Pardon the temporary move, my hosting with Tantalus us no more since I’ve left the company and for now this blog will have to live on my desktop at home. Sadly RCN won’t let me run anything on port 80, hence the wonky looking URL above.
Some time soon I plan to move to my own hosting account elsewhere, but for now this will have to do the trick.
Until the marathon.
AIEEEEEEEEEE!
I’m extremely excited and a little bit terrified. I haven’t trained anywhere nearly as hard as I did last year, but hopefully a full summer of 20+ miles a day on my bike and generally good healthy habits will get me through. I did my best 20 mile run so far last Saturday and came in at 2:51:12, which puts me on pace for about a 3:45-ish marathon, which is exactly what I finished at last year. Considering I’ve probably only done about 1/4 the training I’ll be pretty pleased if I can pull off the same time or better.
Sitting on my desk is a Garmin Forerunner 301. It is a wrist mounted GPS/heart rate monitor that will accurately track all of my biking and running distances, speeds, locations, and heart rates and it will do so by just turning it on and telling it whether I’m biking or running. This is extremely cool.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m in gadget love.
The only question remaining? Why the heck aren’t I out using it?
I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but I never got around to it. I made a map of Chicago vegetarian restaurants that I either enjoy or have heard good things about from people I trust. If you have any suggestions drop them in the comments section and I’ll try to add them.
Wonder where I’ve been? Well me too sometimes, but for the last two months I’ve been rehearsing six days a week with Quest Theatre Ensemble in preparation for Sword in the Stone. It’s been a really great experience getting to work with the Quest folk and I think we’ve got a really fun show as a result. We open this Friday so come on out and see some theatre!
I just found a Linksys NSLU2 at a local thrift shop yesterday for $5.00. I can’t wait until I have time to tinker because, as you can see from the wikipedia page, it supports all kinds of fun linux bits. My local music storage partition has filled up recently and this seems like a perfect chance to buy a nice big USB2 drive and offload all of that storage. I’m seeing DAAP, SSH, Web, Music playing, and maybe streaming radio in my future, depending on processor abilities. Really after spending some time browsing the NSLU2-Linux wiki the possibilities are pretty endless.
Gogo Embedded Linux! (gawd I am such a geek)
Well I’ve been busy but a few things have been happening that deserve a good blogging. In no particular order:
I’m now in rehearsal for Toy Chest with the Tantalus Theatre Group. I think it’s really going to be an interesting piece. It’s a bit more focused than a lot of the stuff we’ve done in the past and I hope it shows when we reach opening night. The (slightly) scary part is I have to do a little dance/sing number. I’m not scared of the singing but I’ve got a pair of left feet when it comes to choreography so I’m a bit trepedatious about the dance number. We open March 10th with a preview on March 8th so mark your calendar now!
I’m feeding my bike addiction a new bike frame that’s in process of being built in my apartment right now. She doesn’t have a name yet, but it’d better be a fast one. Feast your eyes on this little number. It’s all scandium alloy and carbon fiber and it weights about as much as a cup of coffee. There will be more pictures along with my new track bike when all of the pieces get put together.
The bears have made it to the Superbowl. I think they may burn this city to the ground if they win it (although I predicted the same thing when the White Sox won the world series and I barely even noticed the celebration).
The big holiday party that my apartment was all decorated for in the pictures from the previous post was a huge success in more ways than one. I won’t get into details, but I’m pleased with the way life works sometimes.
So life goes on and these days I seem to be on the upside of it most of the time.
Wheeeeeee.
Someone asked for some pictures of my new place in it’s new furniture/Christmas glory. Well why take pictures when you can shoot video?
Living room video
Living room picture (small)
Living room picture (huge)
Dining room video
Dining room picture (small)
Dining room picture (huge)
Kitchen video
Kitchen picture (small)
Kitchen picture (huge)
Bedroom video
Bedroom picture (small)
Bedroom picture (huge)
No footage of the bathroom– it’s bloody boring!
By the way, you’ll need quicktime to view these video clips.
Oh and yes I know my camera takes really crappy looking video but it’s what I’ve got.
Well I realize that those who would find this useful have probably already finished all the shopping but just in case they haven’t
A pair of Soma Everwear bike tires (23c with the blue stripe!) or Contenential Gatorskin tires (Size 23c).
A set of computer speakers that don’t suck such as these or these or (my fave) these.
A membership to the Chicagoland Bike Federation.
A gift certificate to Nashbar, Performance or something similar.
Some cool artwork, especially paintings.
A donation to the Tantalus Theatre Group.
A gift certificate to Filene’s Basement or anywhere else where I can get some new threads.
A gift card to Ikea or World Market
Some books:
An Acrobat of the Heart
Little, Big
Anansi Boys
The Diamond Age
The Gashlycrumb Tinies
That’s all for now but I’ll try to edit this later as I think of things.
Ever since I started biking regularly on city streets I’ve been waiting for the day. Every regular bike rider gets hit by a car eventually and today my number was up. Riding down Ashland in the rain I was hit from behind by a SUV who clipped my shoulder with his mirror. He didn’t even stop. My front wheel jerked hard to the left and I took a header into the pavement. Luckily I’m fine other than a bruised up shoulder and my bike escaped in good shape too, just a few extra scratches on the already scratched up handlebars.
Now that I’m home and I’ve taken a shower and a few Advil I find rather than being scared or hurt I’m just pissed off. Drivers of big things with four wheels in the city don’t keep a very good eye on what they’re doing. I see people eating, talking on phones, applying makeup, and doing all kinds of other stupid shit while driving that really yanks my cord. So as a measure of protection for myself and other cyclists I’m going to make it a goal to talk to at least ten people about watching out for cyclists on the roads. I don’t know if it will help but I feel like it might.
Ride and drive safe out there!