June 2007 Archives

Carrie and I have been watching Animaniacs lately, you know, that cartoon with the nations of the world song? Well, safe to say, it is much more fun to watch cartoons with a degree in music. One of the more interesting moments was catching the opening few measures of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. Unfortunately, one can get so caught up with the music that you stop paying attention to the cartoon.

It is also a fun game to try and figure out who all the celebrities are that they impersonate. Given that these cartoons were produced a few years ago, some are still obvious, but others are still kind of tricky. On the obvious side, I never realized that the GoodFeathers are Liotta, DeNiro, and Pesci. Go figure.

Anyway, I would highly encourage you to rent these wonderful cartoons.

Ok, this is about my run today, but only an interesting incident. If you want the nitty-gritty, you gotta head over to my running blog.

So I tried a new path for my long run this morning, and since I knew it would take me over 2 hours to complete, I started a bit before 6:00 am. This path gives me access to some relatively secluded, wooded areas, which is great considering how surrounded by suburbia we are. While I saw many bunnies and squirrels out and about, I was not expecting to see an adult deer.

The trail, at this point, went over a bridge and then looped back around to go under said bridge. It was in the middle of this tiny loop that the deer was hanging out. I paused my run and clapped a couple of times to make sure the deer knew I was coming. While I've seen plenty of deer in my lifetime, I've never been quite so close to one, and while I figured if it got spooked it would run away, I also know that if it got pissed off it could do a lot of damage.

Anyway, I stop running and just walk around this loop, coming nearly within arms-reach of this deer. I couldn't believe how calm it was. It just kind of looked at me, as if annoyed that I interrupted its breakfast. As I finally start to get further away, it just puts its head down and continues eating. Go figure. I couldn't believe it didn't bolt on me.

Well, I've gotten comments aside from my wife's that indicate that the level of quality of this blog has diminished remarkably due to the inclusion of running posts. As such, I've created a separate blog for those posts:

Behold! (I'm currently designing a new header for it.)

So, you can expect some more interesting posts here in the next few days. For now, I'm lamenting the obscene amount of money that we've spent getting our cars fixed...

Update: The new blog has a cool header and, I think, a snazzy catch phrase. Also, I've updated the Home Page to reflect my failure of podcasting being replaced by the new blog.

I've posted the recording of my most recent recital on my music page, which can be found here. For those of you who are in the KC area, I'll be getting CD's burned relatively soon.

Carrie informed me approximately 5 seconds ago that she has stopped reading my blog because I post too much about running.

As such, I thought I'd mention something I'm doing for the first time in my life--reading a Stephen King novel. You see, I have a problem with scary movies. A big problem. For whatever reason, I tend to get really into movies and my "willing suspense of disbelief" can be too powerful. Thus, while I really enjoy movies, I can't do anything too scary as I have a very hard time disconnecting the fictional horror from reality.

Still, I have enjoyed the Stephen King movies I've seen (The Shining, Misery), despite the many sleepless nights they've given me. The reason I've been more hesitant about reading the books is that with books, everything lies in the realm of the imagined, and I have thus far thought that disconnecting myself from the imaginary would therefore be all the more difficult. But, with summer upon us and running only taking up so much of my time, I've decided to jump in.

Sadly, our library didn't have some of the books I wanted to read, but did see The Tommyknockers and Misery, and decided to check those out. I'll let you know how I end up...

(There, Carrie, I blogged about something other than running.)

I'm sure most of you geeks know that Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) and Bill Gates appeared together on stage for a very interesting interview at the D: All Things Digital Conference. Well, if you haven't had a chance to see it yet, you can download the video from iTunes here, and if the 1GB download is too much, the audio is also available at a much more reasonable 80MB. Enjoy.

Carrie and I got some new bikes the other day, and we both love 'em. For those keeping score at home, mine is a Raleigh C500 and Carrie's is a Trek 7.2FX. They're both hybrids, though are more road bike-y than mountain bike-y. (Think skinny vs fat tires.)

Here are some pictures.

Isn't she cute?

Oh and just to brag on my 25:27 5K this morning...