I write about myself because I can.

Monthly archives for March, 2007

I hate Charley Horses

Mar21
2007 Written by Andrew

It was definitely time to buy new running shoes. My legs were hurting consistently after every run, and since the last pair I bought was in July or August, I had better replace them or else really start doing damage to my legs and feet. I’m not sure how many miles I went in those shoes, but after I bought them I did 25 miles a week for a couple of months, and 5-10 miles a week for most of the winter. I may have squeezed at least 300-350 miles out of them. Yowza.

So I meandered over to the running shop in the next block yesterday at lunch, but as I walked in I completely blanked on the brand and type of shoe I bought last time. After a quick fitting, I declared that the first pair I tried on felt the best, and walked out with a nice pair of Brooks running shoes and a long-sleeved shirt. When I got home, I discovered I’d replaced a pair of Brooks Adrenaline GTS 6 with a pair of Brooke Adrenaline GTS 7 shoes. Well. I guess I picked the right shoes since I replaced my old shoes with the model that replaced them.

To test out my new shoes (and test out my stamina), I decided to go for a run. A long run. I had originally thought about three laps around the waterfront, but I despise laps so much I wanted a straight path…and I only really know of one straight path that has the length I wanted to run. So I ran down to the Hawthorne Bridge, turned left…and kept going until I reached the Sellwood Bridge. It’s a very nice run, but the problem is that I get a bit far from home and if I get tired/injured/bored/thirsty, there’s no much I can do except stop and go back. Or keep going. At least with waterfront laps I can stop after one or two laps and be done with it.

I was feeling pretty good when I crossed the Sellwood Bridge, but past Willamette Park I was pretty tired and starting to hurt a little bit. Long story short…I made it home. I had to stop and walk for a couple of minutes twice, but I made it home largely intact.

Flush with pride in my returned strength and stamina, I decided to celebrate with a beer or two. I got back to my apartment, drank about a quart of Gatorade, and then threw on a hoody to walk up to the corner grocery store and pick out a couple of bottles of beer. Apparently the afternoon’s exertions were a bit too much for my body, and on the landing of the staircase leading to my apartment I got my first ever in-motion Charley Horse. Dammit. That must have been my body’s way of rolling up a newspaper, hitting me on the nose, and saying “No!” I hobbled around for the rest of the night, and my celebratory beer was more or less ruined so I could feel sorry for myself.

Plus, I’d only gotten about 5 hours of sleep the night before, so fatigue from that and my run played a huge role. Hanne and I walked up to the Laurelhurst Theater on Monday night and saw a late showing of Aliens, and I didn’t climb into bed until 12:30. I’m back on the 8-4:30 shift now, and getting up at 6 AM Monday morning made for a long day with a short night.

Yesterday was the 4th anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Whoopty-frickin’-do. I looked back in my blog to see if I’d written anything about the impending invasion, and I came across a nice little rant of mine.

Time to go limp around and grab some lunch.

Posted in Beer, General, Hanne, Running

Surreality

Mar15
2007 Written by Andrew

Hanne has provided several surreal moments in our relationship. I’ve already mentioned the conversation I overheard with her parents when she was suddenly speaking with an English accent, but last weekend she managed to surprise me yet again.

Last weekend I downloaded the movies The Rundown and Casino Royale to watch with Hanne. Since I’d downloaded them, I didn’t realize that they’d be subtitle-less, so we reached a part where several characters were speaking Portuguese in one of them, but the subtitles to help English-centric viewers such as myself were missing. I’d seen The Rundown before, though, so I apologized to Hanne and tried to explain what they were saying as best from my memory as I could. Then she surprised me yet again.

She turned to me and said “I speak Portuguese.”

Er…what? I knew she spoke Spanish, and she actually keeps her cell phone menus in Spanish to keep thinking in Spanish now and then, but I had no idea she spoke Portuguese, and if she told me, it was a long time ago and I’d forgotten. So we’re sitting there watching this movie, and she’s laughing at the dialog in Portuguese that I just remember the gist of.

I tell you, surreal.

Her entire family is coming to town next month for a few days, so any desire I have to experience an encore of the first surreal moment I had with her should be repeated and then some. For a few days I’ll have a girlfriend with a British accent. Cool.

I missed two phone calls on my cell phone in the last few days, and I immediately placed the number as coming from the main switchboard at Beloit. Either they’re doing a big fundraising push, or someone there really wants to talk to me. I’m betting it’s the former. Next time they call I might tell them that I’ll start giving money to help with other people’s educations when I finish paying off my own.

Posted in Hanne, Movies

A surprisingly ambitious Tuesday

Mar13
2007 Written by Andrew

My fingers seem to have a biological malfunction today. I’ve gone the whole day and somehow managed to enter my variety of passwords incorrectly about a dozen or more times overall today. I’m surprised I didn’t get locked out of a few systems.

I submitted my resume for a new job today, which surprised me as much as it may you. I’m not actually unhappy in my current position, nor do I have a burning desire to climb any sort of professional ladder, but I happened upon a job posting on Craigslist after staying out of that section since February of last year when I found my current job, and it was too good to pass up. Smaller company, even more interesting technology to play with, some extra money, and what looks like a better corporate culture. I’ve been working in a large company for the last year, and I’m not sure how much it agrees with me, to be honest. Plus, I’ve had a lot of my friends leave lately, and though I did make a pinky swear with someone not to leave any time soon, I’m sure I could beg forgiveness were I offered a position.

