Shallow Thinker

You’ll have to forgive my delayed report from thed USMC Mud Run, but I am just now able to move my arms again. I still haven’t gotten all of the thick, black mud out of my ears. This event was tough, dirty, exhausting, disgusting, and extremely demanding. And I’m doing it again next year.

First, I must admit that there were some logistical problems at the event.  Traffic getting in and out of the place was horrendous.  My clumsiness typing in the address on the way in had me come in from a different way than most participants, so I didn’t face all of the traffic coming in.  And leaving, I paid attention to how the lines were moving and managed to get out within 30 minutes.  Others in my group waited for over an hour.  In addition, the wait lines for showers were pretty long.  After a big romp in some thick mud, they could have at least run us through a lake to help wash off.  But, the organizers are aware of the problems and will be doing some modifications to help alleviate those problems for next year.

The course itself was pretty cool.  Due to a family emergency for one of our team members, we ended up running the race with three members instead of four.  We were not the most in shape group there (which is evident looking through the official race photos) but I am very proud of my teammates Lala and Scott.  The Warrior Dash back in May was simply a race that you do on your own.  This one required you to rely on your team.  And in some cases, we had to rely on other teams.

Most of the obstacles weren’t anything that required much thinking.  There were numerous instance where we just had to go over or under logs.  But two obstacles stood out as the ones that took the most help from others.  ”The Weaver” was nearly impossible.  By the time we hit it, most of our upper-body strength was gone and the thing was packed with teams trying to get through.  The other is one that wasn’t even on the map.  The event organizers called it “the mud pit” but most of the participants called it “the tar pit.”  It was a big pit filled with the thickest, blackest mud that I’ve ever seen.  The Marine manning that station told our team to run along the side, jump in at the halfway point, and then exit at the end.  Easy enough, right?  It took us 15 minutes to make it through about 10 feet of this stuff.  I don’t know how I managed to pull myself out, but I didn’t think we were going to be able to get Scott out.  Here’s a picture of the stuff from one of the other participants.

So at the end of the day, my team managed to make it through all of the obstacles and come out on the other end without any major injuries.  If you’re interested in more photos, check out the Facebook page or the official photography page. (My team # was 1788.)

While the date in the system says “Aug 12,” this was just posted this afternoon.  But I’ll not complain….much more.

There were some good things and some bad things about growing up in a small town.  And then there were some hilarious things that you’d only find when everyone knows each other.  I’ve pasted the most recent crime page from the local paper of my home town.  My comments are in red:

• On the 30th of July, I submitted my final paper for my graduate degree.
• On the 2nd of August, the grade for my class was registered online.
• On the 6th of August, I checked online to see if my degree was noted on my unofficial transcript.
• And again on the 13th.
• The 20th
• The 27th
• On the first of September, I called the registrar’s office to make sure there were no holds on my account or anything like that.  I was assured that everything was fine and that everything should happen soon.
• On the 10th of September, I managed to have the department liaison track down some emails and let me know when they submitted everything to the registrar’s office.  I should hear something any day now.
• On the 18th of September, I was copied on an email from the department  liaison notifying the registrar’s office of some of the particulars of my degree indicating that they had been asking some questions about what specific degree and minor I should be getting.
• We’re on day 50 of Degree Watch, 2010.  Stay tuned to see if I am actually granted a degree or if I have just been undergoing an exercise in futility.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Last night my phone rang.  I walked through the house trying to find one of our cordless phones, but I knew what message would be on the other end.  I answered and my mother gave me the news that I had been expecting.  My paternal grandfather had passed away. (The one mentioned here.) In the past year, his health had taken a pretty steep turn for the worse.  Strokes, cancer, various illnesses, and time finally wore him down.

When I visited him in the hospital a few months ago, it was difficult to see him in that state.  I had my daughters with me and I wanted him to be able to enjoy their company, but the sterility of the environment kept them nervous and hiding behind their mother.  Though they did venture out to give him a big hug before we left.  I don’t know if my daughters will remember that day, but the man they saw and laughed with was just a shadow of the giant that I interacted with throughout my formative years.

As I sat on the couch last night, I spent some time thinking about the man he was and I tried to solidify in my mind the kind of man that I thought he was.  The word that kept coming back to me was “history.”  As long as I could remember, Pop would tell us stories about everything imaginable.  He told about his mischievous childhood, his years of service to our country, his beautiful, young bride, his three boys, and anything else that was completely irrelevant to any other discussion at the time.  He even got so good at telling stories that he once fell asleep in the middle of telling me one.  But each story had a point.  And a lot of times, the underlying current was the pride that he had for his past and his present. He was proud of his father who had marched through Germany.  He was proud of his sons who had gone on to have families of their own.  But what struck me the most as I sat there on my couch thinking was the fact that he was proud of the life that he had lead and the wife who had walked by his side.

A part of me feels bad because I have accepted his death as an inevitable reality.  Pop lived a long, full life and he was able to see and hold several of his great-grandchildren.  I understand that his days were numbered and that he now rests with no pain.  But last night, the tears still fell as I recognized a void that cannot be filled.  My sense of loss comes from the stories and the history that passed on with my grandfather last night.  Only a handful of his tales will survive his passing and his part of history will slowly fade away.

Once again, I am reminded that our legacy is not the items we possess or the dollars that we spend.  Our legacy is defined by the relationships that we build and the lives that we touch. I am comforted to know that Pop’s legacy lives on in people that I have probably never met and through the stories that I will hand down to my girls. I can only hope to be so lucky.

I turned 30 last year with warnings from my predecessors that my body would soon start falling apart. Being the respectful person that I am, I listened to my elders, heeded their warnings, and fell apart.  I’ve documented my ongoing problems with my knees and shins, but there’s another issue that I’ve been battling.  And this one is almost equally as annoying.

My underarm sweats like you wouldn’t believe.  And if you’re wondering, yes, that last sentence is correct.  Just one of my underarms, not both.  I will be sitting at my desk in my nice, cool, 72 degree office and feel sweat trickling down my right side.  My left side? Dry and happy.

I usually workout during lunch, so I fortunately have an opportunity to let my shirts dry a little.  Shirts?  Yup, that’s right.  My t-shirt and my over shirt.  Both are soaked by lunch.  It’s lke I’ve been doing one-arm pushups all morning.  Except that I can’t do one-arm pushups.  I wouldn’t mind the niagra falls from my pits if I had a reason for ut.  But alas, the only reason I can find is old age.

Join me next time when I talk about my bad back, arthritis, fiber, and gray hair.

Thus far, I haven’t really done anything special to prepare for the upcoming mud run. I have maintained my normal upper body workouts and started mixing in some runs now that my legs are getting a little better.  Just for kicks, my last two runs have been 4.25 miles just to show that the distance isn’t a problem.  And I have pushed it a little harder on my arm workouts, but I haven’t done any specific, targeted training.

When I checked the mud run website this morning, I noticed that they have released the description of this year’s course (click here and scroll down).  Now I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve gotten into something that will kill me.  The good news is that I’m on a team that has no aspirations to win this event.  In fact, I don’t think that I’ll be the slowest or the weakest member of the team.  So the pace shouldn’t be a problem.  My biggest fear is that I might have to drag one of our team members along the way.  His preparations thus far have been to eat twinkies and to sit still for long periods.  Maybe he has the right idea.

So who wants to place a bet on how many bones I’ll break?  Vegas currently has the over/under at 3.5.

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.