You Are What You Have Been

I was thinking about it in the bathroom stall at work a couple of days ago. I should have been in the Army – I’ve said that enough times now that it’s probably true. Long ago, I thought that I’d need about 4 lives to accomplish what I wanted to do. In one I’d do what I’m doing, in another, I’d stick with the academic route, and in the other two I’d be a military guy, Air Force and Army. The thought of these multiple life scenarios got me thinking about reincarnation, not so much because I believe it in, but more because I find it to be logically inconsistent.

So, if there’s reincarnation, why don’t more people know what they used to be? Sure, some think they do, but even they don’t think they’re just a continuation of the same consciousness. I, meanwhile, am yesterday’s person plus today. My recollection meaningfully connects what used to be my conscious self to what currently is. It is this continuation of being that defines me (and you for that matter) – I am the collection of my thoughts, feelings, dreams and experiences.

Let’s say I was a WWII airman in my last life – who isn’t after all? I remember Sully and Hank, my name was Tommy and we crashed into a glacier and were entombed in ice. How is that useful again? It’s not like I, me, yesterday’s person one day further along, have had the opportunity to build 22000 days worth of experiences on a previous foundation. Those people think they were something else in another life. Even if they were, it’s useless – they don’t get to reap the benefit of living more than once. Without the accumulated set of experiences, that previous life is no more you than some old photograph – two dimensional, frozen in time.

Understandably, this transitioned to the idea of losing one’s memory in some brain malfunction. If my collective sum of experiences were deleted, the old me would no longer exist. I am what I have been, not what I could have been or wanted to be, but what I have been. People try to reinvent themselves by moving to where nobody knows who you once were…but you still do, and you’re still you. If you lost your mind though, then you’d be nobody. You’d disconnect from your past, start new, be different, under no obligation to be who you are, whatever that once was. Of course, you’d still be old and your achilles’ would still be busted. But you can’t deny it’d be interesting to blow it all up and start it all over.

How old is too old to do that, do you think?

High In the Uintas

As far as I can tell, I never posted this from Algonquin last year. I’ll have to do that sometime. This year I hardly had a chance to write while we were out in the wild, but here’s all of it, plus a recap from tonight.

7/9/10 2344 MST
We’re here at J’Ann and Scott’s palace in Par City, Utah. 30 ft ceilings, granite everything, just high quality. We drove here from the airport in a marginally terrifying Chevy Rickshaw (Aveo) which can barely do 65 mph on flat roads. The rental car guy was full of glad tidings – “it’ll rain on you every day. I saw a grizzly. They’ll open your car like a tin can. But you’ll love it.” It has been thundering intermittently since we got here – interesting weather and sporadic storms are in the forecast for our future as well.

We’re already at 7000 ft – good for adjusting slowly to tomorrow’s altitudes. Should be an adventure.

7/11/10 1610 MST
I’m currently sitting in the shade at Lightning Lake, having just submerged for the sake of cleaning myself. The lake is at something like 10,700 and the water, ringed with occasional snow, is somewhere near 50F. I had intended to write earlier, but things have been a little crazy. Right before we were supposed to leave, we noticed the tire on the rental was flat. We fixed it, then left for Kamas, where we were to pick up the last minute supplies. For some ridiculous reason, none of the three places we went had butane for ultralight campstoves. Somewhat daunted, we shrugged and left without it. All food would be prepared on fire. Turns out that at 10,500 ft, cooking food on a fire is more easily said than done.

We proceeded to the Grandview trailhead. Chevy Rickshaws are not designed to climb 3000 ft up narrow, lumpy dirt roads. After 7 perilous miles, which Scott was kind enough to lead us through, we were there. 9500 ft and on our way at around 1 PM.

Two general comments on the Uintas. First, the mosquitoes, who are hounding me as we speak, are maddeningly awful and omnipresent. Second, the shelf life of any given weather pattern is about 30 minutes. When I started writing it was sunny, 70. Now a cloudy 60. It was a windy and rainy 45 this morning. 2 hrs into the first day, it hailed on us. Or snow pellets, or some thing in between

Day one drove me to exhaustion. I didn’t eat enough, didn’t drink enough, and got a mild bout of altitude sickness. It was 7 PM before we got to where we would set up camp – an obvious wildlife refuge at 10,500 beyond the Four Lakes Basin, about 12 miles out. By the time Steve, with much difficulty, got a fire going, we were running out of daylight. We choked down the gross Pad Thai, pumped some water, hung the food and went to bed. Having seen moose prints and moose scat every 50 ft, we knew they were around. No sooner had the sun gone down, we heard several very close moose [actually Elk, upon further review] calls – a very loud version of a yip that a coyote might make. Or a 1000 lb bull frog. We found it difficult to sleep. Our moose trespassing and altitude sickness headaches kept us both up until a 1 AM sortie to the food bag retrieved tylenol.

The thing about mosquitoes is that they force you to be in constant motion, lest 70 of them congregate around you at any given moment. Rain keeps them at bay, as it did this morning. Forced to evacuate camp rapidly ahead of the approaching gales, we were on the trail by 7:45. Two hours later we had crossed the 11,500 ft Rocky Sea pass, navigated a 30 meter snow field on the edge of a mountain and gotten down the other side. It’d be rainy, windy and frigid one minute, then temperate the next. After twisting my arm to climb again to Lightning Lake, we arrived at noon, around the same time the sun came back. It’s been a nice afternoon. We can see for 10 miles to 11, 12, 13000 foot mountains on all sides. Our site is perched near the edge of a 500 ft drop – it’s definitely a top-3 site for us. We had delicious pasta, olive oil, salami, cheese, salt and pepper for linner (dunch) around 3, and now Steve’s working on trout for dinner…and it looks like he finally got one.

