or good porn star name?
Before We Begin: I Made a “Day in the Life” Video
Hi so I have been watching a lot of day in the life vlogs and just thought it would be fun to make one. Most of the vlogs I’ve seen are from women and the few men’s vlogs I’ve seen feel less like a daily life and more like they’re trying to prove to you that they practice Buddhism. I think my vlog is somewhere in between that. Why did I do this? I have no idea. Something to do? I think it turned out pretty well.
Sorry for all the technical issues, I basically never edit video and I filmed this in 4k for some stupid reason. Some of the video is jittery and I have no idea why, and the sound volume is all over the place. But it’s fun! I swear. If you like it please give it a thumbs up so I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my life. Okay back to the newsletter…
It’s my birth day month starting tomorrow. This year is the big 4 0. That’s right, I am turning 40 years old on May 12th. The funny thing about getting older for me is that I don’t feel like I’m 40, but I also totally feel like I’m 40. That’s the thing about aging—nobody knows personally what it feels like until they get there, you know? When I was 20 I didn’t know what 30 would feel like. I had ideas, because of memes and stories and pictures and videos of other people complaining about how terrible it is to be in your 30s, but I personally did not know what my body or mind would feel like at this point in my life. So now I’m about to enter my 40th year and I’m like … is this it?
Fun fact: I haven’t heard this song in years and yet the bass line is still embedded in my brain. I saw the Strokes play … Musicfest NW? I think? Years and years ago and I oh no wait I’m thinking of Interpol. Anyway I saw Interpol play years and years ago and the thing I remember about it the most is that the guitar player would stick his cigarette in between the strings of the headstock. At the time, I thought that was very cool.
Remember when you could smoke inside a building? As terrible as it was for everyone’s lungs, there was just something about it that you can’t replicate. Like, back when I lived in Idaho and we would drive over to Merritt’s Country Cafe on State St. in Boise. They made “scones” there but they were basically elephant ears, but they were tasty, and there was a non-smoking section and a smoking section, separated by … nothing, basically, I think a latticed wooden partition. And that’s nostalgic for me for god knows why.
God I miss Merritt’s. A hole in the wall diner still existing in 2023. God bless ‘em.
Anyway, lordy lordy, look who’s (turning) 40 (on May 12).
News & Updates
Lord help me, I signed up for the Portland (Half) Marathon this October.
I’ve probably already mentioned that I signed up for the Shamrock Run half marathon next March. At the time, I thought, “Well, this is a year from now so it’ll give me plenty of time to train.”
And then … look, I’m not sure what’s gotten into me. I’ve never run more than 5 miles at any one time, and that one time I did was the 2013 Shamrock Run. But thanks to Garmin Coach I ran nearly 7 miles on the 25th (which I talk about in the Day in the Life video) and the day this newsletter drops I’m scheduled to run a 7 mile long run. I’ve gone insane, is what’s happened. Running has suffused my brain with so many endorphins that I am now constantly chasing that high, man. Doesn’t it remember how much I loved sitting on the couch, eating an entire bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos in roughly 10 minutes? Where’s the nostalgia for marathon 12 hour video game sessions where I eat an entire frozen pizza AND an entire bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos?
(This is not to dissuade people’s eating habits, by the way. I still eat entire frozen pizzas from time to time. They’re good!)
Hell, I don’t even know why I like running. I have ideas, but whenever websites are like “Why do you do this?” and there’s a multiple choice answer I just pick “health” because I guess it’s health. I know exercise is good and makes you feel good but why running? I used to love weight lifting—why no more? There’s something about pushing yourself in running that’s different than weight lifting. I don’t know how to explain it, other than to say that physically getting from Point A to Point B in a certain amount of time feels more of an accomplishment to me than lifting a big heavy thing.
I decided on the half marathon because A) ain’t no way I’m running a full marathon this year, and B) it’s a logical extension of the 10k I’m running in July. (In fact, that 10k is technically a quarter marathon.) It’s twice that. A half, for those who don’t know, is 13.1 miles. So now when you see someone with an oval bumper sticker that reads “13.1” you know what that’s all about.
For reference, 13.1 miles is the distance from the east side of the Burnside Bridge here in Portland to Troutdale. Imagine me running from the bridge to Edgefield, more or less.
For my friends from Idaho, it’s the distance between the Danny Peterson Theatre in the Morrison Center at Boise State to Kuna.
Some people run TWICE this distance! In two hours! (Fun fact: 145 people at the latest Boston Marathon ran the 26.2 distance in under 2 hours and 30 minutes. That means they ran under an average of 5 minutes and 44 seconds per mile, for 26 miles. I don’t think I could run a 5:44 mile for one mile!)
