This could be the start of something big

Now that I'm more-or-less recovered from the marathon, my trainer has moved me into phase two of our workouts: massive weights and no mercy. Because my ultimate vain-n-vapid goal is to get as huge as possible. But I've at least been rational enough about it to hold off until now so I didn't have to lug extra bodyweight through 26.2 miles.

So today he started me on a hardcore leg workout. Which kind of scares me because he described today's workout as "light" and "introductory" even though it left me with legs of pudding. (I just love the word pudding. It's funny to say and funnier to see in type. Like hooker, but with more calcium. So it's also good for you.) In any case, my trainer promised that as my legs get bigger and stronger, so will the rest of me. So bring it on, I say. Pudding! (See? Funny!)

After five sets of "warm-up" squats this morning, he had me do walking lunges, the one leg workout that looks so silly I've always tried to avoid it. Walking lunges involve holding dumbbells in your hands as you step, squat, stand, step, squat, stand your way across the room, getting shakier and more unsteady as you go. Add some Trumpet Voluntary and some baby's breath in your hair and your suddenly the world's least-efficient bridesmaid.

But trade the girl and the bad dress for a muscleboy and a Speedo and I think I just made another decision about what I want in our wedding. Slow-moving muscleboys in Speedos are the perfect nuptial complement to show tunes and exceptionally delicious cake. And, of course, pudding.

Could you just DYE?

This weekend, the domestic partner and I are taking our friends Matthew and Craig to my hometown to give them a tour of some of the haunts of Grant Wood, who is most famous for teaching art at the high school that was later attended by a certain Chicago blogger with a readership in the tens if not the fifteens but who is also also (much less) famous for painting American Gothic.

While we're there, we'll also be attending my sister's annual Halloween gala, which is normally attended entirely by heterosexual parents of pre-teens. The four of us wanted to make a splash as the token homosexuals, but we're far too lazy to dress up as The Golden Girls or the Sex and the City girls or anything for that matter that involves the word girls and/or frighteningly large high-heeled shoes. I thought it would be fun to go as a boy band (mostly because I wanted an excuse to get another tattoo) but nobody was down with that idea, yo. Then I suggested The Costume Idea That Everyone Loved But Me: the Australian singing sensation known as The Wiggles. Or, for those of you who aren't pre-teens or parents of pre-teens, these dorks:
On the plus side, everyone at the party, being parents of pre-teens, will know EXACTLY who we are, especially once I print four copies of the Wiggles logo to put on our shirts. On the even pluser side, the costumes look pretty easy; they're just black pants and mock turtlenecks in basic, easy-to-find colors, right?

WRONG. Mock turtlenecks—at least the ones that fit adult men–come in two colors in the United States: generic earth tone and white. But! The white ones we found are 100% cotton, so we can dye them, right?

WRONG. Apparently Chicago has fallen victim to the powerful anti-dye lobby, because I have been to the following stores this weekend and none of them carries any damn dye: CVS, Jewel, Dominick's, Whole Foods, Target, Home Depot, Hancock Fabrics, Walgreens, Walgreens, Walgreens (there are lots of Walgreens in Chicago ... just no Walgreens with any damn dye).

But! My sister reports that she found some dye in Cedar Rapids, so we'll be dying our shirts once we get there this weekend, just in time for the party.

Also but! We didn't feel like sewing all that colored piping onto our black dress pants, so while I was at Home Depot I got a package of colored electricians' tape. Unfortunately, it doesn't come in teal (or the purple option we found in some other Wiggles photos), so one of us will have to be a green Wiggle.

Speaking of green, every year on our emploanniversaries, my company gives us each a $100 bill for every year we've worked there. So I just got an envelope with two crisp $100 bills in it. I put the bills in my wallet and got to work fantasizing about all the fun, frivolous things (Shoes! Halloween decorations!) I was going to buy this weekend with my bounty. Besides some damn dye, I mean.