7/22/10 – Before things get too distant, I’m going to write, on the computer, a stream of consciousness hindsight log of the last two days in the Uintas. My last entry was written at the shores of Lightning Lake – though there were far fewer mosquitoes there than either of the other sites, they were still driving me mad as I was writing. Steve did indeed catch a trout, the first of two that we had for dinner. Dinner was actually light, lunch, at 3 in the afternoon, was a full spaghetti, salami, parmesan, salt, pepper, and olive oil meal. I hard just plunged into the frigid water to bathe again, and we walked around exploring the waterfall dumping out of the lake. I urinated from spectacular vistas, 600 feet above a lake and stream filled valley. It was the high point of the trip, Lightning Lake. We went to bed a little later, having walked aimlessly around the highlands after dark picking fights with animals. We saw a few deer and had a bat dive bomb us several times, presumably aroused by Steve’s “Borg Light”. Though I always thought they were blind other than the sonar or whatever.

Anyway, the next day was a challenge. We got out by 8:45, and started what would be an epic day. We went all the way down Rock Creek to near to Stillwater Reservoir, then took a hard turn into nowhereland, trudging back up the West Fork to Granddaddy Lake. 8 and half hours, 18 miles and 2300 feet of elevation lost then regained – driven mercilessly by mosquitoes the whole way back up – I was done, finished, spent. It was just a little beyond what I could comfortably handle. I promised myself I’d jump in the water to clean off after we got there. I did, then the wind started howling as I stood mostly to completely naked on the shore. I spent the next hour and a half shivering miserably, hunched over in full goretex attire, surrounded by mosquitoes and almost completely apathetic. I choked down some food (same as the night before) and slowly recovered. By bedtime I was reasonably well constituted again.

Some highlights from that journey, let’s see. Well, we got to a fork in the river a few miles in. It was the first time we had to swap over the crocs for the day. Steve decided that instead of stowing his real shoes in his bag he was going to chunk them across.

“Think about this,” I, the perpetual Voice of Reason, said, “if you don’t make it, you’ll be walking the next 20 miles in crocs.”

“I’ll make it. You don’t think I have the arm for that?”

And he did. Plenty of arm. So much in fact that the tree limbs dangling twenty feet up swatted his huck right down into the stream. Now, stream means “rapidly gurgling creek, 25 feet wide and 1-2 feet deep”. His shoe landed about 5 feet from the opposite shore and was flushed downstream…until it miraculously got hooked on a rock 6 feet away. He is the luckiest person alive, always.

We saw our first person about 5 miles later – the first person we had seen (in person at least) in about 48 hours. Then they came rapidly, probably twenty of them in the next 5 miles. In the category of “things I wish I had a picture of” was the 35 year old hulk of a man carrying his 2 liter while his 8 year old son trudged uphill with what looked like a 35 lb pack. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It was borderline child abuse.

After we crossed the bridge, we were immediately out of people, we wouldn’t see them again until we got to the car the next day. The West Fork was wild, a bit overgrown, and decidedly off the beaten path. I’ve often thought that I prefer uphills to downhills, and this only affirmed my opinion – a gradual uphill is much easier on your body than any sort of downhill…which is good because the 10 miles down we already did had spurred several classic blisters.

Anyway, back off that digression, back to Granddaddy Lake. That night was all about mosquitoes. 200 of them stood guard outside of the tent screen, a couple dozen of which made it inside during our mid-night pee break. We smushed them, spending 10 minutes at 2 in the morning committing insect genocide inside the tent. Morning was no better, so we packed up and got the hell out of there. The trip back to the car was uneventful, we made it the last 5-6 miles in just under 2 hours, then back to the palatial estate of J’Ann and Scott.

High Uintas

I’ve got some more to write about this one of these days. Here are the pictures in the meantime.

Doorframes

A week ago, there was a minor earthquake in the suburbs of DC. I didn’t notice, as I live next to an airport, a train tracks, a highway and a trucking depot. My house routinely shakes. Still, everyone made such a big deal out of it, it subconsciously began to register in my brain.

Last night, I fell asleep around midnight, to be roused by a consistent, throbbing shake about 20 minutes later. Confused, I decided that my wife needed to share in this twice in a lifetime sort of experience. “Stephen!” I exclaimed, attempting to rouse her from sleep.

Pause.

Groggily…

“Did you just call me Steve?”

I broke into giddy laughter then immediately went back to sleep.

In my defense, we did just spend three nights together in a tent, much of it listening for strange noises.

I would later inform her that it was probably best case scenario for yelling out someone’s name (other than hers) in my sleep.

Bandit

Question:
What is the proper punishment for the Barefoot Bandit?

On one hand, he’s stealing stuff and destroying property. On the other, he’s general harmless and kind of charming. Thoughts?

Utah!?

