Thanks to Taquil for posting this link to my all time favorite ad. The first time I saw this I just couldn’t stop laughing. It must be some Jungian thing I have about bears (which may explain addiction to John Irving in his early years as an author).

Anyhow, I first saw this when I was working for an internet company that specialized in streaming media. We spent lots of “totally justified” time watching film clips on the internet. One of our favorite sites was AdCritic.com where, at that time, advertisements could be watched for free. I’m not sure the site had any other purpose at that time but today it is a clearinghouse for keeping abreast of what is happening in the world of advertising and it costs money. This comes as a huge relief to me because watching all those films would take up precious blog reading time – or eating and sleeping time, who knows?

Stay tuned for a post on running – it’s coming soon. Really.

I have a new tenant over at Stumbling Through Life with Grace. Her name is 3rd Times A Charm because she is on her third husband. She likes to pretend like she is a bitch but she seems pretty nice to me. Actually, she describes herself as a closet bitch unlike me who describes herself as a B.I.T.C.H. (Boys, I’m Taking Charge, Here). Grace was a former bad girl so there is some juicy stuff in her blog if you go looking for it.

Anyhow, Grace has such a great blog she is up for an award for best writing. Please go check her out and maybe vote for her. And also – don’t miss this post about her wedding to Mr. 3rd Time because it is too funny.

I used to think that the only sounds a runner should listen to were the sounds of life – the air whooshing past her ears, the cars and bikes on the road, the bam-bam-bam of construction work, the sounds of the surf and the fog horns and the laughter of little children playing in the park (unless you run a 0 dark-thirty in which case you listen to the sounds of your head trying to organize your day, non?)

That was then, though and now is now. Jeanne recently posted about the addition of an iPod shuffle to her running gear. I also run with a Shuffle (double entendre alert!). I listen to books when I run but occasionally I shuffle over to some tunes just to pick things up and that brings me to a question.

How many of you listen to music while you run? Do you have a favorite mix? Is it available as a podcast? What other podcasts do you know of that are good to listen to (either while running or about running or just about anything)? In other words – what is on your iPod?

I used to think that the only sounds a runner should listen to were the sounds of life – the air whooshing past her ears, the cars and bikes on the road, the bam-bam-bam of construction work, the sounds of the surf and the fog horns and the laughter of little children playing in the park (unless you run a 0 dark-thirty in which case you listen to the sounds of your head trying to organize your day, non?)

That was then, though and now is now. Jeanne recently posted about the addition of an iPod shuffle to her running gear. I also run with a Shuffle (double entendre alert!). I listen to books when I run but occasionally I shuffle over to some tunes just to pick things up and that brings me to a question.

How many of you listen to music while you run? Do you have a favorite mix? Is it available as a podcast? What other podcasts do you know of that are good to listen to (either while running or about running or just about anything)? In other words – what is on your iPod?

That every time I turn on the TV there is a story featuring Tonya Harding? The woman looks like hell, has no talent, and seems to be angry with the world. What exactly am I supposed to care about? I love the way she claims that having her boyfriend try to break Nancy Karrigan’s knees is just a really unfortunate incident that happened . Well, no. It didn’t just happen – you had a hand in making it happen and I think it is time for you to disappear and quit saying stupid, inconsiderate things like:
I’ve gone on with my life,” says Tonya. “[Nancy] was my friend; teammate. Yeah, we were competitors, but, hey, I’m very happy for her and all her successes in life.

Try this Tonya – “I’m deeply sorry for the horrible thing I did and I thank God every day that Nancy was able to heal and go on with her career”. Yeah – like that.

Color me mystified.

Then color my heart red

Your Heart Is Red

You’re a passionate lover – you always have a huge fire in your heart. Too bad it’s hard for you to be passionate about just one person! Your flirting style: Outgoing and sexy Your lucky first date: Drinks and dancing Your dream lover: Is both stable and intense What you bring to relationships: Honesty

NOT! I am totally monogamous when I’m in a relationship – I never even look sideways at another man. I love a lot of people but not romantically. Drinks and dancing is my least favorite date – I’m a dinner and movie gal all the way. Question 2 – why do I take these quizzes??

