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Congratulations to President Barack Obama* and VP Joe Biden.
Time to take our country back.
Most of my candidates did not win, but at least the top of the ticket took it.
Jim Doneless Douglas... you'll continue to be our ineffective and pointless Governor with your just as useless lapdog Brian Dubie. Congrats on showing that Vermonters, even while they embraced Obama were passive enough to vote you two back into office.
*I think my endorsement settled the deal. ;)
just got back from voting. What? You didn't?? Must not be an American citizen, because an eligible voter who doesn't vote - well...perhaps only a step smarter than someone who didn't know who they were voting for in the presidential election until they got to the ticket. Or perhaps you've not voted YET. If polls are still open... you can come back to read this later... go vote.
I'm sick. Left school early, lucky to not have students with me for the afternoon, so I wouldn't be missed. Called my violin teacher to let her know I wouldn't be seeing her today... just get home, wait for Karen, go vote, come home and try to recover from the cold, which has had a seriously bad effect on my throat.
Why is my voting worthy of a blog entry? Pshh... I dunno, I guess some of it is a little in need of explanation.
First, the one without real need is the vote for the Obama-Biden ticket. For real... did you vote for McBush and Caribu Barbie? Give me a break. YOU need to seriously soul search to have a good explanation for that move. It's your right... just using it for evil is wrong. Enough of that.
The US house only has one Vermont rep. currently it's Peter Welch. He replaced Bernie Sanders last election (who went to the Senate with traitor Leahy). I voted them all into their positions. This time, however, Welch didn't do a few things I expected. He didn't stand full force agains the war, he didn't stand against the final passing of the corporate bailout last month and he didn't stand UP for articles of impeachment to be placed on W. To big things to me. So I voted for Jerry Trudell. He's a slightly wacked out "Energy Independence" party candidate but isn't wacked out what the US House is about? Put the people with loud ideas and wild ideas? He's not going to win, but I felt like Welch let us down - those of us who expected a much more liberal-anti-current-GOP guy. I could have gone with the Progressive Party candidate, but when I watched him in a debate on Vermont Public TV, he came off as unsure at times and had a hard time looking UP when answering questions. Shifty almost. If Trudell got his wacky ass in the House, maybe there could be some real energy behind alternative energy in the US.
Vermont State Governor! I voted for Dean. When he went off to change how the US Presidental campaigning process would work forever, I voted for Burlington mayor Peter Clavelle - who lost, then for - well, I don't remember. They all lost to Jim Douglas, whom I'm nicknamed Doneless because he's pretty much done nothing FOR Vermonters. Vermonters tend to be ok with keeping people around who don't screw up completely as long as they are neutral. Well, Gov. Doneless is a total neuter. Anthony Pollina is the Progressive Party candidate. That's the same party Bernie Sanders wan with before going national - independent is what the greater US knows versus Democrat or Republican. Pollina entered the race relatively early on. Gaye Symington entered well after he did. She was the top dog in the Vermont House, a Democrat. When she entered the race officially, many in the Democratic party called Pollina a spoiler.
It's a legit claim in a way, since liberals in VT (if not all of the US or world) are often willing to split their voting among Democrats and alterna-candidates. It appears conservatives of today are single minded. Thus, I believe Doneless' first win and subsequent wins. I used to concider myself a Democrat. No, I'm a liberal. I voted for Pollina. He'll lose, but I hope that he and Symington' total is the same as Donless', which I believe would prove that Instant Runoff Voting will in fact be the most fair option for voters. I like Pollina, but I'm also voting AGAINST Donless.
I suppose the only other vote I made that needs explanation is for the Vermont State Representatives. Two seats from my ward have been taken up by the team of David Zuckerman and Chris Pearson for a few elections. I voted for them even. This year, Keisha Ram ran. She recently graduated from UVM. I met her years ago as a student in the McNair program - a program that aims to get first-gen college students to stick it out to graduate school. I helped run a training program for her cohort in some computer and software skills. I taught her how to do video editing. She, along with a couple others in her group, was very intelligent and well spoken. Something I felt wasn't often presented by perople in her generation. When I heard she was running for state rep, I was a little excited - then I realized it was against the pear-zuck team. She has also pretty much pointed out that she has no real differences than those two. They are Progressive Party candidates and she is a Democrat. Both perfectly fine in my eyes. I had a couple little back and forths with Keisha and Chris on a couple issues. I see Dave almost weekly at the farmers market - I think he sold out when he cut his hair, but my wife reminds me that perhaps it was done for a greater purpose. Anyway, this was the only major vote I made up my mind AT the booth. I split my vote - Keisha and Chris. I know Chris will continue to do a great job and can only hope Keisha maintains the tradition. I do feel a little guilty for taking a spot away from someone I'm certain is more progressive, but since I feel like the house left some work undone (IRV) in the past (though Doneless promised to veto any IRV legislation) a little change in a similar direction is a worthy gamble.
