Twas The Night Before Twisted Ankle
And I am unprepared on many levels. It’s bad enough that I know that I’ve not trained enough between the ING Half Marathon and now, but I’ve also haphazardly packed my camping gear so I am not 100% sure that I have everything I need.
Read Along With Me
Today’s passage from Notes To Myself.
The need to “build myself up” is probably what makes me, Paul, etc., talk excessively. The fear that I’m not much prompts me on because my experience tells me that in the past the right words have wowed people — “If I can just say the right words these people will like me.”
To all who have helped me — Thanks.
I Am More Than Just A Sports Encyclopedia
Normally my participation in Team Trivia is limited to sports questions and occasionally a music question. Rarely am I called upon to supply a movie answer (with good reason since I average seeing about one movie a year in the theaters), that job usually falls upon the shoulders of Bill or Vandy Beth.
Last night “Meet The Hashers” came one question away from scoring a perfect round. Going into the final question we possessed a three-point lead and then were asked this “Of the movies that have won a Best Picture Oscar, only two have had their plot occur in Los Angeles. Name one of those two.” Bill jotted down a couple of guesses, Vandy Beth a couple of more, and I almost-jokingly wrote down “Crash” thinking that one of those two would have written it down as well. It turns out that they hadn’t, we correctly turned in “Crash” as our answer, and won the battle.
As an aside for fans of Lagunatis Brewing Company’s CENSORED Ale — like many places around Atlanta (or Decatur I guess in this case) Raging Burrito has it on tap, and last night my pint cost me a measly $2.95.
ITP Flickr Pic
From last Saturday’s stroll around Atlanta Botanical Garden.
I like the graphical nature of my shot. The color of the flower is nice, and I am alway intrigued buy the fanciful patterns found in nature.
File Under: “Are You Serious?”
For way too long I’ve let BellSouth / AT&T reach into my pocket and take money. When I connected my phone line (and for the purposes of this argument consider I still need a landline) I was a new homeowner and consented to their $5.95/month “Inside Wiring Plan.” This plan is a unregulated charge so over time it has crept to its current price of $7.55/month and I’ve had enough. Further I’ve finally realized that if anything goes wrong with my phone wiring “inside the house” I have the skills to fix it.
Yesterday I tried to cancel this “feature” using BellSouth’s website. Not surprisingly, they make this task (nearly?) impossible as I could find no way to do it. If looks as if I am going to have to call them to cancel this “feature.” Why am I so sure that they BellSouth will be experiencing “higher than normal call volumes” no matter when I call and will have to wait on hold for a long time just to talk to someone? Dangen!
Chumby Update
In yesterday’s comments Andrew asked how the Chumby was doing.
My experience with my Chumby has been what I expected and frustrating at the same time. As platforms go Chumby is fairly rock-solid, which you’d expect because it’s a Linux-based device. I’ve never had to reboot it (yet) and the only times it’s been off is when the power went out for a while. Upon turning the device on it recaptures the necessary settings and current date and time and is running again.
The widgets for the device are still in their infancy. For example, the baseball scoreboard widget that I have loaded could be extremely useful if it would only go out and fetch the latest data correctly. Also I attempted to load a Twitter widget but could never get it configured correctly.
In my opinion the music interface is clunky. Because my internet access point is far away from Chumby the connection goes in and out so I’ve connected an old iPod to one of the USB ports. There is no granularity for picking music on the iPod which, given the Chumby interface is no less limited than the iPod’s, confuses me. I’ve yet to find a way to play music for a certain length of time so that it will shut off after I go to sleep.
There are only two brightness settings for the Chumby’s display — bright and not-so-bright; why a variable slider wasn’t implemented confuses me.
My final concern with Chumby is that they’ve gotten around to selling advertisements and inserting them into my content stream. The folks at Chumby warn you this is going to happen as a “way to keep the service free” but I envision that this could get out of hand as I have no way of limiting the number, or the amount of time each displays on my Chumby screen. I’d rather pay a nominal fee to have total control, especially since the device itself wasn’t subsidized in any manner.
If You Are Not Camping With Me This Weekend You Are Missing Out
First, I will be making my first attempt to set up my new tent “in the wild.” Can you say “Cheap Entertainment.”? I knew you could.
Tomorrow night I will be using all of my culinary skills to make a campground jambalaya. And as a bonus I promise to add no part of my own appendages into the dish! Yummo!
My goal for the remainder of the year is to camp at least one weekend a month in State Park in Georgia or one of its surrounding states. Even with the price of gas you can consider it to be cheap entertainment.
And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Current Mood – okay
Current Music – Sirius Satellite Radio, Channel 26 playing Flaming Lips — “Do You Realize??”
Website Of The Day – During my travels I will certainly be consulting Roadside America to make sure I don’t miss out on anything cool. You can be assured that I’ll be stopping to take photos if I find anything interesting.
Exercise (b)Log – nothing
Monthly Foot Mileage – 12 miles
Monthly Wheel Mileage – 25 miles
Mode Of Transportation To Work – My car
Monthly Marta Rides – 13
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 46 (46)
May Goals
1) Run no fewer than 75 miles
2) Ride no fewer than 100 road miles
3) Ride Marta no fewer than ten times (five round-trips)
4) Read at least one book
5) Make my bed every day
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
My guess is if you forget anything someone (me?) will have you covered.
