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name change

i’m sure all of y’all have experienced moments in your life where one theme seems to come up over and over. everything you look at, everything you listen to, and everything you read seems to always come back to the same thing. I am in one of those moments right now. everything i read or experience seems to have something to do with people changing their names and what happens to their lives after doing so. here are some of the influences that have impacted me on this moment:

  • the biblical story of jacob becoming israel – every since i first read this story i have felt an overwhelming connection to it. there is just something about GOD coming down in response to jacob’s prayer for safety and answering that prayer by popping jacob in the mouth. it was exactly what jacob needed but i would imagine it was quite far from the answer that jacob was expecting. once again i am at a point in my life where this narrative draws me in.
  • alexander supertramp – i’m presently listening to john krakauer’s book “into the wild” about the young man chris mccanless. he went out to find a lifetimes worth of adventure (which ultimately cost him his life because of a lack of common sense). the start of this search for adventure began with him shedding his past life by taking on a new name. i don’t agree with much of what he did but i am fascinated by his resolve and convictions.
  • makalu gau – the taiwanese climber gau ming ho claimed the name “makalu gau” after his fifth attempt at summitting the makalu mountain. from that ascent on he went by “makalu gau” as a reminder of what he saw as a changed life. of course, if you read other people’s versions of his ascents he didn’t really live up to that moniker. apparently “makalu gau” was a pretty lousy climber that always got into trouble and wasted other people’s resources in having to be rescued on almost every climb he went on. he didn’t really live up to his claimed name.
  • buster butterfly mcleod – i read this guys 43 things list a few weeks ago. he wanted to change his name for one year to “test” how much a his personality was connected with his name. he chose a rather odd name and has legally changed his name to it for one year. after that year is up he will apparently change his name back to whatever it was before.

don’t worry mom i’m not planning on changing my name. i rather like my name. still i do find all of these stories interesting. it’s intriguing to consider how much of who we are is wrapped up in our names. while, i’m not really into changing my name i do want to make sure that the name i have stands for that which i believe is important. when people thing of my name i want them to have strong images occur within their mind. i hope they think of a person who …

  • is passionate about his faith & LORD
  • is a good husband and father
  • loves his family and friends because he realizes that the most important things are things
  • may be late often but will try with every ounce of discipline he has to not let someone down when a commitment has been made
  • is open to new ideas, people, and experiences
  • is amazed by beauty and trying to experience more of it
  • is not afraid to take big risks even after he has failed

i hope that’s what people think. if it’s not then you can just start calling me fred cause i’m starting over.

my run for the day
distance – 5.0 miles
time – 48.44
pace – 9:44/mile

[Listening to: The Moment I Said It – Imogen Heap – Speak For Yourself (5:56)]
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ouch

the weirdest thing has occurred today – well actually it isn’t really the weirdest thing, that would be me singing on and winning american idol, but this thing is at least a little odd. it has been two days since i ran the first light half marathon and i finally have the first part of my body that hurts. it’s my … shoulder that hurts. i don’t have any idea why my shoulder would hurt so bad but it is definitely painful. i don’t remember running on my hands but perhaps i did. that would at least explain why my shoulder hurts so bad. i think next time i will run on my hands and maybe my leg will hurt instead.

SIDE NOTE – who dat?

SIDE NOTE – on my runs i am presently listening to john krakauer’s “into the wild” about the death of christopher mccandless in the wilderness of alaska. mccanless was a young man you wanted to live out a jack london/henry thoreau/leo tolstoy lifestyle that pushed him to some pretty far extremes. it’s a fascinating book thus far.

my run for the day
distance – 5.1 miles
time – 53:02
pace – 10:23/mile

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13.1 stories

my legs have rested and i’m moving better now so i thought i would write out a few interesting stories from the half-marathon i ran yesterday.

