club. The person driving said ‘let’s go in’ … and while for a couple of us it was very much ‘not our bag’, we were all pumped up after winning the challenge so we went with it!

And once inside the no-cover-charge strip club and it was every bit as bad as it seemed from the outside. We were informed they were in between shows so we sat down. Half us WERE ‘grandfathered’ and half were not, so we got a mix of beer and soda (though alcohol to kill anything in the glasses was probably advisable). Soon there was a girl wearing very little clothing carrying a boom box onto the small ‘stage’. She pressed play, started dancing and taking off the little clothes she was wearing (and yes, it was as sad a situation as it sounds, even without hte filter of time and age). A few people threw dollar bills on the stage, but largely the crowd was quiet and motionless – we all found it more than a little bizarre.

Then the song ended and there was silence between songs while the girl continued to dance, and suddenly from the other side of the bar a guy said, not too loudly … “I got a boner”.
The music started again, I looked at the other guys and we all nodded that we were ready to go. But before leaving we all left a dollar – I said ‘that moment alone is worth at least a dollar’. We headed out to the car and were all howling with laughter – when we got back to the house no one could believe we’d actually gone IN to that place, and the story has lived on.

4. I Only Ran >5 Miles ONCE Before 2012 … By Accident!

I have talked a lot about my running history, saying that until 2012 I never really ran more than ~15-20 miles per week. But back in the early 1990s I was traveling for work and was in Gainesville, FL doing installation and training on a research instrument at the University of Florida, and of course I wanted to head out for a run.

So I glanced at the map I got from the car rental place – again, pretty much no cell phones, no web, no GPS – and saw a route that looked like 4-5 miles. It was winter and due to flight schedules I had come out on a Sunday, so I was actually running in the late afternoon.

So I was out running, it was about 70 degrees (compared to snowy and 20 back home), and I really wanted to relish the time I had – so I looked down the road and saw another set of lights a short distance away and kept going, figuring adding another block wouldn’t be a big deal. But without a map or GPS, I didn’t know that at the next light the road sloped sharpy away, and didn’t have another intersection for a while. And since I was only planning 4-5 miles … no water.

So I kept running … and running … and running and was finally back heading towards the hotel. I got there, drenched and exhausted – and I checked my mileage, again using the basic estimate off the map. I had done over 9 miles … about DOUBLE my longest run to date … and a distance I wouldn’t see again for another 20 years!

5. Don’t Worry – Everyone Speaks English!

In high school I took Latin, and while it is not really taught anymore, I give it a lot of credit in helping me with linguistics through the years. Lisa says it is more that I am a natural with languages, but I think Latin helps!

When I was working my first job and doing the joint project with a professor at UPenn, the lead scientist at the main company research center in Germany was also involved. So naturally there were visits all around, and finally I was headed to Germany! I had taken some time to learn German, and it seemed to flow pretty naturally, and I had practiced on a couple of German-speakers and felt OK.

Side story – this was the year before Lisa and I got married, we were engaged but she was still living in Albany. The weekend before I left, our friends were getting married – actually they were Lisa’s friends, but all four of us quickly became friends and I ended up as an usher at their wedding. Cut to the chase, Lisa got ‘blotto’ at the wedding, and was in rough shape the next morning … but I had to drive back to Boston, grab my bags and head to the airport. Her father was giving her crap about being sick and hung-over, I was trying to say goodbye … it is one of those ‘funny looking back’ moments.

So I flew to Germany, and given it was 1991 I was surprised to see airport security with full military gear and automatic weapons by where they were checking passports and bags. Again, changing times. I was able to get through customs, get to the train station, get a ticket and head towards Karlsruhe. There wasn’t a lot of conversation needed, and it gave me the chance to say a few words in German.

Once in Karlsruhe I was supposed to grab a cab to the facility – and the driver didn’t speak any English. Fortunately I knew how to put together enough sentences to get myself where I needed and pay him for the ride. I had flown the red-eye so I got in relatively early in the morning, and actually had a bit of time before people arrived – so I wandered around the area a bit, and ran into shops and people … none of whom spoke English either at all or very well. It set me off guard a bit, but I was rolling with it – again thankful for my studies and skills.

At the research center that day, I was ‘buddied up’ with an American ex-pat for most of the week who enjoyed having an English speaker, but laughed at my being told I didn’t need to speak German. Sure, he said – if you plan to not do anything local you can get by. And since my desire was to actually experience the culture – Karlsruhe is in that area that has gone back and forth between Germany and France through the centuries and bears marks of both cultures.

So I spent every evening the rest of the week entirely out of my comfort zone, mangling the German language with people who enjoyed my attempts and youthful enthusiasm … I had great food, great beer and a great view of the culture I’ll never forget.

6. Lost at Sea!

For our honeymoon we went to Sandals in Antigua, and it was just an incredible time – we didn’t join in too many group activities (except when Lisa volunteered me to play with the band), no separate boys & girls things … just the two of us having an absolute blast the whole time. We played lawn-chess, took out kayaks, lots of tennis, hot & cold baths, read on the beaches, had fancy and casual dinners, did snorkeling, hit town and so on. Like I said, it was awesome.

But one of the most memorable / embarassing moments was when we took the two-person paddleboat out. It was getting later in the day, and we were having fun and headed out pretty far from shore … but then the tide started going out and we were struggling to get back in. Now we were both young and in good shape, and also full of pride so we weren’t going to give up easily.

We kept paddling and slowly we overcame the tide and started making progress towards shore … but then a power boat came up and one of the very friendly but insistent beach workers said ‘ya mon, we want to go home now’ and they had a great chuckle at our expense.

And when we got to shore, everyone there was joking with us – one person saying the boats weren’t made to go to other islands, and so on. It was funny but definitely embarassing!

7. The First ‘Date’ That Nearly Wasn’t

I write all the time about my family, most of all my wife Lisa. That is because she is the center of the universe and has been for the majority of my life at this point. This year we celebrate 22 years of marriage, and have known each other more than 27 years. But there was one pivotal night that could easily have destroyed any chance of a future, but instead cemented our relationship and made us inseparable. I wrote about it here, but I think it is a pretty cool story, and want to share it again.

