ow ow ow owwWWWW

You don't know pain until you've had a cat attempt to jump onto your lap while you're wearing boxers and a t-shirt, and the cat doesn't quite make it and is clinging to your unprotected thigh with three of her four skin-penetrating razor-sharp claw-paws. Love ya Tildy.

Meeeeeeoooowwww. Sllrrrp sllrrrp slllllrrrrrrp.

Lately I haven't been sleeping well. It's either a restless night or a too-early awakening. For those that know me, or know us, the culprit isn't who you might think. Little L has been sleeping through the night for a long, long time now. The only ones to blame are the bloody cats. Meowing obnoxiously in the middle of the night or cleaning themselves loudly just a few feet from my should-be-asleep head or scratching on a door. On the shower door, Tildy? Really? Come on! If it's not one cat, it's the other. Please, make it stop. I'd close the bedroom door, but we need it open in case L has a rare middle-of-the-night awakening. Plus, the cat(s) would then simply scratch on our door.

Plus one of the cats, the not-Tildy one, has a habit (a cute habit, some might say) of vomiting every time he eats. Yes, I've made the eating disorder jokes, but now it's just annoying. Super annoying. There's enough to deal with already with L and two large dogs and a bun in the oven, do we really need a vomiting cat? Why do we feed him, anyway? It just comes out whole onto the dining room/bedroom/hallway/kitchen floor.

Hey, anyone want a black cat? He's so purrfect and has so many cute habits. It'd be very hard to see him go, but please, TAKE HIM! TAKE HIM NOW! DO IT!

Not a New Kids song

Step by step.

Literally, when running with the dogs (49:14 Wednesday, 49:30 today).

Literally, when walking to work and/or walking home.

Figuratively, when eating healthier foods.

Figuratively, when doing basic exercises more often.

Step by step.









Ooh baby, you're always on my mind.

Name acronyms - acronames?

I have a niece whose first name starts with G, middle name E, last name M. Therefore, her name acronym (acroname) is GEM. Very nice. My wife and son and I recently travelled to Malaysia for a wedding of two friends. Cexylizzienegligee's brother has twin girls, whose first names start with C and O. The last name starts with W. So when discussing both girls together, it's easier to just say COW. The kicker is that they were born in the year of the cow!

While we were in Malaysia, our son turned one. The use of la/lah is common in speech and writing in Malaysia, and we used it ad nauseam. "Don't be kayu, lah!" "Don't think, just do it, lah!" It was just recently, about a month after our return from Malaysia, that I learned of COW, and it reminded me of GEM, and I thought of what our son's acroname is. It's LAA. If only our last name started with an H! But hey, LAA is the next best thing. As cexylizzienegligee said, considering he celebrated his first birthday in Malaysia, and has an acroname of LAA, he certainly seems to have an affinity for all thing Malaysian! As long as he doesn't bring home any durians, that's okay with me.

1 minute, 16 seconds

Created by Oatmeal

I ran

I went for a run yesterday and have no urge to document the time here. What's the point? I thought at first it would keep me motivated to run, and might come in handy if I wanted to see my improvements or my... declines? Deteriorations? But no, I just want to run. I want to get fit. More time being active and less time documenting it.

My book blog will be seeing more action, catch me there. More action there will mean less action on my error blog, where I was spending way too much time.

I spent a fortnight in Malaysia recently and had a great time. Betty & Lone had a beautiful wedding and were extremely generous and I miss them a lot.

Marathon Quest 250

Even after taking into account my lack of posts lately, I'm surprised I haven't posted about this yet. Especially considering it is running related. Martin Parnell of Alberta is running 250 marathons in 2010. He'll do a marathon a day for five consecutive days, and then take two days off, and repeat that 50 times. (Well, the 50th time will end with more than two days off, I'm sure.)

From the Marathon Quest 250 homepage:

Martin Parnell will attempt to run 250 marathons in 2010. His goal is to raise $250,000 for Right To Play.

Right To Play is an humanitarian organization that uses sport and play programs to improve health, develop life skills, and foster peace with children and communities in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the world.

Right To Play also works in Canadian communities to inspire children and support their right to grow and learn through physical activity. More than 4,500 schools in Canada use the Right To Play program.

To raise $250,000, Martin will run all 250 marathons between January 1st and December 31st 2010. He'll cover a distance of 10,550km or 6550miles, which is approximately the same distance as a run from Cochrane to Boston then west through the US to Vancouver and back to Cochrane.

