Training:
40 minutes on the trainer. Watched the beginning of stage 17 of the 2006 TDF. The one where Landis obliterates the field after blowing up the day before.
Eating:
Breakfast: piece of fruit. vitamin water. soft pretzel.
Lunch: PB sandwich. pretzels. Tall glass of lemonade.
Snack: granola bar. 2 coffees. Soft pretzel. vitamin water.
Dinner: salad. pasta.
Desert:Ice Cream.
Yesterday, 10-26:No training. Eating: Lets say I didn’t hold back. And leave it at that.
Training: 60 miles on the Tri-State ride. Valley Forge and back. Ugly climb on the way out to the park. I blew up pretty bad. Probably because I didn’t so much eat breakfast pre-ride. Also had 2 beers last night. For the first time in maybe a month? month in a half. I just don’t drink much.
Eating:Yes!
Breakfast: an apple. Some gatorade on the ride(home made gatorade: 1 cup OJ, 1 scoop sugar, 1 tbspoon salt, 1/2 koolaid flavor packet, and add water).
Lunch:Pancakes, bacon, 2 decafe coffees, 2 glasses of water. half a pear.
Snack: A smoothie from Orange Julius. Long story.
Dinner: Homemade Pizza w extra sliced tomato.
Snack: another pear.
Eating? Yes.
bfast: OJ, Cheerios.
lunch:dumplings. apple. apple cider.
Snack:another apple(fujis very hard. very juicy.) rice crispy treat.
Snack II: vitamin water. pretzel.
Dinner: 3 pieces of lasagna
Snack 3: Rice crispy treat. apple.
Committing to write a little something every day is not east. Anyway, Here is a short round up of stuff since my last post:
Training:
Sunday, 10-20: 65 miles mostly with Tri-State Velo.
Monday, 10-21: 30 minutes on the trainer, listening to Sugar’s Copper Blue.
Tuesday, 10-22, Wednesday, 10-23: Nothing.
Thursday, 10-23: 45 minutes on the trainer. Listening to The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America.
Eating:
Yeah, I didn’t so much keep track.
Today:
Breakfast: Decafe coffee, apple.
Snack:coffee, granola bar
Lunch: 2 slices of pizza. tall glass of Sprite 
Snack: Lemonade mixed w water. popcorn. Some pretzels.
Dinner: Turkey pot pie. apple cider. apple for desert.
The mention of John Berryman from this song was bugging me. So I looked it up on wikipedia. He was an American Poet who committed suicide by jumping off the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Lyrics:
The Devil and John Berryman took a walk together
They ended up on Washington talking to the river
He said “I surrounded myself with doctors and deep thinkers
But big heads with soft bodies make for lousy lovers”.
There was that night that we thought that John Berryman could fly.
But he didn’t so he died.
She said “you’re pretty good with words but words won’t save your life”
And they didn’t so he died.
So I got a call from an opinion polling firm on sunday night. I spoke with 2 employees of the Western Watts company of (according to my caller ID, tele:9282683060.) Flagstaff Arizona.
I’ll admit that I knew pretty much immediately that I was getting push polled. I don’t know a solitary soul in Arizona and I had a recorded message call a few days prior from the McCain campaign inviting me a rally at the Constitution center.
For whatever reason, my household must be ID’d as potential swing voters. Which potentially means that whoever is doing the voter profiling and segment construction for PA voters for the McCain campaign maybe needs to get fired.
On the other hand, we live in a very working class area, and all of our local elected officials are republicans. So maybe not.
Anyway, instead of hanging up, I figured getting push polled could be educational. And maybe good for a blog post, but I’ll leave that up to you.
My phone mic from college is an ancient memory, so here is what I remember of the call:
I was asked a series of demogrpahic questions. age, family income, highest education level completed, etc.
I was asked if I had seen various ads by the McCain campaign and the Obama campaign. The first couple I had seen or heard.
Then things started going the wrong way.(or right way depending on your perspective.)
The format for answers were typically:
More likely, less likely, no different.
