1332 Main

Nothing to note. Just my boss's office at 1332 Main Street in Over-the-Rhine. It's a cool little place to hang out and drink beers when time permits. I was there Wednesday to finish up a crazy book project. Finished in enough time to go out and visit my nieces before heading home to Columbus. Rolled in around 11:30. I was beat.

Monopolized

Christmas is near. I could've taken the opportunity of a free weekend and gotten all of my shopping done... but I didn't. We, instead, played more games of Monopoly in a three-day span than I think I've played my entire life combined. Did you know they had Monopoly tournaments? Most games went quickly... usually me dominating the upper echelon markets and commanding top dollar because of hotels and other assorted property ventures. But we're now in the throes of a long, drawn out struggle that saw one player nearly bankrupt and another with nothing to build on. After some risky deals, the two foes seem evenly matched. We'll see how it all unfolds... tonight... after dinner. DaDaDa-Dummmmm.

Say, who's this Tiger Woods guy they keep talking about? I've avoided the stories, pictures and voicemails for about as long as I could. Seems like everyone and their mother is offering this guy advice and telling him what he should and shouldn't do and how terrible a person he is. Well, I saw that dude hit a shot out of a bunker that went 200-some odd yards and ended up 5' from the pin... when it mattered. To me, he's a golfer. I read this article on the Dispatch today. I also started to spiral out on the topic and read this article on a gossip site. I've never bought aftershave because I saw Tiger slathered in it. I've never and probably will never buy a Buick regardless of how well Tiger handles the power steering during a commercial. What and who is Accenture? I play Titleist golf balls when I can steal them out of my dad's bag... and when I can't, it's whatever I pulled out of the pond back on #7 because it's just going right back in the pond on #13. At the end of the day, is the PGA going to bar him from their tournaments because he cheated on his wife? No. Sorry Rick, but Tiger doesn't owe me an apology and he sure as hell doesn't owe you an apology. Of course he owes his wife an apology (and his kids once they're able to understand the brevity of it all) but she came after him with a golf club. I'm thinking that woman might be able to handle her own without you and every other PR/marriage counselor chiming in. And if she can't, it's not anyone's business to tell her so.

Believe me, no one's condoning what's been done but my guess is that the guy feels pretty horrendous. It may have even knocked him down a notch or two. Chances are, things will be different and it won't be because 100% of us have passed some other-worldly judgment down on him... it's going to be because of how he feels right now, in his own home, with those that he cares most about. Maybe they'll split, maybe they won't. I don't really care because again, it's none of my business. All I know is that he'll continue to impress me with crazy good golf shots on the course because ultimately he's the best golfer in the world.

And to the kids out there that looked up to him... maybe this is a good opportunity for your parents to teach you the reality and vulnerability of human beings. We are flawed. We make mistakes... even the ones that get paid more in an hour than most of us will make in a lifetime. Then they can teach you about forgiveness.  He's not the first role model to do a public face-plant and he won't be the last, so why do we keep step to the same song and dance?

First Snow

I wimped out this morning. It wasn't the cold that sent me to the dreadmill in the basement, it was the wind. Well, the wind combined with the cold. What a storm this was. Hello winter. I do hope this increases my chances of skiing over the holidays ten-fold.

My niece was baptized over the weekend in Minster so I was able to get to back to Piqua for their Holly Jolly 5K on Saturday morning. I was wrastlin' a decent head cold, but still came away with an 18:56... a PR by about 21 seconds. I got a glass ornament for my efforts. The key is to run these local 5K's in the fall when all the high school and college cross country runners are in season. Come December, they're running sub-16's and making you wish you stayed in bed. But it was fun and I got to talk to some people I haven't seen in a while.

Because of the baptism, I had to skip the trip over to Pittsburgh for the UC/Pitt game. If you want to know what I missed, read here and here. Not here. But hey, family comes first, unless they're incarcerated. The worst part was that my cold prevented me spoiling my two nieces. I've already got dibs on Kendall come Christmas time. Lauren, unfortunately, can walk and doesn't trust me farther than she can throw me. Being continually passed up for the likes of my sister starts to hurt over time.

Come and Get It

In a small town south of Columbus lives a gentleman who's ready to offer you the world. In order to protect identities, we'll just call him Carl. At first glance, it would appear that life may have passed this old boy on by. But do yourself a favor and take a closer look. Opportunity rarely makes it up the walk before he's got the door open, a steaming cup of coffee in waiting and a lifetime of ideas to share. You could say that Carl likes to take the bull by the horns. Any other man would've stopped at satellite television. Few would venture into the realm of the dial-up internet service. Only Carl could combine those two mind-benders with rental trucks... and you might as well throw carpentry in there because wooden benches don't make themselves.

No Boston?

