Run, Music City!

13.1 < 2

Whoo - hooooooooooooo!

How 'bout that!?! I got up at the butt crack of dawn this morning with the intention of limping across the finish line at around 2:20 or so. Not today, Junior! I don't know where I got it but I had tons of energy and I was ready to run. It certainly wasn't from my slack training the past few weeks, or the four whole hours of sleep I got last night.

Now, I have some clarifications. Technically, I might not have come in under 2 hours. We don't get official results until tonight, but I want to blog this desperately. At any rate I know I am within a minute or two. The clock time was 2:14. I know we were more than ten minutes behind the leaders to start. As usual, I had to make a restroom break. This time it only cost me 3-4 minutes. So if you subtract that then I am pretty sure I came in under 2. At any rate, I am close enough to 2 to call it a victory. If you don't like it then to heck with you! >:|

Last year I pretty much did the whole thing alone. It is exponentially more fun with people there to run with and to cheer me on. Thanks! You guys are great!!!

OK. I wanna make a detailed account of the day, not so much for publishing, but for my own recollection. If you aren't interested in the gory (literally) details, it won't hurt my feelings if you stop reading.

Let's see ... I'm not exactly sure what the clock time was when Amanda and I crossed the start line (Go, Amanda!), but I crossed 1 mile at 22-23 (something like that), so I am going to assume that we crossed at around 23-24 minutes. It was ridiculously cold, and I kept teasing Amanda that we were about to get poured on (it really looked like it). Literally, when we were queued up to go, I still believed that I was going to suck wind the whole time. About a quarter mile in I thought, "Wow! I feel unusually good." so I broke away from Amanda and just started truckin'.

My music was PERFECT for today's run. It was comical that in several places the song that came on fit exactly what was going on. I had forgotten to start my MP3 on a playlist that I had meticulously crafted last night, so it just played the songs in the order they were copied to the disk (or something like that). The first few songs were The James Gang. I hadn't listened to The James Gang in forever and it ROCKED. I listened to Funk #49 twice.

I saw LB (dear, cheering, helpful friend!) at about 2-3ish. I got to 4 mile at exactly 50:00. "Out Ta Get Me" by GN'R comes on. "They're out ta get me/They won't catch me" I was feeling awesome! Shortly thereafter I crossed the point where I had to make my disastrous break last year. I had resigned myself to it this year. It happens all the time; 3 miles, 10 miles, whatever. There's nothing I can do. So shortly after 5 I started getting the gurgle (right on queue). I was tailing one of the Nashville Strider's pacesetters. He was a marathoner with a 4:15 sign. At this point I had no thought that I would get close to 2, so I was pretty happy that I was hanging with that dude. Around 6 I had to stop. This year there were, thankfully, substantially more facilities. I took care of that and never stopped again.

So, for the rest of the race I will rely on my songlist. If you know how my mind works, you will know that I remember events through the songs I am listening to at the time. Hence, the following is helpful to me.

Complete song list:

Artist	Song	Comment
The James Gang	Walk Away
The James Gang	Funk #49
The James Gang	Midnight Man	LB, there's a line in this song that a woman sings,"Midnight Man, you're pretty." Thought of you. ;)
The James Gang	The Bomber (Closet Queen)
The James Gang	Woman	Ok ... getting tired of The James Gang right about now.
The James Gang	Funk #48
Lynard Skynard	The Ballad of Curtis Lowe	This is a running song from last year.
Guns n' Roses	It's So Easy	Perfect!
Guns n' Roses	Nightrain
Guns n' Roses	Out Ta Get Me
Guns n' Roses	Mr. Brownstone
Guns n' Roses	Sweet Child O' Mine
Audioslave	Cochise	I got a HUGE burst of energy from this one. I sprinted about a 1/4 mile.
Audioslave	Gasoline	This is where the break was. From here I switched to the playlist. Little did I know that the next song was "Can't Find My Way Home" by Blind Faith. Shoulda' waited.
Cream	Crossroads
The White Stripes	St. James Infirmary	The White Stripes own!
The White Stripes	Slicker Drips
Led Zeppelin	Hey, Hey What Can I Do	I am invincible when running to Led Zeppelin
Beck	Today has Been a F#@ked Up Day	There is much, much history with this song
Led Zeppelin	Misty Mountain Hop	I don't remember listening to this?
The White Stripes	Do
Black Sabbath	Sweet Leaf	This came on right as I was passing the Belmont Church choir. HA!
Guns n' Roses	Sweet Child O' Mine	Didn't care. Didn't want to fool with the player.
Velvet Revolver	Set Me Free	This came on during that miserable stretch on The Gulch, under Broadway. This was also right about the time that it registered with me that I had a legitimate shot at 2. I got a mean look on my face and took off. The Gulch is my bitch!
The White Stripes	Broken Bricks	I feel like I have listened to a thousand White Stripes songs and the good ones never come on.
The James Gang	Woman	Holy Cow! I've had enough James Gang
Cream	Sunshine of Your Love	I do not remember this song
Cake	Stickshifts and Safetybelts	I think this came on right about the split. Thank goodness that huge billboard from last year is gone. It said "Marathon runners! 15.(something) miles left to go!". That sign convinced me never to try a marathon.
The Black Crows	Soul Singing	This is about mile 11ish. I have had it. I am fighting with myself to stop.
The Beatles	Don't Let Me Down	This is the most perfect one of them all. JOHN LENNON is cheering me on! I sped up.
The White Stripes	Astro	There you go! A good rock out 'Stripes song.
Ted Nugent	Stranglehold	And that brought me down that street in front of the Coliseum and past the finish line. Perfect! Especially if you know how that song has a particular significance to my running (Pennington and Cornfed).

