Runny, Part 2

So we start off and I do the first mile down past the pizza joint and none of the Hasher's are there so they must be at the next spot. Unfortunately, my info on the "next spot" is very iffy and I end up making some calls and running to around the 4 mile point then back to the 3.5 mile and doing a lot of standing around looking for a group with a flag among the thousands of revelers until suddenly, I end up on a side alley with a bunch of screaming people with a few coolers of beer making speeches and congratulating a hash contingent from Puerto Rico and then it's off again to the next beer stop.

Runny, Part 1

The last time I posted about running was this.

I had planned to keep it serious for the Peachtree but my knee kept hurting so I gave it up. However I had signed up for the thing so damned if I'm not going to show up and do something but what?

And then... hallelujah!!!

I heard that the Hashers were going to have a pubcrawl during the run and, of course! What could be better? Why not combine my two loves... running and drinking... into one... running WHILE drinking! Sheer genius!

By Hashers, I mean this group of runners/drinkers (throughout the world, by the way) that I've always heard about and associated with certain members of over the years but surprisingly never really committed to in any form whatsoever until...

NOW.

I get off the MARTA and my starting time is around 7:40 or something (I can't remember) but I run south instead of north along Peachtree to a pizza joint that the Hashers are meeting at and sure enough, there are two guys sitting at a table out front and YES they are drinking beer. I go to the bar and buy a pitcher with thoughts that this is about the first time I've drank beer before 8am since... well, I was going to say since some frat thing where we were camping and had no water so had to drink Busch but damn... that was probably after 8 so who knows when was the last time I drank that early? But knowing my memory, I'll be damned if I'll claim it as a record.

So, to make a not so long story less so, more people show, more beer is drank, and most aren't signed up for the run and those that are aren't bothering to start at the starting line but I have a computer chip thingie on my shoe so after cheering for the wheelchair racers and the fast guys, I hoof it on up to the starting line a mile away and stand in the massive throng of racers... a-buzzin'.

Whiteout

Just a quick one on the big snowfall in the ATL. Here's a pic of Liam sleeding on the hill down the street from us. He's on the slide from our plastic kiddie playground thing which actually made a great sled. We've had that playground (structure? I'm not sure what it's called... it's a plastic block thing made out of panels with a slide) since we lived in Buckhead with an infant Liam and it was given to us by some friends who said they had inherited it as well.

True Romance in John's Creek

Kerry and I never do a whole lot for the romantic holidays... Feb 3 was our 9th anniversary. As a tribute to something I did a few years ago, I remade a dinner from Trader Joe's (Trader Vic's would've been somethin'! Maybe next year....hmmm....), and got a tiny bunch of flowers and a card from Publix. When I was picking up the card, I noticed a card with a Grey's Anatomy theme and thought I'd look for one with Lost, something Kerry's huge into and is in it's last season right now. But no dice. I went up to the Hallmark next door and the lady said she saw one which caused me to ransack the store in search but nope...nada.

So I went home and whipped up a goofy card of my own.

For Valentine's today, I got her a little "I Love You" frog that plays "You Really Got Me", a song that I semi-planned to air guitar to at our wedding reception but didn't follow through.

Today, it was cold and slushy outside, so we did a "hike" around the mall. I carried Finn on my back, my bid at weakly simulating exercize outdoors. The kids liked seeing the giant fish tank at Bass Pro, the Lego store, and an indoor shoot'em up pellet gun thing not to mention watching Dad do a climbing wall. Too bad Kerry didn't get a shot of me actually on it!

A week or so ago, a little frustrated at seeing all the cool restaurants in the paper that I had never been to, I said we should make a goal of going to a different restaurant once a month. But of course, when we decided to go out this evening, we ended up at the same place.


It's tough when you have kids. For Liam and Erin's sake, you gotta have a place with basic burger and fries/grilled cheese selection. We push them to try different foods at home but since we rarely go out, who wants to battle at a restaurant? And for Finn, you want a place that's relatively loud so you're not bugging anyone too bad. And even then, I spend half the time walking him around (literally) the restaurant.