There you have it. I don't OWE explanations, but I figure it's a good thing to provide. I would love to run for an important office some day, but being an atheist in the US nearly garentees that I'll not get elected to the types of positions I'd want. Oh well, I'll just do what I do and keep hope alive.
So the focus on last night's presidential debate was in part on the "undecided" voters who were part of the present question askers. I won't get into it completely now - I'll save it for a longer post - but man, if you are not decided by now, you MUST be a moron. I'd be shocked if even Nader would claim that McCain and Obama are even remotely the same choice. So what's holding you up?
If you haven't decided by now, perhaps you should just give it up. Your opinions are useless anyway.
I have included an image in my left column showing the most current electoral college tallies for the November races based on polls and the analysis from Electoral Vote. Last "election" I was glued to this site for days before the election. It ended up being wrong, but that only goes further to proving that the election was a hoax anyway. Even Zogby, the night before the election called it for Kerry (I should provide a source huh - but really, who cares... he lost a lot of credibility).
I'll likely remove the image after the election of Obama. Yeah, I am calling it. Because a vote for McCain is a vote for Bush and a vote for Palin is a vote for the local beauty queen dufus, and even delusional evangelicals MUST be smarter than those options.
If case you didn't know, I play Lord of the Rings Online. I love most things Tolkien related and being able to role play IN actual Middle Earth (well, you know... a computer representation of) is amazingly cool. I believe a lot of WoW player think it's stupid and lacks features, but they are tools who appear to miss the point. Better for the rest of us I suppose.
I don't play very often as it is a role playing game essentially and requires a decent amount of time for each session to accomplish anything, so I tend to try to play for chunks of no less than 3 hours and a few times have squeezed in about 8+ hours. With my job and the requirement of getting to work early, the essentially means I play during vacations or some long weekend. I even put together a special computer specifically for this game - only had to buy a new CPU, additional ram and a kick ass video card to do it. I'm also a lifer, so I never have to pay for my time again after the initial $199 I paid for play time. This means I'm good until the game dies away. I just hope it sticks around for a good long time. I'd been waiting for this since Sierra originally started to develop a version around 10 years ago.
I played this summer connected to a video projector. I'm not sure there's a better way to play a video game (or do anything video related), but it sure was a pain in the ass to set up each time. Finally though I figured out how to get it to diosplay on the TV. It's only a 36" CRT, but it does fine. I don't run at a super high resolution anyway, not wanting to risk the nice framerates and turned up graphics effects - man, seeing the tall grass swaying in the wind while I'm running through it is just cool as anything. That doesn't mean I play more - school has started, so I haven't actually played in over a month, but soon... soon!
Mines of Moria, the first pay for expansion comes out shortly. I'm not going to get it right away. I know I can get it now for a deal (I think), but I believe it's really for higher level characters and my primary character (see below) is only level 19 right now. Like I said, no rush. It's Middle Earth for crying out loud... enjoy it or leave. :)
I got an email this morning from the peeps at LotRO about the new ability to have sigs for the forums with dtat blocks for out characters, and those also include a "likeness". Still very cool - though I don't post in the forums much. Even cooler, I can post an image of the sig stat block elsewhere... so it made for a good excuse to create another entry here and show off my Hobbit Burglar.