So imagine my crestfallenness, then, when I reached in my wallet at DSW on Saturday to find ... only one $100 bill. I have no idea where the other one went. Maybe I gave it to a cabbie thinking it was just a $20. Maybe I was robbed by a thief in the night who just took one bill out of my wallet and left everything else of value in the entire house. Maybe I spent it on something I have no recollection of. In any case, it's gone. But it's not like it was really mine, so while I'm disappointed it disappeared, I'm not destroyed by it.

In other words, it's not like losing it is gonna make me dye. At least not until we get to Cedar Rapids.

Pictures! Captions! But mostly pictures!

6:30 am. I drove the domestic partner and my friends Matthew, Peter and Taz to the marathon. It was supposed to be hot on Sunday, so I'd gotten my hair cut short the day before.
We got there early enough that we could spend some pre-marathon moments hanging around in the Charity Village tent city—with its no-line porta-potties—among all the other folks who've raised millions of dollars for non-profits around the world.

We left the Charity Village early so we could get a good place in the starting corral.

But we had to pee again, so we lost 20 minutes standing in line at the wall o' porta-potties in Grant Park.

To pass the time, we mugged for the camera.

And took individual portraits. Classy individual portraits.

So the first 20 miles of the marathon went quite well for me. The weather was on the warm side of comfortable, but I sailed along at a pace that put me tantalizingly close to meeting my 4:00 goal. Though I needed to dump a lot of water on my head to keep myself cool.

I just dropped $106 ordering photos from the company that took pictures of us along the race route. So I don't feel so bad stealing photo samples from their site until my pix show up in the mail.

Around mile 20, the temperature spiked, and I started struggling in the heat. Fortunately, the marathon photo people captured my pain so I can relive it here in front of you.

My friend Taz was struggling in the heat too. And though we'd drifted apart 15 miles earlier in the sea of 45,000 runners, we somehow found each other again and struggled through our last six miles together. Our one rule: Always look good when we knew there were cameras on us.

I was caught in a tight crowd at the finish line, but amid all the runners, I was able to find a tiny picture of me checking my fancy new running watch that confirmed my official time: 4:50:09.

When I posed for the obligatory finisher picture, I was glad they cropped out my feet, which were emitting cartoon stars and spirals to indicate how much pain they were in.

Back at the Charity Village, Matthew and Taz and I smiled over our accomplishment. Though I had to take my medal off because the ribbon was trapping heat in my neck. And I really didn't need any more heat in my neck.

But I did put it on long enough for one final victory photo. And we're already making plans to train again for 2009—but this time we're gonna be our own team. And we're going to have non-yellow shirts. Because marathons are too important to be wasted in unflattering colors.

First peek at marathon pictures!

The marathon photo people are slowly uploading all ten billion pictures they took on race day and categorizing them by our bib numbers so we can find our pictures ... and then drop a couple hundred dollars on commemorative prints. Here are thumbnails of two of the pix they've found of me so far, both clearly taken before the temperature spiked, which was at my mile 20:



I was pretty much on par to hit my 4:00 goal -- or at least beat my 4:20 personal best -- for the first 20 miles on Sunday. But once the temperature inched past my comfort zone, I got all goosebumpy and dehydrated and slowed to an absolute crawl for the last six excruciating miles. But 4:50 isn't anything to be (too) embarrassed about, and it has a nice symmetry with the domestic partner's 5:40 time, both of which I emblazoned on a store-bought cake (with exclamation points! to show how proud I am of us!) for our marathon victory party tonight:


I normally have the penmanship of a drunken third-grader. And from the looks of this cake, I clearly have the squirtfrostingmanship of a legally sober zygote. But I have to say my 5s look pretty professional here. So I might still have a career in cake decorating. Right after I master the art of taking pictures of the people who came to our party instead of just the store-bought pastries.

4:50:09 ... Sigh ...

Well, the heat came back for the marathon again this year. But I finished the damn thing ... only 50 minutes behind my goal. My time was 30 minutes worse than my personal best but still 3 minutes better than my personal worst. So there's that.

And! The domestic partner, who had abandoned his marathon training sometime in June or July, decided to run today and just quit whenever he hit his wall. And dress me up like Sarah Palin and beat me across the head with a two-by-four, because he actually finished! He's understandably hurting worse than I am ... and even though he totally stole my thunder, I'm very proud of him. And as soon as we wake up from our nap and find that we can move our arms again, I just might give him a hug.