A while ago, I was pleased to learn that the Utah license plate was just as surprised to be from Utah! as I was to see it. Last week, I went there. Stephen and I stayed at the palatial estate of a family friend in Park City for a day on either side of the trip, and backpacked in the High Uinta Wilderness for three nights in the middle. We had 48 solid hours in there where we didn’t see another person on the trail, a highly desirable outcome. Of course, there was a reason…hundreds of millions of ravenous mosquitoes. Still, the scenery was beautiful, the weather interesting/nice, and the camping high – we slept at between 10200 and 10800 for the three nights. The trip featured a top-5 campsite at Lightning Lake and the longest day we’ve ever hauled – 18+ miles from 10800 to 8200 then back to 10500 in 8.5 increasingly painful hours. I’ll have more on it in the future, including pictures.

Vroom

There comes a time in every man’s life when his wife commandeers his brand new vehicle and he gets stuck driving a 1998 Civic. That time, dear readers, is apparently now.

Stuck

For some reason, I’ve been sleeping on my back more than usual. I think it’s because there’s someone else in the bed – eventually I try to roll from one side to the other and run into an immovable object, forcing me to stop halfway. Last night, I woke up at around 4 AM, having been asleep on my back with my Jen-side arm (left) slung up over my head. I tried to move it and was jabbed with pain. Low and behold, my left arm was stuck over my head.

Having dislocated that shoulder in the past, I had the foresight not to force anything. I started stretching out my elbow, pointing my hand from side to side, anything to try to get it to slip back into joint so that I could lower it. No dice. I got up and drowsily walked to the backroom, still with arm dangling above my head. Once standing things rectified themselves fairly quickly – the arm just sort of dropped its way back into place. I groggily returned to bed and went back to sleep.

Alex

I’m not sure if Hurricane Alex is a boy’s name or a girl’s name. I’ve always sort of liked it as a girls name, probably because of Nickelodeon’s Alli Mack, or whatever her name was. I liked her.

Anyway, the official forecast is for Alex to be a minimal cat 2 storm when it makes landfall at the Mexico/Us border. I like the landfall location, but I think the intensity is underdone. I’ll go out on a limb and say that it hits 130 mph before landfall at some point. It’s too warm down there, it’s getting organized quickly, the shear’s too low…it’s gonna get strong in a hurry, hurry meaning by the end of tomorrow.

Addendum 6/30/10 7 AM
I’m probably about 50 miles too far north. You’d think “gee Eric, you’re 50 mph off and landfall is less than 24 hours away.” Central pressure is down to 961 mb, a solid cat 3 level, and dropping. The winds will follow. 130 mph might be ambitious, but I really think it’ll be into major hurricane (> 115 mph) territory. Just since I couldn’t find anyone predicting within 30 mph of my prediction at the time I made it, I’m sticking with it. Let’s see what happens.

93L

There’s a tropical wave in the eastern Caribbean right now which should be watched. Some models take it into the Gulf next week as a hurricane. Seems plausible to me.

Those Filthy Brits

Earlier today, I received an email from a supposedly frantic relative (or maybe “frantic supposed relative”) stating the following:

Hey!
I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,We came down here to London,England for a short vacation and We was mugged at gun point last night at the park of the hotel where we lodged all cash,credit cards and cell were stolen off us.

We’ve been to the US embassy and the Police here but they’re not helping issues at all,Our flight leaves in less than 24hrs from now and we are having problems settling the hotel bills.

The hotel manager won’t let us leave until we settle the hotel bills now we freaked out.

We need your help.

Regards.

Not to spoil the punchline, but someone has control of her email account and is fielding responses. It’s probably not a great idea to bug these people, but if I did, here’s what I’d ask them:

What do you mean by “won’t let us leave”? As in, he has you locked in a closet somewhere?

What sort of hotel doesn’t take your credit card number when you check in?

Why do you all the suddenly capitalize after commas?

When you say “down here to London,England”, where were you coming from? Iceland?

I do appreciate the use of a colloquial English phrase. And NOW WE FREAKED OUT!!!

Does NO ONE speak English in Nigeria, China or wherever this came from?

Someone is out there who will help poor, lost relatives, stuck on the mean streets of London,England. Hopefully it’s not anyone on that particular email list.

Globe Trotting

I do have things to post about. For instance, in the span of a week, I got a Kindle for my birthday, an internet radio (Grace WiFi w/ iPod dock) and we got an iPod Touch for Jen’s rotations. Our technological footprint just took a giant step forward. Next is a phone for me that doesn’t suck. If I ever cough up the cash for a data plan, look out. Of course, we have to get off our parents’ plans first but that’s another story…

Speaking of another story, little Stevie Furst just spent the last few days in Strasbourg, France at an engineering conference. Then he took a train to Torino, Italy, where he’ll be running in an elite international 5K. He’s rooming with Alex Kipchirchir. Whenever you’re sportsman of the year in Kenya, you’re a pretty big deal.

Mixed Border

I have a bunch of things to write about, most of which I never will. One thing is necessary, however, you need to see my garden. I’m mildly obsessed with it. I spend on the order of 10 hours a week working on it. It’s delightfully haphazard, a sloppy clustering of various types of flowers, jumbled together into a 5 foot wide border that surrounds the front and side of my townhouse. That’s not to mention the deck, itself covered with a strange smattering of vegetables in various stages of development and potted in a wide array of containers. I’m constantly amused by the whole endeavor.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

From the corner of the border, marigolds with some basil seedlings in the top left.

Little floppy deep purple flowers (advertised as black), Nemophilia. I suppose they're cute, but in the future they'll live on the edges of containers.