Lisa and I met in college through a mutual friend at a fraternity party at my house (Theta Xi). It was fairly typical – girls traveling as friends, but as soon as our friend met up with her boyfriend, she ditched Lisa. We hung out at parties several times that year (she was a senior, I was a junior), but never connected after she graduated. To each other we were just nice people we had met and would never see again.

Fast forward to after I was out of school and living back in the Boston area. Our friend was coming out for a visit, so the three of us got together and had a pretty fun time, but I was in the midst of my weight loss and she was living in a crappy apartment and dealing with other stuff, so neither of us made contact and we didn’t connect again until the following spring. Again our friend was visiting, and she and I met and then headed to Brigham & Woman’s Hospital where Lisa was working. When she came out … well, it is a moment I won’t forget. I was in a totally different place, and so was she and we hit it off from the first moment and it was just an epic great day.

Lisa was planning to head to Albany the next weekend and I had planned to visit the fraternity, so I offered her a ride there (we were coming back on different days) and we had a great chat across the 3.5 hour drive. We both wanted to hang out again, so set up to go out the following weekend. When she was back we made more specific plans – we were going to head to Chinatown for dinner, hang out around various places in Boston, and generally just have a relaxing night. Oh, and most importantly, we decided that a great central place to meet would be the Dunkin’ Donuts at Park Street station.

The only problem – there are TWO Dunkin’ Donuts at Park street … one on the inside that only people coming from the north can see, and the other on the street where people coming from the south would depart!

You can probably see where this is heading – in an era before cell phones, where there was no way to reach each other unless we checked in at home, there was little to do but wait. I hung out up top for about a half hour, then hit a pay phone and called her answering machine (cost me a dime, too! Talk about old school!) Waited some more and then called again. During that time I did head back into the station as far as I could go without paying again a few times.

Needless to say I was pretty crushed. I was dressed nicely and ready for a great time.

The last time I headed down I hit a crowd coming up from the trains, and looked through to see if Lisa was there. But then as I came back up and looked back over towards the train station – guess who I saw emerging from the other stairway? That is right!

And as I headed over, Lisa turned and spotted me … and we ran and met each other with a massive hug! After a little bit we got a bit awkward and separated and all of that anger and disappointment quickly turned to laughter as I pointed out the Dunkin’ Donuts up top and she pointed out the one below! From there we had a great night in Chinatown, Faneuil Hall, and so on. We walked around and ended up back at her Somerville apartment late, where I crashed on the couch.

She had gotten dressed up as well and looked really nice, and we had the most fabulous time. I call it a ‘date’ because we wouldn’t kiss for more than two months after that. We had grown into friends so quickly, and she had a neighbor who spoke to me in a way that seemed to assert ‘territory’ with her, and honestly I didn’t think she was into me ‘in that way’.

When I look back at the beginnings of our relationship there are two moments that come to mind – meeting eyes with her that day at the Brigham, and the hug and subsequent night in Boston. You see, we had communicated only a casual ‘hanging out’ … yet both of us were very much dressed up. And neither of us gave up – it meant a lot to both of us. Nor did we hold grudges or seek to assign blame – it was an honest case of miscommunication, and it dissipated as we had a great night, turning now into one of those stories our kids have heard hundreds of times.

Of course, today this entire thing would have been solved in two quick texts and a chuckle. I wonder how that would have changed things?

Do you have a story from the time you met someone in your life?

Nominations

I have been following a couple of new blogs and wanted to get them to share some TMI stories in whatever way they wanted. Here goes:

Sami from Peace Love and Ice Cream has just re-started her blog after several months away!

The Running Schlub

Comments? Still awake? Alive? I apologize if you planned a post for today, but apparently I used #allthewordz!

Randomly Random Stuff of Randomness

It seems lately I have had a steady stream of rather serious and heavy posts, but at the same time I have been amassing drafts and filling up my ‘junk draft’ with stuff – so it is time to purge with a ‘thinking out loud‘ theme! And so … let’s get to it …

1. You Really Never Know!
In a comment last week Megan said “I just have no idea how you put out so MUCH content without putting junk out there” – and here is the thing … neither do I.

This was originally where I had what became the Continuous Trust Fall post. It is still interesting to me what gains traction, and also how I can have an idea that seems like a throwaway and then suddenly there is a post! Like today … what started as a random collection of recent stuff gained at least somewhat of a theme as I went along … hope you enjoy! 🙂

2. Dreams Followed

Here is a random one based on the ‘passion over paycheck’ post – last week in our area one of the engineers in our group found a new bakery that had opened. Turns out that it was someone a couple of people had worked with, and he had always expressed interest in opening a wood-fired bread bakery when he retired.

He calls the place “Ash Hole Makers of Dough” – yeah, the name … but the bread? Awesome! Oh – and if you are ever doing the Wineglass Marathon or coming through Corning, check it out!

3. Diner Micro-review: Maple Lawn Dairy Restaurant

OK, I love how Hollie does her diner reviews, they are fun and seem like they would be functionally useful for folks in the area. Plus it is never bad to look at pictures of the monster cakes and sundaes she gets!

On our way to New York City for vacation, we asked around about a place to go and were told about the Maple Lawn Dairy Restaurant, and since it was along the way … we stopped.

– Atmosphere: it really IS both a dairy and a restaurant! You walk through the ice cream place as you go to get seated … and in that moment you want to stop and say “I think I’ll have a sundae for breakfast!” The place looks more like a family-style casual eatery than a diner, with plenty of windows and natural light – so we could also see it was really clean.
– Coffee: diner coffee, but good! We only had a couple of cups each – because we still had more than a four hour drive! But it was good enough that we would have had more.
– Food: Between us we had two specialty omelettes, one Belgian waffle, and I got the jumbo breakfast wrap. The portions were huge – none of us left remotely hungry, and there was food left behind on most of the plates.
– Price: Four people, huge breakfasts, and a total including tip of $50.
– Overall Thoughts / Would I Come Back: One great thing – our waitress brought us a French toast sample plate while we decided, and the staff in general were incredibly friendly and helpful. They have a rewards program that immediately gives you a discount coupon – and my older son and his girlfriend already returned for another awesome breakfast.