Q:If you saw an ad in the National Journal, stating that Barack Obama was going to need to raise 1 trillion dollars in new taxes in order to pay for his proposed programs, how would this effect your vote?
There were several variations on this question, all rotating around the point that Obama plans to raise levy 1 trillion dollars in new taxes. including:
Q:If you saw an ad where Barack Obama said that he thought Joe the Plumber’s wealth should be ’spread around’ (or somesuch) would this make you more likely, less likley or have no effect on your vote?
Side note: I’d love to know if the script this woman read the questions from changed based on my household income. I didn’t think to ask that. I did stop the poll at one point to ask her if she knew who was paying for her to call me that night. She said she did not, and immediately transferred me to her manager, a guy named ‘Mr. Reese’.
Mr. Reese claimed he couldn’t tell me who had paid the contract to make the call. He said he didn’t know. I politely persisted in asking him for about 5 minutes until he told me that the contract was under something called ‘Target State Tracking’, a term so massively generic that googling it later got me nowhere.
I finished the poll after speaking with him. There was a question about whether I had heard about Rep. Murtha calling Western PA voters racist. And another one in which I was asked, True or False, that I had heard neighbors say that they thought other folks in my nieghborhood would not vote for Barack Obama because he was black.
Creepy and weird.
So, in summary: I got a call from someone asking my opinion, but instead of really being asked opinions, I was being given McCain campaign talking points about how Obama is going to raise my taxes.
They may have been trying to take the temperature of the area re:race as a voting factor, or maybe spreading fud about Obama’s viability as a candidate. See also the Bradley Effect.
Classic push polling.
Training: None. Watched a Cross race. Hung out with Graham.
Eating:
Breakfast: banana. pretzel. Vitamin water. Orange Juice.
Lunch: eh. not really. grazed on some graham crackers and shared a banana with Graham.
Snack: Home made rice crispy treat.
Dinner: Ate 3/4s of a home made pizza w extra sliced tomatos and onions. no desert.
Was busy finishing a book yesterday. Didn’t get a chance to write. Didn’t do much anyway.
Training: nothing.
Eating:
Breakfast: bannana, vitamin water, pretzel. coffee.
Lunch: 2 slices of pizza. Lemonade.
Snack:bag of popcorn.
Dinner: Chicken Stir Fry.(late no after dinner snack.)
Today:
Training: 30 minute run at lunch.
Eating: Vitamin water, banana, pretzel, glass of OJ 2 cups of coffee thru morning.
Lunch: 2 PB sandwich. Popcorn. lemonade.
Snack: Granola bar. Pretzel. Vitamin water.
Dinner: Lasagna.
Earlier this week, I stumbled upon this article on digg. Short summary: Ridley Scott is making his first sci-fi movie since Blade Runner and Alien, based on the Joe Haldeman Book, The Forever War. This was the movie he was gonna make after Blade Runner, but something happened with the rights to the book and the project was shelved.
Alien and Blade Runner are, for my money, the two best sci fi movies ever made, so I looked at the plot summary for the novel on wikipedia and decided I wanted to read it soonish.
Funny thing happened when the book showed up(S got it from the Library for me) and I started reading. Halfway thru the first paragrpah, I realized that I had already begun reading it…almost 25 years ago.
The first part of this book was published in Analog Science Fiction mag. And then republished in a compilation of short stories that my father bought for me at Encore Books when I was 10.
It was a very weird feeling, realizing after the first 30 pages, I was picking up on a story I had started over 2 decades ago. Weirder still to realize that my parents had let me (unwittingly) read a book about a military unit whose discipline was based partially on weed smoking and fornicating.
Anyway, seems like it will make for a good movie. Its probably as thoughtful about war as alien was about Corporatism.
I should not at this time my current weight: 181 when I woke up this morning. I guess I’ll weigh myself on wednesdays from here on out.
Work: None.
Eat:
Breakfast: 2 pretzels, vitamin water, pear.
1 cup of coffee.
Lunch: 2 slices of pizza. large lemonade
Snack: Bag of popcorn. Lemonade.
Large glass of water.
Dinner: Chicken burrito. Chips and Guac. 2 Lemonades.
