Mar 29 What up guy at the soda fountain using your definitively clear plastic water cup in order to get some soda? How are your ill-gotten gains? Tasty I hope.
I am sure that you have a good reason for doing what you do. The world has probably beaten and berated you. You deserve some of this sweet nectar. Besides, you figure that it is a chain restaurant, and the syrup water that you are taking is really only worth cents to them. If you have a job it probably is not the one that you really want (I mean not everyone gets to sleep in, tell people what to do, and have no pressure on them whatsoever). Or maybe you don’t get paid as much as you know that you deserve (it must be because people don’t understand how much you are worth).
Some people will never learn to have integrity no matter what they are doing. Some people will sell it for a little cup of soda. Then again others have sold much more valuable things for not much more in return.
So keep at it, sir. I know that you will no matter what I say. And good luck on that whole job of your dreams thing.
Mar 23 The post title pretty much says it. Crom, our (or at least my) favorite interesting co-worker, has a girlfriend. While this may be new to you, it is not actually new information. As far as I can gather they are in a long term relationship. So that would probably make it pretty old information since my co-workers tell me that she’s been in his life for awhile, and he has been here for 10 years.
So I wonder, what is it about commitment that scares people? He is probably in his mid to late 40’s, and from the sound of it has never been married while he has worked here. I have heard him joke about getting married to his girlfriend. Of course I would imagine that those jokes have happened many times over the years with no obvious change in the situation. Maybe he’s just testing things out like he’s testing out his “new” car.
I wonder if he writes a blog, and he wonders about me being a young (relatively to him) guy who has already gotten suckered into getting married. Let’s hope so!
The funniest part is that I could never forget her name. Previously he gave some of us login information for one of his machines so that we could work on a project. Her name was the password. Even though I have long since worked on that project, I definitely keep that Post-It note around just for kicks.
Feb 21 I have a new coworker, and he smokes cigarettes. I had no idea that I cared so much until he started his new job recently. Now I have had coworkers who smoked in the past, but they were never close enough in proximity to make a huge difference to me. That is I could smell the stench when I got close to them, but I did not need to be close to them to do my work on a regular basis. However this new coworker is in the cubicle right next to me so suffice to say he is very close to where I need to be to do my work on a regular basis.
Everyday I find myself trying to figure out his smoking break schedule so that I can tell when I want to take a nice stroll around to see what everyone else is up to. I find myself trying to cover my nose (even though I know that the third-hand smoke can easily get through whatever it is that I’m using to cover it). Somehow, whether real or imagined into being, I find that sometimes I will feel slightly ill right around the time that he comes back from his smoke break.
The coworker does not help the situation very much because he is hardly friendly. He pretty much keeps to himself even when everyone else is chatting. He seems content to be in his world, and subsequently I do not really have a relationship with him. He does not seem stupid so I am pretty sure that he is aware of all of the warnings about the detrimental effects of smoking. At least he knows that he has to go outside to smoke. In any case, I have been thinking about what I can do about this little problem. Some ideas that I have had:
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Post a sign about smoking (which might get me onto Passive Aggressive Notes)
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Move all of his stuff to another cubicle far away and print out a paper directing him to his new location as a result of some hazard located only in his cubicle with thanks and regrets from “The Management”
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Complain loudly to everyone except to him. If he asks me about it then just deny, deny, deny
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Get a fan (its size depending on how passive aggressive I’m feeling) and turn it on whenever he comes back from a smoke break
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Complain to human resources that I am in an unsuitable environment
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As soon as he gets back from his smoke breaks loudly take my laptop and stomp over to another cubicle or office to start working there
Or I just realized that I could just you know…talk to him and tell him how I feel.
Jan 16 Running has just become a part of my life. I hear others talk about how they think that it’s sheer craziness, and I know that I would have agreed at times in my life with that sentiment. But since my mind was changed around 7 years ago I have gone from my first half to a full and even starting to mix in a fair share of barefoot running. With this in mind I decided to do another half marathon with some friends from church.
This half marathon stands apart from the other races that I did because I believe that I did nearly all of my training for it barefoot. There might have been a couple of runs that I ran shod, but I don’t particularly remember them even when I ran in Boston, MA in November or during the cold temperatures here in Los Angeles, CA (~36 degrees Fahrenheit at night). In any case I was fairly set on trying to do this barefoot, but I hurt my heel on my very last tapered run 2 days before the race! I was trying to run on the street more since it was going to be a street race, but it did not go well. I am sure that there are errors in my form, and these will need to be addressed in the future. This started to give me some idea to what my problems were going to be for the race. The pain in my heel was slight, but I knew from past experience that any slight pain will be hugely magnified over the course of many miles. This made me start to doubt whether I would be able to finish the race barefoot.
The morning of the race went well. We all slept well and got up ready to go. I brought my shoes along just in case the conditions were unbearable, but I decided to leave them in the car when we finally got there. At the starting line I went up to the 8-9 minute/mile corral just before they started the race. The first mile along the boardwalk was grand since it was concrete, and I have plenty of concrete sidewalk experience. However near the first mile marker the course turned onto Venice Blvd. That first portion went decently even if there were some rough spots. Just to give you an idea from Ken Bob’s Terrain Guide, I had trained mostly on grades near 6 or 7 while the actual surface of those Santa Monica streets oftentimes warranted a 3 or 4.
In any case I continued on my merry way, doing okay until between miles 8 and 9. It was at that point that I was starting to feel the pain quite a bit, and it was affecting me a lot. I refused to stop or walk, but I was not doing well. Instead of passing people, I was starting to get passed. I won’t lie, it was rough going. The surface seemed to have gotten worse on the way back, but it could have just been that I was more sensitive after having run all of those other miles.
Those last 5 miles were torturous. I knew that I had to make it, and I knew that I could not stop. I reasoned with myself that stopping to walk just meant more time on my feet, and that was the last thing that I wanted at that point. I approached the end, thankfully, and I’m pretty sure that I picked it up in the last half of a mile as the finish line neared simply based on the fact that I was soon going to be able to get off of my feet. For the next 2 hours I was either sitting with my feet off of the pavement or hobbling uncomfortably because my feet were too tender to walk very far.
I did get to meet a nice older fellow who had run the race barefoot. He looked pretty comfortable as he was walking around afterward, but we chatted and he shook my hand in congratulating me on my first barefoot half marathon. I’m pretty sure that he thought that I was slightly foolish for only having run my longest barefoot run at ~10 miles prior to that race, though.
I don’t have too many pictures because honestly I only had 2 things on my mind. My right and my left feet. But the short story is:
- I did not train far enough in my distances.
- I did not train on the correct surfaces.
- I will be hobbling for a little while.
- I did it.
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