This is one of the best breakfast places in the area, a bit off the highway and about 30 minutes east of Corning. Again, if you are coming for Wineglass or just driving through the area – worth a stop!

4. Amazon Kindle Unlimited and Prime Music

Do you love to read? If so check out Kindle Unlimited – it is $9.99 per month, on top of Amazon Prime if you have it. The selection is somewhat limited now, but does include audiobook versions of more than 1200 books. It includes things like ‘Life of Pi’ as well as the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Hunger Games series. The estimate I would make is that if you read more than a couple of books a month it pays for itself.

If you DO have Amazon Prime … you should really check out Prime Music. They JUST added hundreds of thousands more songs (it launched with over a million), and also hundreds of cool pre-fab playlists. The really cool thing is that you can add the music included with Prime directly to your music library, and can then download to your devices to play on the go without any internet access.

5. Running For a Reason

I have talked about Laura’s run across America before, and this week she wrote in frustration about the challenges in finding sponsorship for her cause, which is sexual violence. It is sad that what seems like such an easy cause to support should be proving difficult:

As women, we view the world differently because of what we’ve been told to be afraid of. We may even trust differently, and have learned to be suspicious first. We’ve also been told that rape could be our fault if we behave in certain ways, and I know that is a thought that has passed through my mind as I make decisions (although I contradict it, it’s still there). Please note: it is never our fault.

As I spoke to a potential corporate sponsor on Friday, she was initially excited about the run. But then she found out what cause I was running for, and I was told, verbatim, that this was “not a cause they would choose to align themselves with.”

Again – I find this really sad. And so I want to again encourage everyone to check out her site, her fundraising page, and even her Amazon Wish List and see what you can possibly do to help.

6. 8 Signs of a Relationship Gone Wrong

Speaking of Laura’s cause, over at UpWorthy this week they provided the following graphic and also the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233. It is sad that any of this needed … but it is, very much.

7. My Family Went to New York, and all I got …

Was a new debit card.

True story – last Thursday night Lisa and I were paying a few bills and noticed an odd $0.25 charge from a New York parking garage. All I could think was it was possibly related to our parking garage where we stayed, or maybe the Metro … but none of it seemed right. We made a note to keep an eye on our account.

The next morning Lisa got a call from our bank (Corning Credit Union), who had detected suspicious account activity … and we discovered that the $0.25 was the second ‘test charge’ (the other one was immediately reversed) and that someone had attempted a shopping spree with the card before it got shut down.

That afternoon we were in the branch office going through everything, and they had dealt with all of the charges except for a few that were still pending, and none of it was our responsibility. They shredded my card and issues a new one, and everything was handled incredibly quickly and easily.

I had gotten a new card because I made one trip to Target before their whole system got hacked, and now I just got another one. But what really struck me was the level of fast and friendly customer service we got during the whole process. It made a potentially awful situation much less stressful.

8. Overcoming Negative Thoughts

I loved the post by Harold at Runnah.com where he did his own version of ‘Overcoming Negative Thoughts’ … which was a great post by Christine at Love Life Surf.

Here are her basic thoughts:
1.Write about it.
2.Let it go.
3.Remember what you have accomplished.
4.A good coach helps too.
5.Believe you can fly.

Both posts are great and worth reading, and a great reminder of how negative thoughts can consume us and how important it is to purge them from our lives.

9. Speaking of Runnah.com

When I did my ‘blog process’ write-up, I nominated three wonderful people. But then I was surprised to see that Harold had done his own process post! Why? Because he is generally not a huge fan of these things … but I LOVED that he did it, so wanted to share it here.

Since I am off the running routine for a bit (one of those freak injuries), I have looked for things to blog about and after reading Mike’s blog today about the Blog Writing Tour, I decided to invite myself into the party :-).

I know, I know it probably is not good form, but…hey this seemed like fun and sometimes you just have to take the bull by the horns and do it.

Check it out, and also Lauren, Michele and Sara!

10. Watching Out for Emotional Manipulation

As all of us know, there are many ways to cause pain that do not leave a mark. Many of us deal with emotional manipulators in our lives – they are easy to spot, because they are the ones who will do something to you (or not do something they promised) and yet YOU end up apologizing. There is a great post on 8 ways to spot emotional manipulation – and freeing yourself from emotionally manipulative relationships can be one of the greatest gifts you will ever give yourself:

If you have a headache an emotional manipulator will have a brain tumor! No matter what your situation is the emotional manipulator has probably been there or is there now – but only ten times worse. It’s hard after a period of time to feel emotionally connected to an emotional manipulator because they have a way of de-railing conversations and putting the spotlight back on themselves. If you call them on this behavior they will likely become deeply wounded or very petulant and call you selfish – or claim that it is you who are always in the spotlight. The thing is that even tho you know this is not the case you are left with the impossible task of proving it. Don’t bother – TRUST your gut and walk away!

11. GOMI Good or Bad

Hollie referenced the ‘snarktastic’ site called ‘Get Off My Internets’, or GOMI, in a post this week. The basis of the forum site is based on people creating threads that reference a site in a number of categories. Most of the sites I track and that comment on mine are in either Running Blogs or Healthy Living categories.

In general, no one creates a thread for a positive reason. Sure there are supporters of bloggers who will post, but the preponderance of thoughts are negative – hate reading, criticizing content or style or appearance … and most positive comments are made in the context of a comparison used to criticize someone else.

As for me? I get a single reference in a thread about Sara at Loving On The Run … . Given that (a) I’m older than most of the people I follow by at least 10-15 years (b) I’m a guy and most of the blogs I follow are by women and (c) that I write the comments I do … well, I wasn’t surprised by what was written:

mirulhi said
Plus: Who is this self-righteous weirdo (https://txa1265.wordpress.com/) who comments daily on her crap? Maybe it’s just me, but for some random, old, married dude to be excited to read “a peek into who you are as a person, wife, and runner” seems super creepy. Besides, he posts on his own blog too many late-middle-age man full-length mirror selfies. *shudder*

I KNOWWW!! Everytime that guy comments I get super creeped out. I just know he’s at home, poring over her blog/Twitter/Instagram having dirty thoughts. He loves to dole out relationship advice too.

