at least we beat our dad

on saturday, we ran the lake forest 5k with our dad, some friends of my parents, and about twelve hundred other people.  it was a warm morning, but we've definitely run in worse.  like the december run we did last year, the race organizers made no effort to organize the start so we ended up having to dodge non-runners, trotters and strollers at the start.  we also followed two kids on razr scooters for the first half mile because the race started on a downhill.  other than that, it was a good experience after not training much.
we controlled pace well out of the start which was useful because the uphills were surprisingly difficult.  when we were living and running in mission viejo we couldn't go a quarter mile without hitting a hill or two.  santa ana, however, has so few hills that the other day kim referred to the freeway overpass as a hill.  as such we're no longer able to accelerate up hills.  today, a full two days later, our legs are still surprisingly sore.  a severe lack of training may have had something to do with it...
at the finish we didn't kick like we normally do, but we still threw up.  apparently fruit punch g2 and raspberries aren't a good choice for a pre-race breakfast even though they're just as colorful coming up as going down.  thankfully the race was chip timed so we didn't have to worry about the wasted time at the start.  we finished in 22:56.3 which was good enough for 154th overall, 17th in our age group, and most importantly a near-four minute gap over our father.  after the debacle of a 2004 race in which he beat us, it is very important that we not get beat.  he has his one victory and we have our motivation.  this time was also somewhat faster than our december race so we've got that going for us, which is nice.

that's america

"Some people look at a flag, swaying in the breeze of the White House and say, "That's America." Whenever I see an American flag hung in a window of a basement apartment by guys who have better things to do with their money than buy curtains, I say, "That's America, to me."
In America, there are fifty-one states. Or maybe it's eighty by now. Does England count? I'm not quite sure. The one thing I am sure of is, if I'm standing in a warehouse beside a timeclock, and a guy is punching in his best friend who's too hungover to get out of bed, I'm standing in America. The makeover capital of the world. The place where every young man has to answer in his heart the question: What do you love more, your girlfriend, or your car? Where that young man can buy a beat-up car for three hundred dollars, but have to spend a thousand to insure it. The land where even a paperboy can option the film rights to a book.
America. In America, a woman on an assembly line works out her overtime in her head to infinity, and at the exact same moment, her husband gets into a car crash because he was looking at a girl in a tube top.
America. A land where spelling doesn't count, but people's pets do. Where else can you get a job riding a whale at marineland? The land where a guy's girlfriend breaks up with him over the phone, so he takes a gun, and kills the principal. Everyone's sad until they get the day off. Next week, another guy, another gal, another, "We can still be friends" phone call. Whuh-oh! The *assistant* principal gets killed. And everyone is sad because they *don't* get the day off. Because he was only the assistant principal.
America. A land of opportunity. Yes, that great lumbering beast that journeys tirelessly and stops only to eat a clubouse sandwich, pick its teeth with a matchbook cover, and fall asleep with the tv on.
America. A place for Americans."


from bruce mcculloch's song "that's america"

we learn things by reading.

right now we're reading walter isaacson's einstein: his life and universe.  we have a mild addiction to biographies and history books so this has been a good choice for us.  thanks to kim's library card, we didn't even have to pay for it.
we've noticed a few things so far that we found interesting enough to note:

1. the story of einstein being a poor student as a child is an urban legend.  like most geniuses, he whizzed through school.  sure, he wasn't the best literature student, but he was a mathematical prodigy.  the same goes for him not talking until he was three or four.  the dude was quiet, not mute.
   
2. he and his first wife had a kid that was unknown until the last decade or so.  before they were married, apparently, they couldn't keep the kid because it would have been too scandalous even though they eventually married.  the kid's fate remains a mystery because no adoption records survive and she may have died before an adoption took place.  her existence only surfaced recently when einstein's letters were fully examined.  so weird.
3. he destroyed classical physics in a four month period in 1905 while working as a patent clerk, but was unable to get a doctorate for years and, even after his genius was known, failed to get a professorship until he submitted another, safer thesis.  we guess that upending the state of the physical world is tough to understand, even for physicists.
4. reading this book has been made much easier because of all of the courses we took in chemistry, engineering, math, and physics.  the work of people like riemann, planck, heisenberg, dirac, etc. is referenced throughout and we've been happy to be already familiar with them.  the heavy physics stuff doesn't make any more sense to us, but at least we understand tensors and traces.  we just never figured we'd use physical chemistry knowledge to read a biography.
5. we think it's crazy how all of europe attacked einstein's work because he was jewish.  his work was repeatedly denigrated by others as "jewish science."  what does that even mean?  he was raised in a secular household and, with the exception of a short period as a pre-teen, never had any serious interest in religion, but his work was attacked because he was culturally jewish.  weak.

those are our notes for now.  more nerd ramblings to follow.

does this make me a jerk?

michael jackson just died and (almost) everyone we know is posting about it on facebook.  nearly without exception, they're saying something along the lines of "oh my gosh!  i can't believe michael jackson died."
here's the thing though,   we can believe it.  it makes complete sense to us that someone who massacred their body, had a host of obvious problems, and acted unstable for two decades died young.
deaths are almost always sad and we'd always mildly hoped he'd get it together for a lasting comeback, but we just are not surprised.

on a related note, this is the best response we saw online and it came from touchdown tom(my) hughes: "MJ #23 RIP chi-town Michael jordan greatest ever.  loved the mickey d's commercials with larry bird.  never takin my fruit of the looms off!"

jello should do this

 

check it out here.

we could use some global warming about now

june in chicago is running twelve degrees cooler than last year.
the world's farmers are freaking out because of the cooler temperatures.

we're going to keep beating this dead horse until al gore shuts his trap.

we think this just about sums it up.

 

 saw it here.