When I went to college in Berkeley, I met my first vegetarian. It seemed like a difficult way to live, but I understood the rationale behind it. (Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if one day in the future meat-eating was viewed the way that we view slave-owning today.) As the years went by, I met more and more people in my social circle and work life that voluntarily restricted their diet for moral reasons. Meanwhile, I happily ate any animal I could find on a menu. Most of them are scrumptious.

At one point I decided to ask myself if there were any animals that I wouldn't eat, for moral reasons. I'm not talking about if I were starving on a desert island, but were there any animals that I'd avoid eating given other available food sources? I started to make a list:

• Humans
• Dolphins
• Monkeys/apes/gorillas/etc
  

Those seemed pretty obvious to me. Even if the special at a restaurant was a surf and turf delight featuring monkey filet in a savory dolphin sauce, I'd have to refuse. Furthermore, I'd bet that 90% of the people I know would include these animals on their don't-eat list.

So, what was special about these animals? Well, for me, it was their intelligence. It just seemed wrong to eat an animal that had a level of smarts in the ballpark of human intelligence. Then, of course, I was forced to figure out where exactly I was going to draw the line. Was it right there at monkey?

Eventually I considered dogs. Were they too smart to eat? I decided they were, although JUST BARELY. I was going to draw the moral high-ground line at Dog. Any animal as smart as or smarter than a dog was going to be given a virtual Get Out Of Mike's Stomach card, free of charge. Sadly, this included pigs. My understanding is that they're probably a bit smarter than dogs. This is a big drag because pigs are really delicious. Bacon. Pepperoni. Pot stickers. Damn.

But I drew the line there about a decade ago and I've stuck to it.

Actually, that's not exactly true. My rule is that I don't wish to be the cause of any more pigs (or smarter animals) to be served up as food. However, if my wife or daughter orders some bacon and then leaves some on their plate? Well, I mean, it's not like I could plant the bacon in the ground and re-grow the pig. There's no use in throwing away delicious bacon!

I think most people who claim to be omnivores probably have a similar internal rule for what they will and won't eat, but they may not have taken the time to articulate it or examine exactly which animals are on or off it. If anyone wanted to argue that I've drawn the line in an arbitrary place, I'd agree one hundred percent, but it's the place that seemed natural to me.

Note, however, that since my rule is intelligence based, if I could find a pig farmer who raised an especially stupid breed of pig, then maybe I could enjoy some pork. Similarly if I meet some annoying person who is a total freakin' idiot, and is covered with a spicy garlic sauce, then bon appetit.

Man, I've been really bad about blogging, and I don't have much time this evening, and I don't have a particularly good topic. So, I rummaged through my notes of good anecdotes and came across this mini one. It's more of a fond memory than a full-fledged blog post, but that's what you get when I'm neither available nor sober.

During the summer at the end of my senior year of high school, my girlfriend (whom, astonishingly, had put up with me for nearly a year and a half) was going on vacation with her family for a couple weeks. This was going to be the first time we were apart for more than a few days since we had started to.... (Daisy! Quit reading this!)... have sex.

My girlfriend gave me a present before she left. It was neatly wrapped and formal looking. I unwrapped it and found a empty toilet paper roll that had been decorated on the outside and lined with soft velvety felt on the inside. It demonstrated her craft-making abilities but the purpose of it was not clear.

"So, it's a fancy toilet paper roll?" I asked.

"No, it's for your wiener!" she said proudly!

"I'll wipe my weiner with toilet paper from the fancy roll?"

"No! You put your wiener in it! It's for masturbating!" she said, beaming at me.

It was, in retrospect, one of the more thoughtful gifts I have received in my life. I never brought myself to actually use it (and, frankly, I pray that it would be too small for me), but I've always been impressed that a high school girl understood what was really going on in the brain of a high school boy.

I am not a superstitious man, so I'm pretty sure I won't jinx myself with this post.

