Shallow Thinker

I posted way back in January about an event that only an idiot would do. (Linked here).  As luck would have it, several of my coworkers were stupid enough to join me in the warrior dash.  The event was supposed to be 3.2 miles with about a dozen obstacles.  The number of obstacles was about right, but the total distance was only about two and a half miles.  I’m not complaining at all, but it wasn’t near as bad as I expected.

We’ve already started looking forward to next year.  After some discussions with Brian (my partner in crime in the last picture below) we decided that there really wasn’t any training that we could have done to prepare us and next year (heck year, we’re doing it again!) we’ll just run at it.

Since that one was so easy, we decided to sign up for one that looked a little more challenging.  At the end of this week, we’re going to take on the USMC Mud Run.  4.2 miles and 30+ obstacles.  It sounded awesome when we signed up for it.  But this weekend, they began to post some details on Facebook from some groups that tried the course out.

• “Plan on teamwork or plan to take the penalty.”
• “Work on your upper body…you will need it BIG time!!!”
• “Yes I think more upper body strength is needed for this year! The 10ft wall that everyone is worried about is nothing compared to a couple of the new obstacles!!!”
• “you have to have endurance like never before…the obstacles at the end require you be full of energy and by the time you get to the end you are beat…very physically draining, especially upper body for us!”
• “Save all the energy you can. When I told runners that they were at the halfway point, they thought I was joking. The majority of the second half of the course requires upper body strength. I don’t think many of the teams that ran today were prepared for that.”
• “The course is do-able, but it’s not a walk in the park either. Definitely work as a team. You’ll need each other to complete the course. Yes, upper-body and core ab strength is needed! For new Mud Runners, do not take this course lightly. It is something you have to train for. If you are not running it to make a certain time, then TAKE YOUR TIME and BE CAREFUL. I should know - let’s just say, “Mud Run, 1 - Marilyn, 0″!”

Ah, crap.  I’ve signed myself up for another suicide run, haven’t I?  Here’s to hoping that the pictures below (from the Warrior Dash) are not the last ones of me smiling after a muddy event…

Editor’s Note: After clicking “publish” on this post, I ran across this article about music and the human body.  The final line of the article seems very appropriate - “ ‘Our bodies,’ Dr. Kraus concluded, ‘are made to be moved by music and move to it.’ ”

One of the things that I’m very passionate about, but rarely blog about is music.  It’s really a tough subject to talk about.  Everyone feels like they have to one-up your suggestion or rave about their own tastes.  If you ever disagree with someone’s musical tastes, they act like you have stabbed them in the face and insulted their family.

So please allow me to stab you in the face and insult your family by suggesting that your taste in music in inferior to mine.  I am one of the millions that claims to have an eclectic taste in music.  But that never includes heavy metal, gangsta rap, or grunge.  My likes and dislikes are typically regardless of the genre.  Take country music for example.  I love a good, clean, powerful voice like Martina McBride but I can’t stand the twangy style of Kenny Chesney or people like that. (See what I mean? If you like him, you should take this as an insult.)

It’s nearly impossible to explain what it is about really good music that draws me in.  Harry Connick Jr’s big band, Keith Urban’s lyrics, John Mayer’s guitar, tight harmony, clean acoustic guitar, rhythmic piano.  I know the music that I love and hearing it makes me excited. It completely changes my mood.  I know what I don’t like and no matter how much you explain it to me, it will never make me change my opinion.  Likewise, if you’re not a fan of Keith Urban, my explanation of his harmonic guitar playing won’t change your mind.

All of that to ask this question:
Are religious views similar to musical tastes?

On July 31, I submitted my final assignment for graduate school.  It was a riveting paper that detailing my case study of the failure to implement a software process improvement technique in a mechanical design environment.  I know, you’re completely fascinated with the concept and would love to learn more about the subject.  Unfortunately, that’s not the subject of today’s post.  Today’s post is to highlight the fact that I think I’m done with my Master’s degree. (or is it with a little “m”…or does the apostrophe go after?  I’m not familiar with the proper punctuation of degrees.) And to think that it all started so long ago…

I say that I think I’m done because I haven’t heard for sure.  My professor read my work of poetry and posted my grade pretty quick.  For the past three weeks, I’ve been watching my academic record waiting to see the magical degree appear.  A part of it is because I want some closure that everything is actually done and finished.  The other part is because I really want to see how they punctuate the title.  Either way, I haven’t seen any update on my record or received my diploma in the mail.

