Sweet Times Coming Down...

It's my first week on the night shift. I was very nervous about the first night. I imagined that about 3 am I would hit a brick wall and it would be all downhill from there. They would find me curled up in the fetal position in the break room snoring. It didn't turn out to be that bad. I was kept busy all night taking care of patients and learning the ins and outs of a new position in the ICU. It was very interesting monitoring all the patients right from the desk with the fancy new equipment.

I didn't hit the wall until about 5 am. By then I could push through to the end with thoughts of laying my head down and blacking out. After unwinding for a couple hours that is exactly what I did. I slept hard for about 4 hours.

I think The Commodores summed it up best. It's gonna be alright...

Panoramas

Let me count the ways I love you iPhone. I'll save that for another post. Today I'll be sharing some photos taken with the iPhone and put together with a fun little app. called AutoStitch. While not perfect, the results are pretty impressive for an inexpensive app. and it's super easy to use. Click the photos to go to the originals on Flickr. Click on "All Sizes" in Flickr to see the full size versions.



Fifth Third Field in Dayton, Ohio

Taken during The Bob Dylan Show.


Contemporary Arts Center. Cincinnati, Ohio

Taken tonight while we were downtown. I was reprimanded for not knowing the architect of Cincinnati's new downtown centerpiece. Do yourself a favor and read up on Zaha Hadid and the CAC here.

Fall Race Plans

Today begins training for the fall race season. There was a last minute addition that has me kind of pumped. Initially I was going to do the White Tail Trail Half in October as my main race for the fall, but after hearing that one of Gina's co-workers is running the State To State Half I quickly did some calculations to see if I would have enough time to train. Yep, it has been added to my schedule as my A race for the fall. Competitive? What? I don't know what you mean Gina.

My excuses are: the addition of the State To State will give me the opportunity to go for a PR for the half distance, where I'm hoping to come in around 1 hr. 30 minutes. The White Tail Trail Half will be more for the experience of doing a trail half. It will also hopefully provide for some competition..against myself...for the PR.

For the training schedule I chose Hal Higdon's Advanced Half Marathon training program. I like that it mixes up the speed work with 400, 800 and 1600 intervals over the course of the training. It also includes lots of race pace running and good mileage. I'm pretty excited to get back on to a training schedule (because I'm sick like that).

So the tentative summer/fall race schedule looks like this:

I don't know what it looks like yet. The training schedule suggests racing on certain dates, but I may have to juggle that around a bit depending on work and when races are scheduled.

Off for a run!

The Show In The Stands

Which happened to be at The Bob Dylan Show…

A warm afternoon at the home of the Dayton Dragons with Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Bob Dylan, and 7,000 of our closest friends. Make that 6,998 of our closest friends, because the two ladies behind us were annoying as hell. Do I really need to talk about the music? It was awesome. I loved it. These are three legends of music that you either like or dislike. I'm not going to sway you, but if you don't like them you are dead wrong my friend.

Anyway, back to the real action. We sat down in our seats to enjoy Willie tear through a great set with the energy of a guy half his age and probably while high. Go Willie. This big group came in to take their seats behind us and the two ladies directly behind us starting blabbing immediately. I don't expect quiet at a ballpark concert, but they were shrill and talking loudly about everything that happened to them that day right in our ears. Then they would clap at the end of the song as if they heard anything! I couldn't hear it! I think Gina was going to punch one of them in the face at one point. It would have almost been worth it to get kicked out. We chose to move, because the dirty looks weren't working.

We found a spot in a little side grassy side area (click on photo above for the view from that spot) with some chairs lined up along the top. We chatted with a couple of ladies next to us, enjoyed some “jumbo” corndogs and listened to Mellencamp tear it up as he made every classic sound new again. It was a little off to the side of the stage, but you could see the front of the stage well enough and, once again, the real action was in the stands. This time we happened to sit down right behind a couple that was high or drunk or some combination of the two. The woman spent most of Mellencamp’s set on her back with her eyes closed. They both were grungy and covered in, what appeared to be, needle marks.

