The economy is still ok

You hear stories about how people are cutting back on their non-critical purchases. It seems to be showing up in some of the market statistics, but I'm jut not buying it.

On election day Starbucks was offering a free tall cup of coffee to anyone who said they voted. (Tall, of course, is the smallest size.) I was at a store nearby so I went in for my cup. The place was busy. No surprise. The surprise came as I watched everyone get to the cashier and order the normal mix of $3-5 beverages.

Not only do we have people still lining up in the middle of the afternoon to pay $4 for a fluffy coffee, they will do it even when a normal coffee is free. The economy must not be too bad. Yet.

What a nice day

First, the elections. I am very happy that Barack won last night. He was my choice as the best candidate, but I am also proud that the US would actually elect a black man as president. It wasn't that long ago that blacks had their own bathrooms and were forced to sit in the back of the bus. We do a lot of stupid things in this country. It's nice to see we can make progress at the same time.



Also very happy to see Elizabeth Dole lose. I thought she was useless for NC as a senator. Right up there with John "the useless cheater" Edwards. I thought she was a poor senator to start with, but when she started running attack ads questioning her opponents religiousness (not a word?), I think she lost a lot of support. I was really hoping she would fall.



And not quite as important, but still exciting, is this mornings picture from Deer Valley's Empire Lodge. I'm pretty sure this is how it is supposed to look.



Interesting tidbit: This is just a few hundred yards from where they are building the new high-end Montage Hotel. A few weeks ago, they had to stop construction because they uncovered a store of 19th century dynamite used for silver mining. Seems there was over a dozen cases of very old explosive. Very lucky they didn't set it off with the heavy equipment. It was safely removed and work has restarted.

Golf for the ego

A big thanks to Darrell Baber, my college roommate, apartment roommate and best man at our wedding. Darrell, Jim Saunders and I went out to golf this weekend. Darrell suggested a course just down the road from me that I had never played, Brevofield Golf Course.

Where the hell has this place been all my life? What a great place for your ego! The course is short and open. The greens are flat and mostly easy. I was playing my normal mediocre self and managed to shoot an 89. This is great! I hope to get back there again before returning to Utah.

Oh yeah, it's also cheap.

Non-election stuff on election day

First, it is finally snowing again in Park City. It's about damn time. They've been having record heat for the past few weeks. Think cold. Think snow. Steve wants to ski!!



Next, you know how the American car companies took such a beating for a decade or two because the foreign cars were built better? Now they hold their own quite nicely in all the quality surveys. One little irony. We have a Ford Explorer with over 100,000 miles on it, some of which have been dragging a boat that was well beyond the towing capacity. What piece on the truck holds up better than any other? The engine? The drive train?



Try the "check engine" light. That little bugger has been on every second the truck is running for the past 3 or 4 years. I keep expecting it to finally die an stop bugging me. And for you naggers, yes, I do check the engine every month or so. It's always there. Nice reminder though.

Happy Halloween!!

Save the cheerleader, save the economy

OK. The title was just for the handful of people that watch Heroes.

How can you help the economy? Don't get sick. Sick days cost the US gobs of money. If you haven't had your flu shot, get it soon. No shortages and they still think they have a fairly good shot this year. Julie got hers a few weeks ago and I got mine today.

An update for NC early voting: as of this morning, the early vote count is 1,627,792. I don't know about you, but I think this is awesome. Get out and vote! Next Tuesday is likely to have some huge lines and I hate the idea of people not voting because of the lines. Even those voting for the geezer/dingbat ticket should go vote.

Spiffin up the kitchen

We wanted to make our kitchen newer and nicer without spending a fortune or having a major remodel. Our house is 16 years old and the appliances were going. The counter tops were a mix of white tile and white formica. I hated both.

So, we took off the old counter tops and tore off the back splash. We pulled the appliances (except the fridge) but left all our nice cherry cabinets. Here is the chef.