A foliage plant, which I love, called Joseph's Coat, of the technicolor variety. It's a type of Amaranth. I'll grow it again.

The third sunflower we've gotten, a deep hued dwarf. By the way, if you want the cultivars for any of these, I'll tell you in comments.

The first two sunflowers we got. By the way, bugs love eating sunflower leaves.

A bunch of Johny Jump Up pansies, reseeded from last year. I don't know what to tell you, I have always liked johny jump ups.

Jackmanii Clematis, trained along the fence in the back. This picture is a little old, they've since exploded.

More clematis, hanging over the edge of the fence, a slash of purple visible from our cars in the parking lot in the morning.

Cosmos, they seem like they'll flower a ton, but I'm not quite sold on them. Jen loves them, however.

View from the corner of the garden, toward the side. Dahliah, Gazania, hydrangea, clematis, osterospermum, and cosmos in view

These things only open during the day. They are awesome, for the 10 hours a day they're out.

They're all a little different.

All the dahlia are different looking too. These are some robust plants, let me tell you...

I moved this rose to the other side of the garden and I swore I killed it in the process. Alas, it's still with us.

This is from the Buchart Gardens in Victoria, courtesy of my parents. I dunno, it's kind of motley. Behind it resides the foxglove and lupine.

The lilies and rose were our of control a few weeks ago. Those lilies are bigger than your hand.

This is from a few weeks ago, the pansies don't appreciate the broiling heat we've had.

This is kind of cheating...I probably took this picture two months ago. The phlox is miserable the rest of the year.

This is an eastern redbud, if you're wondering. It too is kind of dumpy the rest of the year, especially when it's blighted, as mine is.

They're really more of a pink, but I'd rather grow a redbud than a pinkbud I guess.

Oil

The oil spill of the last month and a half is one of the top-5 worst things that has happened in this country during my lifetime. 9/11 is worse. Katrina is worse, for now. San Fransisco earthquake in the late 80s is similar/worse. What else? Maybe the financial crisis, that’s probably worse. Maybe Andrew or Hugo or Ike. That’s all I can think of…because this is awful. Just awful.

However.

When there are a million oceanic drilling operations in the world, every so often many redundancies will fail and cause something like this.

The issue is occurring a mile underwater. It’s not easy to fix things a mile underwater. It’s not easy to clog your toilet a mile downstream and not before. It’s understandable why they have problems stopping the oil.

Though it’s not understandable that they’ve developed this sort of technology with no viable solution for this particular scenario. Want to make a bet we’ll have a system in place to close this sort of leak at 5000 feet in the next 5 years? We will. Unfortunately, it will have taken the destruction of untold millions of acres of wetlands to spur that development. That’s very unfortunate.

The government/military is not in the business of drilling oil, and hence cannot be expected to have the technology available to deal with this problem. The government should have regulated for this contingency, however. I don’t care that the platform blew up – that’s bound to happen sometimes. I care that there’s no conceivable way to deal with the fissure that’s spilling bagillion gallons of oil into the Gulf.

People want action, but most of the action is implausible. Wanting action does not mean that any particular action is useful. Cleaning those wetlands is going to be next to impossible.

We think of oil in the same way we think of styrofoam, some foreign, manufactured, humanish substance. In truth, this oil is coming from the earth. Sure, we facilitated it, but it’s surely not the first time in history that oil has come from the earth into the ecosystem – this must have happened naturally at some point in the last billion years where life might care about it. The point is, the earth can absorb that which the earth does to itself.

That part of the country is primed for hurricanes this year. Think this is bad now, just wait until a storm surge shoves all this slop 2 miles onshore in a populated area.

I’m not buying BP anymore. I don’t care if they’re scapegoats for a wider problem. I actually think they are desperate to stop this and believe that they are putting forth the appropriate resources to do so. If no example is made, then this will happen again. If a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars can totter from such a disaster, other companies worth that much will think twice about their R&D expenditures.

It’s profitable to research how to get oil out of the ground from 10000 feet deep – it’s less profitable to figure out how to make oil stop gushing into the ocean. You can’t sell ocean oil. But if you lose tens of billions of dollars because of your oilification of the ocean, then you’ll surely think twice before you introduce technologies that you can’t control. My father always said “if you can’t climb up the tree by yourself, then you can’t climb the tree.” The point is, if you can’t get there by yourself, you won’t be able to get down either. Oil companies only work on how to get up the tree, and now BP is stuck, unable to get down.

Obama takes too much responsibility for things. Do you think W ever would have taken any responsibility if something like this happened on his watch? Doubtful. He’d blame Clinton or something.

Addendum
Interested in how this oil slick will be impacted by (and impact) hurricanes?

