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We have a sorry lineup of presidential candidates this year. It’s a little more exciting for the Democrats who are making a big deal out of getting the White House back - like they aren’t going to screw America any worse than the other party. I guess I’m a little disheartened that we Republicans couldn’t select somebody a little different than Bush on the war issue. I was thinking yesterday, that Bush must have the most sorry speech writers ever. In five years, I haven’t heard a compelling argument as to why we are in Iraq - that is, beside the “weapons of mass destruction” thing which turned out to be a farce.

I can’t even vote Republican for the economy as we, purportedly, dip into a recession. Perhaps somebody has some real compelling reason for continuing the war in Iraq, or not. After all, in my mind, the war is the main reason I can’t support McCain. Have at it - if you dare. I hope both sides get your lunch eaten right here!

Okay, so I ask Dostoevsky to tell his friends to make comments on my posts. Dostoevsky is a great guy, who frankly doesn’t even like lawyers; but, at my behest, he sends out some Blogger SOS and I start getting traffic. Now I’m under some kind of pressure to post again before my blog grows too cold to follow. I hope that a good portion of the commentators subscribed to my RSS feed (by clicking the BIG ORANGE BUTTON to the right). If any of you don’t know what it is, then click here to find out. Better yet, just click on the BIG ORANGE BUTTON to the right.

In the world of blog, content is king and, wouldn’t you know, I have brain lock this evening, but the show must go on, so allow me to rant about how I met my insurance deductable this last year. Though Summer ‘07 was one of running, cycling, swimming and competing in events, it was also the season of my highest medical bills ever. Being in business for myself, I have a high-deductible insurance plan, which for me really means, “I’m not going to the doctor because it costs too much”.

Well, around the end of July, I started getting a pain in my chest that over the course of 36 hours got worse and worse. After the second night of dealing with the discomfort, I wake up in the morning, get out of bed and am staggered by this chest pain. So I decide to go to the minor emergency clinic, “on my way out of town”, to get checked. At that point, I was convinced it was something to do with my lungs, but nothing life-threatening. A while back I had a heart scan for artery blockage and everything looked great. Now, at the clinic, I get with the doc and didn’t have the good sense to NOT tell him that the pain made me break out in a profuse sweat. So he orders an EKG and now I’m starting to think about what this visit is going to cost. It takes longer to hook me up than it does to run the test, and afterward I go to the bathroom (being a heavy water drinker). I get out of the bathroom and saunter back down the hall, all happy yet a little nervous now, as the doctor and nurse are staring at me like they were somewhat surprised that am still on my feet. Now, this doc is acting, all of a sudden, like he wants me out of there. He says my EKG was wacky (my term, not his) and he’s sending me to the ER - in an ambulance!

“Whoa, whoa, hold on just a second. You think I’m having a heart attack?” (Now I am feeling just a little sick). I had always told my wife, “if I ever have heart problems, you get me to Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City, don’t let anybody take me to [unnamed hospital] for my heart.” So, I released the clinic from liability for letting me, presumably, a guy having a heart attack - with risk of dying at any moment, drive a 2,000 lb hunk of metal down the road, and they gladly said goodbye and breathed a sigh of relief that I was not their problem anymore. I drove home to pick up my wife and headed for Oklahoma Heart Hospital.

I’ll finish this in another post. Hopefully tomorrow evening.

Tonight was blu-ray movie night at my house. My sister and her husband came over for dinner. Afterward, my brother-in-law and I went to Blockbuster to look over their pathetic selection of blu-ray movies. Going to my local Blockbuster makes me want to get a NetFlix membership but I hate the thought of a monthly payment. Anyway, it took us 45 minutes to find something. It was like going to a convenience store for a candy bar, but they have the grodiest selection ever and you just have to pick something because that’s what you came for. You say, why blu-ray? It’s because I spent a fortune on my Pioneer Elite BDP-95FD blu-ray player which, when paired with my 50″ Pioneer Elite PRO-FHD1 plasma display, cannot be beat for the home movie experience. As a result, I really don’t want to watch TV at your house. By the way, if you are going to invest in top-notch hardware, you must turn down the lights and watch Close Encounters in blu-ray. It is soooo visually stunning, though I am somewhat disappointed that, with all Sony did to blu-rayize the movie, they didn’t release it in 7.1 surround. Someday, we’ll talk about sound.