But now: nap time. Shhhhhh.

$2,166.20!

The miles are run. The shoes are broken in (I hope). The toenails are trimmed. The hair is cut (nobody wants to look shaggy in a marathon photo). The numbered bibs and timing chips are picked up. There are even fabulous new padded socks with built-in arch support all washed and ready to be worn.

And you, dear people, have once again coughed up an impressive pile of donations on my behalf for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. Here is a list of all you cool folks who have sponsored me (so far) this summer:

Donald S.
David W.
Betty S.
Joan D.
Brian B.
Jane H.
David S.
Linda I.
Jessica I.
Jennifer D.
Nicole H.
David P.
Amy M.
David L.
Jeffrey K.
Bill L.
Ron G.
Karla G.
Jay H.
Jennifer K.
David B.
Todd P.
Nick G.
Janeanne P.
Ingrid T.
Richard N.
Virginia H.
Amy K.
Dominic G.
If I know you personally (and have your contact information), I'll be sending you thank-you notes after the marathon. If I don't know you, the donation web site doesn't give me any contact information, so the best I can offer you is my sincere thanks right here. You're all generous to a fault, and I'll think about you throughout my four (and hopefully not much more) hours in the marathon tomorrow.

The weather is supposed to be on the warmer side of comfortable, so I'm already feeling a little pre-defeated about the race. Send cool thoughts my way from 8:00 to noon (and maybe a little longer just to be safe) Central Time. I'll post pictures and stories as soon as I recover!

I like chasing cars

The domestic partner is about to divorce me for watching this SNL clip so often. But after about 40 viewings, it still makes me laugh until I can't talk.

The Ross Perot Effect

Remember when Perot addressed the NAACP as "you people" in 1992? While he probably didn't intend to sound like a bigot, his words carried the racist stink of dismissiveness and condescension. And they further sunk his doomed bid for the presidency.

And now we have John McCain. Poor, uncomfortable, meandering John McCain, whose entire debate last night was undermined by his pathological need to jab and insult and censure. His repeated "overhead projector" attempts sounded implausible and desperate. His "hair plugs" attempt was inelegant and tacky. And then he slid right to the dismissive, condescending bottom. And the Internet will never let him forget it:

You can steal more of these images from On The Fritz.

The Ballad of the Sad, Pathetic Blogger

He wanted to write about his fabulous weekend

An eight-mile run, the last before the marathon
Yuppie brunch in Old Town, Cuban dinner in Wicker Park
In between, an afternoon spent reading fiction
Among the homos in the Boystown Caribou

A Sunday morning walking tour
Of the statues in Lincoln Park
Can you think of a gayer way to start the day?
Another brunch at a Chicago landmark
A killer workout: chest and shoulders
Dinner at a Jewish deli and, to complete the motif,
A late showing of Caroline, or Change

He wanted to write about all of it in detail
But instead he caught a damn cold
And now all he can cough up
Is a lame attempt at a poem

Holy shit!

So I've been searching high and low for a fresh new pair of my trusty running shoes (Brooks Adrenaline GTS 8s) in my not-so-usual size (11.5 EE) and I haven't been able to find them anywhere. And the marathon is in a week.

They finally appeared on Zappos.com last night when I checked just before leaving work for a company event. So I ordered a pair. At 5:30 pm.

And I'll be damned if they weren't sitting on our receptionist's desk by the time I got out of my morning staff meting today. How amazing is that?


So now I can wear them tomorrow for my last 8-mile run and they'll be all broken in for the marathon on the 12th. And fresh running shoes = fewer injuries on 26.2 miles of pavement. Woo-hoo!

Chcek out my fancy new MAN BAG!

I wore it to work this morning (along with my only Cubs shirt, which totally completes my manly man-bag appearance) and I already have two complaints: 1) The shoulder strap isn't adjustable so the bag hangs way down by my butt and 2) The flap on the front is held shut with weak, unmanly magnets. So as the bag bounces on my butt, the flap opens and loudly smacks shut with each butt bump. Stupid man bag.

