Category: Uncategorized

16 Nov

Precious Medals

One of the great feelings after finishing a marathon or half marathon is going through the food area just past the finishing line and finding all kinds of delicious things to stuff in your starving face.

But before you get there, there’s a person handing out medals to all the finishers, something you can dangle around your neck to show everyone you survived the ordeal. Some of them are pretty cool looking, others are a little lame, but I put them on display just the same.

I was shocked to read in the latest issue of Runner’s World that according to respondents in their poll, only 29 percent kept their finisher’s medals, and just 16 percent held onto age group and other awards. (For those who aren’t familiar, races often give prizes to the overall winners as well as to the top finisher’s in sub-categories like Men Age 20-24.)

Now I’m not wearing my medals around to social events, but I certainly would never just throw them away. I keep them on top of my dresser, right next to my running watches and keys where I’ll see them before every time I go out for a run.

My collection is pretty varied. In the back, there’s a trophy showing that in 2006 I came in first place in my age group in a 5K. I especially like that one as a sign of humility since that was by far my worst 5K time ever, and I only came in first place because I was the only one in my age group who entered the race.

That same year I was on a little bit of a quest to win more age group awards, so I tried to cherry-pick smaller races where my chances might be a little better. Didn’t quite work out as I planned, but I do have a nice 3rd place medal from the Vienna Elementary 5K.

The rest are more legitimate — 2nd place in my age group from the much more contested Herndon Festival 5K (a personal best at the time), then the string of medals from my five half marathons and one full marathon.

By far the coolest one is from the 26.2 with Donna Half Marathon — not confusing at all — which I did in 2009 just weeks after returning to running from a stress fracture. It’s the one in the middle here:

My newest one is on the right. I’m not going to lie, it’s the ugliest one, but then again the race was sponsored by McDonald’s so I’m not sure we should expect more.

By cjhannas McDonald's running Uncategorized
15 Nov

Run, Neb, Run

I’m just going to throw this out there — last weekend rocked.

The big event was traveling to Richmond to run a half marathon, which seemed like a bit of an overly ambitious task given that I hadn’t exactly trained a ton for the race. In case that sounds like I’m just being humble, consider that when I set my personal best at this distance two years ago I was running about 25 miles per week. There have been several months this year in which I didn’t run a total of 25 miles.

With that in mind, I started the race with my sister-in-law Bethany, as we worked towards a somewhat lofty goal of finishing in 1 hour 50 minutes. The last time we ran a half marathon together was when I did get my best time (1:43:08), and this course was much flatter, so at least I had the right conditions going for me.

In the first mile Bethany asked me how I thought our pace was:

C: “Good…a little fast maybe.”
B: “Fast?! I was thinking slow.”

In order to hit our goal time, we needed to keep a pace of about 8:23 per mile. Our first mile time — 8:45. We picked it up from there cranking out 8:04, 8:04, 8:07, 8:41, 8:07, with watch-less, psychic Bethany guessing our sixth mile time exactly on her first try.

From that it seems like things were going great, but we were asking each other after each mile, “We can’t actually hold this pace, right?” Fortunately we slowed down a touch for the next three, going 8:13, 8:37, 8:25.

In Raleigh in 2009, I went ahead after mile 7 and felt great picking up the pace straight through the finish. This time, I left Bethany with a high-five after mile 9 and as I surged ahead immediately felt like I may have made a poor move. My left knee started hurting and I could feel the effects of all those early fast miles catch up to me quickly.

Fortunately, as I walked for a second at the water stop in the next mile (8:24), the knee quieted down a bit and my brain was able to convince my body that with just three miles to go I should just suck it up and go. I also did some quick math and told myself that if I could just keep them under 9 minutes, I could reach what seemed like kind of a crazy goal just an hour earlier.

The result was closing out with miles of 8:20, 8:14 and 7:52, and covering the final tenth of a mile in 42 seconds to finish at 1:48:41 overall. My second-best half marathon ever on easily the least training.

Given that my best time came after a ton of training and was followed two weeks later by a stress fracture in my foot, maybe there’s something to this whole non-training thing. Though as we walked to the car after the race, I couldn’t help but think, “Man, what if I had trained more?”

Maybe next year.

And next year I think may be a requirement. My aunt and cousins in Richmond were awesome hosts, giving us a ride to the start line at 6 a.m., feeding us and cheering us on. They had as much fun as we did, and it was great to experience that with them.

Another highlight, my brother’s forethought when signing up for the race. They gave us the option of putting our names on our race numbers, which means random spectators on the course can call out your name and give you encouragement. I didn’t have mine on there, Bethany had her name, but Ben, who ran the full marathon, went with this:

Go Neb!