I woke up this morning with a sore throat. This development wasn't really out of the blue since I had slept very poorly the previous two nights, and I did my best to destroy my immune system on Saturday by running hard in the morning, and then drinking until late in the evening during our monthly poker game. However, it was still a bit of a surprise to find my throat sore this morning since I rarely get sick.

Being sick today wasn't going to be very convenient though. We had a party to go to and some preparations to wrangle, so I ignored my throat and did all the normal activities I had planned. Magically, after a few hours, my body healed itself. I felt fine by around 1:00pm and was happily drinking a beer later that afternoon.

I don't know what exactly I did to earn such a hardy immune system (it might be the running), but it really rocks. It's almost like a superpower or having a Constitution level of 18. Tomorrow I have to go into the office, and I'm thinking of testing my abilities by tonguing doorknobs and computer mice. Then I'll turn keyboards upside down and shake their dirty bits into my open mouth. Afterwards maybe I'll go to Daisy's classroom and lick the snot right off her classmates.

I am virtually impervious to the common cold.

However, what I possess in good health, I lack in manners. Today I went to Pablo's 40th birthday party. (Happy birthday, Pablo!). His house was filled with good and fun folk, including a few visitors from his home country, a quaint island nation. One of his visitors, a gal we'll call Squeezy, picked up a magazine and showed it to Hank and me.

"Look at this article on women with great style," she said flipping through the pages, "You have to see this."

"Why?"

"'Well, I'm not in it, but check this out," she offered, displaying a picture of a glamorously attired older woman.

I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to see in the picture. Why would I care about some random woman in this magazine? Was it a joke?

I peered at the picture. I don't go to a lot of events where women get all gussied in up. In fact, in this town if you see some older woman all glammed up like that, she's probably a drag queen.

"Oh, that one is a man!" I exclaimed.

Squeezy glared at me. "That's my MOTHER!"

Oh crap! My mind raced thinking of all the possible ways to extricate myself from this situation. I'm pretty fast on my feet, so I quickly settled on this approach:

"Uh.... you see, I didn't mean... errrr.... I was just.... that's a very.... uh.... clearly I..."

Then I laughed nervously and walked right out of the room. Miss Manners would have been proud.

I did apologize just now though.

The other day Hank and I had a discussion about stubbornness. Unsurprisingly it turned into a debate about who was more stubborn. I did my best to persuade Hank that although people sometimes call me stubborn, they're really just confusing curmudgeonry with stubbornness. Although I'll complain about horrible things like camping or skiing, ultimately we do these things and I try to make the best of it.

We needed a third party to resolve this dispute. Naturally we turned to Daisy.
As it turned out, someone who can't even define the word stubborn probably isn't the right person to judge a stubbornness contest. We continued the search.

"Let's ask Liz! She's known us both for years." Hank offered.

"No way! Liz is my ex-girlfriend and one that dumped me on top of that. Of course she'd say I was the most stubborn! I think that was even a condition of the break-up."

"How about Larry?"

"Nuh uh. He's married to Liz. For years now, she's been telling him how stubborn I am. They're married and uni-brain now."

After much contemplation, the perfect answer presented itself at the wedding this weekend. Pablo! He's been our friend for years and had the bonus of having worked with each of us as well. Hank and I both agreed that he was a qualified and neutral judge. He sat across from us at the reception and we explained what we needed from him.

"So, there it is, Pablo. You're the decider. Which of us is more stubborn?"

Pablo chewed on this for a few moments.

"This is hard. So, I'll just have to use what evidence I have. I know that Mike has been fighting against your upcoming remodel, but you guys are still going to do it, so I guess that means you're more stubborn, Hank."

I hoo-hoo'ed and generally celebrated, while Hank digested this development.

"Well," she defended, "Does it really count as stubbornness if I'm just right all the time?"

Nice try, Hank!

Three unrelated Daisy vignettes:

1) I took Daisy to Tae Kwon Do tonight. The teacher started class by asking the kids to line up by height. Although Daisy isn't the youngest, she's the shortest.

