The last .2 miles

When I ran my first 10k a friend told me the last .2 miles is the hardest.  You see the 6-mile mark and know you’re almost there. You expect the finish line to be around every corner but each turn reveals a little further to go. This writing project has paralleled that 10k in many ways. Yesterday in that last .2 miles I stumbled and almost didn’t finish.  I’m glad I pushed through.

Now, like running, it’s time to get back to training.

Follow through

28 of 30 blogs complete and I find myself at 1 am writing number 29.  It would have been easier to just go to sleep and be satisfied with close but I set a goal and intend to complete it. 

It takes a long time to be young

That's the goal, be that awesome at 91.

A fight for equality

Tonight Ronda Rousey fights Liz Carmouche in the first ever women’s UFC fight.  In some sports the women’s league is a topic for jokes and ridicule (the WNBA comes to mind).  In MMA this has somewhat been the case with many fans resistant to women fighting.  Comments are posted on MMA websites telling women fighters to get back in the kitchen and cook for the “real” fighters, the men.  This fight is the biggest in women’s MMA to date could change that perception.  Tomorrow we may know if equality was won but tonight they’re literally fighting for it.

You don’t know what you got until you try to put it in a box

As I prepare for the move into the new place I’ve started boxing things up.  Before I started packing I looked around my small studio apartment and thought, “this will take a few hours and a couple boxes”.  Then one box was full and it didn’t look any different.  Then 5 boxes and still there was stuff to be packed. The more I put in boxes the more I found.  This is also after multiple closet clean outs in the last few months and the occupying trips to Goodwill.  Books alone have filled multiple boxes (heavy boxes).  You look at a book shelve and think, “that will all fit in a box”, wrong.  You really don’t know what you got until you try to put it in a box.

"Oh Al"

I’ve recently been introduced to watching the Today Show in the morning and I’ve found a new hero, Al Roker.  He seems to genuinely be comfortable with who he is.  He says what is on his mind, tells you exactly how he is feeling, and makes jokes about what HE thinks is funny…then he laughs at his own jokes.  “Oh AL” is the phrase we use every time he has one of these genuine moments.  We say “Oh Al” a lot.   When I saw him on Dateline openly telling the story of farting in the White House and accidentally shitting his pants, I was sold.  This guy “is who he is” and he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.  Maybe it’s time for us start asking ourselves “WWARD”, What Would Al Roker Do?

Finding time

When I set this goal of writing 30 blogs in 30 days I had just finished a job and didn’t have another one lined up.  This was going to be easy, without a job to get in the way, writing everyday would be simple.  Then a week later I went back to work and my attitude completely changed to, “how am I ever going to find the time to write?”  What I've found is that it isn’t as hard as you think to find time to do things you want to do. Replace one mindless, time wasting, activity that you use to pass the day with something you really enjoy.  You will be amazed at what you can get accomplished.

Parking in LA

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Is parking on the street harder in LA than other places?  I don’t mean harder as in harder to find a place to park.  I mean harder as in harder to actually do. Actually parking your car along a curb.  In the last 6 months my rear bumper has been hit 4 times, each one taking little chips of paint away.  The one yesterday is by far the worst; two quarters sized pieces of paint no longer occupying my bumper.  In order to take that kind of paint away you have to hit something fairly good, you know you did it.  Yet I found by car damaged and the perpetrator had gone on their merry way.  I mean cars are pretty big; it can’t be that people just don’t see them, right?

How we roll in California

We go to the beach in February. 

Fraternity of bearded men

Scottie and I talked beards today. 

From the valley with love

dodgedartregistry.com

Step 1:  Customize a dart.  Step 2: Set amount to raise. Step 3: Share your registry.  Step 4: Parts get sponsored. Step 5: Congratulations!  These are the steps to dodgedartregistry.com, the website where you can design a Dodge Dart and then ask other people to help you pay for it.  This is a misuse of a registry.  Registries are for when your friends and family want to help you celebrate a moment in your life, wedding, baby shower, house warming. Just because you can’t afford to buy your car fully loaded doesn’t mean you should make it an event that people should help you “celebrate” by paying for.  

Step 5: Congratulations...Congratulations indeed, you just swindled your loved ones into paying for your car.

Sharing the Love

 

It was a fitting text message to get this morning, Scottie sending me the link to the beautiful video of their wedding day.  My Valentine’s Day gift to the world is sharing this glimpse of love.

Enjoy.

Don't sweat the imaginary stuff

I feel it coming on, my shoulders tighten, my stomach knots, I am dreading whatever it is I am about to do. I find reasons to put if off, prolonging the stress and anxiousness. It hasn’t happened yet, but in my mind I have seen all the worse case scenarios. I have run them over and over and tried to figure out how I will handle each and every one.  Then the event happens and most of what I was stressed and worried about never occurs. So much time and energy was wasted on things I was projecting. Not to mention all the physical discomfort that came along with it.  Yes it is good to be prepared, but to cause myself unnecessary stress over things that as of that moment only exist in my head is harmful.   I gotta learn to not sweat the imaginary stuff.

If you keep doing that with your face

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I think all mothers have said to their children, “if you keep doing that with your face it’s going to stay that way”.  I, like most kids, didn’t believe it.  I’d say, “whatever mom!” Then proceed to make and even more ridiculous face, contorting my features into an unrecognizable mess.  I’m now starting to worry.  PBS re-aired Bill Cosby receiving the Mark Twain Prize over the weekend. Throughout the ceremony they showed clips of him acting and doing stand up and he continually made this face. 

When they cut to him in the balcony it appeared his face had stayed that way!

Can this be true?  Did his face in fact stay that way? Should I be worried that this is what I am going to look like soon? 