After crossing the finish line I realized that I was in some pretty good pain. My knee felt like somebody took a sledgehammer to it, and my nipples hurt. I peeled back my number bib to see this horror:

This grodiness is a link if you don't want to see

Finally, LB took my shivering, useless body back to HCA where I stood in the shower for 45 minutes. Much better now. I think I might do it again next year!

Reading the tea leaves

If the previous recession has taught me anything it is to be cautions. These are today's "Stocks and Economy" headlines from MSNBC.com:

Stocks lower after downbeat GDP data
Economy grows at softest pace in two years
U.S. jobless claims rise, as expected
Durable goods orders drop unexpectedly
U.S. consumer confidence drops in April

On the site's main page today is a link titled ...

More signs economy is weakening

... that points to the same article as the second one in the list above.

It makes perfect sense. Rising energy cost increases the cost of business and reduces consumer activity. Put all that together and wonder if right now is the best time to be making huge financial decisions like selling a house, entertaining other job offers, etc. But there is a new, nagging thought from this weekend to not live in fear.

Got My Tickets

22 days; 13 hours; 14 minutes. I am going to explode.

2005 Draft

So we drafted Tennessee punter Dustin Colquitt. I guess Vols fans are pretty happy with his family. Let's hope he does the Orange to Red transition better than Casey Claussen did. I wanted to throw up seeing him in a red jersey ... once ... in preseason. ;)

We also drafted a wide receiver named Craphonso Thorpe. That poor kid. It's not a good sign when the first four letters of your name are 'crap'. Can you imagine the nicknames he had in high school?

Why did we draft a freakin' quarterback AND a wide receiver? If Trent takes a boot to the face and is out for the rest of the year then forget it, we're sunk. Period. What is a rookie wide receiver going to do? If Tony Gonzalez breaks his neck, then so should the rest of the entire team. I think for the 2005 season we need to concentrate on the 2005 season. After this, Vermiel is gone, Priest might be gone, our hopes are gone. This is it ... well, 2003 was it ... curse you, Payton Manning!!!

With insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.

So Caroline wrote this and inspired me to tell a story (hush, LB).

I am, similarly, NOT a morning person. The primary reason is that I cannot go to bed on time. Tonight, for instance, it is 12:30AM and I am up typing blog entries. Why? Anyway, I have similar stories from high school. EVERY MORNING Pop (my dad) would spend 30 - 45 minutes as my personal, human alarm clock. He came with a snooze button. He would say something to rouse me. My response would be something to the effect of, "werwerw wer wregf gfdew ygfojidsknewr y5bt3krwejhfds!" He would go away. Ten to fifteen minutes later this exchange would be repeated.

At Lipscomb, every morning began with this strict ritual: I had a CD player alarm clock that would start playing an audio cd. The same track of the same cd every day. It was on the other side of the room from my bed. After about ... I dunno, 5 - 10 minutes of it blabbering I would get up and hit the snooze on it and (of course) return to bed. This would afford me about 2 - 3 minutes of deep slumber before the alarm clock next to my bed would go off. I would reach over and use the Force to trip its snooze button. Two to three minutes after that, a desk lamp which hung on the wall about 2 feet from my face would turn on (it was on a timer). It would scorch my flesh just long enough for me to turn it off immediately before the cd started playing again. This cycle would be repeated for about 45 minutes to an hour.

Did I mention that I had a roommate that endured this EVERY DAY? He can STILL quote the first chapter of my audio book. When he would describe my ritual to others, he would include hilarious accounts of my facial expressions as I became aware of each alarm. He said I looked as if I was shocked that morning actually happened, as if it made no logical sense to me that I had to wake up in the morning.

His alarm clock system comprised of the following: a single alarm clock with a beep almost as loud as a squeak in a tennis shoe. Most mornings it wouldn't go off. He would beat it to the punch. If it ever did go off, it would beep ONCE.