Some suck-ass news on the running front... no Boston in 2010. Sadly enough, the event reached its maximum number of registrations at the beginning of November. To be honest, I couldn't have gone anyways. It was either Boston or a wedding in Jamaica for a good friend of mine and that would be tough to say, "Hey, listen. I can afford to go to one or the other... and... well... I'm choosing something selfish. Have a great time." But honestly, destination weddings look good on paper but suck when it comes down to logistics. Turns out I'm glad we didn't go through with ours. Music Hall ended up being the bee's knees. It just sucks when you have to choose.

So here's to 2011, right!?! That could depend on a number of things. First, 2009 was the first year EVER that Boston sold out and it did so at the end of January. Registration usually closes at the end of March. This year, registration got capped in November which is an obvious result of it being capped early for 2009. But November!?! At this rate, it's going to be a frenzied registration war if they don't do something about it. Which leads me to believe that they will do something about it. Could be a number of things, but one idea folks were tossing around would be to eliminate the "mercy minute". The mercy minute is the :59 added to BQ times (ie: 3:10:59, 3:40:59). It would save thousands of spots and make it much less confusing, but then my 3:10:02 wouldn't count. I'd need to shave 0:00:02 off my PR to qualify. There's also talk of eliminating the opportunity to use one BQ to enter two consecutive marathons. After a certain date (somewhere in September) your BQ counts for the next year as well as the year after that (ie: my time in Columbus could've gotten me into Boston '10 as well as Boston '11). Seems like one BQ should get you one marathon and that's it. But again, I get the short end of the stick because I'd have to qualify again.

Now, I know that a lot can happen in the course of a year, but I plan to continue running for a long time and my hope is that a 3:10:02 is not my PR by a long shot, but you just never know from race to race. Some days you've got it, others you don't and there ain't a damn thing you can do when mother nature rears her ugly head. It would've been easy to get pretty pissed if I would've opted out of Columbus in order to have a better race in Indy only to be greeted by a 20mph headwind at the turn. It makes it pretty tough to train for 3-4 months in some cases and encounter a humid, 88º day in October... in Chicago. It's impossible to plan for something like that. So if they change the rules, which I'm sure they will, I'll just have to get faster. So, Boston in 2011? I'll see what I can do.

Turkey Day '09

Thanksgiving has once again come and gone. Bring on Christmas, right? Maybe. Maybe not.

What's happened to that holiday spirit? What's happened to the appreciation of everyone gathering around you? Thanksgiving was great but it was pretty low key. Ran in the Flying Feather 4-Miler on Thanksgiving morning. It was a fun race and probably one of the best schwag bags I've ever come across... l/s tech shirt, gloves, stocking cap and a bottle of wine. It was worth every cent of the registration fee. And there were a ton of people. Nearly 2700 finished. On a side note, I know I should've gone faster, but my legs felt stiff and I settled for a 25:40. I did, however, get 3rd in my age group, but I don't think they hand out the big checks for that.

The Tyler side celebrated Thanksgiving in Dublin this year so there were no trips to Piqua planned as it would've made zero sense to fight traffic Wednesday night just to turn around and head home Thursday morning. I was in charge of the mashed potatoes. Erica was in charge of the cranberry sauce and whip cream. My first mistake was underestimating how long it would take to peel enough potatoes for 20 people. So that led to my second mistake, which was trying to stuff peelings from 22 potatoes down the disposal at once. After that, the mistakes just kind of spiraled out of control but we did make it to the party at 2pm with some pretty fluffy potatoes. The only problem was that a clogged drain waited for me at home. We headed out around 9pm (lame that we were the last ones to go) and found the drain as we'd left it. Erica had the idea of using a plunger and I immediately got to work making a complete mess... but IT WORKED! I was able to suck enough peelings into the side sink that the water drained and the disposal worked like new again. So, after many a lesson learned, it was off to bed knowing we had a long drive to Cincinnati the next morning.

Cincinnati was pretty uneventful. Stayed up Friday night playing euchre. Ran out at Miami Whitewater Saturday morning, Thanksgiving dinner Saturday night followed by more euchre. We did hop on over to Western Bowl – Home of the Hoinke Classic, for a few friendly bowling matches with Erica's friend, Brandi, and her boyfriend, Doug. In the five years I've been with Erica, we've never gone bowling despite my pleas and that finally changed Saturday night. It was a great time even though we all did pretty terrible and I now have sore muscles in places I didn't know muscle existed. Got a little work done Sunday and it was back up 71 to Columbus.

To be honest, I've yet to recover from two pretty lousy nights of sleep in Cincinnati. That may be the reason for the foul mood. It might be the lack of a Turkey Bowl appearance that's got me down, but dammit I need to snap out of it and start rockin' out this Christmas spirit. There's so much to look forward to in the coming weeks... like leftover turkey.