If you look closely at this picture, you can also check out the color options for our relentlessly white bathrooms. The color chips are really not well-rendered through a mirror and a camera phone, but the current plan is to paint this bathroom the two shades of minty-celery green you see near the top of the door frame, and the guest bathroom will get the muddy gray/khaki combination you see just above my ear.

These plans change on a monthly basis. Unlike Sarah Palin's debate strategy, which will always be about Energy! Because she's a nookular maverick!

Moderator: We have decades of voting records showing that John McCain's deregulation strategies are directly responsible our current financial crisis.
Sarah Palin: Energy!

Moderator: You keep repeating your mindless assertion that John McCain is maverick like you're some goddamned drunken parrot, but he's voted with George W. Bush's disastrous policies 90% of the time.
Sarah Palin: Energy!

Moderator: "Nuclear" has only two syllables.
Sarah Palin: Energy!

Moderator: Sarah, Palin, you're too stupid to be vice president.
Sarah Palin: Energy!

Apparently I grind my teeth in my sleep

And probably absent-mindedly in my wake as well. Because the enamel is wearing off my teeth at the points where they grind. And the poor things are being rocked back in forth in their sockets, as evidenced by my microscopically receding gumlines.

All this I learned from my dentist last month. He recommended I get a custom-fitted mouth thing to wear to bed to prevent further grinding damage. But I know I would never wear it, so I declined.

And now I’m all paranoid that I’m just one fitful nap away from becoming a stump-toothed old man who feels compelled to stalk the CTA ranting about … oh, I don’t know … the End of Times or FBI mind-control hats or how women really should avoid bangs.

And now as my tongue floats around in my mouth attending to its appointed tongue responsibilities, it keeps finding horrifying new evidence of my teeth’s imminent demise. For instance! The backs of the bottoms of my two top front teeth feel sandpapery, as though the enamel has been worn down to a mere memory of its former shiny self! And my molars feel wobbly! Especially when I obsess about them! And once in a while when I drink cold water, it feels … cold!

Oh, the humani … um … teeth!

Full circle

I lost my favorite brown dress shoes two months ago. I’ve torn up our house and even my parents’ house in Iowa looking for them. I had just resigned myself to the fact that they’d somehow gotten thrown away when, as I was getting dressed this morning, I noticed them sitting on the closet shelf. Where I’ve always stored them.

Speaking of shoes, I went to order a new pair of my running shoes this weekend so I could be springy and fresh for the marathon in two weeks. And I can’t find them anywhere in my size. ACK!

Speaking of running, Matthew and I ran eight miles on Sunday in windy, overcast, altogether perfect weather. Except I was still sore from last weekend’s 23 miles. And now my knees hurt. In a bad way.

Speaking of body parts, I went to the gym in my neighborhood on Saturday and got a pretty satisfying pump in my chest and shoulders. The place was almost empty except for two guys who just oozed A-gay beauty and arrogance through their clingy tank-tops and conspicuous tans. To my surprise, one of them smiled at me. I felt totally validated.

Speaking of gay people, my Chicago friend Marc started a blog that’s an ongoing dialogue between him and his LA friend Jamie. The whole thing’s still in its infancy, but so far it’s a good read—except for its focus on music reviews. You know I love you more than my luggage, Marc, but NOTHING puts me to sleep faster than a music review.

Speaking of Marc, he and his husband hosted a fabulous Auntie Mame brunch on Sunday. I’d (gasp!) never seen the movie, which is fabulous in some places and long in others, but it was lovely to spend a Sunday afternoon with food, friends and faggy cinema.

Speaking of surviving the Depression, how about today’s bailout fallout? I’m not worried, though; my money’s invested in shoes.

Mental Illness Theater

KATIE COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

SARAH PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada. It-- it's funny that a comment like that was-- kind of made to-- cari-- I don't know, you know? Reporters--

COURIC: Mock?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia--

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

Overheard on the lakefront trail

Runner #1: You got quiet.

