Monday, November 17, 2008
Cross 26.2 off my bucket list
Pretty slick look with the headband huh? 30,000 runners and I did not see a single normal headband like mine. Yeah, that's right, I'm a trailblazer. Yeah... 
Friday, September 26, 2008
Picked Sures
In case you missed it, read the title to this post again faster. Now read it out loud again, fast. Just read the words fast and out loud and don't think about what they mean. You know, Mad Gab style. Now try this one:Q: Water hue luck king hat?
A: Picked sures off am ill leigh.
This is fun.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Have YOU ever been referenced in a poem? I have. I am famous!
I believe we should all Google ourselves periodically. Yes, I realize how funny sounding that statement is, but let's focus here folks. It is a big wide world on the world wide web, and we are all on it with increasing frequency and often transparency. This phenomenon presents some fascinating opportunities to connect, communicate, learn, and experience the world in a way that was never available before our time. However, it presents some challenges and real risks as well. Anyone looking to hire you, or who has just met you, or is thinking about letting his kids play with yours, or remembers you in a nostalgic moment can hop online and within seconds pull up what could amount to a substantial bit of information about you (for better or for worse).
So I Googled myself the other day, as I am wont to do, just to be sure there was nothing too incriminating out there. Not that there even could be unless it was completely false. I am, after all, an angel and always have been. Lately though, every time I've Googled myself, the results returned are the same: a Linkedin profile, my race time from the Moonlight Margarita Run last month, and a random link or two to some accounting projects while in school. But this last time there was something new! How exciting...
Here's what I found: a poem, by an old classmate from Doherty who, I discovered (by Googling her), is a prolific poet and writer. I've copied the entire poem and posted link below, adding the emphasis where I appear:
4/16/2008 1:40:28 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
I posted one already--a more William Carlos Williams inspired poem. But I think this is the one I really wanted to write, it just took longer to pull it out!
Wrongfully Accused
Perhaps it was because I
was a lowly high school student—
not, a you were, a grown-up
with a degree—that you couldn’t say
the two words due me.
You had plenty of other words, cheater, liar, willful,
(all thrown out in private, after class,
but everyone heard them clearly.)
Yet when truth slapped you upside your head (before Brady Fitzwater,
who so gallantly offered, had his chance)
you only said “You’re off the hook,”
as if I were a fish, stupid enough
to bite your line.
You retired the next year
and I like to think your
quitting had something to do
with the weight those two little words
hold over the ones
who refuse to release them.
-Sara Diane Doyle
I was not sure what to make of the poem at first, and indeed am still not entirely sure. Clearly I was part of an experience in some way that left a lasting impact on this former classmate of mine. So much so, that she is writing and posting poems about it more than 10 years after the fact. I do remember Sara, and did have classes with her, and I think I probably even know the specific teacher who is the main subject of this poem (as may some of my siblings-anyone have a guess?). I do not recall the event she is writing about, but for some reason found this poem amusing on many levels. I do not entirely understand it-and perhaps, Sara, if this post comes up while Googling yourself you would be willing to discuss your poem with me-but it is well written and it made me feel, just for a moment, as if I were literally sitting back in that classroom, at that desk, at Doherty years ago. That was a neat, in a strange way, so thank you, Sara, for that.
To my knowledge this is the first and only original work I am in that I was not directly involved in producing myself. And for some reason that just fascinates me. Thanks, Al, for bringing us the www. And because I know you read my blog, I ask that for all of our sakes you please zip it about global warming. It is tired already coming from you.
So I Googled myself the other day, as I am wont to do, just to be sure there was nothing too incriminating out there. Not that there even could be unless it was completely false. I am, after all, an angel and always have been. Lately though, every time I've Googled myself, the results returned are the same: a Linkedin profile, my race time from the Moonlight Margarita Run last month, and a random link or two to some accounting projects while in school. But this last time there was something new! How exciting...
Here's what I found: a poem, by an old classmate from Doherty who, I discovered (by Googling her), is a prolific poet and writer. I've copied the entire poem and posted link below, adding the emphasis where I appear:
4/16/2008 1:40:28 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
I posted one already--a more William Carlos Williams inspired poem. But I think this is the one I really wanted to write, it just took longer to pull it out!
Wrongfully Accused
Perhaps it was because I
was a lowly high school student—
not, a you were, a grown-up
with a degree—that you couldn’t say
the two words due me.
You had plenty of other words, cheater, liar, willful,
(all thrown out in private, after class,
but everyone heard them clearly.)
Yet when truth slapped you upside your head (before Brady Fitzwater,
who so gallantly offered, had his chance)
you only said “You’re off the hook,”
as if I were a fish, stupid enough
to bite your line.
You retired the next year
and I like to think your
quitting had something to do
with the weight those two little words
hold over the ones
who refuse to release them.
