What's Going on Wednesday

As I am sure you have all been wondering, what is going on with me? So this Wednesday I will tell you. (Thus the title of my post.)

OK, admittedly that first sentence was just ridiculous. Hopefully it's not an indication of how the rest of this post will go.

Hunting Season

The kids are back in school, so summer is officially over. With that being said, hunting season is now upon us. Or at least me. Which season you ask? Job hunting season.

I found a position that sounded interesting at a "major" corporation in town. I contacted a couple of people that I know who work in the company and networked a contact with the head of the department.

This could be a sweet job. According to the job description - minimal supervision, proofreading, writing, directing internal communications.

So I send over my resume to my friend. She sends it off to the department head and then I wait. Later in the evening I get another email from my friend. She very nicely points out that I might want to take a look at my resume. Seems I have a - wait for it...

Typo! I am applying for a PROOFREADING job and I have a typo in my resume. Not buried in the minutiae of my education or something - in the THIRD FRICKING LINE! (I spellchecked it and everything - apparently "quaterback" is a legitimate word in Microsoft Word's world. It should have been "quarterback.")

Needless to say, I don't anticipate a call back on that one.

Job hunt #1 = FAIL!

Road Trip

This weekend I am heading to Madison, WI to volunteer at the Ironman Wisconsin triathlon. On Monday MS, CS and I will stand in line to sign up for next year's race. I think we are all excited to volunteer and anxious about actually signing up for the race next year. The mere mention of it sends my wife into a tailspin of anticipatory resentment at the perceived training load I will be taking on. I am, however, not going to SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) the training for this race (as I have for others.) I am going to hire a coach and get on a program with one of the main goals being to remain somewhat happily married before and after the race.

Brush with Fame (or Infamy)

Turns out that rumors that have been circulating around the neighborhood are true. Brett Favre's daughter is going to school at the same school as my kids. She is in the same class as our neighbor's daughter - who is a grade ahead of E. It will be interesting to see which social-climbing couple tries to become fast friends with the Favre family. It's all a little "Real Housewives of Edina" for me.

Marathon Training

I am about a month away from Twin Cities Marathon. Training has been going well. The injuries and set backs from earlier in the training cycle seem to have abated. I have two more 20+ mile long runs before taper. I have been feeling good, but I am nervous about running as fast as I have been told I can for 3+ hours. I know I shouldn't make predictions about race day while in the middle of my highest mileage & intensity training block. All indications are that I can run that fast, now I just have to believe it.

Sonofabitch!

Right now I am sitting in the coffee shop and I feel a little tickle on my shin so I reach down to scratch it and WHAM! I get stung by a fricking bee! I freak out trying to kill the thing and get it out of my pant leg. Anyone looking at me would think I was having some sort of grand mal seizure and praying that I don't start choking on my own tongue. How it made it up my pant leg is beyond me. I did get the last laugh as I summarily executed it with an overly enthusiastic, rather effeminate dance on its black and yellow thorax. Take that, MoFo!

(Oh, and you will all be happy to learn that I am, in fact, not allergic to bees so you can all continue to look forward to more moderately entertaining, mostly migraine-inducing posts. Although I suspect there is at least one person out there who would just like me to go away. Mom.)

Other Crap

For the record: this has nothing to do with the stuff I couldn't remember last night, but I thought I would classify it under "other crap" for continuity sake and because it really is just a bunch of random stuff.

We picked up our race packets earlier today. A couple of people (the other two people I am running with) were a bit disappointed in the expo and didn't really get that "pump" for the race that they were hoping for. I set my expectations waaaay lower figuring it was the first year of the race and having already experienced the somewhat ham-fisted way the course was set up. I sent an email to the race director to get confirmation that the course was USAT certified and I have not heard back from him. We asked around the expo and no one could give us a definitive answer - another example of first year inefficiency. (This thing had better be certified because when we qualify it better count, damn it.) Oh, I don't know what kind of tracking they will have available, but our numbers are 355, 359 and 360 - like the circle. (Me, LF and MS, respectively, not "respectfully" like I posted originally - I'm dumb.) The magic number is 3:45.

In other news: my mom is in town to shop before a trip to Europe and to watch the marathon and the kiddos when A and I go to a little private concert on Saturday night. I will be making it a very early night on Saturday and A has already secured a ride home with a neighbor. So, this concert is by a guy named Martin Zeller and his band The Hardways. Martin Zeller is formerly the lead singer for a band called the Gear Daddies. They put out a few albums in the late 80's and early 90's before they broke up. The music is really fun and a lot of Minnesota grew up on this music in college. You can find their stuff on iTunes. (Two favorites - Color of Her Eyes and Time Heals. Unfortunately the best song is not listed - I Wanna Drive the Zamboni.) Now, for some completely tangential Minnesota music information.

As I was checking to see if the Gear Daddies were on iTunes I came across an iTunes Essentials mix entitled "Minneapolis" - there was an "explicit" tag so I had to open it. As expected I saw Prince, The Suburbs, The Replacements, Lipps, Inc. (Yes, Funkytown is a product of Minnesota) I looked at the "Next Steps" tab and scrolled down. At the bottom is a band called Trip Shakespeare. These guys played at a couple of dances at my high school and at the time they were kind of a big deal (not Prince big, but big in the local scene.) This band was fronted by Dan Wilson of Semisonic "Closing Time" fame. The song on the iTunes Essentials list is called "Toolmaster of Brainerd." Brainerd is where I grew up and went to high school and I was the biggest tool there at the time (you know, a "tool master") so that song is essentially about me. I had no idea I had such an impact on the Minnesota music scene. (You do realize that me having any influence on anything is a total fantasy - just wanted to be clear.)