The kids bumbled their way through the activity, slowly sorting themselves via a combination of comparisons and Brownian motion. Meanwhile, Daisy waltzed up to one of her average-sized friends and used her hand to compare the top of her head to the top of his. She reached his chin.

"Daisy!" the teacher barked, "You're suffering from delusions of grandeur!"

She slowly made her way down the line, stopping occasionally to see how she sized up against some young kid. When she eventually arrived at her correct location, at the end of the line, her jaw dropped in amazement. This was NOT how she saw herself.

2) At the end of Tae Kwon Do, they gathered the kids around for a lecture about the importance of exercise. One of the teachers said, "All you kids who watch TV, one idea would be to do some sit-ups or push-ups during the commercials. That's a great way to fit exercise into your day!"

Daisy's hand shot up.

"Yes, Daisy?" the teacher asked.

"Well," Daisy began, "You see, we have Tivo, and on Tivo, you don't have to watch the commercials. I just fast forward right through them." She beamed proudly at her teacher.

The teacher thought for a moment.

"Well, don't do that. Don't fast forward through the commercials. That solves the problem."

When we got home, Hank and I explained to Daisy that that was the worst solution ever.

3) Daisy composed a poem yesterday. As near as I can tell, it's original, although the fact that it's pretty good makes me skeptical. Anyway, here it is:

There was a little puzzle piece lonely and sad
He had absolutely no momma or dad
But one day when walking through the wood
He found his puzzle in his neighborhood
Then his life turned from sadness to glee
Cause now he had a happy family

I went to a great wedding on Saturday night.

In general, I'm not a big fan of weddings. First, they're ceremonies. Oh, man, I HATE ceremonies. By definition, a ceremony is the part of an event that doesn't really count. It's all the superfluous stuff. I sit there and think to myself, "Don't they know that this is not an efficient use of our time? Couldn't they have gotten married by clicking on some web form?"

Second, they usually take place in a church. That's always alarming for me because I'm afraid of having my flesh burn off, or God smiting me, or some other heathen-appropriate result. The clock is ticking on this one.

Third, dancing. This is never pretty.

This wedding was pretty good though. The "minister" was the groom's uncle, who somehow got ordained by the State of California for just this one ceremony. I think the wedding couple chose him because he was funny. Funny may not be efficient, but it buys you a lot of good will in my book. Plus, there was an open bar before (and after) the ceremony. Nothing lubricates the ol' laughing muscles like a vodka martini.

And the ceremony took place in some cool retro Italian club here in San Francisco. My flesh totally did not burn off. That's a big plus in a wedding for me. Secularlicious!

There was dancing though. They hired a cool jazzy-swingy band to play at the reception.

My wife loves to dance. She grew up dancing in musicals, and took many years of ballet, and just kind of gets that whole move-your-body-in-time-to-the-music thing. We watched people dance for a while and both had similar thoughts: "Wow, that looks..."

Her sentence ended with "fun". Mine ended with "hard".

Hank: So? Do you want to dance?
Me: WANT? Do I WANT to dance? No.
Hank: Will you dance with me?
Me: You know I will, but I have no idea how to dance like that.
Hank: We'll figure it out.
Me: Ok, but this is going to disappoint you.

Apparently 'disappoint' was the magic word. She hmmphed, and let it drop.

It wasn't quite magic enough though. Thirty minutes later she turned to me and said. "We're dancing. I'll lead."

And so we did. And she did. Unfortunately, the problem with her leading is that I will only hear the simplest possible rhythm in the music (if any at all). She hears several levels of them. So, her hips are moving to one beat, her feet to another, and she's guiding me to a third. Meanwhile, I'm woodenly transfering my weight back and forth between my left foot and my other left foot, while making that Ow-This-Hurts smile. Every once in a while, Hank would twirl herself.

I had a lovely time though.