Anyway, so the choice was Steak n Shake, Taco Mac, and Chili's. Steak n Shake was hands down the kid's favorite but I didn't want a greasy (albeit tasty) burger... my doctor recently informed me that my cholesterol has finally crossed a threshold... more on that in a later post. And I refused to break my 15 year streak of never ordering anything at Taco Mac except for Wings and beer.

So we ended up at Chili's... the same dang place we've been to the last two times we went out. Oh well, happy Valentine's Day.

Merry Christmas!

I left work at 3 today to avoid the inevitable traffic mayhem resulting from the afternoon snowfall. I brought my laptop AND my monitor so I could work at home but - sorry - I played with my kids in what, as far as I can tell, is the biggest snowfall since just before I came to Atlanta in 93.

But what I've wanted to blog about for a week... and never ended up doing because 11 just keeps rolling around and I get up at 5:20am... is last weekend. A busy, busy weekend.

9am Saturday morning the Pinewood Derby. Liam had designed, cut some, sanded, and painted his car with an eye for speed and his car easily won each of his 4 heats so he assumed that he would win a trophy... there being 3 for each group and 3 overall but no, the top 10 in his group were all basically 2.4 plus or minus 0.05 sec and he ended up in 7th place.

Then we made it to the 2nd half of a chess tournament. It's "interesting" that soccer and football around this area seem to be 80-95% Caucasian but chess... at least the tournament... was about 5% Caucasian... interesting a.k.a "pathetic".

Watched Toy Story 2 Saturday night thinking that Finn might get interested in something on the TV other than Thomas the Train but nope...

Sunday, sickened of seemingly endless days of rain, I was determined to get outside and do some hiking. Erin joined me and we did the AT from Woody Gap up Big Cedar Mt and back... a fairly steep climb and the whole deal was in ice and snow. Unfortunately, I failed to notice when we left the house that Erin had on bellbottoms and "Mary Jane" open top shoes.

No complaints from Supah-Koopa-Paratroopah Erin.

Just stone cold hiking.

She's the one that, someday, will do the whole damn thing.

C.H.U.D.

Well, I was going to give the whole long story about everything Liam and I did on the scout trip to a cave in Kentucky but you can look here for the overview.... athough that site doesn't prepare you for the fact that you will be living in a world of "muudy" clay... meaning EVERYTHING that touches the floor or walls gets instantly stained with reddish-black clay.... no big deal for the clothes we were in but the comedy of gingerly positioning backpacks, tarps, pillows, spare clothes, sleeping bags, etc was something to remember!

Anyway, although our tarp was positioned pretty close to a vile port-a-let, we had a great time.

The key thing for me is that, assuming his memory is like mine (and hopefully it won't be), although 99% of the stuff Liam does in these years he will completely forget when he grows up, he will never forget the fact that he spent the night in a big cave waaaay underground. He'll forget that we crawled around through tunnels and maybe even that we went out on an underground lake in a boat but he'll remember that he slept overnight in a cave.

Just like last year when we had an even better time on the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier in Charleston. Liam won't remember exploring the control tower and the pipe-and-gauge-festooned bowels of the engine room and eating sausage and grit in the mess but he'll remember the fact that he spent the night on an aircraft carrier. Too bad that even though I brought ear plugs, I can't forget the snoring...

Note that in the picture to the left, Liam is sitting on his bunk...
my bunk was the one UNDERNEATH that one!

Weekend To-Do List: Sunday

1) Short hike with kids
check
2) Help Liam on Pinewood Derby car
just about done
3) Ride bike
check
4) Drink Purple Haze at Taco Mac
check
5) Take down Xmas lights
check
6) Take cargo carrier off minivan
check
7) Tell Erin "magic laundry basket" bedtime story
check
8) Read Thomas book to Finn for 34th time
check
9) Write up blog about cave trip
not started

Weekend To-Do List: Saturday

1) Bring trash and recyclables to Recycling Center
check
2) Help Liam on Pinewood Derby car
on-going
3) Do 300 push-ups
check
4) Read Thomas book to Finn for 30th time
check
5) Organize den achievements
check
6) Write up blog about cave trip
not started

