Cheers!

I fear that I may have a latent desire to join the competitive eating circuit. After seeing a recent trailer promo for the "Beer Hunter" card at the Alamo Drafthouse, my first reaction was "Let's go for it." Modeled after my campaign to eat an entire fast-food establishment's menu in March's "Tour de Sonic," I'll be attempting to sample as much of the beer menu as possible between now and mid-November. Just like Jerry in Spirit of the Marathon, I want to earn that T-shirt.

The count so far to date:

• a pint of Sam Adams Boston Lager during Hancock (It's better than the trailers suggest. Definitely another good look at the whole "superhero" thing)
  
• pints of Harp and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale during Step Brothers (Will Farrell's antics do get funnier after a couple of drinks, but there's certainly nothing wrong with waiting for this one as a cheap DVD rental.)
  
• bottle of Blue Moon during The Dark Knight (Excellent flick all around!)
  

It's a tough challenge, but someone has to step up and accept it.

Four down, twenty-six to go....

Same old whines, poured into new whineskins....

Strolling by an Apple Store on my lunch break today, I met a line about 20 people long. I asked one lady what they were doing waiting in front of the door. She confirmed that they were all queued up for the opportunity to buy the new iPhone.

It's been out for over a week, but obviously the new edition of the 3G iPhone still has consumers excited. Reviews make it sound nifty, but I'm fairly certain that I could never deal with a device that uses a "virtual keyboard" for text input. You'd have to drag me kicking and screaming into a world where keyboards weren't both QWERTY and tactile. At least it sounds like the actual voice call (remember those?) functions have been improved. Now if only this new model came with a function to help their new owners better practice the courtesy of cell phone silencing before theater or church....

157,444 miles later....

The tally so far this summer for the CR-V:

Steering rack #2 to replace the leaking original.
Battery #3, a Duralast Gold
Four new Bosch 7562 spark plugs
Four fresh quarts of Mobil 1 5W-30
Unifilter foam air filter cleaned and oiled

Other than the rack and last summer's replacement of the radiator, I'd say the "Blue Betty" is still holding together pretty well for an eight-year-old car.

Fuelish Behavior, part 2

Yesterday I blogged about long lines of drivers all atwitter about $3.75/gal gasoline. Well, I drove by the same station tonight. I guess the cars of the twittered all had their tanks filled yesterday, because the long lines were gone. I quickly found an available pump and topped off at a rate a penny lower.

I really shouldn't, but I feel a little smarter tonight.

Fuelish Behavior

A line of cars in the double-digits waiting for their chance at the pump. Is this picture from the gas crisis of the 1970s? No. Is this picture from the Hurricane Rita hysteria of 2005? No. Is this some crazy radio station morning show promotion? No.


No, these people are swarming this Chevron station for the privilege of paying $3.75 per gallon. I heard a lot of impatient honking as I pondered this scene. Granted, this is a rate about 15 to 20 cents cheaper than other stations in the area, but I can't help but wonder if these folks were able to compensate for the lost value of their time and, ironically, gas burned while idling in line.

What would we have thought if someone told us two years ago that $3.75 would soon be considered an exciting bargain for a gallon of 87 octane?

Volcanic Sprint

Volcanic Sprint is a documentary film that follows runners as they prepare for and compete in the 2006 Mount Cameroon Race of Hope, a ridiculously difficult marathon up and down a mountain. I watched a screening last night at the Aurora Theatre in Houston. Director Steve Dorst was there to help present the work. After the conclusion of the film, Dorst did a Q&A session with the audience, talking about his interest in the country of Cameroon, giving updates on some of subjects profiled in the story, and discussing some of challenges faced by the film crews in getting the action footage during the race itself.