At one point the guy jumped up and ran toward the poor people sitting in the stands off to our right yelling something completely unintelligible, stumbling and laughing. The lady nearest him must have been horrified, because it wasn’t long before she grabbed the first guy in a uniform she could find to report the guy for his behavior. Later he jumped up and asked a few ladies next to us to watch his girlfriend because she is “stupid”. Really buddy?

Some of the other crowd highlights included a man running around the crowd of the in field doing a very jubilant version of the Macarena, and several guys of all ages being escorted away stumbling and weaving. Good stuff.

Some of the concert highlights?

Willie - “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time”
It always makes me think of my grandma singing it and brings a smile to my face.

John - “Small Town” alone on stage with an acoustic. One of the few times he slowed down and changed a line of the lyrics at one point to say that he wrote that song when his wife was 13.

Bob – Honestly, I was surprised by the entire Dylan set. Never seen him in concert, so I didn’t really know what to expect. He had an excellent band and it was a fairly rockin’ bluesy set. I would have to hear the set again to pick out a fav..or maybe see him again.

Adam's Workout Plan

This long distance dedication goes out to Debie in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Debie somehow found a list of songs that I had posted a couple years ago on the message board for a cycling group on Sparkpeople. I'd be curious to see those songs that I was working out to 2 years ago. I suspect many of them are still in regular rotation on my iPod.

Debie asked me what I'm listening to lately that gets my butt moving during workouts. After a quick consult of my trusty shuffle that I run with and my recently listened to songs in iTunes I put together a workout mix, or plan if you will. It keeps me moving, but what's most importantly is if you use this mix you won't have to deal with Ray Ray's broke a$$ no more (see track 9). If you want another, and better, mix I would check out the 5 Minute/Mile Mix Gina gave me last spring prior to the Flying Pig Marathon. It is guaranteed to have you running 5 minute miles (the mix master nor the writer cannot be held liable for failure to run 5 minute/miles. If you do succeed at anytime after listening to the mix the mix master gets all credit for helping you reach said goal). I consider it the gold standard of running mixes. It is still in regular rotation, and I'm constantly striving to her level of mix-manship.

• This Tornado Loves You - Neko Case
• Can I Get a... - Jay-Z
• Search and Destroy - Peaches
• Joker and The Thief - Wolfmother
• The Fear - Lily Allen
• Superstition - Stevie Wonder
• Animal - Pearl Jam
• Bohemian Like You - The Dandy Warhols
• The New Workout Plan - Kanye West
• Like This - Girl Talk
• Ghetto Pop Life - Danger Mouse & Gemini
  
• Movies - Alien Ant Farm
• Sex On Fire - Kings of Leon
• Be The One - The Ting Tings
• Poker Face - Lady Ga Ga
• Lisztomania - Phoenix
• Paper Planes - M.I.A.
• Give Me A Beat - Girl Talk
  

Revelations

Two weeks in with the new job and things are going really well. My reservations for going in to mursing school are the following in no particular order:

1. Going back to school and working full time is going to be hard going, and I'm not a super young dude anymore.
2. Sciences were never my strongest classes. I'm more of an English and Lit. guy.
   
3. I've never been in a job that required patient care before. What if I hate dealing with people in such close proximity?

One of those reservations has been put firmly to rest. I really enjoyed my first two weeks of work. Working with the patients was great and any nerves that I was experiencing during the first day quickly disappeared. Most of the patients are happy to see the PCA's. It makes a big difference to them to stop for a minute and chat. It is something that I will always try to remember. No matter how busy my day is or how tough things are going I am primarily there to help them during their stay.

So, tomorrow begins a new week with a new set of challenges that I'm looking forward to taking on. It's going to be a tough one since I'm facing 3 twelve hour days in a row. It will be so worth it, since on Friday Gina and I will be on the road to Dayton to see our friends John, Willie and Bob.

Kung Pow Kitten