Hank was upstairs tucking Daisy in to bed, while I proved, once again, why computerized tennis players will never beat the top human players. She came downstairs and we had this chat:

Hank: Well, I just had a very interesting conversation.
Me: Uh oh.
Hank: Daisy asked me why two people had to be married to have a baby.
Me: Oh no!
Hank: I wanted to be honest, so I explained that they didn't HAVE to be married. So, then she asked me if there had to be a man to make a baby.
Me: Gah! The talk!
Hank: I said yes, so she asked what part the man does.
Me: *cringing*
Hank: So, I told her how the man puts his penis inside the woman's vagina. I didn't go into much detail, but I felt compelled to answer her questions honestly.
Me: Soooooo, what did she think?
Hank: She asked, "So, if I never have a man put his penis in my vagina, then I'll never get pregnant?" I said yes, and she breathed a big sigh of relief. She was very relieved.
Me: Crazy.
Hank: Yeah.
Me: I'm still going to keep an eye on her though.

Although Hank had clearly stated that we should NOT celebrate Valentines Day, The 4th Sister chimed in with some timely advice and convinced me to do SOMETHING. Luckily, aiming low is my speciality.

So, today was Valentine's Day and Hank kicked it off by getting up 20 minutes early and making a Daisy a special breakfast. She whipped up a batch of heart-shaped pancakes, and accompanied it with a plate of sliced bananas. Each banana slice was imprinted with a red heart shape that she made by carving an apple wedge into a heart shape and then using the apple as a stamp to press red food dye into the banana slice. I can't believe she did it in 20 minutes. If I get up 20 minutes early, I check my email and take a (non-heart-shaped) dump.

At lunch I went out to do my shopping. Hank and I knew that Daisy would enjoy a Valentine's Day gift, so I went out to purchase it. Along the way, I stopped to pick up a small box of chocolates and some flowers for Hank.

Although buying chocolates and flowers is kind of like saying, "Hi, I'm from the planet NoImaginaranus" it seemed like the right level of giftitude given Hank's proclamation that we should do nothing. Not too showy, and not too slackery. Plausible deniability on all fronts. And love of course.

Daisy enjoyed both her breakfast and her gift. I got her a marble solitaire game she's been coveting. Because, is there a better way to express your love for another than by giving them the gift of solitaire? I love you, baby! Now, go play this by yourself.

Happy freakin' Valentine's Day.

Opening day of the 2007 baseball season is just under seven weeks away. That means that I need to get my ass in gear and start working on my great baseball gambling program. I'm still a little fuzzy on how exactly I convert this program into real-world dollars, but I'm inspired by the business plan of other great minds.

Other deadlines also loom. There's a little known holiday called Valentine's Day that terrorizes all but the most romantic of us. Thankfully, Hank has taken the lead on this one. We had this awesome conversation yesterday:

Me: Oh, crap! Dammit! Gah! Valentine's Day is this week! AAAAAAHH! SOMEONE BOIL WATER!
Hank: It's ok. I have a plan.
Me: You have a plan?
Hank: Yes, I have it all figured out. I have a plan. Are you ready to hear it?
Me: *cautiously peering out of one eye* Yes.
Hank. Here's my plan. I propose that we do absolutely nothing for Valentine's Day.
Me: Oh, goddamn, I love you.

I am not naturally or intuitively a nurturing person.

When Daisy cries because she's sad about something stupid, it takes every ounce of self restraint I have to not say, "What?? You're crying about that?! What are you, seven?!?!"

When Hank gets sick, she dreads telling me, because my natural reaction is to say, "Again?!?!" and stomp around the house like a seven six year-old.

("Hey Mike," you interject, "Doesn't this make you a lousy husband and father?"

Screw you! Get your own blog!)

Anyway, through great self-study, introspection, and constant berating by my family, I'm slowly learning how to act more like one of you humans. For example, if Hank is feeling under the weather, I now know to unclench my jaw before asking Hank if she'd like a cup of hot tea. Me smart!

All of this training has come in handy this week, because Hank and Daisy have both been home sick FOR THE LAST FOUR AND A HALF DELIGHTFUL DAYS. Oh, the euphoric joy of forced confinement. Pinch me. Meanwhile, I've been immune to this bug. For the last several years, I haven't really gotten any colds. Occasionally, I'll get a little bit of a sore throat, or I'll be sniffly, but it's always really low-grade stuff. I am impervious to the common cold.