Well, Tim was the renter tonight and he selected The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster. This was in Blockbuster’s “new release” section. I hadn’t heard of it before tonight. We skipped over some other popular movie because of the “graphic nudity” warning in the R rating. Okay, that’s great, they warned us and we didn’t rent it. The Brave One, on the other hand, was rated R for “strong violence, language and some sexuality”. Maybe I’m naive, but I’m looking at the movie case thinking “violence - excellent, language - probably nothing worse than what Abbie hears at middle school” (meaning the “F” word every other sentence), and, here’s the kicker, “some sexuality - hmm… probably just a short non-explicit bedroom scene. After all this is a Jodie Foster movie for crying out loud”. Jodie, the quintessential tomboy from Disney days, and a respectable actress only since Silence of the Lambs, is no babe by any stretch of the imagination. So what director in his right mind would throw nudity or any blatant sexuality into a Jodie Foster scene?”. “Nothing to worry about.” Wrong!!!

Not too far into the movie, Jodie and her fiance get their dog stolen and the holy crap beat out of them by three mexican punks - fiance dies by the way (hope I didn’t ruin anything). So, the inevitable ER scene is flashing back to, Argghhh, (happier times?) her boob involved with a mouth (you figure it out), then back to the ER scene with a bloody boob. I have my wife, daughter, Tim, Kim and myself in my living room… everyone hollering their own exclamations of disbelief and horror. I’m yelling “don’t look” while trying to find the fast-forward button on my BDP-95FD remote. Why didn’t somebody put “nudity” on the package?! Why didn’t they put in big red letters “WARNING, STAY AWAY, THIS MOVIE SHOWS ONE OF JODIE FOSTER’S BOOBS!”? I’m telling you, this was a ghastly and awful scene. And, it seems like for the first half of the movie they kept flashing back to scenes of lesser levels of, nevertheless disgusting, intimacy between Jodie and her fiance, through which I just had to fast forward.

Otherwise, the movie was very satisfying in that Jodie’s character became a gun shooting, crowbar wielding, fearless, pissed-off, vigilante. Now that’s the Jodie Foster that I’ve grown to love and appreciate. The movie, in my humble opinion, had a very happy and satisfying ending. I won’t ever see this one again though. Also, I have to say that blu-ray just isn’t a necessary format for The Brave One. A regular DVD would do just fine, and how much definition do you really want when it comes to Jodie Foster’s boob? I’m kind of thinking now, it couldn’t have really been Jodie’s. It was probably a stunt-boob. That’s what I’ll tell myself.

I jotted down this poem a few years ago. With the current economy, I thought it may be relevant to some.

Austerity, no extra things for me

Cable canceled, no good tv

Thrifty days, on leftovers we graze

This short strict trail we’ll blaze.

Frugality, frugality - financial brutality

Soon again we’ll see days of prosperity

ALL grace in totality.

During our ’06 Christmas vacation at Disney World, my, then 13 year old, daughter suggested that we enter a Duathlon in the Spring. For being in my mid-40’s, I wasn’t in real bad shape and had been run-walking for over a year anyway. So, in January ’07, we started running in the mornings before sunrise. In years to come, we may forget exactly when we began, but we won’t forget how we were greeted that first morning with this incredibly brilliant falling star. It was one of those “wow!” moments, as if the sky had just welcomed us into our new routine with a gift - like the bank gives a toaster to new customers, but much nicer.

Anyway, we had no particular running plan, other than to gradually increase our distance until we could endure two 5k runs at the March in Okarche. We figured that with our mountain biking experience, the 30k bike ride would be no problem. At the time, mountain bikes were all we had and I wasn’t about to buy anybody a roadbike for what could be a first and last event. Well, for me it was pure wonderful hell — if that makes any sense. Because of leg cramps, I could barely get off of my bike and change my shoes to start the second 5k run. Nevertheless, by the finish, we were hooked on multi-sport. Abbie took 1st in her age group. I took 6th in my age group (6th out of 7 – oh well), but, 30k of paved hilly roads on a mountain bike in 20 mph winds was an experience not to be relived. So, we went out and bought two Cannondale roadbikes just in time for the next duathlon in May.

By October 13, Abbie and I finished our fourth and final duathlon of the season. I was running with a messed up leg. At the time, I only knew my leg hurt, so I had sharply cut back on my running about two weeks before the event. I competed, then rested through the remainder of the month. I picked back up again in November with considerable pain. So I got an MRI, started physical therapy and kept running against my therapist’s advice. With the pain just getting worse, my smart physical therapist at Physical Therapy Central called the MRI place and asked them to take another look at the images, and what do you know, my quad had a 20-30% tear that the radiologist didn’t see the first time. Needless to say, that news got me to stop running. I continued physical therapy until my insurance year ended, and babied the leg through January ‘08. In February, stairs were still a problem, but I began to run-walk again, running only until I felt it. However, I felt it too often, and my lungs always hate the pain of starting over. So it became kind of a bummer and I stopped again.