If you read anything else in that thread you’ll see that I make out better than Sara. Similarly I find many people are pretty harsh on Hollie … and when I was looking there I noted they now have a thread on The Suz … ugh, just not nice. Personally I can’t change the gender and age distribution of our community, and since I thoroughly enjoy our interactions, my approach has always been total transparency with Lisa about, as she calls it, my running cult’ 🙂

To be honest, GOMI is FAR from the worst or harshest forum site I have spent time on, and a lot of it comes across rather pedantic, as well as tired, hackneyed, petulant and immature. Certainly compared to some game forums it is positively sedate!

But it is also worth noting that there is a place for this type of criticism. I have talked about the lack of constructive feedback and the overly-positive nature of things … GOMI helps provide an outlet off-blog for people to talk about things. Of course, I think a firect approach would always be better – if you have an issue with a blogger, drop an email.

12. Oldest Sub-4:20 Miler

Since I am 48 I was drawn to this article about a 48 year old runner becoming the oldest to run a sub-4:20 mile. On the one hand I think I look younger … but on the other I look nothing like him rounding the track! haha Check out the video:

13. Random Randoms

– Danielle has a great new featured column at Women’s Running’s Competitor site about sweating – it is awesome and 100% Classic T-Rex! Check It Out

– Shamus has fun poking at the new music service Milk … which is basically radio. Not reinvented, not ‘for the next generation’ … just radio.

– Worst Conflict Resolution Ever – So a guy emails his wife about why he won’t miss her on her 10 day trip, using a tabulation of denied sex requests as a backdrop. So yeah, actually you should head to the original Reddit page … great comments, really sad situation. Nothing is clear except that the level of communications and intimacy in the relationship is dreadfully poor. As many there say, if he has a 7 week detailed spreadsheet with verbatim responses … how long has he been mentally tracking, and how long has it bugged him before … and what was his level of communication about the situation, and how involved was SHE in any of this. To be at this point at 26? Wow … even MORE sad.

– New ’10 Days of You’ posts – you know that Sara got me hooked on this (and is down to her 3 films), and now Laurel has picked it up with her 10 secrets post. My faves? Her talent for learning song lyrics and “I will sometimes sleep in my running outfit so I have one less excuse”. haha!

– 15 ‘Not to Do’ List Items – one way Megan is changing up is posting more things that would be blogs on Facebook – like this. My only addition would “Don’t allow others to dictate your personal boundaries.”

14. Colby Callait’s “Try” – Great Message

Lisa was singing this song and wanted to share it, so we looked on YouTube and found the video and played it. The video was about honestly representing yourself – no Photoshop or other dishonest alterations.

Here is the video:

Sara shared the video as well based on this powerful message. And linked to a site where Callait shared some thoughts:

When I see gorgeous models and singers and they look perfect on their album covers, it makes me want to look like that, too, and it makes me feel like if I don’t Photoshop my skin on my album cover, I’m the one who’s going to look a little off and everyone else is going to look perfect. And that’s what everyone is used to seeing.

They’re used to seeing people on the album covers completely Photoshopped. On one of my album covers, my arm was shaved down and it made me look very skinny. I think that gives a false reality.

So What Random Thoughts Do You Have Today?

Wednesday Wandering Mind, “I Run …”, Stopping the Streak, and My ‘8 Fears’

It has been a while since I did one of these Wandering Mind posts, but not for a lack of randomness! Since I have so much stuff … let’s get right to it!

1. Shaking Up The Workplace

A really interesting article at HuffPo last week looked at the worst places in the world to work. The worst places had obvious problems such as “murder and disappearance are regularly used to intimidate workers”. Denmark was the only country to meet all 97 worker’s rights criteria. How did WE do? Not so great … and really not a surprise to me.

The U.S., embarrassingly, scored a 4, indicating “systematic violations” and “serious efforts to crush the collective voice of workers.”

OK, that is fine – but what should YOU do?

Well, a few articles this week look at a variety of options. First off, you might need to deal with shifting workplace standards like this woman who suddenly found herself with a much younger boss. Personally for me the difficulty has always been the boss themselves, never the age – old, young, same age … who cares, doesn’t matter is they are good. Actually doesn’t matter is they aren’t good either – except that perhaps there is the opportunity for feedback to help them out more if they are younger (and if they are older and are lousy, that is really unfortunate).

You might even try to make big changes at your company – I know I read these posts about good and bad habits of various companies and see both sides in pretty much every company I have worked for or worked with.

But, ultimately maybe you have found yourself in a job or company you know you hate – check out this list of 10 reasons you need to quit your job in 2014 and see if it is time for a change.

2. National Running Day

Cori is hosting a link-up for National Running Day, and while we discussed the insular nature of many of these sorts of things (i.e. most of us will ‘run for running day’ … same as any other Wednesday), I still think that any effort to get people moving is a good thing – even if it is a ‘greeting card holiday’ (e.g. Brooks is sponsoring some of the efforts around, which gives them free advertising).

For my ‘story’ … well, I am going to be lazy and just refer back to my posts on the story – because it was just last week! Here is part one, and part two – which point to my guest posts for Laura here and here.

For today? Like I said, I got up and ran. And with no watch, no GPS, nothing – and I tried to mix up my route as much as possible in the time I have. Did about 9 or so miles, and felt lighter and speedier than I have since last week.

3. Powerful, Poignant Slam Poetry

My kids participate in an after school club called ‘WAS”, which stands for ‘wider arts society’. My older son did a slam poem at one meeting recently, and he previewed it to use … powerful stuff. This video was put up on YouTube a month or so ago and I have had it in a ‘drafts for later’ post ever since. It is something everyone should watch … and if it doesn’t move you, check your pulse.

4. On the Santa Barbara City College Shootings – Yes, The Onion is Satire, But …

I don’t even know where to start with the recent mass killing in California, but it was interesting that The Onion did a take that was poignant enough that there wasn’t the normal confusion over whether or not it was real, and people on my Facebook link just expressed sadness. I am not sure exactly what to do with that … but I’m pretty sure that it is meaningful.

Also, Mark Manson has an article on how we miss the point on these shootings. Thought provoking stuff.