Weekend To-Do List: So Far

1) Drop off tiling tools at Tom's
check
2) Answer Cub Scout e-mails
check
3) Test whiskey allergy theory
check (I'm cured!)
4) Drink beer while listening to ipod and screwing around on the Internet
check
5) Drink a few more beers while listening to ipod and screwing around on the Internet
Hmmm... let's see...
check

Into the Wild

Today, Liam and I walked across the street and into a wooded lot that backs up to an area of brambles and pines that follows a creek that snakes between two subdivisions and a possibly abandoned new one under construction. There was no path and we crossed over two small wire fences. We wandered for about a mile and half and saw nothing but a retention pond, backyards, and a few concrete manholes. When we got back home Liam said it was the coolest hike he’s ever done.

From an article by Michael Chabon in the New York Review of Books (it’s also in the book by Chabon that I’m currently reading):

Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood
By Michael Chabon

This is the kind of door-to-door, all-encompassing escort service that we adults have contrived to provide for our children. We schedule their encounters for them, driving them to and from one another's houses so they never get a chance to discover the unexplored lands between. If they are lucky, we send them out to play in the backyard, where they can be safely fenced in and even, in extreme cases, monitored with security cameras. When my family and I moved onto our street in Berkeley, the family next door included a nine-year-old girl; in the house two doors down the other way, there was a nine-year-old boy, her exact contemporary and, like her, a lifelong resident of the street. They had never met.

The sandlots and creek beds, the alleys and woodlands have been abandoned in favor of a system of reservations—Chuck E. Cheese, the Jungle, the Discovery Zone: jolly internment centers mapped and planned by adults with no blank spots aside from doors marked staff only. When children roller-skate or ride their bikes, they go forth armored as for battle, and their parents typically stand nearby.

There are reasons for all of this. The helmeting and monitoring, the corralling of children into certified zones of safety, is in part the product of the Consumer Reports mentality, the generally increased consciousness, in America, of safety and danger. To this one might add the growing demands of insurance actuarials and the national pastime of torts. But the primary reason for this curtailing of adventure, this closing off of Wilderness, is the increased anxiety we all feel over the abduction of children by strangers; we fear the wolves in the Wilderness. This is not a rational fear; in 1999, for example, according to the Justice Department, the number of abductions by strangers in the United States was 115. Such crimes have always occurred at about the same rate; being a child is exactly no more and no less dangerous than it ever was. What has changed is that the horror is so much better known. At times it seems as if parents are being deliberately encouraged to fear for their children's lives, though only a cynic would suggest there was money to be made in doing so.

On the 2nd sip I begin to admit

Two Fridays ago, I stopped into Pop’s and bought a bottle of Bushmill’s Irish Whiskey a little in honor of the upcoming St. Patty’s Day but mostly because I wanted to try a different liquor. I’m a beer drinker but every once in a while I’ll have a drink. Being something easy to mix, usually it’s Bacardi that I’ll keep on hand. But when me best rum ran dry, I decided it was time for a change.

I’m not much of a liquor drinker and I have have basically zero experience with whiskey.

I have vague recollections of a party at the home of the only “girlfriend” I had in high school involving my inane decision to put WASP’s debut album on the turntable and a bottle of Southern Comfort… which I don’t think is even whiskey.

My second “whiskey experience” involves a night in Colorado Springs with a cousin who liked to drink Jack & Coke’s where I ended the night gazing rapturously into the eyes of a future Mandarin translator for the Air Force and started the next morning with a 30 lb cinder block on my head.

So I decided to give it about 15 years to give whiskey another go. But something happened to me unlike anything that has happened before.

I poured a shot and took a small sip. It had the usual grimace-inducing bite of any strong alcohol but it also had a smoothness that wasn’t unappealing. A little while later I took another sip… same thing but I soon noticed a small annoyance that I can only describe as feeling like I had a thin metal bar embedded in the back of my head running from the middle of my neck to the just below the top of my head. I ignored it and after a while the shot was down and the annoyance became a dull pain. A dull pain that remained there for two goddamn days.

Since it started right after two tiny sips, I can’t imagine it had anything to do with the whiskey unless I’m allergic to peat moss or whatever is used to make Irish Whiskey… Three-Leaf Clovers? Heather on the moors? Sheleighlies?? Plus I have a whole g.d. bottle of Bushmill’s in my cabinet.

