Yes Nikki, I Am Alive

It's been awhile so here are a couple of random blubs.

I had a job interview today. It's for a clerkship in the burbs. It's not exactly what I'd like to be doing but, it's a job, and it's experience. I'm actually kind of excited for it. That probably means that I've just shot my chances in the foot.

Running in the cold sucks, really sucks. I'm trying to get moving again and get back into a shape other than round. The worst part of the cold right now is the wind. I almost got blown off a bridge the other day. Somewhat worse than that was getting a blast of dust in my face while running over another bridge. Oh the joy's of running in a semi-industrial area.

I was starting to feel bad about not applying for to many jobs. Then I discovered tonight that: 1. there really aren't any that I'm remotely qualified for and 2. there really aren't any that I'm remotely interested in doing.

I can now cook a mean chili, chicken parmesan, a deathly spicy (yet awesome) jambalaya, and some bad ass crab cakes. I have yet to poison anyone. I also had the weird experience of learning that my grampa's delicious beans are made with the food equivalent of old truck tires and toxic waste.

I've turned down one job offer so far. Not worth talking about.

I Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans

I have to admit, I was terrified when the letter came. I had no idea what I had done to offend the Supreme Court of Louisiana, but I was sure I had. My grandpa and my parents were so excited by it that they wanted to open it without me. As it turns out, they were inviting me down to New Orleans to give me an award for volunteering down there after Katrina.

After a bit of trying to decide whether to actually go, my sister and I made the 14 hour drive down on the Friday before the ceremony. That meant it was going to be a crazy weekend rush. Drive down on Friday, come back Monday night. It didn't hit me how happy I was to be in NOLA till we were driving down Magazine St. It almost felt like going home. We got to eat lunch at Parasols, which my sister declared was the "dirtiest place she had ever eaten" and "the best sandwich ever" (shrimp po'boy, dressed). It was good to see that inspite of the crime and the total Assclown in charge, that New Orleans is making notable progress. However, it was a bit disheartening to see the St. Charles streetcar running only because the producers of K-Ville got the city to run it in front of where they were filming.

That night we waited in line for almost 2 hours to eat at Port of Call. It was almost worth the drive just for that meal. Afte that it was a fun night out in the French Quarter. The next day was a tad on the rough side, but we had Nacho Mama's for lunch before a walk around the Quarter in the day light. We capped the night off with some ice cream at the Creole Cremery.



Monday morning we went to Cafe Du Monde for beignets and coffee which, in a stunning New Orleans moment we got to enjoy on the Moonwalk with the Mississippi River on one side and a guy playing the sax on the other side of us. It was a beautiful fall morning. After that we wandered over the the St. Louis Cathedral. It was blocked off by a bunch of Secret Service looking types and LA State Police. As it turns out, it was the "Red Mass" or blessing of the judges. Right as we walked up the bells starting going off and a flood of clergy poured out followed by a mass of judges. After that we wandered around the French Market buying nicknacks for the people back home funding the junket. I managed to pick up a pretty cool little "Abogado" devil. The guy didn't seem to find as much humor in me buying an anti-lawyer charm as did.



The awards ceremony itself was nice. There were at least 100 names of volunteers printed in the program and around 20 of them showed up. I was expecting to get a handshake and maybe a certificate. I was a little shocked when I got a plaque and my picture taken with the Chief Justice of the LA Supreme Court. Afterwards, there was a reception coinciding with the LA judges reception. I stayed long enough to get thanked by a number of judges and attorneys.

It was quite an honor to get welcomed and awarded like that. I got involved with New Orleans becuase I was fortunate enough to make some great friends. I volunteered because I fell in love with the city the first moment I visited it. I only wish I could have seen it before Katrina. However, the New Orleans I know and love is still a wonderful and chaotic place. It's going to take more than just me volunteering down there to help preserve what is good about the city while repairing what is broken and wrong with it.

Last Warm Day

I think yesterday will go down as the last warm day of the year. I'm glad I got outside for it. It was warm, sunny and slightly too windy. The only upsetting thing about the day was that, after a couple of months of not exercising regularly and eating too much, I've gotten back up over 200 pounds. I mention this mostly to help embarass myself back into motion.

I'm glad that today is a pretty crappy day. Perfect rest day, but I think I'll try and get the motivation to do some lifting at some point. I've at least managed to do some work on the job search as well. I found one firm to apply to that looked interesting. I also found a firm that I would avoid at all costs. Not because any of them are bad attorney's, but becuase I know one of the partners could bore someone to death. At least this is marginally easier now that I can apply for a job knowing that in less than a month I'll actually be a licensed attorney.