-Sara Diane Doyle
I was not sure what to make of the poem at first, and indeed am still not entirely sure. Clearly I was part of an experience in some way that left a lasting impact on this former classmate of mine. So much so, that she is writing and posting poems about it more than 10 years after the fact. I do remember Sara, and did have classes with her, and I think I probably even know the specific teacher who is the main subject of this poem (as may some of my siblings-anyone have a guess?). I do not recall the event she is writing about, but for some reason found this poem amusing on many levels. I do not entirely understand it-and perhaps, Sara, if this post comes up while Googling yourself you would be willing to discuss your poem with me-but it is well written and it made me feel, just for a moment, as if I were literally sitting back in that classroom, at that desk, at Doherty years ago. That was a neat, in a strange way, so thank you, Sara, for that.
To my knowledge this is the first and only original work I am in that I was not directly involved in producing myself. And for some reason that just fascinates me. Thanks, Al, for bringing us the www. And because I know you read my blog, I ask that for all of our sakes you please zip it about global warming. It is tired already coming from you.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Conversations with 3 year olds
ACT I
SCENE I. Fitzwater living room. Daddy (played by Bradach Fitzwater) takes a peanut butter M&M hidden in his hands to Bair's (played by Bair Fitzwater) ear, setting up the ensuing magic trick.
DADDY (grasping the M&M by Bair's ear): Whoa! Bair, what is this in your ear?
BAIR (wide-eyed and excited): What is it, Daddy?
DADDY (pulling the M&M from Bair's ear while making a popping sound): Oh my goodness! It is a peanut butter M&M!
BAIR: Yeah! I like that!
DADDY: What on earth was a peanut butter M&M doing in your ear?
BAIR: Well, um, you know...I was just saving it.
DADDY: Oh. Really?
BAIR: Yes. For a long day.
SCENE I. Fitzwater living room. Daddy (played by Bradach Fitzwater) takes a peanut butter M&M hidden in his hands to Bair's (played by Bair Fitzwater) ear, setting up the ensuing magic trick.
DADDY (grasping the M&M by Bair's ear): Whoa! Bair, what is this in your ear?
BAIR (wide-eyed and excited): What is it, Daddy?
DADDY (pulling the M&M from Bair's ear while making a popping sound): Oh my goodness! It is a peanut butter M&M!
BAIR: Yeah! I like that!
DADDY: What on earth was a peanut butter M&M doing in your ear?
BAIR: Well, um, you know...I was just saving it.
DADDY: Oh. Really?
BAIR: Yes. For a long day.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Digging through some old stuff this weekend we found each of Bair & Cal's little beanie caps they received as a 'welcome to the world' present from the hospital saff at each of their respective births. B & C wanted to try them on to see if they still fit. Their heads have indeed grown since then, but I must say: they wear the caps well!
Sunday, May 18, 2008
MUDDY BUDDY
May 18, 2008 marks a great day in Central Texas. One of the few, the proud, the select fair cities that play host to the cultural phenomenon sweeping this heaven kissed nation: the Muddy Buddy!!! Not surprisingly, Catherine (hereafter referred to as "CAT" and/or "The Machine" was there. Two teams from Fitness 19 went head to head, straight into the belly of the beast (see mud pit below). The first team, the Coffee Chuggers, featured Kelly (Gym Operations) and Cat (Personal Trainer) with the challengers from the second team Dirty Laundry, including James (Gym Manager) and Ken (Personal Trainer). It was all smiles & dirty laundry in the end as you can see here, but let's go back and see how it really unfolded.
Bair and Cal, the fiercest and most critical Muddy Buddy spectators in all of the Texas Hill Country eagerly awaited the teams to see who would impress and who shouldn't have gotten out of bed. Here, Bair snickers at a team clearly out of their element. "Hacks" he says.
"Seriously! Bunch of circus animals!" agrees Cal before non-chalantly taking another stoke on his thumb to emphasize how un-impressed he had been with the field thus far.
Then finally, out of the blue, Cat comes pawing around the hill and immediately spots the camera (as any intensely focused athlete in 'the Zone' would have.) "Yeah BABY!!" she snarls. Bring on the mud!
MUDD!!!! If you haven't heard of the Muddy Buddy (perhaps your city is not cool enough to be on the prestigious tour that includes the select few cities of Orlando, Austin, San Jose, Atlanta, Richmond, Chicago, Boulder, Dallas, and Los Angeles) consists of a 6-7 mile course of alternating bike/run/and obstacles, and finishes with the grand-daddy of them all, the beast itself, the Mud Pit:
Kelly's freestyle is no match for The Mud, and the Machine plows on through, undaunted, and no stranger to The Mud.
Cat emerges from The Mud first, cleaner than when she went in, and stronger too! She screams "Grrrrrr!!!!"
How sweet; that is teamwork at its finest. Nothing says "I got your back Teamie" like a mud-drenched cuddle as you slosh towards the finish line. Cat & Kelly smell blood and they're going for the kill.
In the end, it was Cat & Kelly (AKA Coffee Chuggers) emerging victorious over James & Ken (Dirty Laundry), by an impressively sloppy 2 minutes! Its back to the drawing board, back to the gym, and back to the dirty laundry for the men, while the ladies revel in their Mud.
Who's driving home?
Friday, March 28, 2008
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