Kerry thinks it's because Bushmill's is generally considered the "Protestant" whiskey... Jameson's being the Catholic one.

I’ve been reticent testing either theory because I don’t want to have a throbbing bar in my head for two days but I gotsta know.

What does a pig say?

There are two conditions that my house exists in. Either of which you can immediately determine from about 10 yards away:

STATE 1: ERIN IS AWAY/SLEEPING/READING
STATE 2: ERIN IS NOT AWAY/SLEEPING/READING

Basically, she is just shy of screaming nearly all the time. Eating, watching a movie, etc., her voice for some reason just carries… and carries…

Also part of the reason that it’s so easy to thell whenever the house is in STATE 2 is that if Erin is running around yelling, Finn is running around yelling, and likely Liam is laughing at his manic siblings so it all blends and sounds like a McDonald’s PlayLand.

More kid updates: Erin has been very participatory lately, having a part in a live nativity and singing in a church choir at Christmas and being in a mock “fashion show” with a few 5th graders for a school talent contest. Also, it’s Girl Scout cookie time so if you are having a hankerin’ for some Samosas,. let me know!

Liam’s favorite place is still in his room with his Lego’s. The other day he got in some minor trouble at school but then was very evasive about what had happened so he missed one of his Cub Scout den meeting’s as punishment. Tomorrow night we’ll be sleeping in a cave in Tennessee with his pack so I’m sure that’ll make up for it.

A few weeks ago I got on his case for not knowing a lot of what he was supposed to study for a big test the next day. I’m not saying he didn’t know the subject matter just that there was a lot of stuff (Internet, workbooks, etc.) that he was supposed to study but he didn’t even know that that was the case and had never looked at them. He’s not the most attentive little fellow, ya know? I got all irate talking about “things are going to change around here” and drawing up plans for charts and an organized workplace but then he ended up getting only one problem wrong.

For a guy that hardly knows any words, Finn is pretty dang talkative. Although he’ll go on and on pointing at things and talking nonsense he does know a few things:

“What does a cow say?”	Finn: “Moo”
“What does a horse say?”	Finn: “Me-heh-heh-he”
“What does a pig say?”	Blank stare. For some reason, he won’t say “Oink”.
“What does a cat say?”	Finn: “Meow”
“What does a doggy say?”	Finn: “Heh-ha, heh-ha, heh-ha” (a dog panting)
“What does a dinosaur say?”	Finn: “Rrroarrr!!” (same for bear and lion)
“What does a car say?”	Finn: “Vrooom”
“What does Erin say?”	Finn makes a real high pitched mewling. Very funny.

Also, all those sounds also seem to be his words for the animal/person in question. He’s also got words for basic functions: “Food”, “Nurse”, etc. but they aren’t at all the actual words.

Did I mention I’ll be sleeping IN A CAVE tomorrow night?!

"Water's cold." "Yep... deep, too."

Over the years, I’ve noticed that whenever I ask the question “So how long did it take you to drive to everyone with very few exceptions will answer with a dirty, filthy lie. When I am asking the question, I am not asking “How fast did you do it when you when you were in college with a case of Jolt and an empty bottle hurtling through the dead of night?” nor am I asking “If there was no traffic and all the lights were green and you knew the cops would look the other way, how fast COULD you make it?”, I am asking for an actual goddamn time that I can use as a reference for gauging my own trip NOT a gauge of your manhood.

Oh well, I am just bitter. Of course, the average time for a family trip from the suburbs north of Atlanta to Orlando is six and a half hours. Every knows that. Maybe seven if it’s a holiday, you know how bas traffic can get.

You know what the typical time is for Team Keough? ELEVEN F'ING HOURS! Note my wording, I said “typical”. This is not our worst time thrown out there for comic effect… this is the typical time. We did 12 on the way down this Christmas and 11.5 on the way back but I say 11 because I’ve done a few 9 hour ones when I’ve gone in the middle of the night.

But ask anyone… even people with families… 6.5 – 7 hours.