The Sun-Times

As a newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times is perhaps a step above the Onion. At least on a good day. Today for the most part, I felt like I would have got more information if I would have read Maxim or perhaps whatever the Pakistani national paper is. However, the Sun-Times should be applauded for bringing me this quote from Chicago Alderwoman Lorna Lane:

"There are residents within our ward who have neighbors raising chickens as pets. They're letting them run around in their backyards. Debris from the chickens is creating mice. The odor from the feathers is something they're not happy with."

I could rail against the city goverment wasting it's time with this crap instead of doing something important, like say, fixing the CTA. But no, I would like to call your attention to one particular sentance.

"Debris from the chickens is creating mice."

I'm no scientist, but I thought mice created other mice. Hell, you can even be religious and say that God created the mice. Or you can be an Alderwoman and think that chicken "debris" created the mice.

If I can't get a job, I'm running for city council, I'm obviously over-qualified.

Probate

It's been 30 days since my grandma died and I filed the will today. Today was a pretty rough day.

First day back, again

Yesterday was the first day I went on a run since I hurt myself and my grandma died. I'd been getting antsy about not running or working out and eating garbage for last couple of weeks. I was afraid to actually weigh in, I was convinced that I'd just about erased all the hard work I did earlier in the year. I was nicely surprised that I was actually still slightly under 200 pounds.

I took extra long to strech out this time. Pookie sent me an email a couple of days ago with her opinion that my long runs were probably either a cause or at least partially responsible for my constant injuries. While allowing for the fact that she is both smarter than I am generally and knows more about running than I do, I have to disagree with her. My long runs would generally consist of 10-15k (roughly 6-10 miles). I don't think that is necessarily a problem to start running that distance. Granted, it takes a couple of weeks to gradually ramp up to those distances. Also, I wasn't running those distances at a particularly speedy pace. My iPod puts my usual 5k pace at about 6-6:30 min/k and I was running longer distances at roughly 7-8 min/k. So that wasn't the problem.

What I think causes most of my injury problems are bad equipment, lack of stretching/cross-training, and lack of rest. The bad equipment problem was most pronounced when I first started running. I bought the wrong shoes without going to a running store and getting my feet checked out. Big big big mistake. I would hurt myself roughly every 3 weeks, with various degrees of pain. I've solved that problem (and hurt myself when I did) by getting my feet checked out. I bought the proper shoes and some comfy socks which seem to have solved that problem. The other two problems are still a problem though. I don't think I strech out enough before or after a run. I always try to, but I don't think it's enough. I should also be doing more weightlifting/non-running exercise, especially for my legs. The final problem is probably the worst. From the reading I've been doing various running and exercise magazines, the good effects of running stick with you for about 2 days or so. That means you can run one day and still have a heightend metabolism and healthiness for a couple of days. I haven't been paying attention to that. I'll go running on a monday and do it again as early as possible on wed. Or I'll do a long run and follow it up with a short run the next day. I'm simply not able to do that and I should know that by now. For example, this current injury happened becuase I ran Race Judicata on a Thursday, The adventure race (which was close to 5 miles of running) on that saturday or sunday, then shortly after that, I did a endurance training. What killed me was not that I ran a particularly long distance, it was that I didn't recover enough and my body simply gave out. What I should have done was run those two races and then spend the next couple of days lifting and streching.

So, back to the point here. I went out yesterday with the intent to do a slow recovery 5k to get back into the swing of things. I also was feeling gross from not working out and stressed out about various things. Not to mention that I have to start getting ready for the Bucktown 5k in a couple weeks. I saw there was a Sox game on so I made a snap decision to run passed Comisky and check out the crowd. Everything was fine until I got to the corner of 35th and the Dan Ryan. There was a girl passing out some sort of Quaker Oat Snacks. Unfortunatly for her, there was a perfect convergance of crap. Right as I started to approach her, I noticed a large crowd of people coming and if I didn't speed up I would either have to run through them, stop, or run all the way around. Also, at that particular moment, Pennywise came on the iPod. Without thinking I started to sprint through the gap between the Oat Girl and the crowd. Right as I started to pass her, she stuck out her hand to get ready to hand someone some oat snacks. Yup, right as she did that my hand pumped forward and I punched that damn oat snack right out of her hand.