I'm doing P90X to get myself back into a more athletic shape. I started this past June and will be ending in two weeks (had to restart the penultimate week because I was dead tired and sore after the first week back to school - this past week). One important thing I learned this time around was the importance of protein. Last summer during fitquest I didn't supplement my running and other workouts with protein, so I lost a lot of weight (~25 pounds), but didn't really gain much muscle. So this time I hooked up with protein drink mix. Gold Standard 100% Whey is what I eneded up going with after asking questions and checking the ingredients. I mostly have the Double Rich Chocolate flavor. It's actually quite good, but has an aroma that isn't all pleasant to all. In fact, my breath afterward usually makes the wife cringe. Wanting to be able to mix with other thins than water (I didn't tend to mix with milk) I later got the Strawberry-Banana flavor. Not too bad either. No great, but certainly passable. Smells a little better too - though the wife does not like bananas, so I can't really win now can I? :)
The first two phases of the program limit carbs a lot and all phases limit fruit in the diet as well. Well, I didn't follow the diet too clasely. If I did, I'd have definitely lost more fat, but I think I did pretty well so far. I'll be posting the pre and post pix when I'm officially done. I did avoid a lot of fruits, which is hard for me, but I stil lfind it hard to get in a ton of veggies - they are expensive to buy fresh and we don't like most frozen options - or the fresh go bad before we finish. I did try tyo eat a lot of cucumbers and lettuce from our garden.
3rd phase, however, more carbs are needed. Not sure it really factors in, but I decided to turn my drink into a shake. It allows me to turn an 8oz protein drink into about a 20 ouce mini meal after my workout. Mmm-mm. It's some good stuff, and here's my recipe. Nothing special, I'm sure there are a ton out there just like it, but hey here's my take:
Chris' Choco-Banana-Protein Shake
1 scoop of Gold Standard 100% Whey - Double Rich Chocolate
1/2 scoop of Gold Standard 100% Whey - Strawberry Banana
1 Medium banana (best if frozen first)
8 oz Milk (skim)
2 Tbps Dark Chocolate Dreams (brand All natural Peanut Butter & Co.)
6 Ice Cubes
In a blender, add the first 5 indredients and blend until smooth. You might need to stop it once to push down any ingredients that got stuck to the sides of the blender.
Keeping the blender running, drop in once ice cube at a time and continue to blend on high until you don't hear any chunky sounds, perhaps doing a few sustained pulses to chop up any last ice chunks.
Pour into a tall glass and drink as is or use a straw.
Nutritional info:
538 Calories
Fat 15g
Saturated 3.5g
Protein 51.5g
Carbohydrates 55.6g
Fiber 5.1g
Starch 6.3g
Sugars 35.4g
Try it and post comments on how you feel about it. Unfortunately, you can't just buy a couple scoops of the Whey mix, but you might be able to get sample packs at the local vitamin shoppe or gnc or somewhere. You could also use a similar powder mix of a different brand. I'm certain it won't be too different, though the nutritional info would likely be different. The kicks Nutella's ass. It's different, but common. I did make this with Nutella and it tasted just great as well, so you could substitute that as well. I have also done it with just peanut butter. I use Simply Jif because it has less sugar and salt and less of the additives or others.
Aug 20th was a changed day. We were supposed to be gaming that night - moving gaming back to Wednesday nights after a summer of Monday night gaming - we're dangerous like that. ;) Anyway, it meant less pressure to get my act together for gaming, and since Violin lessons are now on Tuesdays, I wasn't too worried about making sure to get a practice session in the day before a lesson as usual. I also didn't feel like doing my Kenpo X workout (oh, I never mentioned here I'm doing P90X - saving it up for the final report :) ) so I decided to go for a run. My normal run is about an hour - run down to the bike path and keep going until I get to about 30 minutes then turn back. Great plan for forcing the full hour and usually MORE, as the return home has a nasty uphill: battery park. Ugh!
The weather was perfect. Perfect!
At the 30 minute mark I actually ran (not literally) into my violin teacher walking the opposite direction. I stopped and we chatted for a bit and I continued. I figured I'd go for another 5-10 minutes... then about 5-10 minutes later I realized "hey I feel pretty good", so I decided to try to run to the Burlington-Colchester line, which is about the middle of the bridge over the Winooski River on the bike path.
Well, as I was about as mile away from there, I started to wander in the mind again. I realized I was pushing my luck - well, pushing my muscles. It still felt good, but I knew I had to run back home, so I started to worry, or more so wonder, "what if?" OK, I could turn back now. Nah. I'm to OC for that, I'd feel like I didn't try. That happens nearly every year when we hike the White Mountains. I'll be feeling like I just want to get to the next hut and bypass some side-hikes that either get me up a peak that "counts" or to some neat views. This year I didn't do that. If it had a geographical name and it was in my way, I climbed it. It only ended up adding perhaps an extra half-to-full mile, none easy, and more time, but it was worth it.
