My first race.

Well this weekend was St Louis's St Patricks day run, 5 miles.  Nej has been running for almost a year now and seems to be one of the strange people that enjoys running.  Its very odd, but it makes her happy so its all good, anyway Nej signed up to run in the race and well signed me up as well.  I do not run.  Years ago I partially destroyed my left knee skiing and well it has never been fixed and is one of the main reasons I don't run.  That knee just hurts.  So I work out on ellipticals, lift, swim and call that good.  I well say this, race events are fun.  LOTS of people in all sorts of shapes come out to play.  I like it because you get a nice tech shirt, which I can use hunting.

People in front of me waiting

at the start line waiting for it to begin

People behind me waiting 

Now it was an awesome day, sunny nice and cool, not hot, not cool just freaking awesome.  

They let the elite runners go, then  paused to let the serious runners start and then finally they let the rest of us go.  People took off.  about 1.5 miles in I took pictures to show you the mass of humanity that was running.  Unfortunately, I missed the college kids that were pushing a pony keg on a kart to keep hydrated.  Gotta stay hydrated when you run. 

fun day, I tried to stay somewhat in the middle of the mass.  I finished in under an hour which is not great but hell I didn't train for it.  I think I will get my knee looked at and then consider running.  Thats it just consider it.  Running hurts.  Its two days post run and my legs still hurt.  The guys on the rig laughed at me when I had to run to the rig, or in my case just sorta gimp along.  The joys of exercise.   After the run, we went to Blueberry hill for burgers, which were awesome, and then to the Gateway gun club to shoot some trap with Nejs cousin and uncle.  GREAT fun.  It has been a long time since Nej and I have gone trap shooting and this made us realize how much we miss going out and just shooting together.  Gateway is a nice trap and skeet facility.  9 ranges both trap and skeet and they had two more trap houses poured waiting to be developed.  Nej brought out her  Benneli Montefeltro 20 ga and was crushing clays like a mad woman, I married well. It was great fun a great weekend all around.  

I am a geek

Yes its true.  Welcome to my world, on my days off I hit the gym to get my anti-tub-of-goo workout in and then I head home to play with the dog, clean if I remember too, and play video games.  yes I am a gamer.  The other night was the release of Dragons Age 2 for the xbox 360.  Yes, I stayed up and went to the midnight release.  I did not take a camera to capture the insane amount of geekdom that was occurring.    It was entertaining.  Not as big a crowd as when Black ops came out but still it was fun.  Kids sitting around playing cards, people talking about their favorite games from the past.  I sat back and people watched as usual.  No one dressed up for the event here.  At least I think it was mostly normal cloths.
Gamers are a unique group, most are hard core computer geeks that spend time checking specs and trying to push the envelope of their systems.  They spend hours online playing and finding ways to play better.  They link up and coop with groups that become the core of their online life.  Yes, last year I was one of these.  I was addicted to World of Warcraft like a crack addict.  Spending 12 to 13 hours a day online playing on my day off was not uncommon.  I would drink massive amounts of energy drinks and not really eat properly.  Then Nej held an intervention and saved my life, I no longer play WOW and I do not drink any energy drinks.  I am still married to the greatest chic ever and I still play video games but its not the massive hours I used to play.  When Nej comes home the games go away.  Life is good.

Now tonight, HOMEFRONT comes out.  I have it pre-ordered but will not pick it up at midnight since I am at work.  I will pick it up tomorrow and try it out.  I have been looking forward to this game for a month or two now.  The core group I play with all have it pre-ordered.  Tomorrow will be a day of resistance.  It should be fun.

Starbucks thoughts and observations.

As you know I am a fireman and we work 24 hr shifts.  Which means that I go to work at 7 am and get off work hopefully at 7 am.  So with Nej running and working out in the mornings if I leave work and drive like a bat out of hell I still will not see her before she leaves for work.  This sucks.  So I have taken a chapter from her book, and started working out after work at Lifetime fitness.  So my typical day is doing 30 minutes of  intervals on a procor elliptical trainer, after I get off the torture device I head over to the isolation machines and get in a high speed circuit upper body / back workout, which will leave me in pain for the next two days.  Now comes the reward, if I feel capable I then hit the pool to swim laps for 15 to 30 minutes depending upon how I feel.  Finally, I sit in a steam sauna and just relax before my shower.  To add music to the dry side of my work out I listen on my ipod to Podrunner.  If you have never heard of podrunner get your head out of the sand and step up.  1 hr long blocks of high energy high tempo music selectable by beats per minute to help you maintain your workout pace.  It is a MUST if you do any sort of elliptical work out.
So that is what happened this morning, but I noticed something odd today.  After my shower, I was getting dressed when I noticed several, not one not two but three different middle aged, OK I am in my forties but these guys were older then me..... .. noticably.. damn I guess I am middle aged... son of a ... oh well.. back to the story.  So 3 older dudes getting ready to work out in what they guess is designer workout gear from the 80's when I noticed the true oddity... they were putting on cologne.  I saw a Brute, a drakar and I think a Polo.  Then they left the locker room in a\ herd trailing aromatic bonanza of overpowered manliness.  Now I really have no clue why you would put on cologne to work out.  COME ON PEOPLE its a freaking gym not a night club.  The last thing I want when I am working out is to talk to anyone.  I am there for a high speed workout no distractions, get the sweat on and get it done so I can get on with my day.. and get my smoothie..
So today, after leaving the gym I went and talked to Nej at work.  We are going to have lunch today so I have several hours to kill, if I go home I will NOT get back out so instead I hit a book store and checked out a new book that I want, Patrick Rothfuss's new book.  I have been waiting for this book for several years now, along with all of his other fans, so as I sat down to read it, I realized that I had forgotten to much and will have to reread the Name of the Wind again before I pick it up.  Ah well, so that time killer is out, hell book stores can burn multiple hours usually.  Steve you should grab this book its really really good.
So where to go to kill time, STARBUCKS, yes time to feed the caffeine addiction and write up this post.  So here I sit with my little cup of liquid caffeine delight.  I used to drink raspberry lattes, now I am a mocha with half the chocolate and one pump of raspberry guy.  Its like Christmas cookies in a cup if a massively lovely caffeine kick.
So here I sit in my corner, people watching and typing.  Its a typical starbucks, guys in suits taking over too many tables with their coats and computers talking as fast as they can, being who I am I moved a suits coat to sit down and glared at him when he turned to make a comment.  We have the prozac soccer moms sitting reading on their ipads pounding down double latte mocha-chinos in their tech gear and north face coats each one trying to show off more bling then the next.  We have the book club ladies with their bright red lacquered fingernails and velour sweat pants, an odd combo to say the least.  The college students surviving on caffeine, sleep deprivation and striving to finish that paper on their macs.  The retired guys drinking black coffee and reading the paper. Finally, we have the mid 50's hippy guy, with his grey pony tail, Birkenstocks, cargo shorts and a broken in safari shirt, working on his 3000 dollar alienware laptop of ultapower gaming domination and talking on his blackberry via the new blue tooth ear bud, VERY COOL VERY JEALOUS OF THAT LAPTOP.  He is putting the suits to shame, its great.  He is comfortable in his skin.  No pretense, just is.  Gotta respect that.  Ah well, my time is about up I have to go pick up Nej and take her to lunch.  Since we do not see each other in the mornings we have lunch, it allows me to get my Nej fix to hold me over.
So concludes my thoughts at starbucks.