My own mental compulsion wouldn't let my legs stop sprinting. So I did the manly thing and blurted out "sorry" as I watched the oat snack skitter across the ground. I didn't even look at her face, I was too embarassed. I just ran away as fast as I could. I felt pretty bad about it later, and thought about going back, but I didn't.

The rest of the run was good. I had some phantom pains in my legs, but at this point I know the difference between actually have to stop pain, and my body just making shit up. when I got done with the 5k of running I walked and cooled off for about another k. My legs were rubbery and sore, but in a good way. I'd like to run again on Friday, but I'll be busy. That's probably a good thing.

Golfing with the Father

[note, I started this post about 2 weeks ago and then things intervened to stop me from finishing it till today]



The day after the fair, I went golfing with the Librarian's Father and Brother. It was damn near perfect day; bright and sunny, warm but not hot, with just enough of a breeze. We went to a public course near her parents house that in my opinion was pretty cool. It was nicely laid out and fairly interesting for such a small course. The coolest hole started at the top of a hill that overlooked the course. At the top of the hill you could see the sand traps for the hole were laid out to look like Snoopy. That was pretty goofy, but whatever. It was a fun hole because you could whack the hell out of the ball and it would go flying forever and mine did, right in to a protected grass area. Like about 10 of my balls, that protected grass ate the ball.

I held up fairly well at the start of the game. I shot the first hole with an honest 7 strokes. I went down hill pretty fast after that and the wheels totally came off for the last couple of holes. On about the second or third holes there was a water hazard that I warned everyone I was going to hit my ball into no matter what I did. Her dad reponded with, "That's fine, just don't hit the ducks". I was rather worried as I watch the ball break and hook right over the ducks heads. I think it would have been a pretty good story though if I would have killed or maimed one of the ducks. I could only imagine the look on her dad and brothers faces if that had happened.

One of the highlights of the game was that I didn't manage to lose all of my balls. I only lost a couple to the water and a few more to the protected grass areas. I even managed to get yelled at by a referee when I went into the protected grass areas to look for my ball. The downsides to the game were that by the 14th hole I couldn't hit a damn thing or make any consistent movement forward. The other problem I had was putting and chipping. No matter how softly I thought I was hitting the ball, that little bastard went flying. I might have had better luck if I had used my putter as a driver.

It was a good day though. I only got a little sunburned on my neck; probably because I had gotten a little burned at the fair. After we got back from golfing I took a nap while the Librarian talked to her dad's cousin about their trip to Italy. After that we came back home. All in all, a very nice little trip.

MN State Fair

I think it's been, say, 12 years since I've been to a state fair. The Librarian, and her family, however, go to the MN state fair every year. It was quite the family affiar. We were up and at the fair at like 9 in the morning and started eating shortly there after. If there was anything besides my current injury to kill my training dead was this state fair. The amount of food I ate was seriously offensive. And delicious, soo delicious. We had everything from hotdogs, to funnel cakes, to fried fruit on a stick, to Sloppy joe on a stick, the food on a stick thing was very popular up there. I even got some Kashi, and that earned a couple of odd looks from the Librarian's parents.

Bondage Sheep.

I was also, ahem, restrained from battling any of the farm animals. Even though, the Librarian's mom did give me explicit permission to do battle with my nemesis, the cow. We ended up leaving around 9 at night and I don't think it was possible to sleep on my stomach that night. The only bad part of the fair was that I have shot back up to 200 pounds. I'm going to have to work hard on getting rid of that.

Fore!

Ah, the joys of Golf. I think golf is perhaps the most aggrevatingly fun sport that's not running. Well, running is aggrevating for me since I always hurt myself. Dr. H and I went on over to the driving range today to get in a little bit of practice. I'm going up north with the Librarian this weekend and am going to be playing Golf with her family. I had to knock a little bit of the rust off, man, I was pretty rusty.

Today would have been a lot better though had it not been so humid. I was drenched with sweat in like 5 minutes. It was, rather gross. I did manage to make a better showing of myself though. I even hit one of the range marker flags, which was the highlight of my day. I figure if I can play at least that well this weekend, I won't make a total embarassment out of myself.

First Attempt

Yesterday marks a fairly significant moment in my life; my first real job application. I've had precisely two jobs before law school, KFC and working for my dad. I wouldn't say I really had to apply for either. I did have an interview at KFC, but my guess is that really doesn't count for much.

I should also mention that the Librarian is responsible for a lot of the heavy lifting on this. She found the firm to apply to, redid my my resume and edited my cover letter to make it actually something useful. I'm hopeful on this one, but, honestly, not too optimistic. But it was worth it to go through the panicked feeling of actually submitting the application. I'm hoping that part gets a little easier.

