Burlington, VT

Experimenting with the Canon's handy panoramic mode, and just sqeaking in under blogger's 8MB upload limit.

operation dinner out

notes to self

try:
momocho
russos
melt
red
mint cafe

return to:
lolita
players
lopez

Obligatory chill post

I seem to be the slowest among local bloggers to comment on our chilly weather. But, I haven't seen anyone else present their observations around Friday lunch-time in graphical form. The data are from a nearby PWS via wunderground, but match a few points from my garage-mounted sensor. In related news, I've been trying internet radio as background to housework and building towers out of oversized Lego. Aside from Car Talk this morning via the WCPN feed and the WGBH classical stream, I also have Kent State's Folk Alley channel and groove.monkeyradio.org [1] on my bookmarks list so far.

[1] Admittedly, I added that one before I even listened to it. But, I did keep it there after switching it on.

Blue

It's 9:30, and the nets have called Ohio for Obama. That'll do, pig. It's too early to shut down the laptop, so... landslide watch!

Trick, or treat

From David Kurtz at TPM:

There should be a support group for all those beleaguered progressives who over the years anxiously awaited elections in the futile hope that the polls showing their candidate behind would turn out to be wrong -- but who this year are fretting just as much that the polls showing their candidate ahead are wrong.

I plan to dress as a beleaguered progressive tonight for trick and/or treating. Julian has elected to go as a giraffe. Gordon will pretend to be a dog who's deathly afraid of children in costumes; tonight is right down there with independence day fireworks in his book.

Some photos are here. No photos of G, since cameras fall right behind fireworks, thunder and costumes on the scary list.

Cantaloupe

The first snowfall of the season, I pose. Noted through the windows of the CVBD Phoenix [1]: a place not quite home, not quite work, but that comes with a cup of yirgacheffe, a stack of Nature Cell Bio papers and an overrepresentation of Death Cab in the lift music rotation.

This weekend I was an invited speaker at a local meeting of medical physicists. This might be the first time I've given a talk to a group of which I'm not a member; I'm an instrumentation guy, and clinical radiation oncology folks comprised the audience. Although the subject matter was stuff I'm comfortable with in front of a white board for an hour, wearing a tie and standing at a podium somehow makes it nerve-wracking. Nonetheless, it all went well: their challenging questions were easy, the softball questions required clarification, and they had to smile and nod at my powerpoint drawings because they asked me to attend.

In addition to a nice discussion over lunch following the talks, I was treated to a drive through the easternmost part of Ohio and western bit of PA; the first half of the round-trip was completed before sunrise and in not-quite-icy rain, but the return revealed terrain molded by the Beaver and Ohio Rivers and glazed in peak late-October foliage.

[1] The link here is to a nice collection of blurbs about local history, a topic whose interest to me has only a weak space variance. Some updating attention would benefit the site, perhaps even a wiki-like implementation with review by the history department authorities that currently host it.

Run for the Cheetah 2008

A few Saturdays ago I attended the Run for the Cheetah, a 5k at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. The zoo is a fine place for a run; the entrance and savannah (and race start) are about 100' lower in elevation than the primate building and aquarium. The route, as we found out a few minutes before the starting whistle, would encompass two laps of the hill.

My memory of the race: beep, escape crowd, gradual uphill; monkeys! Left turn, winding path, giraffes! Past the flamingos, hang a right, big uphill. Tortoises, cheetahs, big downhill. Kangaroos lined up along a fence, snouts flopping side-to-side like tennis spectators. Lap; repeat. The attentive kangaroos made my day, and I enjoyed walking around the zoo afterward seeing the unusually attentive critters pre-opening-time.

Unless I'm mistaken, this is my first 5k running race. 23:07, a 7:27/mi pace averaged over this elevation profile.
Given the coincident start of the fall semester, this concludes the bulk of my 2008 training as well, for a total of about 700 miles of cycling, 600 miles on foot and 10 miles in the water. Time (no time?) for some mild strength training and occasional anti-stress running before rebuilding a winter base.