Visit the site to see a video introduction, and then keep checking back to follow his progress. I encourage you to consider making a donation to Right To Play through his site. Today Parnell did his 13th marathon of the year; in -7C weather his time was 5 hours, 56 minutes, 33 seconds. Ha - that's nothing compared to my run of 49 minutes, 59 seconds in 12C weather.

Today's run time

I went for a run today, but today's post title is only Today's run time, not the usual Today's run route and time. Why? Because my runs are usually going to be the same route, and I'm tired of copying and pasting the route from previous posts. So from now on I'm only going to post the route if it's significantly different from the usual. Plus, I'm going to be posting more non-running stuff and can just post a one-liner run-time at the end of the posts. Today I felt like crap - felt as though each leg weighed 300lbs. But I fought through it and felt great at the end. Yay me.

Today's run time: 50 minutes, 5 seconds

Today's run route and time

Today's run route
From our front door, run south on the Trans Canada Trail in Coquitlam River Park, left to cross the pedestrian bridge near Patricia Ave, left to go north along the Trans Canada Trail / Coquitlam River, turn around at David Ave, retrace route in reverse to our front door.

Today's run time
50 minutes 57 seconds

A wet run is great fun. The dogs didn't notice any of the many herons.

We're number one, we're number one

It's now 2010 and the Olympics are nigh. Kudos & Kvetches in The Vancouver Courier posted the following back in November and it's taken me until now to post it here, but hey, at least I'm finally doing it:

As the province speeds headlong towards the 2010 Winter Olympics like a greased-up two-man luge, K&K is happy to report B.C.’s sacrifices, determination and winning attitude have started to pay off. According to the 2009 Child Poverty Report Card released Monday by First Call, a national child-advocacy group, B.C. has the highest child poverty rate in the country… for the sixth year in a row. In your face, Nunavat!

Of course, it’s not easy maintaining such consistent results, especially when B.C. is one of the most affluent provinces in the country, led by a government who voted to give its top 100 bureaucrats hefty wage increases last year, including Premier Gordon Campbell’s deputy minister, Jessica McDonald, who received a 43 per cent raise, pushing her salary from a paltry $243,936 to a more civilized $348,600. And let’s not forget that just two years prior, MLAs voted to give themselves a 29 per cent wage hike, and the premier a 54 per cent raise.

So how has B.C. managed to own the child poverty podium, despite such huge obstacles? Let’s start by giving a big shout out to the 156,000 kids around the province living in poverty. Without their sacrifice and dwindling resources thanks to constant cuts to social programs, B.C.’s dream of having the highest child poverty in the country would be just that… a silly dream. In short, their lack of options and poor diet make us stronger. Thank you, poor kids.

And let’s not forget the province’s steadfast refusal to increase the minimum wage, which was once the highest in the country but now secures the bottom spot, sitting at $8 an hour since 2001, to say nothing of the generous $6 “training wage” the B.C. Liberals introduced, presumably to dampen the sticker shock a princely sum like $8 an hour can cause.

Also, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention a recent article in the Georgia Straight that pointed out that B.C. Liberals—while slashing funding for mental health services, support for arts and culture and children’s sports—have shelled out nearly $1.5 million for 2010 Olympic tickets purchased by Crown corporations B.C. Hydro, ICBC and the B.C. Lottery Corporation, all at the expense of taxpayers. And “many of the tickets, including those for luxury suites in B.C. Place, GM Place and the Pacific Coliseum to watch coveted hockey and skating events, were for B.C. Liberal MLAs and cabinet ministers for the purposes of ‘Olympic community engagement and leveraging.’”

Then there’s the recently completed Vancouver Convention Centre, which was originally budgeted at $495 million, but ended up costing $883 million.

But the B.C. Liberals can’t take all the credit for the province’s gold medal performance in child poverty. Carole James and the NDP, despite initial protests, eventually accepted their “outrageous” 29 per cent wage hikes a few years back and have squandered every opportunity to defeat the government by putting its energy into opposing what it thinks are hot button issues such as gasoline taxes and now the HST.

Then, of course, there’s you, the majority of B.C. voters, who have either continually supported the government on its winning path of achieving the highest child poverty rate in the country for the past six years, or don’t bother voting at all. So take a moment and pat yourselves on the back. There’s plenty of blame to go around.

Here's a link to the original post.