Runner #2: I was thinking about how much I hate Sarah Palin.

This is the closest I’ve come to hurling

When you’re working out in a vain and vapid attempt to get huge, you push yourself well beyond your capabilities both in weight and intensity. And when you finally get yourself into the outer bounds of your natural abilities, your body responds two ways: getting pumped and fighting back. The pumped part is awesome, but the fighting back part involves shaking and varying degrees of nausea. I’m not disciplined enough to push myself that far on my own, which is exactly why I hired a trainer. And today, after a high-intensity three-part chest superset followed by a high-intensity three-part biceps superset, it took a lot of effort to get my protein shake down without gagging. And now I can hardly hold my hands still enough to type this. Woo-hoo!

When you’re working to convince the electorate that you have the basic skills required to lead the country, you say and do thing that demonstrate integrity and instill confidence. And you go out of your way to make sure you don’t come off as a two-person clusterfuck of ineptitude, mendacity and desperation. Yesterday alone, Sarah Palin moose-in-the-headlightsed to America that she has no idea how hard John McCain has fought against financial oversight over the last quarter century, though she kept insisting he’s devoted his professional career to financial regulation and reform. And McCain, who just a week ago insisted that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong,” is suddenly suspending his campaign under the guise of trying to repair the economy, which he’s now describing as “about to crater.” Which tells us either that he’s spent 26 years in Congress with no workable understanding of economic science or that he’ll readily stoop to the most transparent political stunt to distract the electorate from his culpability in our economic meltdown.

McCain and Palin are political ipecac. But they don’t even offer the side benefit of making us look better. And the fact that they have even one supporter outside their immediate blood relatives makes me embarrassed—and scared—to be American.

The Women: Two options at the cineplex

Option 1: Predictable. Hackneyed. Clumsy. Overacted. Wholly disappointing. Plus, there's a goddamn montage where a character undergoes a personal transformation to a rock soundtrack. There's no lower art form than a personal-transformation montage.

Option 2: At least it doesn't have a montage.

23 miles! Finally!

As I'm sure you remember (all week you've no doubt been saying to yourselves, "wow, we're sure finding ourselves thinking about this all the time"), last Saturday's 23-mile run got pre-empted by some stupid rain. And some stupid tornadoes.

But! This morning's weather was perfect for running. (OK, it was about two degrees warmer than perfect, but we'll still take it.) And at 6:00 the entire 2008 AIDS Marathon population found ourselves gathered along the lakefront for our pre-run pep talk:

The weather remained perfect (well, two degrees warmer than perfect) all morning. And we had a fabulous first 12 miles. We were all smiles just after the turnaround ... way down on 31st Street beach. It's weird to contemplate that we ran from Foster to 31st Street and back, but when you're in the middle of it you just kind of focus on the miles in front of you and you don't take in the big picture until you're done. At least I don't.

Unfortunately, we lost a runner soon after that when an old injury of his flared up. But the three of us who remained (our pace group is down to about four regulars from the 10 or so we started with in April) continued to plug along. Here we are at North Avenue beach, which I think is about six or seven miles from the end. You'd think after running in Chicago for eight years that I'd have a better idea of how many miles are between landmarks, but I don't.

Since my longest run this summer had been only 18 miles (everyone else had done 20 but I crashed in the heat on our 20-mile run), 23 was quite a jump this morning. And the last four miles were pretty painful. But I crossed the finish line just moments after everyone else. And since the AIDS Marathon training program is filled with gays, we had balloons and flags and even a drag-queen bar mitzvah clown waiting for us:

We also got medals! But we always get medals for any run over about 15 miles. So my cumulative medal collection is well over the paltry eight that Michael Phelps won in Beijing. What a loser.

Of course nobody was really watching us cross the finish line because somebody was shooting a damn Abercrombie & Fitch-type ad right there. Seriously. Matthew (being a completely impartial photojournalist) took pictures, which I am posting here only for the sake of being a dutiful, news-reporting blogger:

What has a peg leg and a flaky crust?

A PIE-rate.

I totally just made that up!

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Sarah Palin was in my hometown today

Maybe we should have it bleached.