By cjhannas family running Uncategorized
03 Nov

Constructive Boredom

We’ve all experienced boredom at work, it happens, but we don’t always make the best use of that opportunity.

You may know that in a former life I spent quite a bit of time in retail, including a stint as a supervisor at a shoe store in the mall. At some point our store ran a promotion giving customers a discount on a new pair of shoes if they gave us their old ones. I’m pretty sure we sent the old ones to some sort of charity, unless they were really gross in which case they went straight in the trash.

The response was kind of shocking. I think we were giving something like $10 off, but an enormous number of people took us up on the offer. Of course, that meant finding a place to store all of these shoes as they accumulated throughout the day.

That’s where boredom came in. Blessed with absolutely nothing to do but listen to a music system we all hated, me and two of the other managers set about creating an old-shoe storage system. We called it the TUB, or Trade Up Box.

We took a bunch of different sized cardboard boxes we had left over from a recent shipment and created what was essentially a giant mailbox. It was as tall as me, with a big flap near the top so you could flip it open and toss the newest old pair of shoes down the chute.

It took the three of us — the highest paid employees in the store at the time — about half an hour to construct, which I think was definitely a solid use of company time. The owner of our franchise visited after we made it and complimented our work. He even suggested we send photos of the TUB to the other stores in our chain.

I was reminded of this great day last week during lunch at Taco Bell with one of the other former managers. He was brave enough to try the XXL Chalupa that was the center of my World Series bet with CA. He seems to have survived the ordeal, so maybe there’s hope for CA and I when we make good on our wager.

By cjhannas mall Uncategorized
02 Nov

Hey Taylor

It’s been a long time since I mentioned Taylor Swift here, mainly because her quest to ruin my life appears to be over.

We never had direct peace talks, but both sides seemed to have lost the will to continue the fight and we settled back into a sort of neutral stance. However, that’s not true for her and another member of my family.

Last weekend I went to see a “Moneyball” with my mom and brother Pat. Mom, a country music fan, was driving and when the very first notes of a Taylor Swift song came on the radio she immediately changed the station. This was not nearly the first time I had witnessed this phenomenon, but in case there was any doubt as to her feelings towards Ms. Swift, my mom added, “I don’t understand why everyone else thinks she’s so wonderful.”

Last night mom and Pat went to a hockey game at the Verizon Center, and my brother sent me a text message saying they saw a Taylor Swift poster go by as they went up the escalator to their level. “She’s trying to follow mom,” he said.

I get that maybe Taylor was tired of feuding with someone taller than her, but I don’t get why she has to keep pursuing these quarrelsome relationships. Hey Taylor, it’s OK to just play your guitar and sing. I’m perfectly fine with that. My cousin, who has used your picture as his Facebook profile photo, is definitely fine with that.

Though maybe you shouldn’t do it when my mom is around.

By cjhannas family Taylor Swift Uncategorized
31 Oct

Stunt Double

Facebook has added in a lot of features over the years — some good, some not so good — but there’s one aspect of their technology that may help solve a lifelong question.

If you meet me, there are certain facts that are likely to elicit what I consider overblown responses about their novelty, mainly that I am left handed and have a twin sister. Yes, I understand neither of these are tremendously common, but each brings its own series of questions I have answered a hundred times.

With the twin thing one of the most frequent questions is if we look alike. The answer, I say, really depends on whom you ask. To some people there’s a big resemblance while others think we don’t look anything alike.

Thanks to Facebook’s face recognition feature when you upload photos, we may have an answer. At least, we now know what computers think:

I uploaded a picture the other day with all of my siblings in it, and Facebook only tried to tag one of the faces. It’s mine, but Facebook think it’s my sister.

What do you think? Here’s perhaps the greatest picture of us that will ever be taken:

And one more for good measure:

By cjhannas family technology Uncategorized
28 Oct

Crazy Dreams Come True

Revisiting movies or television shows from your childhood is a dangerous thing.

There’s great potential for nostalgia and reconnecting with something you enjoyed in the past, but equally great danger that you’ll hate it and wonder what the heck little you was thinking.

This morning I put aside any fears of ruining good memories and delved back into the 1993 film “Rookie of the Year,” about a 12-year-old kid who hurts his arm slipping on a baseball and heals in such a freakish way that his 103 mph fastball earns him a spot on the Chicago Cubs.

I saw this movie in the theater for my 10th birthday, and the main character, Henry, became my hero both because he played professional baseball as a child and also because he got to star in a Pepsi commercial. That seemed like a pretty ideal life to me.