I’m thinking about doing a video journal of my experience on YouTube. Not my experience on YouTube the platform, my experience of training for and running a half marathon. Would people be interested in that? Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to like this post and SMASH that subscribe button. (I’m practicing for YouTube.)
In other news, I got my lipid test results back finally from Quest Diagnostics, who took well over a week and an email from me to send them. They aren’t very good. Slightly better than when I checked almost two years ago (and I mean slightly), but still high and low when they should be low and high. Like, I’m not actively dying but I’m probably dying, you know what I mean?
I was a little bummed at the results because I thought all the running I’ve been doing lately would help more than it did. Our damn bodies are just very, very good at keeping stuff like fats. We looooove them fats. And the good news, I suppose, is that it isn’t worse.
Also, my dad had to go back in the hospital because his gallbladder keeps making gallstones, and gallstones can be made from high cholesterol, which means … I really gotta get my cholesterol in order so I don’t get gallstones when I’m 80. (He’s fine, they cut out his gallbladder and he feels a lot better!)
So, I’m trying to eat less meat and processed stuff. You know, the same thing everyone else is trying to do. I think my health trend is getting better though. Nothing apocalyptic for me, but high cholesterol is a cause for concern, and if my running etc doesn’t help drop it by, say, the end of summer, then I’m going to look into taking statins. I could just have the kind of high cholesterol that doesn’t go away with diet and exercise. We’ll see!
Five Fifty Fifty & Lilac Run
Two 5k races in the same WEEK? What is wrong with me?
Here’s the blog for Five Fifty Fifty. Here’s the blog for Lilac Run.
In short: the Five Fifty Fifty is a race for mental health that this guy in Wisconsin put together around six years ago. It’s a 5k in 50 states in 50 days. But there are only fifteen states on my shirt. I guess the rest are virtual? It’s probably fine, but it also felt very slightly like I gave my money to a scam artist. Probably not though! It was fine! To be fair, every race is just money spent on a t-shirt and medal, really, which if you think about it is kind of a scam. I get a shiny thing and clothes but I have to run for it? Anyway, it was a VERY small group, 50 runners total, and was rainy and cold as hell. Took place in Laurelhurst Park which is a nice park, but very hilly. My time was 36:39, surprisingly fast considering the rain and hills. The whole thing was alright, but probably not a race I will run in the future. Sorry, mental health.
The Lilac Run was a much more normal run in Gresham, out and back down the Springwater Corridor, which is just a long paved trail that stretches from southeast Portland to god-knows-where. I didn’t even know it went all the way to Gresham! My time was 35:41, a new personal best and the first time I’ve gotten my 5k time below 36 minutes. This means I have officially beaten 2013 me’s pace! It only took me ten years! Take that, 30-year-old me! Honestly, this run felt very good and I tried refueling as I was running, which had mixed results. Also there was a little Japanese garden island next to the venue! Neat!
This week was supposed to be a recovery week, but then I “unlocked” actual workouts on Garmin Coach, and have been running like a madman ever since. You can read more about that here, or watch the vlog I made!
parkrun #12
I did a parkrun again. It was a hot one! Like seven inches from the midday sun, almost!
Side note: Gen Z is never ever going to know how fucking big this song was in 1999. This album, really.1
It was a gorgeous day out at Rock Creek Trail and we all did a parkrun. My time was 37:16, which is not bad considering I’ve been running like crazy this week, but it’s also pretty slow, comparatively. It’s cool, the sun was out and it was my first real time running on a sunny morning with temps around 65°F. Which is hot, for me, when I am running okay!
A Video for You
They’ve been releasing series 13 of Taskmaster on a weekly basis on YouTube, but I’ve finally gotten to the final episode. This was definitely one of the best casts this season. Taskmaster is great. Please watch it, it’s very fun and funny. But I guess start with episode one, even though this episode is very, very funny.
I knew nothing about this channel but it came up because of The Algorithm and I love Benny Schwaz. The host of this channel is also named Josh and honestly could maybe play my stunt double in a movie or something. He’s a little annoying to me, not a personality type I like to watch on YouTube, but thankfully he and Ben are a delight together. Ben is almost too good of an improviser. He’s so quick and funny in a way you just don’t see with a lot of people. I really wish we could’ve seen him in a movie or anything with Robin Williams.
The End
When next we meet, I will be … 40. I’ll also have another two 5ks in my belt, because I’m a madman. Until then.
- Sometimes when it’s cold outside I will say, in a Rodney Dangerfield voice, “Boy, it’s a cold one! Like seven million miles from the midday sun!” This is still much too close for the sun to be, however. ↩︎
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