Check this out

For example…

“I expect that during the peak portion of hurricane season (August – October), the clockwise-rotating eddy that is attempting to cut off from the Loop Current this week will be fully separated from the Loop Current. The separation of this eddy will substantially reduce the possibility that significant amounts of oil will reach the Florida Keys and Southeast U.S. coast, since the Loop Current will be much farther south, flowing more due east towards the Keys from the Yucatan Channel. Oil moving southwards from the spill location due to a hurricane’s winds will tend to get trapped in the 250-mile wide eddy, potentially covering most of the surface of the eddy with oil. Thus we might have a 250-mile wide spinning oil slick in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico for days or weeks after a hurricane. This could potentially have a significant warming effect on the Gulf waters, since the oil is dark and will absorb sunlight, and the oil will prevent evaporation from cooling the waters underneath it. Since Loop Current eddies contain a large amount of very warm water that extend to great depth, they often act as high-octane fuel for hurricanes that pass over. The rapid intensification of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were both aided by the passage of those storms over Loop Current eddies. Thus the warming of the Loop Current Eddy by oil pulled into it by a passing hurricane or tropical storm could lead to explosive intensification of the next hurricane that passes over the eddy. “

In Case You Missed Me

A lot of people think that this will be the most active hurricane season on record. For instance, this site – look out if you’re the gulf coast! Oil, oil, everywhere.

Keep The Change

Jen and I spent the weekend in the Poconos, taking naps, reading books, and talking to elderly gentlemen about glass. At one point, we went to the local grocery store, an IGA. As we were getting ready to checkout, I witnessed the tail end of a transaction between the two cashiers. One had purchased a diet pepsi through her neighbor’s register.

Cashier 1, let’s call her Ashley (holding a nickle): Here’s your dime.
Cashier 2, Sue, ignores her.
Ashley (still holding nickle): Hey, take your dime.
Sue ignores her.
Ashley (patiently holding nickle): Take your dime…err…nickle…

Me (to Ashley): I think I’m going to count my change.

Ashley looks at me somewhat confused, “Umm, that’s fine,” she assures me, automatically. Jen, having not witnessed the exchange, is of no help. Once again, no one got my joke. I thought it was funny at least.

Just Like On TV

I had a strange thought walking into work this morning. Let’s be honest, it was more of a hobble. My left achilles is not doing well. I have a searing pain inside of it when I stretch. I feel it when I walk, it makes me short step. Needless to say, this is not good for my unofficial plan to train for a race in the fall. Let’s shelve that thought for a second.

On TV, sometimes people say things like “Why is this happening to me?” Me? I rarely say that. I can’t recall ever saying that. I more often wonder why other worse things aren’t happening to me instead of why moderately inconvenient things are. Listen folks, I’m a runner. It’s what I am. I was hobbling in to work this morning, and I was thinking about how sometimes older people get some bug in their ear and start thinking things like “hey, how about I try to run a 10K?” or maybe “hey, I’m out of shape, I should fix that.” I was wincing, walking, and then I thought…but I won’t be able to have that thought, at least not realistically, when I’m older. Even though that is what I am, a runner, by nature. And then, for the first time in my admittedly short recollection, I wondered to myself “Why is this happening to me?” Like I’m some kind of victim of some sort of injustice.

I know why it’s happening to me. It’s happening to me because I’m genetically predisposed to this sort of thing. It’s happening because I only did almost everything right when I was a runner and not everything right. It’s happening because I knew it was happening but made the choice to continue anyway because I’m stubborn and think at some almost conscious level that I’m invincible. So, that’s why it’s happening to me…but it doesn’t make it any more pleasant.

I still don’t regret it. I guess that’s probably next – never been a victim, owner of few regrets, I’ll probably be whining about that soon too.

Just a few nights ago, I was telling Jen about Sisyphus as we were lying in bed. Do other couples talk about Greek mythology as they fall asleep? How many times can I try to run again, only to tumble back to the beginning, wearied and beaten, but still, despite it all, defined by my need to push the damn rock up to the top of the damn mountain again.

Anyway, thought you might like a post.

Nine Days In Connecticut

I returned to Baltimore on the early morning Acela train this morning, having spent the last 9 days in Connecticut. During those nine days, I worked 109 hours, mostly in two shifts a day with naps in between. For instance, I stopped working on Friday night around 11 PM (I think), then worked from 11AM – 4PM Saturday, then again from 8 PM to 7 AM Sunday…at which time I drove home for mother’s day, where my mother celebrated by making me eggs, doing my laundry, and leaving me alone while I took a nap downstairs. Thanks mom!

Overall, the trip was a resounding success, and I have a sadistic, competitive sort of addiction to the stakes involved. Really the worst part was the fact that I worked those 100+ hours in a room that was between 81-84 F all the time.

Now, however, I’m profoundly tired. I am fantasizing about bed.

Semi-Coherent

This time I have an excuse…an 80 hour work week, including right now at 3:30 AM sort of excuse. I’m walking around the lab with neither shoes nor socks, because it’s 82.6 degrees in here and no one else else around. I’ve got three more hours, then I’m driving home to Goshen. I’m going to do laundry, eat breakfast, wish mum a happy mother’s day, take a nap, then drive back. I think things will get a bit more regular by Monday. This stops Wednesday, most likely, but days sort of blend together, so it’s more useful to count in terms of hours. Or measurements, columns, sub apertures. Not really days.

I made it so that the test dings at me when it finishes. So on to more of that.

Payton Jordan

There is a comically awful announcer for the Payton Jordan Invite, and hippies from Stanford are banging pots and pans to provide music for the event…I think it’s time for a live blog of the festivities. All times are in Eastern Time.

By the way, Steve’s in the seeded men’s 5K. I think the race is going to be substantially slower than last year. If he wants to break 13:30, he’s going to have to finish top-5. I put my guarantee on it.

11:50 PM – The women just finished. Steve up next. Garbage can bongos on hold.

11:54 – I see Bobby Mack in neon yellow up front, Steve in light blue and neon yellow in the middle of the pack. They’re working on the road crew after the race.