It may be because I was on a super baseball high after last night’s amazing World Series game, but it’s possible I enjoyed this movie even more today than I did as a kid. It’s funny and heartwarming, and only features sliiightly implausible baseball scenes that are easy to overlook. Plus it has one of the great aspects of watching movies of this era — the ability to pick out random actors nobody heard of then, but have since gone on to more famous roles. In this case, the winner was the first basemen for the Cubs, actor Neil Flynn, who is much better known as the janitor on the TV show “Scrubs.”

Even the star of the movie, Thomas Ian Nichols, managed to avoid the fate of many child actors. Instead of being in one big film, doing a couple of TV show cameos and disappearing from the acting world, he has consistently worked since this movie came out, most notably as one of the stars of the “American Pie” series.

And of course I can’t leave out director Daniel Stern, who also acted in the movie. Most people would know him best as one of the robbers in the classic “Home Alone.”

I was also struck by how many lines I remembered, many that my friends and I quoted over the years (and perhaps still today): “Hey Rosinbagger!” “Did he just say, ‘funky butt-lovin?'” “Piiitcher’s got a biiig butt.” “Float it!”

Here’s to hoping the next one is such a positive experience.

By cjhannas baseball movies Uncategorized
14 Oct

Jersey, We Have a Situation

Professional sports teams go through disappointing seasons where it’s clear something is wrong, but there aren’t obvious moves to fix the situation. Sometimes the best answer from management is to get rid of some key players who have been around for a while and move in a different direction.

It’s time for this to happen to “Jersey Shore.”

Some would suggest we just get rid of the show entirely, but as I’ve written before, there’s some merit to having it around. However, in its current state that argument is harder to sustain, and making some changes to the cast would go a long way toward removing some negative elements.

The producers have at least hinted this may happen, though I don’t for a second believe the claim made in last night’s episode by Mike “The Situation” that he’s considering not returning for season five. There’s only one episode left in this season, and I would be shocked if it didn’t end like all the others with everyone in the house hugging it out and proclaiming their latest stint together was the best time of their lives.

And that’s unfortunate. The Situation has to go. He should also take Snooki and her BFF Deena with him. The rest are fine, but these three have descended into a weird state of outrageous behavior this season that’s not healthy for them or anyone watching. Something has gone seriously wrong when Sammi “Sweatheart” — an emotional, unstable wreck in previous seasons — stands out as the bastion of rationality and normal behavior in this house.

From the beginning, The Situation has been about bravado and making everyone think he’s possesses irresistible charm on a level never seen in the history of man. This worked for a while, particularly in the first season when nobody knew any better. But now in season four, everyone has figured him out. The confident persona is all about getting attention, and when things aren’t going his way in that department, he starts drama.

It’s like he’s pathologically wired for destroying relationships, whether it’s the rare instance of Ron & Sammi actually getting along this season or his persistent efforts to ruin Snooki’s relationship with her boyfriend back home. He even seemed to think it was funny when she got mad and threw a glass wine bottle at him. The persona was entertaining for a while, but now it’s just kind of sad to watch, like he’s not even happy being there himself.

It also seems like both he and Snooki are victims of the reality show world. I don’t mean “victim” in that we should feel too sorry for them, but that their experience with getting super famous for being these characters only served to reinforce that that’s what people want to see. When someone writes you a big check and invites you back for another season, it’s hard to think you should be doing anything differently. For The Situation that has meant wearing out his welcome with everyone around him, but with Snooki, it’s more of a dangerous self-implosion.

She walked into the house in season one with a similar projection of self-confidence, but quickly threatened to leave when she felt like none of her roommates liked her. She ended up trying way too hard, and evolved into someone with a care-free attitude who doesn’t give a crap about what anyone else has to say. Oh, and the drinking. She’s drunk all the time — not just she had a few beers and is having a good time drunk, more like half the time she can’t walk straight or even sit on a chair without somehow falling on the ground. For a while it’s kind of entertaining to watch, the kind of spectacle that makes you just shake your head and say “Wow, whaaaat is wrong with you?” But when it happens episode after episode it becomes, “Wow, seriously, what is wrong with you?!”

The drinking affects more than just her balance, leading to all sorts of self-destructive behavior. That boyfriend she thinks is going to hate her because of what The Situation is saying? She gets in a fight with him on the phone, then hooks up with one of the roommates, and she’s so drunk she doesn’t remember what happened the next day. That leads to yet another series of arguments on the phone and begging the guy to stay with her because she needs him in her life. It’s a wonder he doesn’t seem to find that sentiment to be mutual. So for her sake, and for the sake of not promoting her issues as a way to fame and fortune (I’m all about the children, you know) it’s time for her to find a more positive occupation. Yes, America has loved Snooki, and thus helped create this monster, but we need to let her go.