5. Ending My Runner’s World Streak

I talked about the brutal hill repeats I did with my 12.5 mile run on Sunday on Instagram, and coming after my 14.5 mile long flat run on Saturday, as well as coming after 3 rest days in all of May … well, my body was telling me on Sunday that it was exhausted.

So I woke up on Monday ready to NOT run … and that was exactly what my body was telling me. I got up out of bed … then went back to sleep. Because a running streak is essentially meaningless – but listening to your body, is incredibly important.

6. Own Your Happiness

The other day Suz talked about regrets, and Sara in her ’10 Day You’ post ‘called BS’ on people who “don’t have at least one thing they wish they could go back and change.”

Over at Greatist, they take it a step further – rather than looking backwards, they look at the NOW. What can you do NOW to be mindful of all the little decisions we make every day to control our happiness? It is a fun little read – and it is always worth looking at the things we can do to improve the quality of our lives.

7. OK … just randomness

I love this video of a reporter trying to keep up with elite marathoners at the Stockholm Marathon.

What happens to our body when we stop drinking water?

More on Water – from Medium: ‘An Explanation of Water and Our Bodies’:

I drink lots of water but still feel thirsty!
This happens to a lot of people. Some research groups have calculated that about 95% of North Americans are constantly dehydrated. Normally trying to drink the right amount of water every day can fix this (side note: the ‘correct’ amount of water for you is half your weight in ounces, meaning a 150lb person should drink 75 ounces per day, equal to 2.25 liters), but most people don’t drink that much.

I have talked before how I really don’t like all of these artificial ‘love’ and ‘celebration’ days – Valentine’s, Mother’s, Father’s, Bosses, Grandparents, and so on. I love this Penny Arcade comic on the subject … because regardless of what we say, there are almost always at least minimal expectations.

I am often posting about the BS of the music business, and how much of what we think we ‘choose’ has been force-fed into our brains. So if you think music has become more diverse, or your tastes are ‘I will listen to just about anything’ – there is a REALLY big chance you are very wrong. Why? Because 1% of Artists Earn 77% of Music Revenue. So those few names you hear? The industry makes sure to concentrate YOUR dollars there to keep up their (the executives) revenue streams … which in turn makes a very few people very, very rich. All of whom are mainstream and have massive teams who do most of the work behind whatever you hear.

Are you a fan of the classic story Strega Nona? Here is a Barnes & Noble ‘Online Storytime’ feature on the book.

And finally – and assuming everyone knows already how I would feel about this … “11 Signs You’re A Men’s Rights Activist”

1. You have no problem with the gender wage gap. But you hate having to pay for dates.

2. You insist that it’s a scientifically proven fact that men are stronger than women. But you complain about society believing that it’s worse for a man to hit a woman than for a woman to hit a man.

3. You believe that the age of consent is unfair and that there’s nothing wrong with having sex with teenage girls. But when you find out that a teenage girl enjoys sex, you believe she’s the biggest slut in the world.

4. You hate when a woman automatically assumes that a man is a douchebag before getting to know him. But when you like a woman who likes another man, you assume he’s a douchebag just because he’s not you.

5. You believe that if women want equality, they should be drafted into the military. But you also believe that the military is not a place for women.

6. You hate when women assume that men are like wild animals. But you believe that a woman who doesn’t cover up and make herself invisible to men is just like someone wearing a meat suit around wild animals.

7. You hate the fact that men are bullied for not conforming to their male gender roles. But when you find out that a man disagrees with your beliefs about women’s rights, your immediate response is to try to emasculate him by comparing him to a woman as an insult.

8. You hate when women assume that there are no nice guys. But you call yourself a nice guy and act like it’s a rare quality that should cause women to be all over you.

9. You hate when women assume that men just want to get laid. But when you find out that a man is a feminist, you assume that he’s just doing it to get laid.

10. You hate when women make generalizations about all men. But when a woman calls you out for being sexist, you claim that all men think like you.

11. You insist that women should be responsible for protecting themselves from being raped. But when they follow the one piece of advice that actually works, which is being aware of red flags, you complain about them assuming that all men are rapists.

OK, so now I am up to Day 3, and the theme is Fear.

Day Three: Eight Fears

1. One of the boys dying – they say there is no worse feeling as a parent than losing your child … and honestly I never want to find out.

2. Lisa dying – at this point in my life I know people who have lost spouses. Not to freak accidents, but to cancer and heart attack and so on.

3. Being Unable to Provide for My Family – Getting laid off put the impermanence of things in perspective … and coupled with the info above about the US as a not-so-great place for workers, I worry that something will happen and I will not be able to work and keep us going financially.

4. Being stuck someplace confined – I don’t have severe claustrophobia, but I remember being a kid and having a narrow spot between rocks to get through … twice, and barely making it. Being larger than the other kids didn’t help.

5. Becoming Mentally Incapacitated – the threat of Alzheimer’s disease is very real and very scary. On the good side I look up and down both sides of my family and there is no history of dementia. But the thought of being unable to function in that way scares me.

6. Losing my vision – I am very fortunate to have great vision, but I have also noticed in the last couple of years that my up-close vision isn’t as strong as it used to be, to the point where for really small print I will just use the magnifier on my phone. I know reading glasses are in my future – which is fine … but the thought of being completely unable to rely on good vision? Not fun.

7. Losing My Love for Running – I hope to always remember that awful feeling of trying to restart running in March 2012, because (a) it makes me appreciate how far I’ve come, (b) it helps me empathize with others just starting out and (c) it is a reminder how different my post-thyroid landscape is.

8. Getting Fat – Yeah, this really shouldn’t come as a surprise. I know it is one of few things on this list entirely under my control, but it is still a deeply held fear that motivates me in many good and not-so-good ways.

Bonus. Miles Davis and Keith Jarrett – Last Concert of the Bitches Brew Era

From November of 1971, a DVD was made of the Miles Davis group that disbanded later that month. The group consisted of Miles on trumpet, Gary Bartz on saxophone, Keith Jarrett on electric piano and electric organ, Michael Henderson on electric bass, Leon Chancler on drums, and Mtume and Don Alias on percussion. The band represents the last links to the “Bitches Brew” era. The concert is sublime, and as the DVD is out of print, a YouTube version is available that no one seems worried about taking down.