Plus, a little extra money to find a better apartment would be a blessing. I’m not unhappy here, but the stresses of battling the ants finally got to me and I suddenly wished I lived in a place without yearly ant infestations. You see, after my initial victory over their ground troops, the air support came out in force. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen your bathroom practically swarming with flying ants. Every time I went back in there during the day, I’d find another 10 or so, and after stupidly wishing I only had to deal with the ground ants, those came out in force the next morning.

I think I found where they were coming in, though, and I nuked them. I may have stopped the invasion temporarily, but I don’t think my bathroom will ever smell of anything besides the natural clove scent of my can of Raid ever again.

Last weekend was actually quite nice. After a Friday night of a going-away party for one of my afore-mentioned friends leaving the firm, I remained fairly stationary for the rest of the weekend, partially because I didn’t feel too well for the rest of the weekend (not in a hangover way, thank goodness), partially because the weather was pretty lousy. Saturday night I was feeling bad, so I invited Hanne over and we went to the store to be bad together. I ended up being bad in a culinary sense: mixed olives, ciabatta bread and an olive oil dip, a bottle of wine I’ve been saving for two years, steamed broccoli, a baked potato, and a 12 oz. ribeye for dinner. It felt so wonderful to splurge on myself for dinner instead of reheating something or cooking pasta. Hanne was satisfied with a tamale, but I wanted to live a little more.

The wine was as good as I remembered it, and for the first steak I’ve had in close to three months, well, let’s just say that it was worth the money.

Today was another double run day. I went for 2.5 miles at lunch, then another 3 when I got home. Next week I’m switching my shift so that I work 8-4:30 instead of the 9-5:30 I’ve been on for the last six months, so even though I’ll be up a little earlier in the morning, I’ll have even more daylight to play with in the evenings. Now I just have to figure out how to cancel my membership at Bally before they charge me again.

I feel like a celebratory beer to mark a successful cover letter composition and revision of my resume for a job that I didn’t want before 4:30 PM this afternoon. I think I have one beer left from my beer run to John’s two weekends ago, so that should work out quite well.

Cheers.

Posted in Beer, Food, Hanne, Running, Work

Several sunny days, five miles, and many pints later.

Mar07
2007 Written by Andrew

Dan and Kristine left, taking all the sun with them, unfortunately. They chose a perfect weekend to visit, as Portland had gorgeous weather all weekend long, culminating in 65-degree and sunny weather on Monday and Tuesday. We took full advantage of the weather on Monday and the three of us drove up to Government Camp to go to lunch at the Mt. Hood Brewery brewpub. In all honesty I would have preferred to take them somewhere else since we’d indulged in our fair share of alcohol over the previous couple of days, but that was the only restaurant I knew in the area. I mostly just wanted to get up into the mountains and show them the view. There’s a section of the highway as you get close to Mt. Hood that takes you along a valley where you can see the tree-covered hills, and as if that isn’t enough, you come around a corner and bam. There’s Mt. Hood. I love that view. The peak of Hood was shrouded in clouds, but the view was impressive nonetheless.

I showed them a pretty good time, I think. We went out for breakfast a couple of times to a little cafe not far from my apartment, I took them to a couple of brewpubs, we ate lunch at a McMenamins, we went to John’s Marketplace, we went to Powell’s, we ate at some of my favorite local restaurants, and we just generally had a good time. Unfortunately, I seem to have overdone it at John’s, and I walked out of there spending literally twice the most I’ve ever spent there. I was a bit shocked, but it was all in good fun. Plus, it’s not like anything I bought will go to waste. The $21 bottle of beer I bought contributed a bit, too. I didn’t even look at the sticker when I bought it–but if I had, I still would have put it in the cart. I would have just put fewer bottles in the cart after that.

I also got ‘em hooked on “Heroes,” so mission accomplished.

Yesterday I was so pleased with the weather I went for not one, but two runs. I didn’t quite make the distance I wanted with my lunchtime run, so I went home, changed clothes, and went for another run. I got home right as it was getting too dark to be outside without reflectors, but it was a very nice run. I had no energy at lunchtime probably because I hadn’t eaten much yet that day, but once I got home I had energy to spare and I was really cooking up and down the neighborhood.

I saw Erika downtown yesterday, though she didn’t see me. Last time I saw her was, what? A year ago? Early March sometime. We missed each other by a mere 30 seconds as my bus pulled away from the stop, and it’s probably fortunate that we didn’t cross paths as I would have most likely said something impolite to her which would have felt very nice, but that I would have regretted later. For the best, I suppose.

My new Media Center has pretty much all the bugs worked out of it, and I’m enjoying using it. It’s not quite as intuitive as my TiVo, but it can do so much more and in many cases, much more easily. I’m particularly enjoying the ability to play video files stored on my desktop computer without converting them first. Last night Hanne and I watched the first couple of episodes of “Veronica Mars” that I’ve been meaning to watch for so long. You couldn’t even tell they were stored on another PC.

Work’s work. That’s about all I need to say on that topic, though one of my good friends is leaving this Friday. The list of people I’m close to here keeps getting shorter and shorter, which is somewhat disconcerted since I’ve been here less than a year (one year as of 3/13).

Speaking of which….

Posted in Beer, Erika, Food, Geekery, Hanne, Running, Work

About me

Early 30's, Portlander, professional geek, runner, cook, beer drinker, beer brewer, gamer, occasional blogger.
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