She can take her friend Deena, too. Deena is the newest cast member, but all she does is enable Snooki’s behavior and serve as a fill-in for Sammi’s former role as the girl in the house who can turn any slight into an argument and subsequent crying session. She carries Snooki’s same coating of not caring what everyone else thinks, but is so deeply affected by the opinions and actions of the other roommates that everything sets her off.

With those three out of the house for the next season, we would need replacements. MTV obviously has an entire crew of people who scour the country for those interested in being on these shows so I’m not worried about finding willing participants. The new members would bring an infusion of new life, and give us not only new personalities to examine but also reveal new things about the old cast members we think we know and love.

What we need is Vinny and Pauly D continuing to do Vinny and Pauly D things, and for Ron and Sammi to continue their progression into seemingly normal human beings instead of their former roles as polar opposite fighting machines sent to this planet to destroy each other. In fact, Sammi has been so normal this season I actually picked her the other day when a friend demanded I answer “If you HAD to date one of the girls, who would it be?” Before this season, my answer would have been more like, “NONE OF THEM. Are you crazy?!”

As for JWoww, well, let’s just say she’s on the trading block if next season doesn’t start so well and we need to make another change.

By cjhannas Uncategorized
09 Oct

Pizza Hut and the (Re)Quest for the Pepperoni Smiley

A few months ago I asked Pizza Hut to place the pepperonis in the shape of a smiley face.

It wasn’t a totally random request, since they have a box on the online order form that specifically asks if you want anything special: “Want your pizza cut into squares? Have another request? Let us know.”

I could hardly contain my excitement when I picked up the pizza and brought it out to my car, but disappointment instantly set in when I opened the box and saw no smiley. I posted about it on Facebook and learned I was not alone. My friend Holly said she once requested they cut her pizza into rhombi, but Pizza Hut just called and said they could deliver it uncut so she could cut it herself.

Yesterday, I tried again. I was talking to AV when placing my order and she suggested I throw in a bit of trickery to try to influence the process. “Say it’s your 5-year-old’s birthday,” she said. “Maybe that will tug at their heartstrings.”

The only problem with the request section of the form is that it only allows you 28 characters to work with. The word “pepperoni” is so long that you’re really limited in saying much else, but this is what I came up with:

I mean, come on, it’s for a kid! How could you ignore that? When I picked up the pizza, the guy behind the counter seemed extra happy about the process. Granted, I’ve never met this guy before so it’s possible he’s like that all the time, but I want to think my order had something to do with it. Unfortunately, there was nothing special about the pepperoni placement, but at least they got the spirit right:

I still want to find a place that will follow through on the pizza itself. Let me know if you have any luck.

By cjhannas food Uncategorized
08 Oct

Leviathan

After reading a few books that were far too close in tone to the project I’m working on, thankfully I stumbled into one that is unlike any I’ve read in a long time.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” or “High Fidelity,” they just muddled my thoughts a bit and complicated what I was doing. Enter “Leviathan,” the third book I’ve read by the underrated Paul Auster.

It follows the usually enjoyable setup of “I’m telling you something about the end of this saga, but in order to understand the situation fully, let me now start at the beginning.” The narrator learns that a man has blown himself up in northern Wisconsin, and after reading about it in the newspaper and getting a call from the FBI, he figures it is his friend. He then tells the story of how they each made it to that point, a story of interwoven decisions and fates that build on one another until the final outcome is like two locomotives speeding toward one another.

Auster’s style, unlike that of say, Nick Hornby, relies much less on long stretches of quoted interactions. If you’re not looking for it, it’s easy to miss, but I found myself at various times looking back and finding stretches of pages without a single piece of dialogue. Just shows there are lots of ways to tell a story.

The man who blows himself up is a writer named Sachs, whose brain is always running with whatever he is working on consuming his thoughts. The narrator describes him by saying, “The wall between work and idleness had crumbled to such a degree for him that he scarcely noticed it was there. This helped him as a writer, I think, since his best ideas seemed to come to him when he was away from his desk.”

I can’t even remotely tell you how many blog posts can be directly attributed to that notion. I never sit down and say, “OK, let’s post something.” Often what happens is I’ll wake up at some ridiculous hour thinking about something random, and know that I’ll continue thinking about it until I just bite the bullet and get up to write it all down. Of course, then getting back to sleep afterward is a different challenge.