Here is the entirety of the concert:

So what is wandering through YOUR mind today?

Thinking Out Loud – Sixteen Candles, Americans Hate Jazz and More

After some heavy stuff recently, a nice casual romp sounded like a fun idea. A few quick things that are not related to anything particularly serious. So let’s jump into it!

1. Awesome Wife is Awesome

This week in our house has been largely dominated by Advanced Placement and antibiotics! Advanced Placement courses with proficiency tests at the end have been around for a long time (I took them ages ago) and promise to dress up your college applications and possibly earn you college credit (my AP tests meant not needing to take any humanity courses at all!). Both of my boys had tests this week – Danny had American History yesterday and Chris has World History today. These are challenging, multi-hour tests that do not replace the final exam for the course (or even the Regents exam in New York). So final study and prep has loomed over the house for the past few weeks.

At the same time Danny has been fighting a cold, had one sick day and ended up in the ‘walk-in care’ doctor’s office on Tuesday with a sinus infection – meaning he took a 5 hour AP test 24-hours into anti-biotics! Yay, fun!

Then yesterday morning we really were worried about our older terrier Rosie – she is 10, has some heart issues and we really feel she is headed towards congestive heart failure. But two days ago she started ‘hacking’ and wheezing and had some rough breathing, and it was even worse yesterday morning – so we got an early vet appointment. Fortunately it turned out she had a small infection, and her trachea was irritated and inflamed, and her lungs were clear and heart sounded good! Whew – just antibiotics and a cough suppressant. Today she is already clearly starting to feel better!

After I headed to work yesterday Lisa got in her workout – after I gave the dogs breakfast Rosie normally lays down in bed with Lisa while I go for my run. But she sounded so bad that Lisa was freaking out (her words) and I abandoned my run so we could sit together. It was a long day, and after dinner Lisa was exhausted and just wanted to relax, do her nails and get ready for a work trip today and watch a bad Lifetime movie. She encouraged me to head out for a run, knowing that I am always better with a run and had missed my morning run, filling the space with loads of stress instead! It was awesome … and I really appreciated it! The picture at top is from after my shower …

It reminded me of the post on SuzLyfe about her relationship with her husband and the challenges and how sometimes the best thing to do is to push your spouse to do what is right for them even if they won’t ask for it themselves.

2. Sixteen Candles Turns 30

The fact that I not only saw this in theaters but also paid my own way and drove there along with friends tells me something – I’m old! Haha …

Sixteen Candles is a classic 80’s John Hughes film, with Molly Ringwald as the lead character whose birthday is forgotten in the frenzy surrounding her sister’s wedding. Anthony Michael Hall is perfect as ‘The Geek’, and even John Cusack has a minor role. This is one of those movies I have always loved and seen a million times, and falls in with my favorites of the era – Real Genius, Better Off Dead, Revenge of the Nerds, War Games, etc – as a great ‘must watch’ movie loaded with memorable quotes and moments.

Here is a classic scene with Gedde Watanabe as Long Duk Dong:

Have you ever seen Sixteen Candles? It is one of those that seems to come and go from Amazon Prime and Netflix (rental-only on Amazon now, DVD-only on Netflix).

3. Acclimating to Heat & Humidity

The other day Sara posted on Instagram talking about not being used to the heat, and I snarkily chided her that she wasn’t allowed to complain after the winter we just had! But the reality is that there IS an acclimation period when the temperature shifts very quickly – which is exactly what we’ve seen!

Abby posted a link to an Active.com article looking at what happens as you get used to the heat.

Some of the changes that occur during heat acclimatization include:

– Decreased heart rate, skin and body temperature for a given exercise level
– Blood plasma volume increases, keeping core temperature lower
– Rating of perceived exertion decreases
– Electrolyte concentration in sweat decreases
– Sweat rate increases, allowing more effective cooling
– Renal (kidney) electrolyte concentration decreases, preserving electrolyte levels
– Cutaneous (skin) blood flow improves
– Blood pressure stability improves
– Circulation of blood to muscles improves
– The threshold for sweating decreases and evaporative cooling begins earlier in exercise
– Less reliance on carbohydrate catabolism during exercise

How do YOU deal with it when the temperature suddenly jumps?

4. Why American’s Hate Jazz

I have shared my love for jazz here before – and in particular my love to so-called ‘avant garde’ jazz, stuff that unlike the great Miles Davis ‘Kind of Blue’ (which is both great art and highly accessible) will not simply sit in the background. In college one of the guys in my fraternity drew a picture of a saxophone being tortured which was hilarious. It is my type of music, not for everyone … and I am decades past worrying if anyone else likes it, or debating the merits of the art.

But the fact that jazz accounts for about 3% of total sales means that this great American art form is being practiced by people who need to be willing to trade off money for art. An article over at Dyske.com delves into why Americans (in specific) dislike jazz and improvised instrumental music, with a number of things that are likely to tick some people off … which doesn’t mean they aren’t true. Here is one:

To be able to enjoy instrumental music, you must be able to appreciate abstract art, and that requires a certain amount of effort. Just mindlessly drinking wine, for instance, would not make you a wine connoisseur. Mindlessly looking at colors (which we all do every day) would not make you a color expert either. Great art demands much more from the audience than the popular art does.

He goes on to discuss how the limited musical scope of most popular music of the last 50 years has slowly eroded the ability of an audience to frame an emotional context around non-lyric-based music. Here is one thing he says:

The same happens to instrumental music. If there are no lyrics, that is, if there is nothing for the minds to interpret, projecting of any emotional values becomes rather difficult. As soon as the lyrics speak of love, sex, racism, evil corporations, loneliness, cops, etc., all sorts of emotions swell up. Jazz to most people is like a color on a wall; unless you hung something on it, they don’t even notice it.

I have all sorts of music on my iTunes collection, from jazz to classical to pop and rock and death metal to rap and hip-hop and funk and R&B and folk and electronic and on and on. And I definitely notice that particularly current pop modern hip-hop has shrunk the musical vocabulary to a fairly extreme extent. Generally you can think of it this way – in the past you could play multiple parts of a song (rhythm, two or more harmony patrs, melody) on a piano and have it recognized. Now rhythms are very common and very often replicated from song to song, same for harmonies – and often hip-hop songs are nearly devoid of a core harmonic structure, and that leaves the melody (or key guitar riff in a song like the Stones’ Satisfaction).