Home of the Schmo

On the Joe Schmo Show one unsuspecting “schmo” is tricked into thinking they are on a reality show competing for $100,000. Did you know the “Schmo’s” have all been from Pittsburgh or it’s surrounding areas?  Every season the producers go to cities across America looking for another Schmo and somehow they always find them in Pittsburgh.  Apparently that's where they raise the Schmoiest Schmos.  I think it’s time to update their city signs, “Welcome to Pittsburgh…Home of the Schmo”.

I'm easy

This was a text conversation I had with my brother yesterday.

I only play video games on the easiest level.  When I sit down to play a video game I want to enjoy myself, not get frustrated because I keep losing. I don’t even know why they come with other difficulty levels, who doesn't want to continually destroy the computer?

Handmade

There is something satisfying about taking a piece of material; wood, metal, leather, a car or motorcycle, and with your two hands transforming it into something new and different.  The ability to have a vision in your head and through the use of your body make that vision become a form and shape in the world. Whether it’s through the use of hand tools or by the human force you can exert with your hands themselves.  I have always been drawn to seeing the way something is done or made and then finding a way to do it myself.  This curiosity and fascination has taken many paths in my life. From modifying bicycles, to modifying cars, altering clothes, and even teaching myself to cut my own hair.  There always seems to be something that I have my hands on, tinkering and fiddling with, trying to get it match what I envision in my mind.

Maybe I'm a video site snob

Michael Scott once said on The Office, “when I discovered YouTube I didn’t work for a week”.  I never found myself lost on YouTube watching videos. Vimeo however has got me.  There is some amazingly well done stuff on there.  Great short documentaries, animation, stop motion, etc. I have lost hours going through hundreds pages of videos searching for the next thing that looks interesting. 

Classics

Matt Hughes is fighting Chris “Lights Out” Lytle; it’s UFC 68 from 2007.  I’ve seen the fight before and I know who wins, yet I sit and watch.  I love re-watching great fights from the past.  ESPN Classics is airing a Final Four college basketball game from what looks like the 80’s and I think,  “How can someone watch this?”  Then I remember, Matt Hughes was fighting Chris “Lights Out” Lytle; it was UFC 68 from 2007.  I’d seen the fight before, yet I sat and watched.

Body don't fail me now

When I started running a mile seemed like forever, it seemed like it would never end, that first blocked felt like a mile.  Then a mile turned to two, two turned to three, three to four, and then I did my first 10k.  I did it injured and that was a mistake, but the feeling of accomplishment I felt when crossing the finish line was exhilarating.  My stubbornness to run while injured cost me 4 months of running.  My leg was slow to heal but a few weeks ago I took my first running steps again. It was only a mile and I felt like I was smoking a pack of cigarettes the whole time.  Slowly one mile turned into two, and then two into three.  My mind knows I can do six, but my body is fighting me.  My cardio is there but my knees are screaming.  I know that knee pain, it’s the pain I’ve gotten every time I’ve tried running in the past, I know it means I need to ease up a bit, let my body recover, but my mind knows I can do more and wants to do more.  I have to learn from past mistakes and listen to my body because something that once seemed like the dumbest thing in the world has now become something I can’t see life without.

That wasn't so hard

I gave myself a project, 30 blogs in 30 days. Write, take pictures, just a post a day. I’ve discovered it’s been way easier to think of excuses not to write than it has been to think of something to actually write about. As I sit staring at my blank computer screen, the only ideas flowing are, “it's just one day, if you miss no big deal” or  “you're not getting paid or graded for this, it's self imposed, you’ll write tomorrow for sure”.  The jokes on you procrastination thoughts, I just turned you into a blog. That wasn’t so hard.

It's the balls fault

After missing a putt four times in a row Sunday my golf ball went flying into the L.A. river.  I threw it in. It was a childish reaction to say the least and my mom made sure I knew it. My dad, Ross, and her proceeded to give me a good amount of shit for it. I needed it, because as a smile came across my face I realized, I’ve never played better pissed off.

So God created a Super Bowl ad

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God needed a caretaker, so God created a farmer. God needed someone strong enough to clear trees and heave hay bails, so God created a farmer.  Dodge needed a powerful ad campaign, so God created Super Bowl commercials.

That parking space is TOO far from my hike

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I know hiking in L.A. sounds like an oxymoron but there are a few small patches of nature scattered throughout the city.  Today was my first trip to Runyon Canyon, which apparently is the spot to hike in L.A.  I almost expected a red velvet rope at the gate.  Like all places in L.A., parking is an issue.  The only parking available is street parking and several of the nearby streets are permit parking only.  As the throngs of people converged a battle for available spots nearest the entrance ensued. People honking and speeding around cars trying to parallel park; cars backing up down the street hoping to grab a spot that opened up behind them.  All this…just to avoid having to walk too far to their hike. 

Slow your roll Netflix

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“Flick” - slang for movie.  “Flix” - a hip way to pluralize “flick”.  “The Net” - slang for internet.  So isn’t it implied that Netflix is a place to get movies from the internet?  Have you tried to stream a movie from Netflix recently?  More times than not when you type in a movie title they seem confused by your request. They do offer up suggestions for movies they think are close. For example, when I type in Rocky, they suggest Rocky and Bullwinkle.  Not exactly the same movie, but they’re trying. In the latest issue of GQ there’s an article about how Netflix has begun producing multiple TV series with ambitions of bucking the network television system.  No more conforming to standard episode lengths, ordering whole seasons without a pilot, shows won’t be canceled midseason because the entire seasons will be available at once.  Those are ambitious goals, my concern is they weren’t able to accomplish their original goal, flix on the net.  When your store is called Donut Hut and I ask you for a donut, you can’t tell me, “well we never really figured out making donuts”.  Then expect me to believe you when you say, “but we’re working on some great new recipes for vegan lasagna.”