"No Mon, I'm not dead..."

First off, forgive me for not being able to resist keeping the "Cool Runnings" continuity there.

Secondly, what happened? Well, let's just say I got roped into a gentleman's agreement to give up social networking for Lent. So I've given up the facebooks, the twitters, the blogs, the message boards, and pretty much all those good time wasters that are out there. Before doing so I wondered how it would affect me and if I'd actually get anything more accomplished or feel like I had any additional time. Honestly, I don't think so. I may have paid more attention to movies I rented, and had a small backslide into reading comics again, but that's about it. I blame Felicia Day and "The Guild" and IDW for putting telepathic zombies in Ghostbusters and Star Trek comics (also Transformers and GI Joe, but that's not important). In the mean time, my friend and the comic shop guys have been bringing me up to speed on other things as well. I'd feel childish reading them if the writing on a lot of this stuff didn't have more depth than half the crap on TV. Ok, so maybe the Infestation stuff is lacking there, but the novelty of a zombie Stay Puft Marshmallow man is hard to pass up.  Mostly, not doing my online things just made me feel a little more disconnected from my friends, especially the ones I don't hang out with regularly.

Anyway, I edited out the swears so I could take off the adult content warning, and I'm going to try to catch this thing up...

The Shillelagh
I was not happy with this one at all.  I just couldn't keep going hard and died in mile 3.  I ended up running the 4 miles in a 40:08, which isn't bad by old Brent standards, but I didn't want to be over 10-minute miles on short races anymore.  So this one had me mad...no, pretty much flat out pissed...the whole rest of the day.  That didn't help when the old concrete laundry sink downstairs sprung a leak on me later that day, but that's taken care of.  Well almost, the old sink still needs to get out of the basement, which I'm thinking will be in pieces.

Corktown
I started off the day going to church at St. Anne's in Detroit, which is officially our oldest parish in this state.  The church itself was built in 1886, and absolutely gorgeous.  I was only able to go to the English mass in the chapel, but I'd like to go for mass in the main church if I can bring my translator (my younger sister).  My 3 years of Spanish has completely evaporated out of the top of my head.

For the race itself, I took the approach of just trying to flat out run until I couldn't breathe and push the entire time.  The Shillelagh the day before had me full of steam and I ended up knocking out a new record for the 5K.  Just like I said, it fell, with a 28:53.  Then I ended up falling into some St. Patrick's Parade festivities, and did another showdown of American and Lafayette coney islands.  I still like American better, nothing's changed, and my friends are dead wrong.  The war continues, and now I have recent research.


Pot O'Gold
Just to purge the Shillelagh demons further, I had to do another 4-miler.  I walked downtown, and then had to come back home (and walk back again) because the shirt they had was a sweatshirt.  It was 60 degrees out.  No way I'm running that bundled in that high of temperature.  Jessi met me downtown to see me off.  I saw some people I recognized from the Shillelagh and blew by them for a 38:36.  Shillelagh demons purged.

Al Kayner
I chipped my windshield the Friday after St. Patrick's Day coming home from my friend's birthday party in Yale.  On the way up to Bay City with Jason that same Sunday, the chip became a crack, just like in the commercials.  First time that's happened.  Jason had a little bad luck in the race and took a wrong turn with the 5K people.  Given the fact there weren't signs and only 2 people to point out what to do, it probably wasn't too hard to get crossed up if you had headphones on.  Speaking of, my trusty mp3 player was cutting in and out, but more on that in a bit.  I ended up with a 47:59, about a 9:40/mile time, and another 8K record (destroying the Winterläufe time).

As far as the Coby mp3 player, I popped it open to diagnose the problem after figuring out it wasn't just bad headphones.  The jack itself was coming loose from the board, and needed to be soldered back in just right, and unfortunately, I couldn't do so finely enough to save it.  I almost had it, but on the last bit I wasn't steady enough, got some excess solder in just the wrong place, and ended up frying it when I turned it back on.  The last song it officially played was "End Times" by The Eels, so it had a poetic death.

I'll write about the Halfer and beyond later.  For now it's late and I just ran out of Firefly episodes to give me an excuse not to get to bed.