The issue isn’t about something being ‘better’, but rather about the potential musical implications of an entire culture eschewing complexity and depth of musical structures. Does it matter? Who knows … all I know is I like what I like, and respect that everyone has their own tastes. So check out the article, or dismiss it as yet more alarmist elitism. 🙂

5. Random Cool Videos

By now many people have seen the ‘cat saves kid’ video, but I’ll share it because it is cool. Basically something is wrong with this dog who works around a minivan and leaps and attacks and drags a kid off his tricycle, only to have the most amazing ninja cat came to the rescue! Check it out:

Another fun one is more of a commercial for the GoPro action camera, but it is so sweet I really don’t care!

Any cool videos
6. More ‘Make You Feel Old’ Stuff

My older son’s girlfriend is a high school senior, headed to Cornell in the fall as part of the college class of 2018. My boys are high school class of 2015 and 2016, and every year there are a number of ‘stuff kids entering high school will never know’ articles.

Buzzfeed looked at “58 Extremely Disappointing Facts About The Class Of 2018”. As always, most of the references are to either outdated technology or forgotten pop culture things that mean something to their parents (or the 20-somethings running Buzzfeed … most of the stuff wouldn’t mean anything to the parents of the class of 2018 either). Anyway, here aer a couple of my favorites:

“Roll down your window” has no meaning.
34. Neither does “don’t touch that dial.”

7. The ‘Outlet Mall’ Ripoff

I think most of us who have shopped at outlet stores for more than a couple decades have seen the changes from when they were messy side-rooms off of a main location where a company could sell off ‘second quality’ or unsold merchandise at a huge discount that would otherwise end up as trash.

The changes I see is the use of ‘outlet malls’ as a secondary retail space – you go to the stores, see many full-price items, some clearance, and some things that SAY they are mark-downs but don’t seem like a great deal.

Over at BuzzFeed they look at the trend of outlets using ‘look-alikes’ – in other words, knock-offs – of their own stuff that they sell at a seemingly low price with a high MSRP that would reflect the first quality goods when originally made.

Here is a quote:

J.Crew, like many other retailers, notes in filings that it sells “a specific line of merchandise” through J.Crew Factory that’s “based on (full-price) products sold in previous seasons” — in other words, it’s kind of a knockoff of itself.

Have you noticed this trend? Do you shop outlets, and if so how do you discern a good deal?

Since I’ve been rambling, I will link up with Amanda for a ‘Thinking Out Loud’!

Bonus #1: Infographics That Promote Reading!

I love reading – though not to the extent of what Laura was tackling earlier this week – and think that things that promote reading are great. Ebookfriendly rounded up seven infographics that promote reading. Here is one:

Bonus #2: More Jazz for You to Hate!

Albert Ayler – Spiritual Unity (no live recording available, sadly)

Derek Bailey – a fave of mine, abandons precepts of rhythm and tonality.

Anthony Braxton – ‘structured freedom’, based on logical and mathmatical concepts.

Peter Brotzman – raw power and emotion, totally visceral stuff.

Sam Newsome – more solo stuff, love all of his recent albums.

Mary Halvorson – my favorite young guitarist, really enjoy her concepts

So what is wandering through YOUR mind today?

Take Care Tuesday – Begin By Loving the Person in the Mirror

For whatever reason, over the last few weeks there have been a number of items that have looked at how to deal with our own self and self-image in a world where we seem judged against unattainable standards. This topic goes way back to this post, as well as something from Laura, and a great post by Amy.

More recently we had the great series from Laura, a heart-felt update from Sara on her struggles, a reminder to appreciate what we have from Megan, and on and on.

What occurs to me is that while we work hard on our running, training, nutrition, cross-training, and so on, we are leaving out something. As Megan says “Remember that even your worst day is better than someone else’s best day” – meaning that rather than wallowing in our struggles, to focus on our gifts. I would take it further – I would say that we need to focus on ourselves, and rather than seeing our own flaws we need to focus on what makes us great and special – we are enough; we deserved to be treated with respect. And that is my thought today – once again I repeat ‘you are enough’, and owning that you ARE enough!

1. Accepting Who You Are

You know the song ‘Valley Girl’ by Frank Zappa? There is a line where she says “Well, I’m not like really ugly or anything. It’s just like … I don’t know!”? Yeah, we are pretty much all like that – very few of us possess an exceptional beauty. And worse still, all most of us only see the worst of ourselves.

The reality is that most of us have imperfections – voice, hair, face, body, brain, internal organs, mannerisms, or whatever – that make us unique but that perhaps we’d like to eliminate.

The key is to realize that these imperfections don’t define who we are, they are just physical manifestations. We are all so much more than any one thing – especially any one physical thing. We deserve love, respect and good treatment.

2. Sometimes It Isn’t About You

This is a bit of a weird one, but have you ever felt lonely in a crowded room? Alone in a group of colleagues or acquaintances? It can be a real esteem-breaker … but maybe it has nothing to do with you.

I have known for many years that I possess a strong ability to remember everyone I meet – if I forget a name, I won’t forget the person. Early on I assumed other people didn’t remember me because I was fat and they didn’t care. Only when I saw it happening all around me did it occur to me that for many people, meeting and remembering others is a challenge.

Yet, it was always a struggle for me to just let it go. If I met someone once, I held no assumptions of them remembering me and was fine re-introducing myself. But by the fourth time, or after a couple of actual conversations, it DOES start to bother me. For a long time I would let it chip away at me, making me feel bad – but several years ago I had a conversation about this with a couple of people, one who couldn’t ever remember names, and the other who couldn’t remember faces – and they both awkwardly did re-introductions and the one who never remembered faces admitted asking ‘have we met’ to people who they’d had dinner with before!

Again, it is very easy to just assume that it is something negative about us – but WHY would or should we do that? Certainly sometimes we are one of many people being introduced and memory expectations should be lower, but when it is a one-to-one introduction in a small setting, each party is equally responsible to remember the other.

