REI

It was a thing of beauty! Perfect in syntax and all the right things were said. I spent an hour typing away and scrolled down to hit "submit" when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a "DATA BASE ERROR" screen (see photo) - and with that, my masterpiece was lost in Cyberspace forever.. Oh well, I guess that's what short-term memory is for. Let me see if I can recreate it (I hear the same thing happened to Tolstoy after his first draft of War and Peace was eaten by his dog..).

I'm really not sure who the people in the picture are, but I do know that as of last night they're not on American Idol anymore! It was a bittersweet way to spend my evening, typing away on my blog only to watch the rug get pulled out from underneath these four obviously bad singers at about the same time my blog entry was pulled out from under me. : ) The moral of this American Idol story is (to quote Ryan Seacrest) - "if you have a favorite, you must vote!".. Touching words that have carryover value to everything from the presidential elections (both past and present) to "win 100 of ANYTHING Powerbar" contests - voting for the LATTER will commence on March 12th!

The REI dividend check, that is. My son Caden and I went to both REI and the North Face (Outlet) Store in Berkeley yesterday to purchase some much needed items. There wasn't much of anything at the North Face Outlet, and the big sign at REI reminding patrons that dividend checks will be mailed out next week kept me from buying anything (our dividend should be just over $500).. With a 20% discount off any one item the week after dividends go out, I think I can wait a couple more days to do my big buying..

My wife is running the Napa Marathon next weekend, so I've been working my training runs in before hers (meaning I get up at dark:30 and spend the first half of the run trying to convince my body that I'm not in the middle of a nightmare). When I went to bed last night it was pouring (seriously POURING) down rain, so I was delighted to hear absolutely nothing when I got up this morning. I only had about 90 minutes before my wife needed to head out, so I simply added a climb up "Snake" to my standard 7 mile loop. The loop by itself is a great little mindless run, but adding the climb up Snake transforms the entire distance into a serious butt-kicker. Roughly 11 miles around with over half of it being seriously uphill and the rest being even seriously'er downhill, it sure beats the heck out of doing leg press at the gym. There were some posts earlier about running in the rain. Luckily I dressed for it, because just after reaching the top of Snake, the skies opened up and I was SOAKED.