Anyway, with Hank out of action, I've been taking on more of the cooking duties this week. Mostly this consists of us ordering more take-out, but I have "cooked" up a batch of fish sticks and frozen pot stickers. I am, in case it's not blindingly obvious, an untrained, terrible, and very lazy cook. Today, however, when contemplating a dinner plan, I stared at the packages of defrosted chicken legs that have been sitting in our refrigerator for the last four and a half days. Something needed to happen with them, but what?

Microwave chicken ala Mike? Maybe not so nurturing.
Boiled chicken fiesta? With salt? Hmmmm, maybe not so tasty.

Then, inspiration struck. Maybe it was the discussion I had at brunch about the Houston market with its impressive lard display (19 facings!). Maybe it was the fact that I rarely get to eat one of my favorite foods because it's unhealthy and not Daisy friendly (allergens). Maybe it was hubris. Regardless, I googled a bit, and then turned to Hank and said, "I'm making fried chicken!"

Ok, the recipe didn't look particularly delicious, but it had the irresistable quality of looking allergen-free and easy. I'm all about the easy.

Hank suggested a complementary side vegetable (chard!) and gave me detailed instructions on how to cook it. Meanwhile, I started to heat up nearly all of the cooking oil in the house. I love fried! I chopped, sauteed, seasoned, rolled, and fried the various ingredients. At the end of this absurd exercise I had some chard which was almost as good as Hank makes, and six legs of fried chicken.

So, was it good? Good is a strong word. It was slightly overcooked and a bit bland, but to be perfectly honest, it might not have been the worst fried chicken I have ever had.

I don't say that to be self-deprecating. I say that to brag. I have been fist-pumping and thrusting my arms in the air, touchdown style, ever since dinner. A casual observer would assume that I had thrown the chicken legs into the end zone rather than turning them into mediocre fried chicken, but they would be tragically incorrect.

I am THRILLED to have made overcooked and bland fried chicken. I can't believe I didn't start an oil fire, or give my family salmonella. Having the meal be edible is really just figurative gravy. Daisy, whose favorite food might be crispy chicken skin but had never had fried chicken before, really dug it.

Afterwards, Hank turned to me and and charitably said "You cook. You clean. Now all you have to do is cure the common cold."

I raised my eyebrows at her and said, "I have cured the common cold."

Daisy, who is in 2nd grade, got her report card last week. After Hank drove her home from school, Daisy stayed in the car, staring sullenly at the card.

"So, she's upset about her report card?" I asked Hank.

"Yes."

"Is it bad? Did she get bad marks?"

"What do you think?"

"I think her report card is probably pretty good, like usual."

"Exactly!" Hank said exasperatedly.

I went back out to the garage to see if I could coax my tiny self-flagellating child off the ledge. She wordlessly refused, so I decided to let her be for a while. She eventually came in, plopping down dejectedly on the couch. I sat down cautiously next to her.

"Mom says you're upset about your report card. Is that right?"

She nodded.

"Can I see it?"

She shrugged and told me where it was. I glanced through it and saw good scores across the board. All the necessary boxes were checked and all the scores seemed to be solidly above average.

"Daisy, this looks like a GREAT report card. Congrats! What's wrong with it?"

She pointed to the last page which was entitled "Things to work on". It listed penmanship, and double-checking her work, and a couple of other reasonable items.

"So, you don't like that your teacher said that you have some things to work on?"

Daisy sniffed, paused, and then burst into tears. "Noooooooooooo!" she cried, "I don't!"

"That doesn't mean that you're a bad student. If there was nothing left to work on, you'd be all done with 2nd grade, and it's only February! Everybody should have some items in the things to work on section in February."

"Well," she moaned, "That's not the only bad thing. Look here.....waaaaaah!" and she pointed to the page of test scores.

