Again, a light week. I would have added a third run on Saturday, but had to split town to attend a family reunion. Here’s the breakdown:
Total: 13.5 miles. The 9-miler went well. It took just shy of 90 minutes, but I think the ol’ bod’s getting used to the stress of longer runs.
I got cat-called about six miles into a nine-mile run yesterday. A quick whistle, followed by an “Ooh, baby!” slipped out of the window of a passing car as I plodded down Coolidge.
Surely, the outburst must have come from a sarcastic place. When it’s 80 degrees, I run with my shirt off — baring my pale, skinny, sweaty glory to the world. I doubt I’m impressing anyone. But, if it was earnest … um, thanks.
My two readers probably long ago tired of posts about running, but I did a tally last night that blew my mind and I wanted to crow. I’ve tracked my mileage weekly here now for five weeks, and in that time I’ve logged just under 95 miles.
Ninety. Five. Miles.
Whoa! That one deserves an exclamation point. That’s about the distance from my home in Huntington Woods to my hometown of Saginaw.
Again, I had an abbreviated running week. On the bright side, one of the two runs I managed to squeeze in raised my personal best by two miles. The breakdown:
Total: 16 miles.
The 11-miler just kind of happened. I hadn’t planned it; I just started out that morning, and kept feeling more into it the farther I ran. To get to 11, I began with one of my standard laps around the neighborhood (a hair over 2 miles). After that, I cruised east into downtown Royal Oak, headed north on Main to Crooks, turned west on 12 Mile, and then headed south along Coolidge back to my ‘hood (a 6.75-mile course). Once in the ‘hood again, I did a little victory lap (an addition just-over 2 miles). Bingo.
Afterward, my calves burned. I stretched a bit, but the tenderness lasted into Friday. That’s it. Just Friday. I blasted past my previous best of 9 miles, and it didn’t tear me up. I’m so close to that half marathon, I can amost see the finish line.
I’ve been on iPhone’s 2.0 firmware for a week, and have had plenty of time to try out a few Apps. My favorite so far is Zenbe Lists.
Though I desperately need an organizational scheme, I find that my life doesn’t quite rise to the level of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done.” I’ve read the book, and like some of the ideas — particularly the concepts of simplicity and capture. I need a simple system to capture thoughts when I have them. Otherwise, they float away. If you’ve seen “Memento”, you get the idea. I’m not quite tattooing to-dos on my body (yet), but I do have a terrible short-term memory.
Which brings me to Zenbe Lists. The App does one thing well: lists. Create them. Share them. Email them. Embed them. As a bonus, the App syncs quickly over the 2.5G network. Mrs. Blocletters can update the grocery list or the Tar-jay list from her work computer (and eventually, her own iPhone). When I get to the store, I just need a couple seconds to sync to make sure I get the latest. As I check things off, another sync updates the Web site so she can see what I bought.
The interface defines intuitive and easy to use. On the iPhone, three taps get me to entering a new item in any list. On the Web site, it’s even easier.
Since I bought my iPhone last fall, I’ve used Notes for these functions. But, as others have written and I’ve mumbled to myself, Notes doesn’t sync anywhere. Sharing? Forget it.
So, Zenbe Lists fills a niche. It’s more feature-rich than Notes and still intuitive and easy-to-use. Now, as always, the only thing standing between me and organization is me.
For your reading pleasure, a try this item from the Freakonomics blog on the New York Times site. The kernel: Price and quality of wine do not necessarily go hand in hand.
I’m not a wine snob by any means. Nor am I particularly educated about wine. But, I know what I like. And I like Charles Shaw varieties from Trader Joe’s as much as many more expensive wines I’ve had. Plus, at $3 a bottle, I’m not going broke to support any kind of wine habit. I’ll drink to that.
This one should be titled “Weakly mileage update.” John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Life happened this week: Mrs. Blocletters and I are super busy with the house, painting and prepping for an upcoming party. It bit my mileage total, big time.
Total: a mere 13.5 miles. Better luck next week.
Thursday I woke to my iPhone blipping with a text message from my brother. “Dude. iTunes update the app store is open. Updating now.” It’s 7 a.m., and he once again out-Macheads me.
After trying to sleep for another hour, I dragged myself to the computer to update iTunes and check out the software I’ve impatiently waited on for months. Hundreds of programs teased me from the store’s pages: I could download them, but couldn’t use them without the accompanying 2.0 firmware. So goes my love/hate relationship with Apple.
Then I got an email, again from my brother, telling me about a leak of the firmware. Zoinks! I downloaded, updated and got my app on in short order. My two word review: limitless potential. The handful of apps I grabbed stretch the device in whole new directions. Facebook has tight integration, and you can even upload photos to your profile directly from the iPhone. AIM rocks. VoiceNotes is OK; I may shop around for a different voice recorder. Remote is cool as hell. And PhoneSaber is just plain kooky fun. I could go on (and probably will once I find more cool software). Point being, all these were freeware. There’s even better programs with price tags.
I’m glad I updated Thursday, after reading about problems Apple and AT&T had during the official Friday rollout. I read tonight on Macrumors that the unofficial version I installed may have been meant for the 3G devices, but it’s running like a charm, so I’m in no hurry to get the proper version. I’ll wait until the hullabaloo dies down, and in the meantime enjoy twice the device I had earlier this week.
I firmly sit in the camp that holds that the baggy-pants-mean-the-end-of-civilization meme ranks up there with the Ozzy-bites-off-bat’s-heads meme: It’s prima facie ridiculous. While Ozzy may have bitten the head off a bat, I’ve read it was a misunderstanding, or somesuch. While really baggy pants may lower the wearer’s IQ in my mind, I count it as free expression. After all, no laws bar people from dressing like clowns.
Given those views, a chuckle rumbled through my belly to see the issue (baggy pants, not Ozzy) on the front page of today’s Detroit Free Press, let alone as the centerpiece.
Then I read the lede:
Flint residents now have to watch their butts because Police Chief David Dicks is on the lookout.
Um, watch your butts ’cause Dicks is coming? Cute. Maybe a copy editor should have told them. Maybe it was intentional. If it’s the former, they’re fools for not realizing how awful and suggestive the lede is. If it’s the latter, I’d call it a lame attempt at trying to be hip with the lingo, as the kids might say. Either way, on reading that, I would have groaned and had the reporter change it.
And to think that yesterday I spurred a minor controversy in our Features department by flagging a variation of the phrase “get it up” in a story. The head of our department nixed it, replacing it with a parenthetical euphemism. Here’s the original, with apologies to Sue (I really liked the original quote).
(Author Jim) Harrison is predictably blunt. “I had a professor from U-M ask me why (Thomas) McGuane and Richard Ford and I all went to Michigan State,” he says. “I said it was easier, you had more time to read literature and write. And also, I told him, ‘You guys haven’t gotten it up since Arthur Miller in the ’40s, so just ease up, you know?’ ” He laughs.