Now, some mornings he would get up early to do homework. He had a computer in the room and would type his papers or what not. When he did that (keep in mind my previous story), I swear it sounded to me like he was pounding on the keyboard so hard that he was about to ram the keys completely through the back of the desk. Of course, he was just typing like normal. It drove me crazy. Whenever I would point this out to him (that's a nice way of putting it) he would remind me of my ritual.

Songs of the Church You Kind Of Know The Words To

We are now home from the singles group retreat this past weekend. I think there is a consensus that it was a great success. GREAT JOB LESLIE AND JANEL!!! Personally, I feel spiritually challenged and significantly closer to the group after this weekend.

I think there is also a con census that one of the most enjoyable times of the weekend was the completely unplanned and unscripted "ole' time song service" on Saturday night. In between guffaw laughter, my mind kept matching the fun we were having to these following thoughts. Many of the songs we were singing were in fun, sprinkled with an appropriate portion of irreverence. These were the songs that I grew up with and remember as a kid in the Church of Christ. They conjured up memory of a stuffy church, but, I infer, a pretty typical C of C for the 80's and 90's. During some of the songs I actually felt a prick somewhere in the far back of my mind saying, "Whoa! You can't CLAP to that song!" Caroline had a pertainant comment at the end of her account (here)of these events. I agree with her assesment of that classic, "Jesus is Coming Soon". What a riot. Now, none of what I am saying is intended to be critical. In fact, I kept thinking just the opposite. I have spent my entire life in the Church of Christ, and church related activities have usually taken up most of my "free time" (i.e. not work time). The culture of the C of C is part of my personal wiring. Singing all those old songs the other night reminded me of how different a "mainstream" C of C is these days. While I appreciate the change, and I am ... proud (?) ... of the church for its growth, I appreciate our heritage. The thought occurred to me then that while we can all joke and be critical of our church history, I really appreciate it. I LOVE a good C of C joke, but at the same time those quirks and cultural nuances give us an identity. Saturday night was a great example. A room full of folks that, literally, grew up all over the country can sit in the dark in a room and sing the crustiest old songs for hours from memory. We even had the four part harmony some of the time. AND they didn't feel crusty, they felt familiar. It was fun to sing those old songs, though I can remember, as a kid, trudging through them for endless Sunday's. There's a double entendre there, "endless Sunday's" as in an uncountable number of them, and Sunday's that would never end. The difference this time around is that those old songs immediately reconnect me with the history of the C of C, as well as my own personal history, as well as to each of the other individuals in that room. We have a shared culture. I also got to thinking that while I appreciate other denominations, and it has been suggested to me innumerable times that it might be good to switch denominations and try something new, the C of C culture is so much a part of me and it is such a precious thing to share with others that I don't want to change. I couldn't switch to a Baptist church and be able to share all those years of history with them. That shared history and culture is very important. It is a huge part of being family.

Giovanni Paulo Santo!!!

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires."

- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

I read this article and picked up on Cardinal Ratzinger's comments. I would tend to agree with that. I think that the protestant community wholesale rejects Catholic teachings rather blindly. There are innumerable examples of the most compassionate, learned, Christ-like individuals in history being members the Catholic Church. I like 'em and would like to learn more.

All of the fuss lately about the Pope and the Catholic Church has renewed my interest in Catholicism. I understand when people feel that the Catholic Church is stuffy or too filled with ritual. Some find disagreement with the idea of a single man leading the entire Church, or praying to Saints and all that. I, for one, really appreciate the (literally) thousands of years of Church history. It connects the present age with thousands of years of Christians. I do think that praying to Saints is kind of weird, but I don't think it is a salvation issue. Ultimately, they believe in Jesus the Christ and power that He displayed in his crucifixion and resurrection. That makes the rest of our differences merely cultural, even (especially) the ones that we get so upset with each other over.

RSS Bandit

If you are like me and read a bunch of blogs, it can get monotonous to click around to a hundred different web sites just to see if there is anything new. This is especially true for blogs that belong to friends. These might get a couple of posts a day for a few weeks and then go months without one. I am especially guilty of that.

Most blogs have RSS feeds. These are basically a different form of your blog that programs can poll for changes. All of us that have blogsot accounts have the option of allowing RSS feeds, and most of us have ours turned on. There are a number of programs out there that can download all these RSS feeds and let you view dozens of different blogs at a glance, much like reading email. The program that I use is called RSS Bandit. You can get it here. Here's a screenshot of what mine looks like:

Hey! You! Get off of my Cloud!