Sachs also deals with struggles that a lot of creative people go through with uncertainty about accurately evaluating their own work. Author Bill Carter talked about this “imposter syndrome” in his book “The War for Latenight” – the feeling that no matter how good you are, someone’s going to eventually expose that you’re not. In Sachs’ case, he asks the narrator to read the first third of a novel he is working on:

“I’ve reached a stage where I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he said. “I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. I can’t tell if it’s the best thing I’ve ever done or a pile of garbage.”

Part of my lack of posts lately has been due to hitting this point with my own work. I know I’ve said about 37 times that I’m going to do a proper update on what’s been going on, but I really do intend (possibly in the next week or so) to follow through on that. Thankfully I feel like I’m through a really rough patch, thanks to consultant/editor/consigliere AV’s push, echoed by the narrator in this story, to “just keep writing.”

For anyone who insists that growing a beard is a good idea, I’m going to use Sachs’ wisdom as my excuse for not letting it grow. After spending some time in the hospital, he rocks a beard for a while before snapping out of that phase for the sake of the country:

“He wanted to do his bit for capitalism. By shaving three or four times a week, he would be helping keep the razorblade companies in business, which meant that he would be contributing to the good of the American economy, to the health and prosperity of all.”

So remember that next time you suggest I let the beard grow. As much as I enjoy ditching the beard, I get even greater satisfaction out of seeing random references I understand from having read other books. In this case my knowledge was thanks to Ralph Keyes and his book “I Love it When You Talk Retro.” It’s only because of him that this made any sense:

“You always dressed me up when we went out, and I hated it. I felt like a sissy in those clothes, a Fauntleroy in full regalia.”

Fauntleroy, Keyes writes, is Little Lord Fauntleroy, who first appeared in literary works in 1886. “As much as the text itself, detailed drawings of Little Lord Fauntleroy in a dark velvet suit with a scalloped white collar created an indelible image of this idealized child. They inspired a type of formal (some would say prissy) boys’ wear.”

And I don’t have anything else to add to this, but I loved this quote too much not to share. It’s from Sachs’ wife, Fanny:

“You don’t want to get stuck in the past. Life is too interesting for that.

By cjhannas books Uncategorized
06 Oct

What You’re Looking For

If you’re looking for a can’t-miss business idea, I can assure you there’s money in the custom ping pong paddle industry. Seriously.

The most common search term that lands people here continues to involve homemade paddles, with “China home made ping pong paddles” and “sweet paint jobs for a paddle” showing up this month. Though, actually, that last one may be related to something else entirely that maybe we should ignore.

I’m not sure how to monetize that — maybe do-it-yourself kits, mall kiosks offering custom paint jobs — but there’s money there for sure.

For anyone who still doesn’t agree with my method for making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, at least I include the peanut butter part. Someone ended up at that post recently after Googling “Jelly on bread.” Sounds delicious.

One of the cool things about the service I use to see this info is that it will (sometimes) tell you where your site ranked in the search results. Even better is seeing how ridiculously patient some people are when browsing those results.

Take this recent example. Someone in India searched “Gutters cleaning service,” which after 197 other results listed my post about the epidemic of gutter-cleaning peeps leaving flyers stuck in our front door. For the record, we still aren’t interested. If the Google page shows 10 results at a time, that means they browsed through nearly 20 pages of other options before reading my post. And even then, it could in no way have had anything to do with what they were actually looking for.

Those are my favorite outcomes, when what I wrote has absolutely no bearing on what the person was trying to find out. Someone once searched something like “what aisle silly bandz target” and ended up at a post describing these awesome marshmallows I found at Target and a completely unrelated anecdote that mentioned Silly Bandz.

Thanks to another search a few weeks ago, I now know that Googling “tweety tat” brings up one of my posts as the fifth result. It has nothing to do with Tweety Bird or tattoos, of course. Just me talking about my Twitter habits.

There was one search in the past month that did really make me curious about the searcher. They said, “Why not live it up take the risk,” and landed on this post from 2007. I was writing about the movie 10 mph, which tells the story of a team of people who were unsatisfied with their lives, quit their jobs and pursued a project of riding Segways across the country.

I wrote it the day after I quit a job that was sucking the life out of me and daily worsening a sense of personal disappointment. Whether that somehow drew me to this movie, or if it just happened to come to me at a time it would really speak to me, it did help to put some things in perspective.

I hope in this one case the searcher found what they were looking for.

I’m glad to see that some people have also started making use of the buttons on the bottom of each post that allow you to easily share something you like. If there’s one thing people love to do these days, it’s sharing links, and the buttons make it easy to email, post on Twitter and Facebook, or for the really cool kids, +1 it on Google.

As always, thanks for reading.

By cjhannas blog stats Uncategorized