A short post with purpose. Three purposes to be exact.
1. I have let my blogging slip into a race report-only sort of mold. I never really wanted that, although I do take pride in writing a story of races I run in and direct. When I started blogging, back in 2007, I published a blurb nearly every day. It was sort of like TZ's diary. What did I eat today, what did I think about gas prices, Hey, I got bad service at at a restaurant. I think I have grown a little as a writer, although I certainly won't toot my horn as I know there are far more creative and literary writers, many of whom are good friends. I am gonna try to be a little more prolific, and light hearted. Not every post has to be heavy, long, or have 35 pictures. Saying this is a challenge to myself, and I will feel obligated to follow through.
2. I have a new iMac. Roman, Susan and Jeff Westmoreland, and my youngest son have been preaching the virtues of Apple, saying they are so much better, easier, faster than PCs, and I finally caved. My computer was old--5 years at least, and the router was older than that. I was trying to tinker with the modem to see why it was so slow, and why it finally was not letting me connect to the interweb at all--and somehow spilled my coffee right into the vents in the top of the modem box. Instead of having 4-5 blinking lights, it had one--the one that said yes, there was electricity going to the box. I had Cox Cable come out, and they switched out the modem for me, and my old dinosaur computer seemed to wake up. But I was in a Black Friday sort of mood, and went to Best Buy and brought home a sleek white iMac. I opened the box and was just SURE something was missing. I called to ask my buddy Jeff, who told me all the chips and cards and computer stuff was in the flat-screen monitor. Who knew???
I hooked it up, and it worked--but it worked SO SLOW!V It was like having an iPhone out in BFI with only the edge network for a signal. So I bugged my buddy Jeff again, who agreed to come over to look at it. On a whim, I went back to Best Buy and bought a new speedy wireless router, and a new ethernet cable--took them home and hooked 'em up, and BAZINGA! It worked so super fast!!! So fast, I actually read ALL of Facebook this evening.
I'm still learning how to find my way around on it. The first thing I did was install Google Chrome, which I am used to using. That helped. I uploaded over 100,000 pictures onto a portable drive--which has 1 TB of memory. (Jeff told me that was a LOT of memory.) I can access them from my new computer, but it still has a few hiccups. I'll learn it.
So, I felt compelled to try a blogpost to see how easy (or not) it was gonna be. It's actually not too bad. I actually seem to have fewer fat-finger typos on this keyboard--that's a plus.
3. I am super sick and tired of rain rain rain every day. And these coldish temperatures suck it too. Dana and I have wanted to go to running all weekend, but we couldn't get our warm bums out the door. We have basically ate turkey leftovers all weekend. But Turkey Mountain is gonna see us out there more in the coming months, and hopefully on a day with some sunshine.
I have some races I'd like to run tin the upcoming months. Ouachita Switchbacks in January is on my radar. I am only capable of doing the fun run (a 25K that is really 18 miles.) And of course I will run the Half and Half in December. I prolly will just do the trail half, but who knows--I might get a wild hair and do the whole thing. I've been asked about doing Run for the Ranch. I am undecided. Ideally, I'd like to do Rocky Raccoon, and maybe another 100 in the summer. I'm just not ready to hang up my 100 mile shoes just yet.