So, here it is March and I’m starting again in the morning – again. If it hurts I’ll walk, but I’m going out. Sooner or later, my leg will be completely healed and I will compete again. In some ways, it might be easier to just forget running altogether and stick with cycling through my old age. For me running is grueling and painful, especially to start again. But, I am drawn back. I’m drawn to that early morning stretch at 4:00 a.m., that first 1/2 cup of hot fresh coffee, the solitude downstairs before anyone else is up. I’m drawn to trying to beat the morning train to it’s crossing, and the expectation of once again competing along side my daughter. For every tomorrow though, I’m drawn to the chance of another priceless moment when the sky says “hello” like it did on the day we first began.

“Blessed is the man who never stops starting to do what he should.”

- Dr. Robert Peterson

It’s nearly 9 pm, on a Saturday evening. I’m relaxing on my sofa watching Stage 3 of the Tour of California on my DVR. The gentle nearly-spring breeze flowing through my living room inspires me to write about the doors to my patio, but I won’t. This evening my subject is outdoor cooking, my first memories of which hark back to the 60’s and the associated images of my Dad “barbequing” hamburgers, t-bone steaks and thick sliced bologna on hot summer weekends. I can still see the sweat on his brow, smell the smoke on his hands and clothes, and sense the primitive satisfaction that came, and still only comes, from cooking over a charcoal flame. Wholesome and indelible impressions all, and from which I derive two inviolable traditions — the outdoor grill is a husband’s domain, and a man’s fuel is charcoal.

When I got married my dad let me have his Sunbeam cast aluminum charcoal kettle that he had used for 15 years. I grilled on it for another 15 years until I could no longer find or fabricate parts for it. I have since purchased two charcoal grills of my own. Both Weber, both charcoal fueled, and both indispensible. My Ranch Kettle is a monster with a 37¾” wide cooking surface. It’s big enough to grill 26 burgers at once, 4 pizzas or 2 large beer can chickens in one cook. The massive grill really opens up options for recipes calling for indirect heat or multi-level fires. It truly brings the art of grilling to heights that are just unfathomable with a 22½” grill.

I will never buy a gas grill for myself, and will surely never contribute to the sissification of any man by purchasing one for him. Turning a knob and pressing a button is not a “fire” experience. Building a fire, tending a fire, shaping a fire, burning off your eyebrows when raising the charcoaler lid — these are fire experiences. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it gets you dirty, and you may sweat; but, there is great therapeutic benefit and a distinct satisfaction derived when a man harnesses the elements to bring a meal to his family’s table. Skipping right to the cooking, as gas-grilling promotes, eviscerates the grilling experience and fails to stir the easy, enjoyable conversation that is fostered by tinkering around with the coals and otherwise preparing the fire for it’s job. I spend 5 days of my week rushing around, so I relish the slow times spent building, cooking, and talking over, a real charcoal flame. I charcoal grilled today. And, I am a better man for it.

This evening I finished The Whisperers by Orlando Figes (702 pgs through endnotes). It’s about Soviet life from the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and through the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin from 1929 to 1953. I was amazed at how the masses forfeited their culture, religion, family relationships, enterprises, homes, self-respect and personal security, and bore such government repression for so many decades - all under the guise of “the common good”. The book is based upon the oral histories given by those who lived through those times as adults and children. The work is corroborated by many documents and pictures contained in family and government archives. Figes’ accounts of the deplorable social, environmental and familial conditions of the era make for compelling excerpt reading aloud to your family - so they will know just how good they have it. One example:

In Moscow the average person had just 5.5 square metres of living space in 1930, falling to just over 4 square metres in 1940. In the new industrial towns, where house-building lagged far behind the growth of the population, the situation was even worse. In Magnitogorsk, for example, the average living space for working-class families was just 3.2 square metres per capita in 1935. Most of the workers lived in factory barracks, where families were broken up, or in dormitories, where a curtain around their plank-beds provided the only privacy. (Pp. 172-73).

And those lovely children’s homes. According to Inessa Bulat, who was sent to one when she was just three years old, after her parents were arrested as ‘enemies of the people’:

Conditions were terrible - I could not even go to the toilet: the floors were covered ankle-deep in liquid shit . . . The building faced a big red-brick wall. It felt like being trapped in a kind of hell . . . The head of the home would always say to me: ‘Just remember who your parents are. Don’t make any trouble: just sit quietly and don’t stick your spy’s nose into anything.’ . . . I became withdrawn. I shut myself away. Later, I found it very difficult to lead a normal life. I had spent too long in the orphanage, where I had learned to feel nothing. (Pp. 335-36)

Despite the above excerpts (and plenty of others) on the communists’ deplorable living conditions, this isn’t a shoot-yourself book. Nor am I drinking any heavier, having read the book, than before I began. On the contrary, The Whisperers contains accounts of personal and familial triumphs as well. Primarily, this book elucidated the awesome and various coping mechanisms necessarily devised by a population that couldn’t protect itself from it’s own government. It speaks loads about the strength of the human spirit and is, for many reasons, a worthy read.