  • i didn’t get to see this but pam did and told me about it – there was a 1.2 mile fun run that was organized along with the half marathon. the last person to finish the fun run was a 6 to 7 year old boy who had down’s syndrome. he had run the whole race by himself. when he got close to the finish line his mother jumped out to stand at the finish line. she began shouting to her son “i am so proud of you! you can make it, just keep running! i’m so very proud of you!” when the crowd realized what an amazing moment this was they all jumped into the act. the crowd began to scream wildly for the little guy. he was just focused on his mother and she kept shouting how proud she was him. the whole scene ended with him running into his mother arms and everyone else cheering. of course, pam couldn’t see this because she was too busy balling her head off.
  • the start to my race was a little more exciting than i had hoped for. i run with an mp3 player. when they started the race with my brother-n-law, sister-n-law, and i in the middle of the pact i pressed the “play” button on my mp3 player. it was at that very moment that my mp3 player fell out of its strap and onto the pavement. when i turned around to get it i was face to face with 400 people who were running straight at me. for some reason these people didn’t seem to understand that i needed to go back the twenty feet to my mp3 player. i swam upstream towards my player moving people out of the way. when i got to my mp3 player and reached down for it things didn’t get much better. now instead of me avoiding bodies that were coming towards me it was my hands quickly avoiding feet that were coming towards them. even though i finally was able to get my player back it was probably the scariest part of the entire race for me.
  • the water station at mile 6 was manned by men and women in red dresses – every single one of them. it was a very odd experience. some of them were very ugly guys in very skimpy dresses.
  • the whole event got me very excited about the music city marathon that we are going to in april. it was fun running with 1,000 people. it will be incredible running with 20,000 people. my brother-n-law is blogging about his training for the marathon. you can read his blog here.
  • i just found out from the race results on the mobile press register that i was 214th out of the 410 half-marathoners.

SIDE NOTE – i’ve started watching the dvd edition of the “firefly” tv show. it’s really good. too bad the series only lasted one year.

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finished reading

this week i finished two great books:

  • fast food nation by eroc schlosser – it was a great book that is already affecting my view on fast food, agribusiness, and consumerism in general and i am sure it will continue to do so.
  • crucifixion by martin hengel – this is a scholarly discussion of the greco-roman view of crucifixion. it is not so much a discussion of the method of crucifixion as it is a discourse of how crucifixion was viewed in the ancient near east. it gives new insight into paul’s meaning in 1 corinthians 1:18.

both of these books were top notch reads.

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24 is back

nobody pushes jack bauer around – what did these people think they were doing? i love reading dave barry’s minute by minute interpretation of the show.

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been there, done that, got the t-shirt

today i finished my first half marathon. i’ll tell y’all more about the interesting things later (things like my mp3 player falling on the ground at the start of the race and me having to bob and weave backwards through the start of the race to get it from in between hundreds of runners’ feet, or the struggles i had with a desperate need to use the bathroom and no option available). i’ll tell y’all those stories later. right now i’m tired and i don’t really want to think about exerting myself (even mentally). the only thing that has probably been harder in my life was climbing a shear cliff on a mountain within the sangre de christo mountain range in colorado. this was a very close second. i would have never been able to run all 13.1 miles if it had not been for pam or my brother-n-law and sister-n-law.

my run for the day
distance – 13.1 miles
time – 2:09:39
pace – 9:53/pace

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13.1

tomorrow morning i run my first half-marathon. we’ll see how things gone because i have been completely lazy this week and only run two days for a total of 12 miles. i tend to think that i will be dead.

btw, i finished “fast food nation” by eric schlosser and it was great.

my run for the day
distance – 4.8 miles
time – 46.23
pace – 9:39/pace

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the nature of firecrackers

in my constant attempt to be a good dad i took adam with me yesterday to a fireworks tent to buy some manageable explosions for us to “ring in the new year.” our plans for the evening changed somewhat when the guest that adam had coming over ended up needing to stay at his house and thus invited adam to come over to his house and spend the night. this left pam, noah, and i together for the evening. noah didn’t really want to blow up anything without adam around so we decided to lite just a few fireworks for the evening. one of the items that we wanted to fire up was a small 50 packet of black cat firecrackers. being as one of my goals for 2007 is to post at least one photo on flickr everyday that i am at my house, i thought this would be an excellent photo op. the mistake i made in my thought patterns was that i didn’t stop to ask the pack of firecrackers if they wanted their photo taken. the firecrackers responded my rude manners in the only method that firecrackers know how to respond … they exploded. i was expecting this, after all it was what i was hoping to take a picture of, but what i wasn’t expecting was for the firecrackers to work as a team to send their explosions after me.

