Home. I got in a couple of hours ago, have been too lazy to unpack. I was afraid I was going to die flying into Denver. We got popped with some heavy turbulence, enough to make my cup on my tray dance around. It was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Returned from SEA
Jan 24th, 2006 by bwann
Yay, Seattle!
It’s chilly and wet here, which is a complete opposite of the 26 C, drought conditions in Austin. It’s great spending time with Alex and Victoria again. As soon as I got here, we spent some time running around down town. I thought Austin and Houston had a lot of food, they have nothing that even comes close to the Pike Place Market. All matter of fresh fish, crustaceans, meat, veggies, fruits, and other handmade sundries.
At the market, I was captivated by some metalwork for sale. This guy had made metal cutouts of an eagle, bears, and salmon, which in themselves aren’t that interesting. These pieces were highly polished, then he had used a torch to heat up parts of the metal to deform it with different shades of blue and black. This gave the salmon eyes, lateral lines, spots along the side, and gave the eagle feathers, facial features, and definition to its talons.
We went to a Japanese supermarket named Uwajimaya downtown. What Pike had for all around fresh food, Uwajimaya had all manner of Japanese food. Fresh fish, oysters, crabs, domestic brand foods? They had ’em. Weird cartoony hard candy, noodles, $3,000 Buddha cabinet, calligraphy sets, Mad Housewife wine, dehydrated minnows in a bag for snacking? They had those too.
I was totally lost while in Seattle. What I felt was North was totally wrong. I blame it on there not being any sun out to give me reference.
Maybe it’s the grass-is-greener thing, it seems like Seattle had a large number of young cute girls running around, moreso than Austin. I suspect most are either UW students, but not all UW students can afford to be running around Nordstrom’s.
Speaking of Nordstroms, in today’s tipping society where we tip for most anything down to the most trivial of tasks, why don’t we tip perfume wenches at the mall? It seems like that’s an unfilled tipping niche, tipping somebody for spraying perfume on you.
Saturday evening, I made pictures of the Space Needle, but avoided being touristy by going to the top. The $10 admission made me reconsider the idea. We met up with Tom, JP, Gwyn, Eric, and Irene over at Hale’s for dinner.
Sunday, we went out to Steven’s Pass. OMG snow! Snowboarding totally broke me. Alex took Tom and I up to the kiddie slope and showed us how things worked. My first goal was to go down a small slope diagonally and back. I busted my knees, elbows, hip, ass, shoulder in all sorts of ways falling down. We predicted I’d be riding goofy-foot, but after a couple of attempts, that wasn’t working and I switched over. Foot by foot I was making some progress. I was happy just to be able to balance on the board. After a while, my knees were the first to go. It became a great effort just to stand up after strapping into my bindings. I eventually learned to roll my ankles in at the same time I tried to stand up, which allowed me to bring my knees forward and down so I could get up that way.
Next was a lesson on the lifts and the first beginner run. By this time my right ankle was cramping and burning like a severe shin splint. I absolutely could not put any weight on it at all. Getting out of the bindings to stretch wasn’t helping. This presented an interesting problem in that I could only go left diagonally, and couldn’t return to the right because I couldn’t keep my weight on my right foot and spun out of control. Eventually I just lined up my board straight down the mountain and sped down… and fell a couple dozen times in a rapid manner. At least once I went tumbling down the hill sideways, my board windmilling along the way and kicking up a plume of powder. wheee!
After one run I called it quits for the night. I knew my ankle wasn’t going to get better, and with 3M just a week away, I did not want to force myself back up and mess myself up to the point I couldn’t run. Apparently Tom got the hang of things; him, Alex and Victoria were out on the slopes for a few more hours.
Dick’s burgers in Seattle is the most awesome burger place evar. “Deluxe” half pounders for $2.00, one-third pound cheeseburgers for $1.00, totally greasy fries and a nickel for ketchup. They are extremely fast, time to order until greasy goodness in hand was under a minute!
I will return to Seattle to solve snowboarding soon.
3M is near!
Jan 17th, 2006 by bwann
3M is approaching!
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I can fly!
Jan 14th, 2006 by bwann
I had a dream last night I could fly. I was doing cartwheels through a pasture.
Why don’t I live in a big house with an expansive shaded back yard with a big gong? and a small creek with a footbridge. and big fucking gold carp swimming in said footbridge. and fire pits!