I still invite you to join me in celebrating the fact that I might, possibly be done.  Maybe.  Could still have more to do, though.  Possibly not.  Who knows?  Or maybe, they found out that I was really only doing this in hopes of making more money instead of doing it for the true pursuit of academia and that caused them to revoke my degree. Crap, I knew I should have used bigger words in that report.

I have always been warned about those kinds of people.  You know.  The ones with tattoos or more than one earring.  Maybe even some type of piercing other than the ear.  You know what these things mean, don’t you.  It means that they are thieves, murders, deviants, and just plain weird.  The exceptions to this rule are sailors.  Or people who had a wild spring break in college.  But other than that, no normal people have tattoos.

About two years ago, I began working on a tattoo design for myself. Originally, I thought it might be good incentive to help me get into shape.  If I could get the design looking good, it would be something to strive for because to pull of the tatted look, you have to have some guns.  And I didn’t have any guns.

My first design wasn’t all that great (on the left), but I had a concept in mind with some important elements that I wanted included. I thought a local artist might help.  I looked online for reviews and picked the one (out of only two or three) that had the best review.  That was a mistake.  The guy was missing more teeth than he had and his shop looked like one of those places where you get your bad spring break tattoo.  And he was absolutely no help with the design.  I left disappointed and thought maybe it was just a bad idea.

As last July approached, I thought about the design again and wondered if it would make a good 30th birthday present to myself, but I couldn’t get the design anywhere close to what I wanted and I had no idea of where to get it done.    Without something that I felt comfortable getting traced on my arm, I let the idea die down.

This past spring, I started forming a little bit better of an idea of what I wanted.  And my friend Daniel had a great recommendation for a place to get some work done.  So I went back to the drawing board.  All of the important elements were still included, but the design was getting much closer to something I could live with.  I called the artist, sent him my concept (shown on the right), and set an appointment.  As luck would have it, my business travels took me to a conference within ten miles of Ink and Dagger in Decatur, GA. Daniel had a good experience with Jeremy Sutton, so I called him up.

Monday evenings are apparently a slow time around the parlors.  When I walked in, Jeremy was working on my design.  He showed my the computer screen and I could immediately tell that he knew what he was doing.  He took special care to make my design look better while maintaining the elements that I wanted.  Here’s the finished product:

They say the the sign of a good tattoo is that you want to go back and get more done.  I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t already thinking about the next one.  But don’t worry.  It will be something small and unnoticeable…

And yes, I’m aware that I’ll need to bulk-up a bit in order to pull this one off.

Way back before the Great Blog Famine of 2010, I wrote about some of the physical therapy that I had been going through.  Since that post in early May, I’ve had a rough go of it with the therapy.  After about three or four visits with no improvements regarding my knee or shin pains, my therapist called in the Head Honcho from the facility.  After some poking, twisting, stretching, and watching, he finally came to the conclusion that I’m crooked.  There’s a really cool medical explanation behind what is going on, (seriously. It’s pretty neat if you like nerdy biology stuff) but the gist of it is that when I run, my hips twists really well to one side, but not the other.  All of the pain is from my body compensating in some manner to keep me stable.  Again, it’s really cool medical stuff with some really big names, but I don’t remember them all.

In early July, I started work on realigning my body to where my hips can rotate as they should.  But we couldn’t get everything how it was supposed to be.  So, we twisted, stretched, poked, and looked some more, and the root cause ends up….and some of you ladies probably already knew this…that I have a really tight butt.  That’s right.  The muscles in my posterior were so tight that I wasn’t flexible enough to twist. We shifted my routine and exercises to loosen up the correct muscles, but up through the first of this month, we were seeing very little change in my flexibility.

Until today!  Not only did I get a good report and respond well to the physical tests, I went running this past weekend for the first time in about a year with no shin or knee pain.  As a reward, my therapist told me that I have just a few more exercise to master and that these are the “really hard ones.”  How exciting!  Wait….”really hard ones?”  Man, this stinks.

On my way to work this morning, I was fortunate (?) enough to get to listen to some of the local news-talk radio station.  After three or four callers voiced their opinion on a recent matter, I began to ponder:

It seems like the only time that white Christians (as in race and religion) talk about human rights is when they don’t get their way.

After the doctor’s diagnosis, I started evaluating my options.  The custom inserts at $300 were definitely out of the question.  I traveled down to my local running store, spoke to a friendly representative, and walked out with $40 arch supports.  Sure, they’re not exactly what the doctor ordered, but at a tenth of the cost, I figured they were worth a shot.

Since I’ve been dealing with the knees for a while, Kelley and I thought that it would be a good idea for me to go ahead and see what the diagnosis is.  After a lot of twisting, pulling, and pushing, the physical therapist said ,”Oh my.  You’re going to be a tough one.”  I’m not sure exactly what that medical jargon translates to, but I think it roughly translates into “I must break you!”  I have four sessions scheduled starting next week.