In a little while here we will be heading back to Burger Jones for dinner with my mom and sis. A is at her parents helping get them settled after her mom had her hip replaced. (See, totally random stuff.) She'll be home later, but will miss dinner with us. I will try to go light tonight and get a good balance of carbs and protein. A burger should be pretty well balanced, right?

A late addition - here is the link to the Minneapolis Marathon. Like I said before, I don't know what kind of tracking they will have, but if I am still cooking out on that course at noon we will have missed our target, by A LOT. The race starts at 7:00 AM CST.

Two days left

Today is December 1st, 2008.  I only have two days left of my thirties.  Wednesday I turn 40.  On one level it's not such a bad thing.  People who don't know me very well assume I am younger (maybe it's because I am so immature.)  I am in pretty good shape and I have most of my hair (although it has been thinning - and thanks A for reminding me about that.)  I have also been avoiding, up to this point, feeling particularly 40.  It does help that I started to enjoy running as much as I have so I have energy and have avoided injury.  But 40 isn't really that old is it?  

On another level I feel kind of sad.  It doesn't help that I am "celebrating" another decade and I am currently under-employed.  The hair on my head is thinning yet I am growing hair in areas I haven't before. (Nose and ear hair clipping is now a regular grooming regimen - sorry if that was TMI.) My kids are getting older, my mom retired and I like to watch the History Channel. Oh, well - there isn't anything I can do about it so I will just keep plowing ahead.  

The 405

My 40th birthday came early and in a big way thanks to my incredibly generous mother.  The present at the top of my wish list cost about $350 retail.  My mom figured with tax that would bring the total to about $400.  By her estimation $10 a year was a pretty reasonable amount to spend on her favorite and only son.  I suggested that she may want to refigure her estimation as I was pretty sure that some of those years (especially most of the teen years) I probably owed her more than $10.  She agreed, but pointed out that there were a lot of years that were easily worth $20 so an average of $10 a year was appropriate.  We went to REI and picked up the most powerful watch I have ever had on my wrist - the Garmin Forerunner 405 with Heart Rate Monitor.  

So, in the past few days I have spent time playing around with all the various functions and have had a couple of occasions to run with it and work with it in action.  Boy is it fun!  I am still figuring out some of the more interesting details of it, but I have discovered one unsettling bit of information.  This information has me in a quandary because it affects more than just myself.  Do I share this information with the running group or do I keep it to myself/ignore it and continue on the way we have for over a year now?  The disturbing information is that I now know precisely (or more precisely) how long we run.  And it ain't as far as we have been figuring.  What to do?  What to do?  At some point I am sure someone will ask, "Hey, Mr. Fancy-Watch-GPS-Heart-Rate-Monitor-Old-Timer-Bastard, how far does that super-fancy time piece say we actually ran?" and then I will have to be honest, won't I?  That question will probably be asked sooner rather than later now that I have posted this and most of the running group reads this on a regular basis.

I hope that you have learned your lesson

After running errands on Sunday afternoon I come home and A matter-of-factly announces she had to save F's life.  In an irritated voice she explained that he was eating lunch with his friend and was cramming (we are a family of crammers) his sandwich in his mouth and talking (which he never seems to stop doing) and laughing and he aspirated his lunch. 

I picture it going down this way - F is talking and laughing and standing at the table eating as fast as he can (the kid never sits down in a chair).  A warns him to stop cramming food in his mouth, but he keeps cramming, talking and laughing.  Then the talking and laughing stops. A looks over at F's eyes bugging out of his head, puts her hands on her hips, cocks her head, rolls her eyes, lets out a big sigh of exasperation and walks over him, spins him around and gives him the Heimlich.

                    

Not this Heimlich                                 This Heimlich

Tangential story - My mom was an emergency room nurse when I was growing up and she would do training for the EMTs and first responders in our small town.  One night while she was teaching the CPR course she accidently referred to the Heimlich Manuever as the Heimlich "Removal".  Well, she couldn't get off of it and referred to it that way for the entire night.  To this day we refer to it as the Heimlich Removal just to make her nuts.

Tangential story II - Not really a story but a joke told by my dad who made every joke an Ole and Lena joke and told it in a "Scandihoooovian" accent.  Ole and Lena are having dinner with Sven when Lena starts to choke.  Sven gets all excited and runs to dial 911, but Ole remains calm and tells Sven, "No need to worry.  I know yust what to do."  So Ole grabs Lena, spins her around, pulls down her pants and licks her on the butt.  Lena lets out a giant cough and the piece of food she was choking on flies out of her mouth and across the room.  Sven looks at Ole, eyes wide in amazement, "Ole that was yust incredible! How did you know what to do?"  Ole replied, "I yust learned CPR - they call that the 'Hind-lick Manuever.'"

Back to the story - I only picture it going down that way because that is kind of the way A told it and that was kind of my reaction - eye-rolling, an exasperated sign and the phrase, "fricking kids."  Needless to say, I am never one to miss a "teaching opportunity."  For the rest of the day, every time I saw F eating something I felt compelled to remind him to be careful so mommy wouldn't have to save his life again.  It remains to be seen if he has learned anything.