11:55 – Jen wishes they wouldn’t put the camera on the rabbit. Even she knows what’s going on more than the announcer and camera crew. She’s now been following track and field for about 16 months.

11:56 – Steve sitting in about 8th, on the outside, not bad position. He cannot let any gaps form, I swear on my future children’s lives, 5 people will run the time he wants, no more.

11:58 – I can’t be sure, but I think they just came through the mile in about 4:17. I was looking for lines on the track from a camera angle at ground level.

11:59 – Pace setter lasted 1700 meters. Thanks for stopping by, dude.

12:00 – Midnight here on the east coast and Steve’s sitting around 8th, in good position. Bobby’s right with him. I think they’re running pretty fast so far, but the announcer has no useful information for us. It kind of looked like they just came through the 2500 in 6:56, which would be dirt slow. Can’t be. Well, if dirt slow is 13:52 pace, that is.

12:02 – Steve in a major traffic jam, running wide, people bunching up, this is problematic. I see a gap, and Steve’s on the wrong side of it. He looks to be laboring a bit.

12:03 – This is slow, damnit, I hate being right. Steve’s in about 7th now. They’ve picked it up. Steve is strong…I think.

12:04 – I don’t think one of these guys is going to run 13:25. Steve’s on track to run about 13:36 again.

12:05 – Steve is in 5th with 600 to go. He’s running well, but he’ll barely pr if he does.

12:06 – This is going to be a giant cluster in the last lap. He’s got to find a gear or two.

12:07 – Great race for Steve, right up in 6th or something, but 13:36.25, which is about a half second pr by my reckoning. And the winner was 13:32. They must have stretched out that short track.

14 millifarads

As part of Jen’s training to do blood sugar readings and whatnot, she needed to learn the quantity of blood needed to satisfy the meter. It was one of the things she was being tested on today. The number? 0.6 micro liters.

We were practicing last night. I asked her how much blood I needed. She dutifully told me 0.6 micro liters.

Now let me ask you something. How much blood is that? The best I could come up with was one three-millionths of a two liter bottle of Pepsi. It’s an utterly meaningless number. She said it was akin to the head of a needle. “So like, the size of a deer tick?” Nope, she didn’t like that. “So then the size of a dot you make with a pen?” Nope, more than that. “Dot from a sharpee?” Sure, that much. “What the hell kind of needles are you using?” She’s sowing whale hides to teepees or something.

Meanwhile they asked her today, she said 0.6 micro liters, they smiled and nodded and gave her a great grade. As long as we decide before hand that we’ll communicate in esoteric terms with no real world meaning, I guess it’s easy enough to pass the assessments.

Hot Off The Presses

I can’t make heads or tails of the end of the conversation I just overheard in the bathroom.

Large Man in Large Person Stall (summoning): Hey Dave.
Dave (presumably): What?
Large Man in Large Person Stall: Hear the latest?

And then Dave (presumably) walked out. He didn’t ask what the latest was and the LMiLPS never followed up by disclosing the latest. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

Furthermore, we just lost our email servers for the last 4 hours. It came back up a few minutes ago. I just got an email explaining that the email services were down. Yeah, I noticed.

Swedes Can’t Help Themselves

I’m not about to go data mining to find all the details here…but remember the time when Matt claimed that he, Dowdell and Seamus had accidentally met up with a Swedish princess, leading to an almost believable, uneventful evening of Matt, Dowdell and Seamus related hijinks? There are a bunch of posts around the turn of 2003, here’s a representative one. Well, apparently, she’s single.

On Friday, I informed Matt of the latest developments in flying cars and today he learned Princess Madeleine is available. Not a bad week for stoking delusional fantasies.

On Why I Don’t Post

I haven’t been writing much, as noted recently by Bess. Why is this?

1) I am busy. Jen studies all the time, and I do a lot of jobs around the house, mostly of my choosing. I probably spend 10 hours a week working on the garden or in the hydroponics lab. I do a lot of cleaning, some of it half-assed, but it takes time. I’ve been running more, and that takes time. And I still have a full-time (+) job.

2) Even if I’m not explicitly busy, I make myself busy because I can’t stand not working when Jen is working. I don’t like being comparatively lazy.

3) I don’t choose my bedtime. We tend to go to bed at a mutually agreeable time, but that precludes spending 20 minutes writing something inane. It’s bound to pass, but these days, I only see my wife when we go to bed, so I’m perfectly fine with altering my schedule to accommodate whatever bedtime works best.

4) I’m too busy at work to post from there. Moreover, too many people come to my desk to chat. More than just not posting from there, I’m too busy to have the thoughts that I used to jot down and write about when I got home. Speaking of which, I can’t just come home and spend 45 minutes writing about something I thought up at work – dinner feeds more than just me.

5) I have somewhat less angst, particular angst that is healthy for me to share publicly. All the sudden I don’t have free reproduction rights on all of my life experiences – things that used to not be private now are, because I am not the only person who has a stake in them.

6) I almost always wrote when I was by myself, and now I’m never by myself. Jen’s computer is 6 feet from here. I have a hard time focusing on writing when I’m with someone, even if she’s scouring primary literature for information on things like cisplatin. Then, when I ask her how to spell cisplat, my favorite drug, she rolls her chair over and I feel like I shouldn’t be writing about this sort of thing at all.

