Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!!!!

…That woodenhead would be better cast as Gort, anyway.

Hey, ZombieKillah… does this remind you of the good ol’ days when I sat on the other side of the sneeze screen at work?

Okay, now, after that last song I posted, this is gonna seem like a pretty wild swing in another direction, but I have been listening to this band almost non-stop since my friend Aaron shared a bunch of their music with me. My musical tastes have really broadened over the past year or so (thanks in a very large part to friends like Aaron and cy and Frank) and I am listening to stuff that I would never have imagined liking a few years ago. Including this, which–played at volume 22 with all the Tiburon’s windows down and the sunroof open–has seriously frightened the livestock grazing along Kimball Road over the past week or two.

The band is called this morn’ omina, and it’s Belgian. And two-thirds bald.

What do you call this kinda music? I dunno… mebbe some kinda fusion like tribal ritual or ritual trance or industrial or noise or someat else? Me no know. Aaron could prolly answer that one, tho’…

But if you like it, you can hear more here.

And thanks to Aaron for sharing this with me!

Have you heard Rodrigo y Gabriela yet?

I think these guys are fuggin’ fantastic!

Thanks to Whitney Matheson’s excellent Pop Candy blog for turning me onto ‘em.

With the intention of going for my weekly long run this morning, I woke up when my alarm went off and then… just… lay there. Snuggled back down into the feather bed and hit the snooze button a few times. Finally sighed and got up around 6:30 and started to get ready to go. But just couldn’t seem to work up any enthusiasm for it and decided that might be a cue to take a break today. There is a little twinge in my right rear-hip that cropped up sometime after my lap swimming yesterday. I don’t think it’s anything serious, but at this point I’d rather be safe than sorry.

‘At this point’ being that point where I’m pretty sure I’m going to try my first half-marathon this fall.

A coupla months ago, while I was out on my Sunday morning run (which, at the time, was typically about 8k) I decided, as a lark, to just. keep. going. I was feeling good and I thought I would see if I could get out to Bright’s Grove and back. Well, I did. I totalled it up when I got home and discovered I’d run 15k. When I mentioned that to a couple friends, they pointed out that another kilometer and I’d've run the equivalent of 10 miles. I like round numbers. So the next week, I ran 16k. Ten fucking miles–it hardly seemed possible, y’know? I ran 17k the next week. Then went back to 16k for two or three weeks. Then jumped to 18.5k a couple weeks ago and then just a shade under 20k last week. So. I am confident that I can run the half-marathon distance (21k). For me, it’s just a matter of trying to run faster. My kind-hearted running mentor keeps telling me that I mustn’t worry about my speed (or, rather, my lack thereof). But, hey, that’s easy for him to say–he runs a lot faster than I do! But I will take his advice to heart and not push myself too hard and risk injury. If I can get a little faster, that’s great. If I can’t, well, it ain’t the end of the world. At least I’m in the race, eh? Eventually, I’ll get faster.

I’ve mentioned my tentative plans to family and a few friends, but have kept mostly quiet about it. It seems like I doom hopes and plans as soon as I have the temerity to actually mention them to someone. God mocks me. (Not that I don’t deserve mocking–I dole out more than my fair share of it, after all!) My natural instinct has always been to just keep quiet about my hopes and desires and this is a shy habit that I have been trying to break. But, often, it seems like mebbe it’s better to just keep my hopes hidden. Then I’m the only one who knows when my heart breaks over some new disappointment.

Anyhow, nothing’s written in stone yet, but I am (half-assedly) training for this year’s Tronna Waterfront race. There’s a full marathon and a half marathon. Not sure I’ll ever run a full marathon, but I think a half is within my reach. So I finally bit the bullet and registered for it today.

“Come run past the sparkling water of Tronna puddles!”
(Incidentally, if you ever see me wearing a hat like that one, I hereby give you permission to slap it offa me.)

I had tried to talk a few people into running it with me (well… not ‘with’ me, exactly, since those I asked actually run faster than I do… we might start at the same time, but we sure wouldn’t be running the race together, heh-heh), but I think Laurie and Kelly are going to run the local half, instead, and my sister’s back problems are squashing her attempts to get back into running (she ran the Detroit marathon 3 years ago, but hasn’t run much since). My friends asked me if I might prefer to run the Sarnia race rather than the Tronna one but, I dunno… I guess it just sounds more fun to me to go run someplace new.

Mebbe I can at least talk ‘em into coming down for the weekend with me. Laurie? Kelly? You up for a weekend in The Big Stink? A little shopping, a nice nosh, a room with a view… Yer not gonna make me do this all alone, areya?

They want your brain. (Of course, they don’t want his brain… such as it is…)

(Thanks to ZombieKillah for the link!)