It’s 486 miles from Cumming, Georgia to DisneyWorld. That’s an average speed of over 70 mph the whole freakin’ way! LIARS!!! SLIMY ROTTEN LIARS!!!!

I go about 70 by the way. But I also stop for gas and for restrooms… just like everyone else must do unless they’re in some ubergreen, urine-powered vehicle. And I’m not the type to force three kids to sit in a cramped box for that long, we’ll usually make one or two pretty long stops at a place with a playground to give them a chance to run around a bit.

But the killer is 1) we travel a lot around the holidays, and 2) our route is the infamous ENTIRE NATION FUNNELING INTO FLORIDA TO VISIT THE GRANDPARENTS one.

Vulcan Lab Doll

Tomorrow we’re hittin’ the road for Florida. This morning, Liam woke us up a 7 on the dot, and we went out to the tree for the annual ripping open of presents.

Liam loves the Legos but he’s not into the Star Wars or any of the other movie stuff, he likes the machines and the buildings. He got two city sets but the eye opener was a giant Nerf machine gun.

Oh wait, no this is it.

Erin’s been wanting one of those pricey American Girl dolls for two years but we told he she’d need to be able to read the books. I’m sure it wasn’t the only reason (at least I hope it wasn’t) but now she’s reading a ton so Santa got her one.

Finn, not really knowing what the heck’ going on but enjoying it all the same, got some Nerf balls, a bowling game, and a plush brown Labrador.

I got a bunch of great stuff from REI the big one being a pair of hiking boots. I’m not a big fan of the word “deserve” but I think in this case, the word fits. In 2001, my bother-in-law gave me a 5yr old pair of LL Bean boots. They were a little beat up and a few sizes too big but, hey, can’t beat the price, right? I’ve hiked in them many times up Stone Mountain, countless times at Amicalola Falls, a few times up Blood Mountain, and on the entire Appalachian Trail in Georgia so I’m due a new pair.

Plus this and a coffee mug to replace the Nissan one I lost at work.

My gifts to Kerry were a little... well, pretty weak this year but Valentine’s is around the corner, right?

I’m dreaming of a “White Christmas”-less Christmas

Usually [our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy are we] I try to get my annual Christmas rant up before the actual day but hey, I’ve been busy. But I’ll keep it short and to the music.

Since Thanksgiving, Kerry has had the house filled basically non-stop with music from a Christmas music channel on the TV. I can’t [well maybe just a half a drink more] complain too much because a) it’s not TV, and b) it’s mostly the classic 50-60’s stuff.

However, now I HATE the classic 50-60’s Christmas music that I used to like. There’s only so much of ”giddy up, giddy up, giddy up, let's go, let's look at the show” and “city sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style” a man can stand. I’m sure my agony at hearing Bing will pass in time… for Ethel Merman, it definitely will not… but I have to admit to a newfound love of Goulet.

Next year, I will have to come up with something new to throw in the mix. Maybe this from a friend’s recommendation.

And more Goulet of course.

Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?

Yesterday I continued a current tradition and hopefully rekindled an old one.

I continued my ritual of last minute Christmas shopping by heading out with Liam to buy my gifts for my wife and to help Liam get his present for Kerry as well. Since my wife takes care of all the shopping including for my family, this is all I really have to do. Amazingly though, I spent 5 hours out just to get 3-4 basic gifts. Sure for a little less than an hour we ate at Liam’s fav Subway but I didn’t even go near the Malls. 5 hours?!

Since I haven’t been running much lately, I’ve made a point of riding my bike every weekend. I ride my old running route with two lanes so cars can afford to move over a bit and a lot of massive hills. This time I changed it up so that the turnaround ended up at Taco Mac.

Back in my intown days, oftimes after a bike ride around town, we’d end up at Neighbor’s in Va-Hi and talk about the waitresses and sip on afternoon Purple Haze. I don’t know how we started drinking that… the draft is significantly less sweet than the bottle, by the way…. but it felt right after working up a sweat. Another thing we’d do (covered here) is Wings on Sunday’s at Taco Mac so conveniently, I’ve decided to combine the two and have a mid-ride Purple Haze on my weekend bike treks.

