Today's amusement

This site is hysterical. Thank you Vimal. Be sure to check out the Top Posts.
#11 and #61 were big hits with me (among many others..).

Best V-day card!

Oh man. This is so funny. Ok, so I am a dork, but I couldn't stop laughing. Seriously, if someone gave this to me (ok, other than Alison-she did put it on my desk), I think I would be very compelled to make them my mate (ha! on the Beagle!).



Fantastic. (Thanks to Alison [via John]).

Booggie Down Bronx -Birth place of hip hop, Haagen Daz, yours truly, and a bad half marathon course

Yesterday I ran the NYC Grand Prix Bronx course. Like I said in my previous post, I thought it would be nice to run in a fairly unfamiliar borough with a few familiar streets. The weather prediction reported a cold and blustery day, so I bundled up and headed out. Waiting at Columbus Circle for the D train was pretty funny. The platform was filled with runners, everyone with yellow chips on their shoes and many people were already loading up on Gu (Why!? Eat a REAL breakfast people!).

It turned out to be pretty warm, so I ditched the scarf, hat and gloves and lined up for the race. The guy next to me started talking to me and so I asked him if he ever ran the course and if so what it was like. "Not hilly like Central Park. It's the flattest course you will ever run. I always run my PR in this race." Really....Taking this information, I ran the first 5-6 miles WAY to fast. It was hilly, but I thought that maybe there were little hills and that we were done with them. Oh no. More hills. Then a really long, hilly, boring out and back stretch on Grand Concourse. Oh yeah with polar temp. and gale force head wind which convienently appeared about 30 min into the race. Seriously, it was so windy that the big post for the mile markers fell over. And it was always head wind. At some points I felt like I was aqua jogging because I was running so slow. So I slowed down. A LOT. Then I got really tired at mile 9. I got mad. I also got really hungry and tried to eat a Cliff bar. But the water station was far away and my mouth was dry from the polar winds and the bar just expanded in my mouth. I spit most of it out. I got really mad at mile 10 when I saw that dude who LIED to me and told me this was a flat course. I yelled at him. Not my best moment and if I could apologize I would, but I was mad and tired. I played Head like a Hole over and over again. I saw Katie cheering me on at mile 2 and then with John (who is like super human fast) at the end. It gave me enough energy to finish. Seriously, that was a boring 13.1miles, but...I'm glad I did it and I did it at a respectable 9min pace (faster than Manhattan, but Manhattan was a lot of fun). I promise I have learned my lesson and running only the occassional half marathon is not a good idea. No injuries, but this can't be good. I have to start regular running workouts.

Two down, three more to go. Brooklyn is next.

Where have I been?

A lot has happened since my last post in October. Actually, not much has happened. I've just been busy. Busy with what? Oh, writing grants, helping getting one funded, a little hiking, making a turducken, and a lot of holiday drinking. Things like that.

Oh, you want to hear more about the turducken? Well, essentially I shot off my drunken mouth at a party and promised a turducken at the next party at our place. Then Mike scheduled a party for the following week and voila! turducken was made. And a ricotta tart desert, pasta (poor Joe...I made him eat sooo much pasta), sour cream and chives baked potato casserole, and other stuff...Oh! Kashan made the best gingerbread person cookies EVER!

It wasn't easy making this turducken since I had to debone each bird, brine them overnight, and then assemble the damn thing. It was fat. I made it too fat. It was a 12lbs. turkey, bacon, cornbread jalapeno stuffing, duck, bacon, stuffing, chicken, bacon and stuffing. It was too stuffed and sewing it all up was quite challenging. Stuffing kept ooozing out of each end. Deboning was quite an experience. I have never done this before, but I definitely have dissection skills and so I employed these to debone the birds. I did it pretty well and fairly fast. The hardest part was snapping the joints. Anyway, it had to cook for about 9 hours and when it was done, it came out quite nice. Next time (if there is), I will cook the bacon to acheive some crispiness while saving the bacon fat to drizzle on top of the birds. Have you gotten ill reading this yet?




Other than the turducken, the holidays were good and it was great to see everybody. This year I decided to try to do the Grand Prix half marathon series. I did Manhattan last week. I ran it slowly (9min 26sec pace). I was really happy considering I hadn't ran over 5 miles in about 2 months and ran 7 miles the Wednesday before to make sure my legs wouldnt' fall off. My ipod playlist was great and I had a great time running it. Bronx is this weekend and I think the course takes me around where use to live as a small child which will be fun to revisit.

In other news, I'm excited about the presidential election and am currently watching the results roll in. Super Tuesday is super fun, especially since it involed a bag (okay, snack size small) of Doritos.

Back to the TV.