It's the final countdown....

The countdown has begun. In exactly one from today, I will be running a marathon. Actually, by this time, I should be all done, and probably laying in the hotel room, after showering, trying to motivate myself to get back to the finish line to cheer on Jen as she finishes walking. Since we're doing the race with Team in Training, part of the money we raised goes to our hotel room, a dinner the night before, and a post race party Sunday night. The funny thing is that at that party, they are planning on having a DJ and dancing. Normally, that makes for good times, but after running 26.2 miles, I'm not sure about how many people will be physically able to dance. But, we'll see. Maybe if they play a slow song, Jen and I can just stand still on the dance floor and nobody will notice that we're not actually moving. Or to bring back a fond memory of my high school grad nite, a fine session of chair dancing might be in order.

Here's me, and my newest niece... in one of the few 4-week-old moments of non-crying from hunger. The guy in the back, well, right after we took the picture, he walked over, and asked if I wanted to try a sip of his delicious beverage. I declined, which made him quite sad. Actually, he was asking me where the elevator was... who can figure it out?

Dub

I did it... I ran 20 miles. That's 35200 yards, 105600 feet, 1,267,200 inches, 32,186,880mm. I ran across 300 football fields. I ran the equivalent of the track of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland 39 1/2 times. And today, I hurt.
I hurt all over (from the waist down). I hurt in ways I haven't hurt yet in my training. Muscles are tight, I've got knots pretty much everywhere, the joints don't want to move. It feels awesome.
And when I do the race, in three weeks, I have to do the same thing, and add 6.2 more miles. And then go to work the next morning.
LOL

So this past weekend, my improv group had planned to do a few shows over 2 days. The first day was down at Mariner's Church in Irvine (I hadn't been there before, and I enjoyed it. Reminded me of Saddleback as far as size, but the architecture was more of what I would call University style.... which is probably a horrible description). That day, we were actually scheduled to do three shows, of about 15-20 minutes each, or about 2-3 games. These shows were for foster kids, and their foster families, or other people close to them. The second day, was at a home in Chino for kids who had to be removed from their homes by the state because of abuse or neglect by their parents/caregivers. Needless to say, we were somewhat apprehensive for both days. For one, doing Improv for kids is tough, because unlike adults, who are pretty afraid of yelling things out, kids love to yell all the time, and it can be pretty easy to lose the audience. But more importantly than that, our job was going to bring laughter to kids that so far in their lives, they've experienced loss, and pain, beyond what most of us have experienced as adults. Don't misunderstand me, I wasn't scared of the thought of not getting laughs (because my jokes create silences a lot) for my own benefit, I was scared that we wouldn't be successful at creating smiles. Now, one of the games, which we call Uncle Jim's Storytime, involves 3 of us going outside, while the fourth staying in, and getting characters, a setting, and other details about the story. Then we come in, and as he tells each part, we assume the characters, and create the story. This will come in handy in a moment....
Well, we did the shows, and we got laughs, we had people thank us, and it was good.
Then today, I get an email from one of the other guys in the group. He was eating lunch at Chik-fil-a, and a little boy runs up to him at histable, and just stared at him for a few seconds. Then, the boy says, “Thanks for the story.” My friend says “excuse me?” the boy says again, “thanks for the story…. I saw you at camp and you told a funny story with a funny guy playing Frosty. That was the best day… thanks…”…. And then he runs off….

So, lets just say that I feel pretty good about the whole thing.
And no, I wasn't Frosty, we had frosty twice, and I was either Soldier Boy, or Barney, depending on the show he saw.

World of Lame

So, I was at the gym the other day, and while listening to my random music selections saved on my phone, there was a news story on cnn, or msnbc, or one of those, about Second Life. If you don't know about second life, it's an online world, where you can create a character, and.... well..... be there. It's pretty dumb, to be honest. Which was somewhat of a disappointment to me, since I tend to like most things computer. But this just wasn't interesting. There was no objective, nothing to gain. If I wanted a house, or a piece of land, I had to pay the in-game money for it... which I have to buy with real money. Fine, a game that costs money, I already have that with WoW, but at least in that world (of warcraft) there are objectives, there are things to do, and it's interesting. All I learned in my hour of trying out second life is that people don't actually want to chat, and that flying isn't actually cool, since it's a pain to control properly.
So, if anyone had wanted to check it all out, save your time... honest.
Go buy WoW, and play with me!