So, not continuing on the run was out of the question. Then I thought "hey, I could just keep running until I couldn't any longer. I've neve done that before. I have NO idea how long that would be. I joked in my mind that I'd end up in Canada. Hahaha. Then I'd just call Karen for a ride home. Well, turns out that would have been a bad idea . I didn't have my phone and didn't have money or well, anything besides my clothes, mp3 player and a house key. So I set the bridge as my goal, thinking "hey, round trip, that'll be close to a half marathon.
I ran. By about 58 minutes, I got to the bridge just as what appeared to be a larger group of young girl soccer players out with their coach on a bike ride coming the opposite direction. I stopped to rest for a minute to let them pass. I didn't realize they would stop on the bridge next to me. I was feeling like I might block other traffic, so I turned and started running again. I just barely passed the lead and they started up again, slowly all passing me by. I kept going. It was my thing, typically, unlike most activities, when I'm running I don't care too much about who passes me. I was passed a couple times by the same woman who was running with her two dogs. She looked older than me, but she looked more fit and was wearing what appeared to be a commemorative t-shirt for some running race or marathon. I know I can't compete with a competative distance runner. I'm a sprinter at heart.
At about 1:30 into the run, I realized my ass was really starting to hurt. My legs were sore too, but nothing like my ass. I noticed I was running with a straighter leg stride. I decided to run with my knees up some more. All the while I was trying to keep my heartrate within the range my polar HR watch was telling me to keep it - 164BPM being the top it set for optimum performance. Well, that wasn't going well. I was more hovering around 167-172. The knees up did allevieate the butt pain, but it did tire me out a little more. I kept it up to stretch out the glutes and then went back.
Something extremely annoying about the bike path - no water fountains on the path. At least not on the part I was on. WTF is that all about? Encourage people to get out their and be active, but don't give them an easy way to hydrate?!?! I don't carry water on me when I run because I can't satand having a bottle bouncing around on me and I don't have a decent secure way to strap it on anyway. I see some people carry their bottles. No way. Not for me. I need to be able to loosen up my hands when I run. It promotes better running form.
Anyway, I'm convinced I was dehydrated and that caused a lot of the muscle pain and fatigue. I had to drop down to a fast walk for about 30 seconds 3 times on the bike path. I was burnt. When I got to the pain park at the foot of college street I could finally get to a fountain. I stopped the timer and got some water. Whew... that was good.
Then starts the rough part. Up the hill to Battery St and then up the Battery Park path. Uh, I could run TO the path, but I had to walk up the path. It was just way too much, if I wanted to make it home in one peice. Keep in mind, my knees aren't so great and I always worry about weakening them to the point that they just give out.
I got up the hill and ran back to the base of my block, at which time I ran harder - as much of a sprint as I could muster - to the end, where I live. Done. Stretch time and some moments to reflect on accomplishing the longest run I have ever done, both distance and time-wise. I spent a good 10 minutes stretching outside the front door then went in for my protein drink. All said and done it was just over 11.5 miles. Not quite the half marathon I thought it was, but still... easily 3 miles more than normal for me. I do suspect that the measurement of the run is off though, but what can I say? I believe I used to typically run 8 miles in about 1:20 or so. It's all iffy.
Here is the map of my run if you wanna see it's glory. The masochist in me thinks I should try to do this perhaps once a week. Eventually it'll become a lot easier and perhaps I'll build it longer. I'd love to be able to run a solid marathon one day. I might try to make a team to do the Vermone City Marathon next year, so that's a good start. Watching the olympians do it in the under 3 hour time makes me shiver knowing that I'd be lucky in my current level to finish in 5 hours.
In any event, it was a run in the right direction and proof that my fitness level is not too bad.
So, I just finished watching Xanadu
Anyway, is it weird that a cheesy ass movie like Xanadu could still have the same effect on a 36 year old dude that it had when he was 11? Sad movies don't make me cry - or they RARELY do. Movies with needfully happy endings do choke me up.
So, have your laughs at my expense - just remember I did share. And I still hold that I did not like when OLJ got all tight and leathery in Grease. To this day I still like the innocent and angelic look.
All that said - the movie is pretty lame. Most musicals are lame. All the added feature songs and stuff to showcase "talent" and embellish the stories. Yuk. Not my thing. However, I will watch it again, and likely numerous times before I drop dead.