I’m pissed in a way I haven’t been in a while. I’ve been working nonstop to backend two of our work trips since Wednesday morning, pulled two all nighters, and operating on 5 hours sleep the past 66 hours with little help on my side. The job is just expected to get done. As I get done working with one site, it’s time to work with the other site. When that’s done, it’s time to do the reverse. I’m not even on-call this week. I have been working like mad to get stuff done so I wouldn’t have to work tonight or Saturday. I’ll be damned if I’m stuck at home working all day on a Saturday or miss my morning long run. That’s not happening, because here I am. Maybe I can make it to 70 hours.
I was supposed to have a 14 mile training run at 7 AM, that’s not happening now either. I’ve already missed this week and last week’s Wendesday evening group workouts because of work, along with workouts for the past three days. So help me God, if something comes up that causes me to miss running either of my half-marathon races that I’ve spent nearly every day of the past 6 months training for, I’ll explode.
I was completely confused when a phone call woke me up tonight, I had no idea where I was or even _what_ I was when I tried to answer. For about half an hour I found it amazingly difficult to concentrate. I had no idea even what I was supposed to do, I was so out of it. whee.
My Garmin never arrived today either. Looked up the tracking number, it was delivered to Arizona. What the fuck? eBay sellers are getting on my tits here lately.
Time for a new Mac
Jan 10th, 2006 by bwann
Apple finally came out with Intel-based notebooks. I absolutely hate the name “MacBook Pro.” I’m seriously considering buying one. The price isn’t too bad. So far my G4 Powerbook has survived a full bottle of Pepsi right to the keyboard, the burner doesn’t work, I’m on my 3rd hard drive, my battery won’t hold anywhere near a full charge, and still tethered to my firewire drive. Maybe it’s time to buy another one.
Oh wow, I suck. I placed 275 out of 292 in the overall results. 15th in the male 25-29 age group. Chip time 2:04:47.1, gun time 2:07:01.9. Looking at the leaders in both 10 and 20 milers, these guys were running more than two times as fast as I was.
RunTex 10 miler
Jan 8th, 2006 by bwann
Today was the RunTex 10/20 miler, my second running race. I finished the 10 miler in 2:04:28 according to my time, I don’t know what my official chip time is yet. There was a stiff breeze all morning long which made things hard. It was bloody chilly when I got there, I warmed up wearing my fleece jacket and promptly overheated. I ran the course, mad at the wind. I don’t know how many turned out for the race, I was bib number 1680. I was amazed and amused when I could look on the horizon in front of me and see runners strung out miles ahead of me.
The race was a loop 10 miles long starting and ending at the Dell Diamond in Round Rock. 20 milers did the loop two times before finishing. Somewhere after mile 8, I got lapped by Gilbert. I hear he finished first, which doesn’t surprise me; by my estimates he would’ve finished well under two hours. A good string of 20 milers were finishing at the same time I did and kept on coming in when I left around 3:00 race time. There were spectators at every turn, cheering on everyone as they went by.
The most I’ve ran is 12 miles, but after I exited the finished chute and stopped to grab a bottle of water, every muscle in my legs decided to lock up. I visited the on-site chiropractor, who gave my legs and shoulder a workover. My right shoulder popped, and man, it felt wonderful!
I hope Kreutz got some good photos of me, I don’t have any of my running yet. I’m glad I finished. I feel really, really good about it.
Going to SEA
Jan 3rd, 2006 by bwann
Issuing airline: FRONTIER AIRLINES Date issued: 03JAN06 Passenger: WANN/BRYAN MR 20JAN FRONTIER AIRLINES F9 211 From: AUSTIN, TX Departs:630A To: DENVER, CO Arrives: 740A 20JAN FRONTIER AIRLINES F9 847 From: DENVER, CO Departs:825A To: SEATTLE TACOMA, WA Arrives:1010A
I am now 100% committed to going to Seattle.
First ride
Jan 2nd, 2006 by bwann
“Who replaced my quads with lead” or “that’s what I get for laying off the bike for a month.” First ride of the year, Mansfield Dam loop, 41 miles. It was a great Texas day, sunny, around 23 C with a light breeze. As I suspected, it feels wonderful doing nothing today.
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