On that particular front, I decided to sign up for Law Crossing. Man, is that expensive. Pinky said good things about it, so I'm going to try it out for a couple months. If it doesn't work, that's an expense that's getting cut fast. Speaking of expenses, I really need to get any sort of job I can get my hands on. Dr. H had the suggestion of getting some crap job to make some money and then volunteer at a legal clinic to get practice. I think that's a pretty good idea and might look into that.

Laid Up

Well, that took all of, um, say 3 days. I guess the races and the extra training were a bit too much. I should have figured that my legs wouldn't have held up. I felt my right knee starting to go out during my regular training on last Tuesday. By the time I got home and cleaned up, the knee was dead. It was almost more excruciating than when I screwed up my left leg. I think this time I might have screwed up something in my calf that has caused my knee and IT band to go out.

On the day I hurt my knee, the knee itself and my IT band hurt. Since then the pain has gone down there, but I've had cramps and pain in my calf. It feels like there is a cord, running down the middle of my calf that is pulling on my knee and is stiff and pained. I have no idea what I hurt this time, but I'm pretty pissed about this.

It screwed up my training schedule pretty bad. I'm now unable to do any sort of interval running for the next couple of weeks and will probably have to put those off until September. Damn. I'm going to try to do some stretching and strength training on my legs and core. I'm hoping that if I can beef that up I'll keep my knees from blowing up. More importantly, I need to get back in shape for the Bucktown 5k.

Training

Aka, last post for today.

Today marked the first day of training for the Bucktown 5k. I have to get in much better shape so I can reclaim my honor and dignity from Pookie. Worse comes to worse, I’m going to Tazer her before the race. You might say, wait, your giving away your game plan here, Pookie’s gonna know what’s up with you before the race. I say good. That will motivate me to actually beat her, and perhaps, strike some fear in to her mean little corporate heart.

Anyway, I weighed in a nice round 197 pounds this morning. I’d like to drop that down to 187 for the race. It would be nice to run the race a nice 10 pounds lighter, even lighter than the Sox race. I had a respectable time of 29:18 there, and I’d like to beat that by 5 minutes. That might not put me in contention against Pookie, but it will at least be a respectable loss.

Today’s run was a Nike+ endurance interval. Ten minutes of bad music (Pussycat Dolls) to warm up, then 4 sets of three minutes of hard running (and bad music) followed by 3 minutes of rest running (and bad music, this mix really sucks) followed by 10 minutes of cool down (actually a cool Pharrell song). My warm up was good; I managed about a 7 min/k pace. The first two sets were good, I felt like I was charging, including a good uphill over the bridge at Bubbly Creek. The second sets, well, they sucked. I had to drop down to a walk for most of the rest sets and my legs were shot by the end of the run. I clocked in about 6.5k in roughly 50 minutes. The cool down was pretty hard and my legs were cramping by the end. I also walked a little at the end. Holy crap, I’m sweating just thinking about the run today.

After the run, my body felt ok for the most part. I had some lingering cramps from Saturday’s adventure race before the run and my calves were not happy to run today. As the day wore on though, my right knee has started to bug me. I feel like someone is digging around in there with a flat head screwdriver. I’m going to ice it and see how that feels. It better not complain too much, I’m running a easy 5k tomorrow whether it likes it or not.

High Trek Adventure Race

So the Saturday after Race Judicata, my buddy Sean and I did one of those “urban adventure” races. It was basically a giant scavenger hunt, where you get a sheet of clues to figure out and then go to that place and take your picture with it in the background. Pretty simple. There are 12 clues to locate and you can skip one. For each clue you get wrong though, you get nailed with 30 minutes tacked on to your time. However, you get to have a partner back at home that you can call up and ask for help when you need it. Before the race you take a short trivia quiz and for each question you get right, you get a minute taken off your time. As for actually going to the clue locations you can either walk/run or take public transportation. No bikes, skateboards, cars, taxis or transport. They did have a couple of those igo cars roaming around that you could flag down, but we didn’t see them.

We got there and milled around a bit before the quiz. Sean was impatient that I actually read the damage waiver. If law school taught me anything, it’s read what your signing. We were in one of the last groups to actually get started. We got there a little late and they staggered the start based on when you got there. Once we got started though, we flew. The first two clues were on North Ave. and we knocked those out fast. A quick run to the Armatidge bus and we were on our way to the next set of clues. I figure we must have pounded out the first 6 pretty fast, maybe like 45 minutes. When we got to the DePaul quad for the next 6 clues we were the first there.

