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Month: May 2023

they say it’s your birthday

they say it’s your birthday

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so another pass around the sun has finished up and life just seems to get more interesting. now i know what they mean by youth is wasted on the young LOL

some good things happened today, which just so happened to be on my birthday.

  1. we launched a new website at work. this has been 2 years in the making – from the planning to start the RFP process, to selecting the vendor (which i did from vacation in the black hills), to focus groups, design meetings, site maps, content review, etc. etc., then the past 3 months just plowing through 1500-ish pages of content to make sure it all looks good. today was the big day, and it all seemed to work with only minimal weirdness! Just a few links that weren’t linking correctly, and we have a couple more functional things to work out. i’m happy it’s finally live and it works and i can think about other stuff occasionally!
  2. gov walz signed the legal cannibis bill! this is big news. after years of obstruction by republicans funding the “legalize marijuana” parties, the dems finally got a single majority vote and pushed through a crap ton of social bills this leg session. one of which legalized marijuana in the state. the process was thorough, and if anything else, it helped the public understand the legislative process a bit better. eventually i want to do a blog post on all the legislation that passed this session to see what good things came out of it. and if you start to complain about rich people’s taxes, then i guess they can go live somewhere where there isn’t the same quality of life. when you have support for people, you have happy people, and you have people who are more willing to move here and live here, which equals more workers, which apparently is the only thing the populace is good for, according to the rich.
  3. i got a massage. and ate at a restaurant with nate. and had cake!

well i guess there were only three good things. i also want to talk about AI at some point. like, am i going to lose my job?

here’s what chatgpt said when i asked if i was going to lose my job to AI:

As an AI language model, I cannot predict the future with certainty. However, it is possible that some jobs may become automated or replaced by AI in the future. It is important to continually develop skills and adapt to changes in the job market.

cool. i leave you with this tweet.

Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted

october usurped

october usurped

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mid-may, and the nights are chilled

the mornings shine with a bright blue sky, air full of crisp hope and green smells

and afternoons warming to unfurl leaves and grasses and buds and flowers and the soul

but evenings, oh evenings, with the gloaming stretching long with birdsong and frogpeeps, dew-laden grass tickling at the toes and freshness in the nose

the moment brief each year, but belief that lilacs and apple blossoms will appear

pulls us through our winter months

to smile at the green hope that’s here

race report: granddad half

race report: granddad half

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for some reason, i think it’s a good idea to run two half marathons two weeks apart (and bring liz and doug along for the ride). now, the good news with that is that you’re trained already, so it should be easy. and given the horrible weather we had for the half two weeks prior, anything would be a cakewalk.

so, i left central mn, where we’ve been waiting for spring for 84 years, and right around maple grove, suddenly everything was GREEN. unbelievable!!! what was this miracle? axial tilt for the win! it was so verdant that i stopped at the great river road information center in prescott WI so i could admire the greenage on the river.

the drawback to the granddad half is that it starts at 7 a.m. in a spot nowhere near the finish line. so you have to be at the shuttle pickup at 5:45 a.m. what a racket! we made it there, coffee in hand, and headed to the start line, an unnervingly long distance from the finish.

as you can ascertain, the weather was much more pleasant.

and our pace started off great! we had a great first 7 miles. the incline was downhill and flat-ish, and we ran on a gravel path next to a train track through some very scenic marshland. heard some frogs, saw some green stuff, got passed by some very fast marathoners. (marathoners started an hour before we did.)

then quinn started having some knee and hip issues, and we ended up stopping and stretching and walking for a lot of the second half, which was ok because we made such great time in the first half that our final time was still under three hours (always the goal). also, it let me take a pause to smell some LILACS THAT WERE ALREADY IN BLOOM!!!!

😮

overall, the weather was much better, but it was very muggy. and given how much i like to sweat, i ended up having soaked-through shorts by mile 4. how fashionable.

after we finished up, we got our free beers and headed home as fast as possible so liz and doug could get craig to his soccer game. hannah stayed home with me while i took a shower and a short nap, then we met up with everyone to eat some food and a bloody mary (a tradition now).

i left about 2:15ish then stopped at my parents’ house AND jane’s house to say hi on my way home.

overall, race was good. liz and i thought from here on out we will only run 10k races, but i think we both know that isn’t true and we’ll likely sign up for another half next year. who knows what will happen!

an item of note: i’m going to knock on wood for this one, but my muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments, etc. have all be really good this year, and i hope they hold up. i don’t know what i’ve been doing, but i’ll keep on doing it.