i asked noah to go out and light the packet of firecrackers while i sat down a couple of feet away to frame my photo. i had to sit down pretty close to the firecrackers because i had a wideangle lens on my camera. noah lite the firecrackers and the first blast immediately blew other lite firecrackers towards my face. quickly i decided that i didn’t really desire a photo of exploding firecrackers and so i assumed the fetal position trying to protect myself from the miniature fireworkers display that was going on inches away from my head. i’m guessing that firecrackers hate babies or at least the fetal position because all that seemed to happen from me being in this protective position was that more firecrackers bounced towards me. once, the firecrackers stopped noah asked how i was doing (in between his rolling laughter) but the ringing in my ears kept me for a little while from hearing his questions or his laughter.

of course, i could be wrong about firecrackers wanting people to ask their permission before taking their picture. it could just be that firecrackers prefer canon cameras to nikon and they responded to my nikon camera with hatred.

my run for the day
distance – 5.20 miles
time – 51:55
pace – 9:59/mile

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i wanted to do this before i turned 40

i'm signed up
next year (november 18th) i’ll turn 40 so if i’m going to run a marathon before i turn 40 it has to happen some time within the next 11 months. thus today i signed up for the music city marathon. it’s in april so if i fail on finishing it (because we all need to remember that i am old) then i can try again later. i owe my brother-in-law and sister-in-law (jim & jill) a big “thank you” on this because i never would have signed up to do a half marathon if it hadn’t been for them and if it wasn’t for the half marathon training i wouldn’t have become convinced that i could make it through a full marathon. jim and jill or going to nashville for the marathon also.

i haven’t finished the run that i am supposed to do for the day (i’m supposed to run 12 miles today) because it has been raining pretty hard in baton rouge today. it stopped raining for a little while early this afternoon and i started my run then. by the time i had gotten dressed and stretched out it had started lightly raining. that’s not a problem because i love running in the rain. a light sprinkle makes for a great run. of course, the light sprinkle changed into a good rain about a mile into my run. this really wasn’t a problem either and thus i just continued running. around 6:30 p.m. it was getting pretty dark and i was feeling pretty heavy from all the water that i was carrying around in my clothes. it’s when i finally got home and took my clothes off for a shower that i finally noticed that my torso was covered with red streaks. it looked as though i had an allergic reaction all over my arms and torso. the problem was that i didn’t feel like i was having an allergic reaction. i wasn’t feeling odd or itching so i was pretty confused by the whole thing until i looked down at my soaking wet clothes. that’s when i realized that i had been running in a relatively new long sleeve, red t-shirt (a.k.a. it’s been worn and washed once). the rain washed out dye from the t-shirt and it stained my body. some of it came off by means of a hot shower but my arms still look like i am in need of some benadryl. it freaked pam out when she saw it.

my run for the day (thus far)
distance – 6.8 miles
time – 1:08:16
pace – 10:02/mile

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love & hate

LOVE
january 14th “24” starts up again. i can’t wait to see the next adventures of jack bauer. the show may not be in it’s prime anymore but i still get a kick out it each sunday.

HATE
house drives me crazy. i’ve only seen the show a couple of times. once i watched it to see what all the hub-bub was about. since then i’ve watched it a little while pam was watching it. thankfully pam has also reached the point of agreeing with me. i simply can’t watch house without getting mad because he reminds me of some of the doctors i used to work with when i was an insurance adjuster back in the ’90s. working worker’s compensation severely lowered my view of many doctors. life is to short to watch a television show that glorifies a jerk.

of course, jack bauer is also a jerk but he is an entertaining jerk. in fact, house and bauer are allot alike – they both constantly break the rules, destroy other peoples’ rights, and only trust their own skill in their attempts to achieve their goals. i guess the main difference is that i don’t know anyone who works in counter terrorism and therefore i can just assume that there are no real jack bauers. unfortunately, i have work with doctors and therefore know that while most are good there actually are some like house.

my run for the day
distance – 5.1 miles
time – 48:31
pace – 9:30/mile