The second set took us up Lincoln and were a bit harder. We were also getting a bit sluggish. We stopped for Gatorade shortly after running through a park full of girls wearing bikinis that should have been wearing burkas. After a clue up on Clark St. we ran back to the Brown Line at Belmont and went up to Lincoln Square. The last two clues were tricky, they seemed really far away, but were actually within two blocks of each other. We ended up getting a rest for a few minutes on Western Ave. waiting for the bus to take us back to Division St. The bus ride was about half an hour and Sean was antsy. For the last clue we had to run down Division towards the bar where it started. We snapped the last picture and Sean wanted to sprint, I wanted to die, but ran anyway.

As it turns out, we were also the first team back. The guy running the race seemed a little surprised that we got back so fast. We got our schwag, which consisted of; a shirt (that I’ll get in a couple days), a Goose Island 312 hat and bottle opener, some food coupons (sushi, bleh) and tada! a free pint of 312. We had lunch while we waited for the other teams to show up. It took about an hour for us to get our food and about the same time for the next team to show up. They looked a little shocked that we were there. We joked that we were “Fat Man and Lazy Guy”. The 3rd team came in about 45 minutes after the 2nd team. Sean had to go to run in the “Elvis is Alive 5k” so I waited at the bar for the results. I’m glad I didn’t sign up for that race. I was dead while I waited in the bar. I had another 312 and inadvertently took a nap. I was shot. My legs were stiff and felt like hamburger.

I was sitting, talking to this group of people when they announced the results. The 2nd place team got a pair of shoes and scowled at me when they left early. The people sitting next to me took a second and were like “holy shit, you won!” and congratulated me. It was pretty sweet winning that race. For our trouble we got roundtrip tickets on Southwest. Our final score for the race was 2 hours, 17 minutes. We got all the clues right and got 17 trivia questions right. Now we just have to figure out where to go.

Race Judicata

Race Judicata 07 was supposed to be my triumphant victory over my buddy, Pookie. You might not guess by looking at her but Pookie is perhaps just a touch faster than say, Speedy Gonzales. We made a nice little bet, 20 bucks followed by an automatic rematch at the Bucktown 5k. Pookie was even handicapped by 3 minutes to give me a fighting chance.

The race took place in Grant Park at 6:30 on a muggy Thursday evening. For whatever reason, maybe it was the desire to see a bunch of lawyers pushed off path in to the lake or get run over by a bike, the organizers left the course open. It might not have been as bad had there not been some 3000 runners. It was hot and the humidity was oppressive, but I was optimistic (stupid).

I got there, listened to some pretentious twit whine, met Pookie, stretched and milled around waiting for the start. Once the race started the chute was so clogged with people that it took a couple of minutes to actually move forward. My Nike+ gear decided to act up while I was going forward towards the start. I really need to figure out a better system for getting that settled before a race. Once we got going I freaking flew! I killed 2k in 10 minutes. I would have made a record time and perhaps even won 20 bucks. The race gods, they thought differently.

I wanted to puke at about 2k and had to slow down. Pookie passed me on her way back at about 2.33k. By 2.5k I was walking, jogging and simply willing myself to finish. I finally got in at 34:18, worse than even my training runs. Obviously, I lost the 20 bucks and a small portion of my dignity. I blame three factors for this poor showing; the heat and humidity, bad pace control, and to a lesser extent the race format (evening start, open course).

After the race Pookie and I stuck around for the post-race entertainment, Chicago's own Ska gods, Skapone! I haven't seen them in years so that was a treat. We were also treated to a bunch of free beer, which went down nice after the race. The schwag from the race was pretty sweet; concert, shirt, USB thumb drive, beer coozie and a stress ball, oh, and free beer.

Great race, but I have to do better.

First Post

So, I’ve decided that I missed my soapbox. The old blog had to die though, bit to personal, to chaotic, and perhaps, a tad whiney. I missed the writing and well, the narcissism of it all, so I’ve decided to give Blogger a try and see how this turns out.

This blog is also going to be a bit less personal (read whiney) and hopefully a touch more focused. Maybe I’ll even sell my soul to Adsense seeing as I have no job. The point of this blog is to bitch about being unemployed, my running and training and maybe some other goofy shit that comes to mind. We shall see.

Oh and I’ve put links up to other blogs I really like, check ‘em out.