3. You Are Fine Just How You Are!

This brings me back to the article I mentioned last month:

The constant struggle to lose weight makes it worse, too. When I physically push myself—really, really hard—make it to the gym two hours a day and five to seven days a week, count literally every calorie, I tend to be able to lose about 10-15 pounds. I’m not happier, of course, because every waking moment is spent calculating and scrutinizing and weighing.

When I do get down that 10 or 15 pounds, I may like the way I look better but the stress to maintain it exhausts me. Then my life happens to me and I “fall off the gym wagon” and I end up right back at the weight I’m at now. The number that’s on my scale now is (give or take five pounds) the number I’ve been at for almost all of my adult life (not including the tail end of my pregnancies), so why can’t I just be okay with it?

It is amazing the things we allow ourselves to use as ‘pass/fail’ metrics for life: friends, car, house/neighborhood, job, title, weight, spouse/significant other, pant size, random physical attribute of choice and so on. Why? What do we gain by limiting ourselves this way? We should be seeking happiness rather than finding reasons for unhappiness.

Remember: You Are Enough

Ultimately we ARE the person in the mirror. We are all of the awesome parts we can’t see, the great things we love about ourselves, flaws we wish we could change, and all the rest of it.

Sometimes we want to make changes on things we can control – change hairstyle, lose weight, catching up on reading classics, improve fitness, learn to play an instrument or whatever – and that is great. But the critical thing is to always ensure that we are doing things for the right reasons: because it is something YOU want to do for yourself.

You should never do things for others. Because you already ARE good enough.

Thought for Tuesday – On Bandits, Blog-Scrapers and Proportional Responses

Thanks for all of the great comments from my Friday post – I am still finishing up my post but will have it up soon enough.

One of my pet peeves in the blog world is using someone else’s content without credit or permission. And that translates into the real world in a few ways that bug me – people who cut in line, managers who take credit for the work of their employees (but always quickly dish the blame), music/video/software pirates, and people who bandit races.

All of these things seemed to be happening this week:
– As we waited for the doors to open at a concert my boys were in that featured the Dallas Brass, things were taking longer setting up … so while the kids were supposed to be there before 6PM, the doors didn’t open until 6:45 (I was there at about 5:40). As I stood by the door I could just watch people honestly waiting in line and others weaseling their way to get in front.
– I came across a post that was so obviously lifted from another post I had read just over a week ago that I was shocked. It was not directly plagiarized, but instead all of the points were used in the same order, just redone in the new author’s own words (for the most part).
– There was a couple of ‘Boston Bib Bandit’ stories, despite tighter security. The wife of Foursquare’s CEO ran with a duplicated bib, and there was a ‘manhunt’ for other duplicate bib-wearers.

In all of these cases, there are three main decisions to be made – this is something I discuss with my kids all the time:
– Did something happen that should bother you?
– Is your basic reaction aligned with the offense (i.e. annoyance, sadness, anger, etc)?
– Is your response proportional to the offense?

Yesterday Amanda at Miss Zippy had a great post about ‘The Boston Marathon Bandits (and glass houses)’, where she talks about the incredible outpouring of hate and ‘witch hunts’ over these bandits, and also how many of us are really in no great place to have such righteous indignation. I replied to her post with the list above, and the following assessment:

And with these internet things, while (1) is generally satisfied, (2) seems to always jump to outrage and (3) is largely out of control.

For those who are totally outraged and wish death upon the ‘bandits’, here is a ‘Pro Tip’: if a casual listener cannot distinguish if you are talking about someone who bandit-ed a race or the marathon bombers … you might just be reacting out of proportion … 🙂

And that sums up my thoughts on all of these things. Here are my follow-up thoughts on the earlier events:
– As I stood waiting and then entered the theater, I could see that one couple who had only recently arrived had managed to push themselves up to just a couple of people behind me. I heard a couple to the side talking, one getting upset at people pushing in who didn’t wait in line, the other saying it really didn’t matter. It is a small theater and even being as near the front as I was, the picture I got was about as good as it gets – the bands sit fairly flat, and so unless you have a flute or clarinet player, you can’t really see your child. I had a tuba (right side, bet you can’t find him) and mallet player (back row just left of center). The sound was great everywhere … and it really didn’t matter.

– As for the ‘borrowed article’ … I contacted the original author, and left it largely to them. They found it bothersome, but decided to leave it alone. And I thought about it – there is only one of a few possible outcomes: the person ignores direct contact, deletes comments and ignores attempts to point out what happened … which leaves the original author even more frustrated and does nothing to resolve the situation. Or, the ‘scraper’ has to basically pull the article and/or write a separate apology post … or at least amend the article to say that it was inspired by the original post. That doesn’t help anyone much either. The only reason I had considered contacting the other author was as a ‘learning lesson’, like I did about attributing info graphics in the past.

– As for the ‘bandits’, there was an article at Tripping the Kenyans I enjoyed that looked at all of this. Specific to the Boston Marathon, I think what they did is clearly wrong – and ‘bib bandits’ are definitely worse than the traditional ‘run at end of race’ bandits … because by wearing a bib, you are consuming resources that were purchased for those who paid an entry fee: photographers, food and water, medals, post-race supplies, and so on. But again, aside from being annoyed that people would do this – the reality is I am pretty much just as upset at those who feel it is justified and it is those who find it wrong are the ones with the problem. But again, it is not something I work myself into a frenzy about.

And ultimately that is my message: before you you hop into comments or Facebook or wherever and suggest that someone should be beaten, raped, arrested or killed because they wore an insensitive Halloween costume … think about my 3-step rules a little, ask yourself:
– Did something happen that should bother you?
– Is your basic reaction aligned with the offense (i.e. annoyance, sadness, anger, etc)?
– Is your response proportional to the offense?

It is too easy on the internet to raise to the level of righteous indignation over the smallest offenses … but generally not worth it. When you get to that level, no one is really listening to you anymore – you are better off saying “I don’t like this, and will do what I can to affect positive change in my own sphere of influence” (except that no one actually talks like that). But you get what I mean – be the change you want to see.

Be the change you want to see; say the things you want to hear; do the things you want to see done.