Check it, yo. I have a new friend. I just welcomed him to my blog and told him to check out the ones listed on yonder left links. I hope he swings by. His 'American' name is Cloud and he lives in China. He is one of Linda's students. For those of you not in the know on that one, she is a Harding friend that teaches Engrish over there. She's been there for ... years. She has a blog too, but maybe we should keep that under wraps (you know why).

Anyway, Linda and I have put together a group of 'Chinese Pen Pals' from about a dozen folks at OC. Cloud is my Chinese pen pal. So, be nice to him if he comments on your blog.

Take three ...

Well, I haven't posted on here in a thousand years. Some friends in Nashville have started up some blogs, so that is inspiring me to try again. I am going to change the rules. I am going to see what it is like to allow any registered blogger.com user to post comments. No cussing!!!

Dissociative Disorder

WHAT IS DISSOCIATION?

Dissociation is a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. During the period of time when a person is dissociating, certain information is not associated with other information as it normally would be. For example, during a traumatic experience, a person may dissociate the memory of the place and circumstances of the trauma from his ongoing memory, resulting in a temporary mental escape from the fear and pain of the trauma and, in some cases, a memory gap surrounding the experience. Because this process can produce changes in memory, people who frequently dissociate often find their senses of personal history and identity are affected.

Here's a topic that I think I could ramble about forever. I'll try to keep it brief.

It seems that the past year or so has been riddled with close friends experiencing very dangerous illness. I have recently thought a lot about how wired it is to deal with that.

Just for LB, here are a bunch of stories.

About this time last year, the mother of one of my life-long best friends was dying of cancer. My thoughts revolved solely around the friend and worried for him and how he was going to deal with it. She died that July and still, a year later, every couple of days I think that it is just inconceivable that the Earth still revolves around the Sun without Melissa. She's not actually gone?

Last winter my best friend from Lipscomb was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. I have seen his thin, short hair, his IV-lump-thing in his chest. He has told me about enduring chemotherapy. But I think I emotionally click the whole thing off because I don't think I can deal with him being that sick. I KNOW he deals with it better than I do. It's like we talk about nonsense and whatever and then he tells me about what is going on and POP! my brain disconnects from my heart until we move on to some other topic. He is supposed to have his final treatment of chemo this week. I CAN'T WAIT!!! That's just crazy. I'm all excited for him, even though I couldn't allow myself to get upset at any point. I keep saying, "He's going to be fine." not as a faith (or Goldeneye) thing, but as TOTAL denial.

Just a few weeks ago an old (not an old person, just friends for a long time) friend from KC calls me and tells me that she is going in to get a lump removed from her breast in a few days. She is very distraught. She's upset, her sister is upset, her mom is upset. I couldn't come close to "getting upset". I prayed for the girl with emotion analogous to "Lord, let her rent check not bounce."

Last night a relatively new friend from church was diagnosed with MS. A bunch of us went over to her apartment and hung out to "keep her mind off of it". We did great! Laughed, told stories, had a great time. COMPLETELY ignored the part about her just finding out that she has an incurable degenerative disease.

NOW!!! Here's where this gets sticky for me. This in not a joke, nor even intended to sound funny. A couple of weeks ago Pennington sends me a text message that says, "Taco Via burned down." This is my favorite restaurant in the whole world. I was near tears. A few minutes later he sends another one, "Just kidding. Debbie says hi." I felt like I just got punched in the face. I had that feeling for three days. I can connect with this one. One day, Taco Via will be gone. I know that. I know that my time with Taco Via is limited so I must appreciate every chance I get to eat there.

I cannot imagine a world without my favorite adopted mom, even though that IS the current reality. I cannot imagine Shaun having cancer. BUT HE HAS IT!!! Slater may be nuttier than squirrel turds, and we may have gone years without talking to each other, but she will never die (at least as far as my mind tells me). Three weeks ago, Clair was the picture of health, and all of a sudden BAM! it totally changes. I can't imagine life without these people any more than I can imagine myself not existing. But I CAN imagine a world without those yummy taco's, and therefore I can feel all the pertinent emotions.

Here's my theory. I think my mind makes a barrier for things that are just too difficult to deal with and deflects them. Taco Via going away stinks enough to make me upset, but it isn't bad enough to make me ... numb? People I love becoming very sick or dying slams right into the barrier and never gets properly processed.

So here's another twist. I don't think this one applies to Clair because there isn't that history, but it is generally applicable to the others. If I'm numb, then I may not be the supportive friend that I should be. And if I am detached or not supportive enough during their trials, would these friends not think of me as the friend they thought they had? So a fear creeps in that they would think, "Well, he wasn't a good enough friend during all of that crap. To heck with him." NOW I experience fear of loss. Because a diminished or lost friendship IS conceivable and falls under the emotionally acceptable barrier.

... OK. Cutting myself off ... Darn you, Pennington! You had to send that message and ruin by blissful ignorance.