You see, I’m torn now. I have lost a lot of flexibility, which is strange because I’m such a rigid person, you would think I wouldn’t care about losing flexibility. I don’t really care these days that I don’t write, though it’s disconcerting that I lack amusing and original thoughts. I also feel guilty about not providing input to the web people. Then again, I don’t really harbor a secret longing for beautiful, dark and volatile stalkers anymore. See, even if I did, back in the day I could write about it…and now I can’t.

Not Here

So what, I don’t do anything for a week or 6 months or whatever it’s been, and then I come back with a link to volcano pictures? That doesn’t count, and I know it.

Caught Up

For the first time in maybe six months, I’m all caught up on the pictures. The last batch came from the trip to Washington state, particularly the San Juan Islands.

Apple A Day

Is it strange that I tend to finish my lunch before 9 AM (before 8 AM today)? I think it’s strange.

Hot Dog

Today was hot dog day at work. You get a ticket, stand in line for a half an hour and get a hot dog with lots of fixins from the VPs, all in commemoration of the start of baseball season. It’s also a Tuesday. For the last several weeks now, Tuesdays are speed days. So instead of standing in line for a hot dog, I went outside to run times too slow to make me feel good about myself but too fast to make me feel physically pleasant, with an unseasonably mean sun beating down. I stumbled into the building, sweaty and bloodshot, and went into the locker room, where I almost enjoyed the broken shower, the one with no warm water. Almost.

Skipping hot dog day isn’t a major sacrifice, but it is a sacrifice. As far as I can tell, the only way to rebuild toughness is through pain and sacrifice. Today featured both, probably more of the former, but a hot dog with all the fixins…mmmm.

I’m not training, by the way. I’m pseudo-training. I’ve commissioned an exploratory committee to determine if training is plausible. I’ll let you know how it goes in June. Or maybe September.

Elegant Prose

CBS just did a fluff tribute to longtime sportscaster Dick Enberg, along the way extolling his understated elegance and commitment to finely crafted prose. I spent the piece wondering, “wait, did he die? Did I know that?” As it turns out, no, he is still alive, but retiring. He ended the piece by reflecting on how 50 years worth of athletes provided the fodder – he just reported on it. He said, “we just deliver the baby and they’re the ones who write the script.”

Hmmm.

Last sentence after a 50 year sportscasting career…and you mix a metaphor. Maybe, “we just promote the play, they’re the ones who write the script.” Or, “We just deliver the baby, they’re the ones who copulate in the bathroom stall during the prom.” Personally, I’d stay away from either. We give you the news, they make it. We tell the story, they live it. We are merely witnesses to their dastardly deeds. Something like that. While he probably wouldn’t have scripted it ending that way, we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater; he didn’t stick out in either direction per my recollection, which makes him an effective announcer. That’s how a good announcer does it. He lets the athletes write the scripts, he just delivers them babies with a subtle whisper for all the world to see.

Snow More

Spring starts tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I’ve finally gotten around to editing pictures from the big snowstorm in early February. This was from the first storm, which totaled somewhere over 30 inches. We got something like 16 more a few days later.

Pictures

I’m a few months behind on pictures, but here are a few new ones. These include a hike in the late fall, some from wedding that I took before the ceremony, and a few from the honeymoon.

The picture thing on the sidebar is working again, though I can’t make it give me a random picture.

Opener

Little Stevie Furst opened the season at a cold, windy and rainy Raleigh Relays last night, winning against some good competition in 13:47. Definitely an encouraging start to the season. You can see an interview here.

Snowpe

I hate to say it, but we could see some spare snow showers after this storm passes through. Which is weird, because it’s 67 right now.

Yesterday’s Weather

Often, I’ll run in the dead of winter with shorts and a t-shirt. Why? Because it’s 55 degrees sometimes in the dead of winter. Everyone else is in parkas.

Today, I ran outside in a long sleeve and gloves. Why? Because it was 47 degrees and windy. I ran by four people in t-shirts.

I have concluded that people could care less about what the weather is actually like, preferring to rely on their impression of the weather last time they were running. January is normally cold, therefore today is cold, since today is in January. Last week was unseasonably warm, therefore today is also unseasonably warm, because I can’t plan for the future and am completely reactionary.

Don’t get me started on this health care fiasco. Here’s what a learned: everyone believes what they believe no matter what and there’s no point in arguing with them. Politicians don’t believe anything, other than what they perceive is expedient for the next 5 months of their political lives. Neither of those conclusions are earth shattering.

Where Oh Where

In case you’re wondering where I am, I am here. And I’m not coming back!

Plummeting Hits

There have been many times that I’ve thought about writing something in the last few days. I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time. It’s sort of like dreams. You wake up at three in the morning with a clear recollection of the dream and you say to yourself (if you’re me at least), man, that was a weird dream, I’m going to write about that later, and then you forget all details when you wake up a few hours later. It’s not enough to think about thinking about it, you have to make a conscious effort to drive the recollection into your conscious mind, to inspect it, mush it around, chew on it, digest it, poop it out. Sometimes you have to follow the metaphor to completion, I’m sorry.

Anyway, I remembered the dream about Jen trying to bribe a grader for an exam with $42 in an envelope. It was a $2 bill and a $40 bill, which doesn’t actually exist. That’s the good thing about sleeping with someone, you can mumble your dreams to them while they try to ignore you. Sometimes you just need an audience at 4 in the morning. Your dreams are important enough to wake someone else up for, and you should do it if you get the chance.

