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jimsjournal

Running into October -- 10/04/10



Last week just zipped by -- I was very busy -- and then Friday came -- and Nancy and I tuned in HBO to watch that George Clooney movie from last year: Up in the Air. We both enjoyed it.

Then on Saturday I had to dash up to Providence to a class I was taking at RISD. This was a six hour class about doing voice-overs. Some of the people were taking it because they wanted to do voice-overs professionally. I was taking it partly just for fun and partly because I am involved in doing some interview-type podcasts at work and I was looking for any hints and tips I could get about voice recording (with an emphasis on both words -- about voice and about recording). It turned out to be a fascinating class -- interesting and entertaining and informative. It was well worth the time and tuition. (In fact, we actually got bonus time because most of us stayed for almost another hour.)

I had lost my little Olympus FE-230 digital camera on Tuesday. I at an ASTD meeting -- which meets at the Save the Bay building in Providence (I had pictures in an entry last November) -- and had stuck my camera in my sports coat inside pocket in case I had a chance for more pictures. As it turned out, I didn't have time for photography, had to get back home to work, took off my jacket as I got into the car and tossed it on the passenger seat. Later, in the afternoon, I went to get my camera and it wasn't in my jacket pocket. Hmmm, must be on the passenger seat. Nope. Look on the floor. Nope. Come back inside and look around the house. No camera. I even called the receptionist at Save the Bay to ask if anyone had found a camera. Nope.

On my way back home from class on Saturday I stopped at Save the Bay to look around the parking area. No camera. So when I got back to Wakefield I stopped at Staples and bought a new Olympus (an FE 4020). When I got home, before opening the package on the new camera I carefully looked again for the old one... backseat of car, back floor, check the passenger seat again, check my jacket, the pants I had been wearing, looked all around. Okay, open the new one, charge the battery, insert the memory card.

Cooked up a tomato sauce and then used it to make pizza for dinner. Nancy and I finally popped Inglourious Basterds into the DVD player -- this was a Netflix DVD that had been sitting around for weeks -- many weeks -- because whenever we did want to watch something, we simply didn't have time or energy to watch a two and a half hour long movie. So at last we would get to see it.

Well, as much as we could stand. We both thought it was terrible. Nancy quit after half an hour or so... I probably lasted twenty minutes longer. Dumb and pointless and boring.

So... up a little before five a.m. on Sunday. On the road about six... off to Hampton, New Hampshire.

It was chilly. 47 degrees here... and as we approached New Hampshire the outside temperature was 43 (6 C. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt because I somehow was anticipating that it was going to get into the sixties. Fortunately I also had a heavy sweatshirt. It was 48 (9 C) when we parked. I got out of the car and as I was about to close the door I saw something -- my missing camera partially under the driver's seat.

Above -- Jill with her race shirt. Smuttynose is a New Hampshire brewery (located nearby in Portsmouth, New Hampshire -- and the sponsor of the Smuttynose Rockfest and Hampton Marathon & Half Marathon.

They said they had five hundred people registered for the marathon and sixteen hundred registered for the half-marathon. The race start time was 9 a.m. and off they went...

I wandered about town for a bit, looking for someplace to get a cup of coffee but everything seemed to be closed for the season (although later some of the restaurants did open for lunch & dinner... and if I had walked another couple of blocks I would have found a McDonald's)... and I took some photographs... and sat in the car for a while and read... and then went to the finish area to watch the runners coming in and to cheer for Jill when she approached the finish line. (By now it was all the way up to 56 (about 14 C) except there was a breeze coming off the water.

The picture above was taken near the water's edge looking toward the town. The buildings were on the opposite side of the street and the big white tent and the smaller tents (put up for the race) are on the beach side of the street. And the picture below was taken from just about the same spot except facing in the opposite direction.

Jill's time was not as fast as she had hoped for. She had been doing well until about ten miles into the race (a half marathon is about thirteen and one tenth miles) when her right knee began to hurt and she had to slow down.

Still, she was happy to have successfully completed her first half marathon. The picture on the right was taken just a couple of minutes after she crossed the finish line. The ribbon around her neck is holding a finisher's medal (you can't really see the medal against a black shirt) that they hung around each runner a few feet after they crossed the finish line.

By this time the big white tent had been turned into a beer hall with free Smuttynose beer for the runners.

Ah, but can you guess what happened next? Right. They wouldn't let Jill into the beer tent because she looked too young and didn't have ID. (Who carries ID when they run in a race?) She was very tired and annoyed beyond belief. She had her wallet with her driver's license in my car but she said she was too ticked off at the gatekeepers at the beer tent and she was too tired and her knee hurt too much for her to want to walk three blocks to my car, get her driver's license, walk three blocks back to the tent to drink a beer by herself (the beer tent was for runners only) and then have to walk three blocks back to the car again. "Let's just go home."

Which we did... and she dozed off for most of the ride (which took longer than the trip up because by the time we passed through the Boston area the roads were filled with traffic).


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