I’m not sure what the official term is, but as I understand it, my body favors my right side.  All of the joints on my right side are much stiffer than on my left.  The uneven loading causes pain in several areas.  My body compensates for what it interprets as a weakness by adding bone to the joints.  The additional bone causes grinding, which my body compensates for by adding fluid to those joints.  Then I get stiffness in those joints.  Stiff joints means that I compensate in how I stand/run, etc, to alleviate the stress.  In reality, this just pushes the problem to another joint.

I’m basically in an unending cycle of overcompensation.  (That’s what she said!)  I think that the physical therapy will be aimed at evening things out.  I don’t know if this will remove the pain or distribute it evenly across the body.  I should have probably asked that before I signed-up for more sessions.

Our valuable tax dollars were well spent in the state of Georgia’s legislative session, which ended at midnight last night.

From the Macon Telegraph:

Senate Bill 474: Makes it clear that people can keep the body of a wild animal killed by a motor vehicle, unless it’s a protected species. Anyone keeping a bear carcass, though, must notify local law enforcement.

Well, thanks for clearing that up.  You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted that rotting squirrel carcass, but thought that I might get in trouble for taking it home with me.

I visited the orthopedist today to finally get something done about the pain when I run.  I was afraid that he was going to tell me that I’m getting old and that I should just shut my trap.  As luck would have it, there is a perfectly good explanation for my constant crying.  Actually, there are two explanations.

My knees - So, the doctor that diagnosed me with arthritis when I was 24 was probably a little off.  It looks like the real problem is Chondromalacia Patella.  The prescription is physical therapy.  (Wow, that’s going to be expensive.)  I’ve been doing some strength training, but apparently, I haven’t isolated the muscle enough.  What I really need is to find a physical therapist to just show me what to do and I can do them for free on my own.

My shins - The short answer here is shin splints.  The long answer is that everything I had been told about them before didn’t really apply to what I’m experiencing.  Essentially, I have “high arches” and the shoes that would normally work for my foot shape aren’t what I need.  I was prescribe custom arch supports.  So, I meandered on down to the place and found out that they cost $290 for a pair.  Yowza!  Now I’m wondering if I should try to buy some different shoes from the running store.  Those would only set me back about $100.

Crap.  Now I kind of wished he would have told me that I’m getting old and to shut my trap.

Class #8 of 10 is now complete.  My final lecture of the course was last night.  The professor was nice enough to give us our final exam two weeks ago so we all showed up tonight hoping to get our graded finals.  (We got them.)  Class #9 comes to a close tomorrow evening with our final webchat of the semester.  My final assignment for the course is due at the same time that our class starts.

This final assignment has been a bit different.  We are supposed to make a presentation to justify a department within a fictional organization.  I worked through my rough draft last week and have been struggling with my final draft this week.  As I worked on some details this morning, I decided to go back and calculate what I need to make on this assignment in order to get an “A” in the class.  I need a 70.  Not bad.  But what do I need in order to have a “B” in the class? I need a 3. No, not a typo.  It’s a single-digit.

Well now, that takes the pressure off.  Instead of struggling through the assignment in order to make it perfect, I’ve decided to just add some pretty pictures.  Want to see my first slide?

You see that awesome logo at the top?  Yeah, I made it myself.  Because that’s what it takes to earn a 3 in graduate school.

One of the funnest parts about being in grad school is being included on e-mails like the ones below.  You know there’s some kind of story behind this…

I forwarded this out to some of my coworkers for a laugh and, as is likely to happen with engineers, I started a pun war.

From: Brian
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 9:07 AM

Yeah – something’s definitely afoot.

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 9:08 AM

We could take this story and run with it.

From: Brian
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:07 AM

If they’re caught, the thieves won’t have a leg to stand on.

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:08 AM

The police wanted to investigate, but the thieves already had a leg up.

From: Brian
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:10 AM

Students on campus are wondering if the community will be able to heel after such a heinous crime.

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:11 AM

Crime certainly has a toe-hold in that area.

From: Brian
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:13 AM

These foot puns are getting really corn-y.

From: Jonathan
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:13 AM

I’m sending this thread to the guys whose project this was. He’ll get a kick out of it.

From: Andy
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 1:48 PM

How could ya’ll be so callus?

I’m back to having nothing to write.  How about some free songs as a consolation prize:

Free Mp3s From Amazon

If the link doesn’t work, maybe I can just sing you some songs.