I reread that page. There were a variety of sections (for spelling, math, etc) listing Daisy's scores and the average score for the class. For almost every test, Daisy's score was above the class average score.

"What's wrong with these scores?" I asked, confused.

"Look at this one!" she said pointing to an '11' she had received. "And look how high the class scored!" she cried, pointing to the '8.8723581382" average class score.

"So? The average kid in your class scored 8 or 9 on that test. You got 11 right. That's great. Are you mad that you didn't get 12?"

"No! I'm mad that I didn't get 88723581382!"

"Oh, baby! The average score wasn't 88723581382! It was 8 POINT 8723581382. I know you guys haven't studied decimals yet, but that's just a complicated way of writing down a number that's between 8 and 9."

She stared at me dumbfounded. "What about this one?" she asked disbelievingly, pointing at an average class score of 10.239275.

"That's just a number between 10 and 11. It's 10 plus a little more. You scored 13 on that test, so you beat the average there too."

She pulled the report card back in front of her face and stared at it fiercely. I went through each test score with her, showing how her score compared favorably to the class average in almost every case (and naturally I spanked her for the one where it didn't).

By the end of the conversation, she was beginning to come around. It took a while to recover from her deep sadness, so I can only hope that this is the last time that decimals cause her such tears.

I called my wife, Hank, from our "boys" trip to Tahoe to check in. I chatted for a few minutes with her and with Daisy to see how things were going, and then I returned to the festivities.

Hank called back about 30 seconds later. We had this conversation:

Me: Hey babe, what's up?
Hank: Hey, I wanted to know if you knew where the Wii packing material was.
Me: Yeah, it should all be on the floor by the TV in the living room.
Hank: So, the Wii box, and wrappers, and containers are all on the floor there?
Me: Yeah, why?
Hank: Oh, just checking to make sure that we both knew where all that stuff was.
Me: ....
Hank: ....

The lightbulb clicked on in my head at this point.

Me: Ok, I get the point. Ha ha ha.
Hank: That's all. Love you. Bye bye.
Me: Yeah, yeah, love you too.

I got off the phone.

"What was that about?" Pablo asked.

"Oh, well, Hank recently informed me, after more than 10 years of marriage, that I have a habit that drives her nuts. Apparently I'll leave bits of garbage around forever. Sometimes an envelope, sometimes some packing material, whatever. I open something and then never clean up the clutter. She claims that she'll try to wait me out and see how many days it takes me to get to it, and that I never ever do. Apparently she cracks before I do. Anyway, just one of those harboring seething things that married couples do to each other."

"So, she just rang you up to bust your balls?" he asked.

"Yep."

Then Pablo said what he always says at times like that.

"That's what you get for marrying somebody smart."

Last night my coworkers and I gathered for an evening of food, booze, and cards.

Typically we convene at a Reno casino which has NOT barred me from playing blackjack, and hunker down at the tables for a stupefying number of hours. It's consistently entertaining, but sometimes we lose our shirts and pay a steep price for that entertainment. So this time we decided to change things a bit. My boss has a timeshare condo in Tahoe, so we converged there for an evening of moderate debauchery.

I brought my Nintendo Wii along for some entertainment (much to the chagrin of my wife and child who were cruelly left Wii-less for 24 hours. The horror!), my boss cooked up a mess of tasty vittles, and we drank a variety of hangover-inducing beverages. The main activity of the evening was a poker tournament though. This way we'd still get to gamble, like always, but instead of giving our money to the casino, we'd give it to me. It was a win win!

At some point during the card-playing, one of my coworkers noticed that something had been intermittently beeping. We paused and listened for another beep, but none occurred. Several minutes later it happened again. This went on, sporadically, for a good chunk of the evening, with members of our gathering getting increasingly annoyed. It was kind of a high-pitched squeaky beep, one of the more dastardly species in the beep genus.

I have a special hatred for beeping objects. They plague me. So, it was exceedingly annoying having this beep intervene into our festivities. We contemplated all possible sources: iPods, laptops, Pablo's bionic hip, Wiis, appliances, and people who had beans for lunch.

