Wow, that was fast

Not the DMV. Definately not the DMV.

Man, talk about pulling freakin’ teeth. I went to get my driver’s license renewed this morning. Got there 15 minutes before it opened, and there were already 40 folks in line. Luckily, most of them were teenagers waiting for the driver’s test, so once the DMV opened, I was at the counter with my renewal form, check, and voter registration card (I’m now a registered member of the Connecticut Whig Party/Trotsky Brigade – maybe I’ll stop getting poll calls this fall). The dude took my picture and asked me to wait.

Fastforward to 2 hours later – someone finally checks the printer, and there’s an issue – no licenses have been printed at all today. FSCK. They reboot, and bang – I’m out of there.

Busy, busy day at work, but rewarding. I stayed late ’cause I had thought I was going to get in touch with an old shipmate from the war (honest to gosh). He ended up tied up, so I went shopping for Missy’s birthday (She doesn’t look a day over 16), and then went to do the 50 minutes I missed yesterday on Jamestown.

Man, what a day! Sunshine and blue skies, with the shadows starting to get long and, even though the temps were in the mid-70s, there was the smell of fall in the air. I stretched out the 50 minutes to 52 minutes – I wanted to do the turnaround at 6 miles, ’cause I ought to be able to run 6 miles in 50 minutes (~8:30 pace).

The trip back was amazing – negative split and all that. 28 minutes out, 24 minutes back, and Paula Radcliffe (Man, I’m still smarting from watching her limp into the Birds’ Nest) telling me I’d set a new personal best for the mile.

I floated in the cove for a while – the water was brisk, and I didn’t sweat all over the seat on the drive home.

I cannot wait for New Haven.

Late Summer

So, I’m trying out a new thought as far as blogging goes. A PowerBook180 – RAM measured in K and hard drive measured in MBs – has fallen into my use. So, I’ve got a platform on which I can, well, just WRITE. The only question that I have is one of how to move files off of the platform. The only easily accessible storage is good old fashioned 3.5″ floppy disks, which are “MAC” formatted. Very interested to see if they come off.

Although, I suppose I could find an ancient dot-matrix printer to plug into the serial port… Wow, that would be a cool, cool thing to do, wouldn’t it?

Running been berry, berry good to me lately. Saturday’s long run was both wonderful and miserable at the same time. I started off with about 4 miles of hills, and then headed down to River Road (have I posted pictures recently? I’m still stunned by how sweet of a ride it is) for a quick loop to finish off the 12 on the schedule.

I was a bit bushed – I’d run Thursday and Friday, as I’d missed my run on Wednesday and wanted to make it up – but I ended up gutting it out. The initial bit (before the obligatory stop at the coffee shop for hydration) was 9 consecutive miles, which is the longest I’d run without stopping in a good, long while.

At the coffee shop, I ran into my pastor and a bunch of his cycling buddies. Kind of cool to see people you know in a new and different setting. A little bit of hydration and glucose later, and I was on my way back home.

The last three miles up River Road were at once the best three miles of my life and the worst. There was an odd combination of feeling good and not so good while I ran – extremely tough to explain, but I wanted to curl up in the green grass on the side of the road and keep running forever all at the same time.

Cannot wait for New Haven. I think I’m ready this year.