Although a two-year-old Taco Mac in a Target parking lot is a far cry from my idea of a trusty ol'neighborhood watering hole, I’ll take what I can get.

Never underestimate the power of the Swami

Super Dodgeball on the Nintendo was truly the mack-daddy of drinking games. Countless hours were wasted and beers were consumed while sitting on the nasty carpet of my college apartment in front of the TV. If you haven’t played it, you have no idea what I’m talking about. If you’ve played it a few times or only by yourself, you still have no idea. If you’ve played it with others for at least a few hours, you are on the verge of enlightenment. You are nodding sagely to yourself, a glow of nostalgic contentment spreading across your face.

But…

If you have played…nay, LIVED it among Men, with a beer in your hand and a cheer in your heart, and the certainty of knowledge that if you are thwoked with a ball you must drink… and drink well… then you, sir, are my brother.

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed.
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Rock in the Hand

In the Dart on the way home
Matt, Mark, me, and forgot the other guy
At some point shook-up beers were sprayed all over the cabin
Pull up to my apartment
Matt, thinking I’m on a mission of vengeance, sprints out the door
Hits the point of the driveway where it angles down
Wile E. Coyote-style continues straight
Slams, sprawled out in the gravel at the base
Bleeding and torn, shuffles inside

Panicky roommate wants to call 911
“Huh? My hands bleeding.. big deal.”

All I wanted was a Pepsi. And you wouldn’t give it to me.

Ambulance shows up and they’re the cops from Superbad

Yeah right
Take two aspirin, call me in the morning

Next day we wander over to some guy’s house and play Nintendo
Matt takes off the bandage
A little hard fleck in the middle of the wound
Gets a needle to probe
A touch of the speck causes a tectonic disturbance in his palm

More digging

Speck begets fleck
Fleck begets smidgen
Smidgen begets grit

Grit begets pellet
Pellet begets pebble
Pebble begets massive, craggy boulder from a vast cavern within the flesh of his palm

Guitar Hero: Opel Edition

Ok... here it is:

At one point in college, a friend of mine (I’ll call him “Matt”) had three utter POS cars that I believe, after each breakdown, he would re-assess the condition of each to determine how he could have a drive-able (in the most literal sense of the word) vehicle with the least amount of money and effort.

He had a Lancia something-or-other, a Baja Bug, and an Opel station wagon.

I guess the Lancia must have been a sad case because I don’t remember much about it. In fact, the only thing I know about Lancia’s at all is that Herbie fell in love with one in Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo (the Lancia is at 0:48. Come to think of it, the Baja looked a little like Herbie but with some red and blue stripes not to mention the fat stinger exhaust in the back.

Speaking of, Matt liked to race the bug through puddles to give the passenger a refreshing splash up through his chicken wire floor panel. The neighbor’s also loved to hear the sound of his muffler-less engine as he raced through our apartment complex across from the college known affectionately as “the ghetto”. And, on occasion, he would catch air in the thing on a giant hill next to a construction zone (there being zero non-man-made hills in Florida).

I cut my teeth on Smashing Pumpkin’s “Gish” and pre-“Mother’s Milk” Red Hot Chili Pepper’s on a single sputtering side-door speaker dangling from the rear view mirror in that bug. Another time, I could’ve easily cut my HEAD open as we made high-speed crop circles in roof high grass in the middle of the night hoping there was nothing lurking in the stuff…a shrub, a log, a freakin’ abandoned CAR for chrissakes could’ve been in there!!

But the gem of the lot had to be the Opel. At one point, the cable linking the gas pedal to the engine throttle became severed so the ever resourceful Matt, likely in a hurry to get to his job downtown, wired a guitar string to the throttle, passed it out through the side of the hood and into the driver window, tied it around a screwdriver, and held it with one hand to drive the car.

Take that, Nader!

Beat to the Punchline

Well, still not done with the site and...
STILL not done with the tile so I'm not quite ready for the three POS story but looking at the BOOKS section of the Sunday paper this morning I did realize this.

Aww crap... someone - who am I kiddin'? - a bunch of people already thought of this.

The movie was ok but that poster has to be one of my all-time favorites. It's true genius.