I’m pushing the Brown story to the bottom in favor of welcoming my new tenant The Pajama Mama. I love this woman! First of all she has assumed responsibility for the webring Crazy Hip Blog Mamas and is working hard to energize that group. Although I’m in the ring I can’t claim to be helping out at all – sorry! Second of all she has a huge heart and has recently served as an emergency Mom for a kid in need.

This is how she describes herself :
We can add “she already has three kids, two with severe special needs, and she’s taking in a fourth” to the list of why she’s crazy. Hey, I told you, I have a bleeding heart.

This especially makes her a woman after my own heart as I am a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) for a child in the foster care system. Kids who get taken out of their homes for any reason have such a hard time and whatever help they can get on their journey is so important. Please step on over to The Pajama Mama’s blog and read some posts.

Back to Brown.. He told the White House that New Orleans was in trouble and then…..
And then he went back to worrying about his wardrobe. Remember that whole thing about the email thread regarding his awesome shirt from Norstrom? I guess when he didn’t get any response from the White House he just sort of gave up – right. The only thing notable about this claim is that is sort of an anti-Bush brown nosing maneuver. Does that mean anything?

And back to me – I ran again today. Madam Garmina was a little flaky but did serve to incent me to hurry it up. For example, it showed crazy slow paces (14+ minute miles) and, when the little widow came up and said ‘Lap 3’ I stopped running because I was almost home and I really wanted to just run 3 miles. The time said: 31:40 so I was thrilled! Then I looked again and the total miles said 2.94. WTS (what the shizzle!??). I turned the thing back on and ran another .25 mile but as it turns out I really did make that first 3 miles i 31:40 for an average of 10:32/mi. Not bad. I don’t know what the deal is with the screen read out. The software seems to work fine. I’ll have to call Garmin tech support.

In a nutshell, things at the White House are still unbelievable in the truest sense of the word but there are still good things happening. And that’s Madonna-thon 2006 Day 1.

ps- Apologies for changing this whole post after publishing it. Sometimes these things happen

I’ve decided it is time to quit stewing in envy and start doing something about it so I’m about to embark on a ‘Madonna ain’t got nothin’ up on me’ campaign. We will not count her singing voice or her millions as part of this contest.

I am already training for a 65 mile bike ride at the end of March and I’m registered to run the San Francisco Marathon at the end of July and I like to swim so there’s no question that I’ll be getting lots of exercise over the next 6 months. I eat pretty well but I am going to impose a white-out on my diet which means no white food. No white rice (I prefer brown so no problem), no white pasta (I love whole wheat and soba so no problem), no white bread (I always eat whole wheat anyhow so no problem), and no white sugar. It takes me about 6 months to consume a 5 lb bag around here so all I have to do is swear off ice cream and cookies. Ouch.

Anyhow, what I really want to know is how do people insert those tidy data tables in the side bar of their blogs? You know, the ones that record exercise and diet. I am horrible with HTML tables so I hope there is a blog widget for doing that. At the very least do people use Front Page or Word to generate the table and then cut and paste the results into the template? Please do tell. I will need to make daily confessions to stay on track.

ps – Anyone care to join me? Misery reall does love company, you know.

Today I went running for the first time in a couple of weeks. I have been biking and swimming but not running. I was just too lazy to get up to swim this AM but I needed to do something so run it was. I covered 3 miles and my Forerunner made me crazy for at least 2.5 of them. I got off to a great start but the next time I looked down the pace said I was running a 14-something mile. No way! I ran faster and it barely got down to 12-something. I stopped, breathed and started up again and the pace dropped slowly from 22-something to 11-something which still didn’t seem right. I finally quit looking at the pace and looked at the total time and distance, instead. Clearly the pace calculation was off. Ultimately I ran 3 miles in 32:29 with the breakdown looking like this:
Mile 1 – 10:13
Mile 2 – 11:11
Mile 3 – 11:02

I’m so tired of being slow. I guess I’ll have to wait until my bike ride is over to start really logging the miles and getting my pace in order, annoying and frustrating as that is.