I had found out about this screening from an announcement on the HARRA webpage, and the aspiring athlete **chuckle** in me just had to see it. After seeing Spirit of the Marathon in January, this film makes a great opposing bookend in the spectrum of marathon experience. Spirit tells the story of a high-profile race cradled in one of America's largest and flattest cities. Sprint is the tale of an event nearly flat of corporate sponsorship that exposes participants at one of the highest peaks in west Africa. Probably to the benefit of non-runners in the audience, neither film gets very technical about the marathon training or strategy, as they focus on the human aspects of the participants and their feelings as they prepare to race. Dorst commented that the training programs and equipment used by the Race of Hope participants isn't complicated or expensive: They run on slopes. I laughed out loud at a scene where one of the profiled runners was discussing training and it actually showed him at an Internet cafe logging into the Runner's World site for tips, just like we do.

A note on the venue: This was my first visit to the this itty-bitty cinema in the inner-Loop, and my stupid self had left my neatly-printed directions to the Aurora Picture Show at home. Having been inured by so many megaplex visits over the years, I was unprepared to anticipate this building and ended up driving by twice!

The location is at 800 Aurora Street, in the middle of a predominantly residential block near the intersection of North Main and the North 610 Loop. It doesn't visually stand out from the houses that surround it. There is no grand sign declaring that one has arrived at a house of film worship. (The building is a converted church.) But I found it, and I went home glad the community can support a place where devotees of independent film can seek their heaven.

Michael Ellis DeBakey (September 7, 1908 – July 11, 2008)

I just read the news that Dr. Michael DeBakey passed away this morning, just a couple months shy of his 100th birthday. Sometimes we overuse the word "legend" to describe someone, but I'm quite certain that this label was meant for persons with accomplishments like his. Advancements in medical science directly attributable to him save lives every day.

Just yesterday, I was posting on the RunnersWorld forums about how comparisons to high-achievers can be a truly two-sided coin: (1) You can let them get you down and discouraged, or (2) you can let them spur you on to unleash the best you have to offer the world.

I really would like to get better at number 2. Farewell, Doctor DeBakey. As someone who once had an eye on a medical career, I salute you.

Raising Cane's: Yup, they're basically chicken.

Raising Cane's was a primary sponsor of this year's Freedom 5K. Dropped into the race packets that morning were coupons for free "Box Combo" meals -- four chicken fingers, cole slaw, fries, toast, and a drink. So I decided to stop in and give one a try.

The company's "one love" is chicken fingers, and it shows. They were cooked when I placed my order and the freshness of the meat was obvious. The fingers were battered, but weren't greasy. The tangy flavor of the accompanying "Cane's Sauce" was very subtle, but I still liked it. The crinkle cut fries and toast were pretty good too. The cole slaw was rather bland, though, and needs something to make it something more than mere roughage.

The biggest disappointment was the lemonade. I adore fresh-squeezed lemonade. While I could tell that it wasn't the pale shadow of lemonade that you'd get from a Country Time mix, there didn't really seem to be all that much lemon present.

Unless I really needed something alcoholic to wash them down, I'd rather save a time and a few bucks by getting the chicken fingers from Raising Cane's instead of, say, Chicken Crispers from Chili's.

Now if I could get Chik-Fil-A's lemonade with Cane's chicken, then we'd really have something cooking....

Go ahead: Wave your zeroes and ones through the air like we just don't care

My parents do not (and very likely will never) subscribe to a pay-TV service. They've got a pretty nice Sony TV with a Trinitron tube that still throws a darn good image at the glass after all these years. They are in the class of Americans that would be in danger of losing their TV programming when the ax falls on analog broadcast signals on February 17, 2009 unless we took action of some kind. With the $40 coupons being distributed by the federal government, I purchased a couple of Magnavox TB100MW9 DTV Digital to Analog Converter set-top boxes. Net cost for the pair from Wal-Mart: $21.37, including sales tax. (The second DTV converter box will eventually be installed on a very old TV in another room, just as soon as I find an adapter to convert the coax output into twin-lead antenna input!)