"Argh!" yelled one of our coworkers, "What is making that beeping!?"

Pablo broke out into a sneaky little grin.

"That," he said quietly, "Is the Annoy-a-tron. It's currently affixed to the underside of that lamp table."

He hobbled over to the table and retrieved his dastardly little toy for us all to marvel/spit at, a device whose sole purpose is to annoy people like me. I go to great efforts to annoy the people around me, and this device accomplishes the same thing with the touch of a button. It's a genius time-saving machine.

Me thinks that some lucky people will be unknowingly receiving the Annoy-a-tron for next Winter Present Tree Day.

Our new(ish) neighbors invited us to their Superbowl party yesterday. The husband, Fred, lived in Chicago for many years, and is a big Chicago Bears fan. So they encouraged their guests to bring Chicago-themed food items.

Chicago-themed foods?!?! What the hell would that be?

I know that many cities have foods that they're famous for. Philadelphia has their cheesesteaks, Boston has their damn beans, Houston has it's... uh... lard, and everyone goes nuts for San Francisco's famous sour sperm. Similarly, Chicago has deep dish pizza.

I think that's about it though. I've read that Chicagoans think there's something special about their hot dogs, but come on, it's a freakin' hot dog. Maybe they have fewer or extra rat feces parts per million, but I'm pretty sure you can find good and crappy hot dogs in every city of reasonable size.

Obviously not everyone was going to bring deep dish pizza though. Maybe some creative bastard would bring a meatloaf shaped like Soldier Field, and someone else would spell out Chicago using nacho cheese sauce. This clearly opened the door for Hank and I to bring a deep dish pizza from the best pizza place in the San Francisco Bay Area. Realistically, how many deep dish pizzas would there be?

Six. The answer was six.

My phone just rang. It was Rod the head hunter. We had this conversation:

Rod: Hi Mike, this is Rod blah blah.
Me: Hi Rod. I recognize your name from the numerous emails and phone calls I've received from you over the years.
Rod: Oh, well, I'm glad to hear that we're doing a good job keeping in touch with you. So, are you happy these days?
Me: I'm happy that I'm earning a decent salary and I get to work from home.
Rod: Work from home, huh? That's tough to beat.
Me: Yes, it is.
Rod: Well, what are you working on these days? Because I've been in touch with some small companies here in SF doing Web 2.0 work and some larger companies building interesting web applications in Java.
Me: I'm doing Web -3.5
Rod: ...
Me: That's a joke.
Rod: Oh, I know. That's very funny. *emits tiny laugh*
Me: If you're going to try and convince me that you thought it was funny, you have to try and laugh a lot sooner.
Rod: No no! It WAS funny. See, I mean everyone is talking about Web 2.0, but what does that even mean?
Me: Nice try, Rod.
Rob: Well, let's keep in touch. Do you have my contact information?
Me: All that I need, yes.

(Apologies in advance)

My favorite race of the year took place this weekend. It's a half marathon (my favorite distance, yay!) here in San Francisco (convenient, yay!) and aside from one short-ish hill at the end, it's mostly flat and downhill (fast, yay!). I've run this race about half a dozen times and I've gotten faster each time, setting a personal record (PR) for the half marathon each time.

I signed up for the race again this year, but was somewhat depressed when I looked at how fast I ran it last year. I had averaged faster than 7 minutes per mile over the 13.1 mile course in 2006. Since my running has essentially stalled, it seemed unlikely that I'd beat the record. However, my training over the last month went pretty smoothly and I slept reasonably well last night, so I got up this morning and knew I'd have at least an outside chance at setting a PR again.

I set out before the neighborhood cafes opened up, so my pre-race caffeine consisted of a Redbull. That's vile vile stuff, and it sent me to the porta-potty line with mere minutes to spare before the race started. However, it's loaded with plenty of caffeine and sugar, so I vibrated my way to the starting line and was ready to roll by race time.