It looks like we aren’t leaving until 3??? I’ll probably miss the whole ‘tent set-up’ show.
Your loss.
Of course there really is no estimation on how long it will take me. And the longer it does the more entertaining it will be.
Good luck this weekend, Paulie! Don’t break a leg!
What was the other movie beside “Crash?”
What I don’t get a good luck? You want me to break a leg Stacy???
Geez…. I’m off to go cry in the corner…
You had to ask that, didn’t you. I don’t remember because I was so full of amazement that my answer helped our team win.
Thanks. I’ll be running/walking with my mantra “No injury greater than a beer can fix.”
I’m sure your new tent will go up with out a hitch.
It is too bad we can’t be there.
And, since you don’t have a partner (like me) to “help” – you won’t have the full entertainment package that Allan & I have provided in the past. REI helped us out by re-stringing the bungies in the poles, so the battle of the tent doesn’t happen like it used to.
It isn’t a state park, but in October a bunch of us are going camping at Davidson River campground, in the Pisgah National Forest and near Dupont State Forest (Brevard, NC)….. if you want to add that to your list. It is only about 3 hours away, and even if you don’t want to ride the mountain bike, you can hike to a bunch of waterfalls.
@Barb: I’ll keep it in mind. Currently I have a weekend in Tybee scheduled with Cheese Nips and Screams for the annual Pirate Fest. ARRRRR!
note to self: must look for cabin/condo rental
@Martha: We don’t have to worry about bone breakage as that’s Betsy’s forte. You have the corner on the massive bruising market so we all expect big (black and blue) things out of you on Monday.
The challenge is finding someone will to take the picture for me.
Ah at least I have a goal for the weekend, but it just wont be the same without PE there to give it a good slap.
Oh yeah – 3rd weekend in October (10/17-19). Anyone is invited, so you readers that are non-wheelhoppers are welcome as well. Debbie – Dupont has lots of trails that are mainly horse trails (we’ve tried to bike them, and I love horses, but they do tear up a trail)
Pirate Fest is a blast I’ve heard, I haven’t been, but some Parrothead friends have, you need to get a costume!!!
Oh gosh, no, Laura! I just know Paulie’s klutzier than you….
Okay, I hope YOU don’t break a leg either! May there be NO bones broken this weekend by all! 
Pirate Fest is the 10th-12th…arrrr! Is it too soon to start talking like a pirate?
Good luck at the twisted ankle everybody! I wish we were going to be there for the Paulie tent meltdown, somebody bring a video camera!
Trick loves this race so I’m sure we will be there next year.
It’s too bad the Chumby is giving you problems, I think it’s an awesome concept. I wanted to get one too but I learned long ago that it’s not always good to chase technology. I have been screwed a few times being an early adopter. I’ll wait for a couple revisions before picking one up
> Trick loves this race so I’m sure we will be there next year.
Because she won her age group or something like that or because she kicked my ass big time? (The latter is not that hard to do btw)
I don’t regret buying the Chumby, it’s still geeky cool.
>somebody bring a video camera
Hey Paulie, don’t you have a new video camera? I haven’t seen anything from it yet. Do you have a tripod for it…that way I can watch it when I finally get there.
I have a new video camera and a tripod on which it would fit. Sadly for everyone else neither were on the “Things To Pack” list so they are not with me.
Paulie,
I’m sure “The Captain’s Lady” is available for your weekend in Tybee. It doesn’t get much better than that!
HA!
I should have asked MC if she still had the key that she forgot to give me when we checked out.
Nice pix. Very timely as well given the upcoming Georgia O’Keefe exhibit. Good luck tomorrow – I’m bailing out unfortunately (too much family stuff to do) but maybe next year. As for the movie, did L.A. Confidential or Chinatown win best Oscar?
Bummer Brenan. You should try next year, it’s a fun time as long as you only run the half marathon.
I think both were potential Meet The Hasher answers. Checking IMDB I see that neither of those won the Oscar for “Best Picture”.
i think it is Million Dollar Baby (thanks to my co-worker) – is that right?
that’s it!
Please don’t give Debbie any options on that weekend- that would just so happen to be the Stone Mountain Highland Games… I have to just about hog tie her as it is.
Trick finished right on my heels that second year of Twisted Ankle… a much hotter year that the first, which insured my run sucked. Feeling like I had been run over, I went back to camp and drown my sorrows. She shows up later with her first place award and MY third place… my one and only time I got hardware. Go figure.
I hope everyone has a great time!
-FP
sorry Debbie – Steve says you aren’t invited to NC with us……
but, but, but don’t I get a vote!?! There was nothing in the vows about Stone Mountain Highland Games attendance.
The third weekend in October is PERFECT hiking, riding, biking, camping weather, dammit.
That pic looks exactly like a Georgia O’Keefe painting! Gorgeous. Sheesh. Great minds think alike Squid.
This is my first time reading your blog Paulie. It reminds me of Bridget Jones’ Diary —
Date: May 18 Weight: 170 Miles: 13 Beers: 17
Resolutions: make bed every day, always put last night’s panties in hamper.
Find sensible girlfriend and avoid the following: perverts, fuckwits, etc. etc.
Congratulations on your vastly improved time.
I TOLD you when you and Martha were passing me (as usual) in front of Target that YOU TWO WANKERS ARE FASTER THAN YOU THINK.