Setup to the old Trinitron warhorse was very straightforward. I attached the coaxial connector from the existing antenna to the box, and then ran RCA connections from the box to the TV. The most difficult part was navigating the dusty web of cables behind the entertainment center cabinet! After a very brief quick setup sequence that asked for date/time, audio connection preference, display mode (I chose to zoom the image to fill the screen, which cuts off the left and right sides of a widescreen frame), a channel autoscan was performed and we were finally ready to start watching digital TV broadcasts.

Unfortunately, the bundled remote control for the Magnavox set-top box (STB) is an ergonomic joke, with lots of itty-bitty, squishy buttons with itty-bitty labeling. (Way to think of of our senior population, Magnavox!) I took this opportunity to really clean things up by bringing a Sony RM-V210 universal remote control onto the scene. This was an obvious choice since the pre-existing group of TV, DVD and VCR are all members of team Sony. Per the fine print in the Magnavox instructions, I was able to successfully use a Sylvania STB code (3403) to program the remote to control the Magnavox STB via the CBL button. The clutter and confusion of four remotes has been reduced to the merely daunting prospect of learning to handle one remote.

There will certainly be an adjustment period as they get used to the new setup. But I rest easier knowing that Mom and Dad are now prepared to continue watching The Bachelorette, Wheel of Fortune, and even Sólo Boxeo Tecate on Univision (uppercuts and TKOs need no translation) into the digital age. As for me, I've been set to go for months with my sleek LCD hi-def television with built-in digital tuner. I don't watch enough television these days to justify spending the money on pay-TV myself.

It's just part of what makes me a unique individual, just like everyone else.

Freedom 5K

Here's how this morning's Freedom 5K went for me:

Mile 1 -- 8:22
Mile 2 -- 9:04
Mile 3 -- 9:34

5K elapsed time: 27:43

I know my heart was racing pretty darn hard during the third mile, and I had to take a walk break there to get things back under control. I briefly chatted with the RW forumite "running_crazy" after the race. She had driven in from The Woodlands (about an hour away!) to run this race and went right back home.

This is the fourth year I've run the Freedom 5K, and the first official one under 30 minutes:

2008 -- 27:43
2007 -- 23:52 (2.6 miles, course shortened due to flooding)
2006 -- 31:13
2005 -- 37:38

It looks like 27:43 was good enough to be the 11th guy in my age group out of 20. But more significantly, my three-year door prize streak was broken this year. For the first time ever, I came home from the Freedom 5K empty-handed. And I was starting to think it was a birthright . . . .

Do Not Remove This Tag Under Penalty of Blog

I think E is trying to get back at me for telling her that she'd do fine in running a half marathon. She wants me to share six random things about myself. People, this is MY blog. It belongs to me. If I thought there were things about me interesting enough to share with you, wouldn't I have posted about them already? Sheesh!

OK, I'm playing along with this game, only because she's a fellow slow-running Honda driver:

Random Thing #1: I've never set foot inside a Hooters restaurant. There's no real "reason" behind this.

Random Thing #2: I've been playing Guitar Hero III on the Wii for about two weeks now. I've beaten every song on Easy except for "Raining Blood" by Slayer. That one, um, slays me.

Random Thing #3: The other day a woman in my neighborhood called me a "show-off" as I was out walking my dog. Weird.

Random Thing #4: Many years ago, a woman in Austin called the cops because I was in her neighborhood and was suspicious-looking enough to spook her. I was just lost. I suppose I do have a menacing-looking side to me.

Random Thing #5: I once had an ceiling tile randomly fall on my head during an indoor volleyball game. (Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Cut it out!)

Random Thing #6: Just days after I took the picture of Bernie's 19th Hole, the storefront was closed up. I'm not sure which makes me sadder: (1) that I never actually paid a visit, or (2) that Bernie is now dead or married.

OK, here are the game rules copied straight from E's post:

- Link to the person who tagged you.
- Post the rules on your blog.
- Write six random things about yourself.
- Tag six people at the end of your post.
- Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
- Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Claire, Lorelei Leigh, Girl In Motion, Kelly G, Pat and Jenn . . . TAG! . . . I'll be visiting you shortly.