The first few miles of the race were fairly flat. Before the race I had computed how fast I needed to run to set a PR and I stayed just a bit under that pace. I slowed down a bit for a water break halfway through the race, but the next few miles were downhile, so I kept banking a couple seconds each mile. After 8 miles I was 24 seconds ahead of schedule.

At this point I was one mile into the mentally challenging part of the race. Miles 7 though 9.75 are straight along Ocean Beach. This sounds pleasant, but it's long and straight and mentally draining. At Mile 9.75, you turn around and run the same 2.75 miles back in the other direction, so all in all, it's a mind-numbing 5.5 mile out-and-back. Each step that you take in the out direction is a reminder that it's another step you'll have to take on the way back. Meanwhile, you can see all the fast people that have already turned around at the 9.75 mile point and are steaming towards the finish line. It's a long long slog and since the previous miles were scenic and downhill, this flat section almost seems uphill.

My pace dropped a bit in this section and I started taking seconds out of my "bank". Five seconds here, eight seconds there. They were disappearing sooner and faster than I had hoped. At the Mile 11 marker, with 2.1 miles to go, I realized that if I kept up my current pace, I'd miss setting a PR by a few seconds, so I tried to pick up a bit of speed. I still had a few saved-up seconds in my imaginary bank.

At the 12 mile marker, I checked my watch and found that not only had I not picked up the pace, but I was no longer ahead of schedule. My bank account was empty of extra seconds. The last mile was going to be the toughest mile too, because it contained the one hill in the entire race.

"Oh well, Mike!" I said to myself, "You'll miss your PR by about 10 seconds. At least you're prepared to give up." My mind flashed forward to what I'd think about this result laying in bed that night. I decided that I didn't particularly care for it. I'm all for throwing in the towel, but it seemed silly to decide to miss a PR by 10 seconds with just 1.1 miles left to go.

I had been running near the limit of what I can do for 12 miles and I'd have to say that my brain probably wasn't really at it's sharpest. I had almost forgotten the favorite training technique of my running club's coach.

In general, he's not a big fan of having his runners log lots of miles. He prefers that we run "quality" miles (and do crosstraining and eat right blah blah blah). So, for example, on a long run, rather than have us run for 2 hours, he'll ask us to start with 15 minutes of hard running, then do an hour of relaxed running, and then end with 15 minutes of hard running. That way, it's a quality 90 minutes rather than slogging through 120 minutes at even pace. So, most weekends, when I'm doing my long runs, I end the run with 10 or 15 minutes of hard fast running.

"HEY, MIKE!" I said to my brain. I'm LESS than 10 minutes away from the finish line! I'm trained for this! Hill or no hill, tired or not tired, I CAN run harder for the last 7 or 8 minutes. It's that many minutes of pain, but the payoff is another PR, which will make my heart sing for at least the rest of the day. "Be inspired or inspirational, or something un-Mike-ish, Mike!" I said to myself.

So, I picked up the pace and I started passing people again. And then we hit the hill, and I shortened my stride and plowed up it, passing a few folks along the way. At the final turn, with about 150 yards to go, I sprinted with all I had left.

Ta dah! I broke my record from last year by 20 seconds (which is a triumphant 1.5 seconds per mile). Victory is sweet. I reflected happily on this as I limped the 2.5 miles back to where my car was parked (stupid courses that don't end where they start!).

Next year is really gonna suck though.

Moxey tagged me for a meme.

I have to write short stories.

Only six words per story allowed.

Shorter sentences? Sure. Six words TOTAL.

I've done 55 word stories. Poorly.

Moxie wants to see some cleverness.

Disappointment? All signs point to yes!

Ok, I'm all done practicing now.

SIX WORD STORIES FROM TODAY'S NEWS

SF Mayor cheats. Surprise at heterosexuality.

Global warming. Exxon makes billions. Inconceivable!

France bans smoking. Depardieu gains weight. (That last link is NOT safe for work)

Iraq still crappiest place to shop.

The End

Hey, that was only marginally worse than I thought it would be. Low expectations are like manna from heaven.