We replaced our dishwasher, microwave and oven. The dishwasher isn't terribly exciting. The microwave is definitely a step up from what we had, but the cool new thing is the oven. Julie wanted a real double oven, but we don't have the room. She found a double oven in a single space. The top part is small, heats quickly, and is great for pizzas, appetizers, broiling things, ... The bottom is a full sized oven. The only thing you lose is the drawer for pans. Very nice!



This gives a better look at the granite. We both love the mix of colors.



I should have taken a before picture for comparison. The improvement is dramatic. Yeah!

More cool iPhone stuff

• For you runners, use RunKeeper. It uses the GPS in the latest iPhone to track your run, pace, time, ... It uploads it to a web site where you can see it on Google Maps. Great for tracking distance on runs.
• For you skiers, either SkiUtah or SnowReports to get new snow totals.
• For couch spuds, i.TV to give you a nice listing of what's on for your particular location and service.
• For old style gamers, Missle Command. It is just like the old game and plays well on the iPhone.

Yes, my iPhone is now well beyond just a phone. Email. Music. GPS. Midgit web browser. Video game.

Inspiration and motivation for perspiration

When we were in Chicago last week, I had a number of things happen to inspire my running.

• First, I met Kelley, one of the Benson's friends from California. She runs marathons and helps train people getting ready to try one. She told me about how she qualified for the Boston Marathon and what an incredible experience it was. 500,000 cheering spectators. 25,000 runners. Damn! How cool would that be? The bad news is that I would have to run a 3 hour 20 minute marathon to qualify.
  
• Then I saw a bunch of people with race numbers on. They had been competing in the Men's Health Urbanathlon. It is a race (about 10 miles) mixed in with urban obstacles: crawl through culvert pipe, climb over jersey barriers, ... It sounds like a blast. Check out http://www.menshealthurbanathlon.com/
• Getting more psyched, I checked out the Boston Marathon web page. Turns out that by getting older, I bought an extra 10 minutes. I can now qualify in 3:30. That extra 10 minutes means a lot.
• Then I read the small print and found *An additional 59 seconds will be accepted for each age group time standard. For example, a net time of 3:50:59 will be accepted for a 42-year-old woman. This buys me another 59 seconds!

So now what? Running Boston is a bit of a sick dream, especially with my knees. Then again, I am probably more likely to accomplish this than my 100 push up plan. So I'll try and use this for inspiration.

Motivation for me may be a bit different than it is for most people. I actually like to run. I think I like the runner's high you get from longer runs. My issue is motivating my skinny little legs to push the rest of me at something more than a crawl. Endurance, sure. Speed, not so much. A 3:30 marathon is 8 minute miles for 26 miles. My normal concern as I run down the highway is that someone will call the DOT and ask that they come remove the dead animal from the roadside. Run fast enough and they don't mistake you for a dead animal.

My first step in this insanity is to run Raleigh's Old Reliable Run on November 16th. It's a 10k (6.21 miles), which isn't too much of a worry. The hard part is to run it at the 8 minute mile pace. I figure if I can do it for a 10k, all I need to do for a marathon is keep running for another 20 miles. Sounds reasonable.

I've read a bit about training programs and they say that for a 10k, you want to be doing 20-25 miles per week, with a 2 long days, 3 short days, one cross training, and one rest. I've gotten 38 miles in the last five weeks, so I think I'm good, but I didn't actually work through all the math.

Wish me luck.

Vote early. Vote often.

North Carolina is one of the states that lets you vote early. We have lots of polling places open every day and because of the high demand, they have opened more. After seeing an amazing count of how many people were voting early, I went off to the web to find more information.

I found an early elections site run by a George Mason professor. So far, over 900,000 people in NC have voted! We still have 10 days to go before the actual elections. For a state with 6 million registered voters, many of whom don't normally vote, this is pretty awesome.

No matter who you want to win (Obama), it is nice to finally see the U.S. actually care who wins.