Something that wasn’t a dream was what I saw while driving to meet Jen’s aunt and uncle for dinner.

I’m barely coherent right now, by the way. I’ve done nothing but work all day, well, I guess I went to church and went on a hard run, but the moral of the story is that I’m delirious. My eyes are blurring. I want to shut everything down and go to bed, but I have a head of steam and if I do that I’ll lose it, obviously. I might clean the bathroom after I finish this. It’s just that I know it’ll be full of hair again in 3 days; it’s a little discouraging. Say what you will about Justin’s localized sloppiness, he didn’t leave his hair everywhere.

Anyway, the missus and I were driving north on 95 when we hit some traffic – which is normal for rush hour, even Saturday evening rush, which does exist around here. On the left hand shoulder we pass a cop car, two civilian cars and about 10 high schoolers looking hip in their shaggy hair and little accessory tote bags (while stranded on the side of the highway!). Immediately after them and stretching for the next 400 meters were many dozens of mangled, torn, disfigured stuffed animals. They had clearly hit the pavement at highway speeds, being dashed to bits as they pinwheeled snout over feet for an extended distance. Eyes were missing, appendages dismembered, button tails bobbed into the ditch in the median. It was the most macabre, morbid and absurd scene I’ve seen in a while. I wanted a picture of it. I have one, in my brain, and I’ll try to describe it to you if you ever want a full description. I can tell you that every stuffed animal was different. It had a lot of character for a mangled mess.

Let’s see. We’re going to WA in less than a week. My plants are thriving so far, but I’m a little worried about the Dahlia – they seem to be getting a bit to big for their britches. Thunbergia, Black Eyed Susan vine, are also in need of some new digs. I have a lot of garden related work between now and when we leave, including planting the second set of seeds, planting the forget-me-nots outside, planting the hummingbird mix seeds in a planter outside and planting some Dahlia tubers. I’m having a hard time negotiating the fact that I’m growing Dahlia from seeds right now while I have Dahlia that look completely different and grow from tubers in another place. Hmpf. Is Dahlia such a cool name that we need to name two different flowers with it?

I need a friggin nap. I need to go back to work so I can relax a little. Sheesh.

Root

Well, now I’m annoyed. I was happy, I was jovial, but Photoshop Elements 9.0 is different than 6.0, though only in annoying ways. It took me 10 minutes to resize a picture. Whatever, here it is:

These are some of the early results of the hydroponics lab in the basement, planted 2/14. Everything is growing. In this particular picture, the nine cell square (3 per side) in the top left has a few Vinca, grown from seeds that I collected from the deck last year. Bottom left is Sempervivum, aka, hen and chicks. They are plentiful, maybe too plentiful, but very small, having come from little tiny seeds.

The big ones on the bottom are dahlia. They’re growing their second set of leaves already – I’ve had to prune away the extras from each tray. It was sad. I’m still annoyed about image resizing, so this is going to be brief. A screwdriver and speed skating right when I finish too. Behind the dahlia are the black eyed-susan vine seedlings, which are going to have a prominent roll in the garden. I’m pleased with them.

Next to them, foxglove (look it up), in front of the foxglove, Rudbeckia. Next to that (not in the picture), a plant that’s supposed to be difficult to grow – primula gold laced – they’ve just recently sprouted – I hope those guys work.

Jen’s screwdriver…strong. We mix some strong drinks here in the Furst household.

Lastly, there’s the..uhhh…Ganzania. They are growing well too. The whole operation has been a resounding success so far.

Next weekend, I make the next tray. Not sure how I’m going to arrange things yet, or how I’m going to juggle all these plants outgrowing their pellets, but shoot, spring’s got to come eventually. When it does, I’ll have flower. Lots of them.

Next Man Up

Keep your eyes open for a possible storm 3/3.

Googling Not As Cute As Superbowl Commercial

You know that Super Bowl commercial about googling your exciting new lover from France? Most of the time, Google probably tells a different story about your priorities and plights. From the always interesting Trevin Wax, here’s a link about internet search information made public by AOL a few years ago. People candidly tell stories to Google, and Google remembers them all.

Day After Tomorrow

I feel obligated to tell you that a potential blockbuster storm is in the works for the traditional Nor’Easter areas – interior and north of us – later this week. We could get a couple of inches of snow from it. It seems like a mighty complex system, so I’m not going to speculate much further.

Addendum
From my father, jumpstarting the hype machine:
“Here we go again. NWS says ALL OUT BLIZZARD for Thursday into Friday with 1-2-feet for Orange County. Bastardi has one model that puts the bulls-eye between Washington and Baltimore with colder temps than NY and heavier wind, but not as much snow. His analog years are 1969 (Lindsey storm), 1958 and 1888 (the white Hurricane with Warwick measuring 42″). Be ready.”

Addendum
Let the hype begin! Just to be clear – this is a big deal Philly and north and west. This will be a wind maker in Baltimore, with some snow, but I think this is a much bigger deal for Goshen then Elkridge.

Addendum
Here’s your latest snow map. So Genelle, your weekend is in jeopardy. Sheesh.

Addendum
Some predictions:
Somewhere (probably in NY) will see over 40 inches of snow between now and Saturday.
Somewhere in Delmarva will see sustained winds over 50 mph with gusts over 65 mph between now and Saturday.