Yesterday after work, I headed downtown to find new running shoes.  Remember, I’m a lousy runner.  I thought that with my ability to make new running play lists, though, I could find a way to motivate myself.  After a lot of fretting about it, I decided to try my hand at the couch to 5K program. It was then I realized that I was using my most recent set of “running shoes” to tromp around in the mud sorting Rubbermaid tubs in my parents’ backyard.

I have always been a fan of New Balance because my feet are incredibly narrow and “low volume”, in that they’re not very tall. New Balance has a wide variety of widths and my absolute favorite shoe I’ve owned was a lightweight marathon shoe that was a size 10 AAAA. I still own those shoes even though they’re barely adequate for mowing the lawn, but I just can’t bear to see them go.

My last trip to the New Balance store, though, was less than satisfying and that’s how I ended up with these ugly kicks that I only like wearing in the mud. It was time for something new. I decided to try my hand at Running Etc. so they could tell me what kind of shoe I needed.

The store is very cool because they actually watch you run and suggest what kind of shoe you should get. They first had be run in sock feet and she said “do you always run like that?”. Uh, I guess so. Apparently if I’m not wearing shoes, I run up on the balls of my feet like I’m in dance class. Hooray muscle memory.

She found me a pair of New Balance shoes in a narrow and directed me to try running again. I made it three strides and then face planted all over the carpet like there was a sniper in the store that took me out. Apparently the toe box on those shoes was a little on the big side and if you run up on the balls of your feet it’s easy to trip. I was fine other than my wounded pride, so we decided to move on to other shoe options. After trying on about four different pair, I put on a pair of Asics Gel Nimbus shoes. As I made my return jog back to the bench I realized I was grinning over a pair of shoes. And when I took them off I was hesitant to give them to the sales attendant to put in the box. Apparently, I had found my favorite shoe, not surprisingly also one of the most expensive shoes in the store.

I bought a few pairs of fancy socks to complete the package and I jogged all over the downstairs of the house last night to try them out. I haven’t decided if I’m going to start my first day of running/walking Friday or Saturday, but I’m hoping I’ll become an honest to goodness runner someday and not just someone who scowls with envy at runners.

Psst. There’s now a Monty Python channel on YouTube (warning: it starts playing immediately). Via LonelySandwich, who found it via Cynical-C

My mother is in our house right now using my computer to do some schoolwork (she teaches community college) and she has been humming non-stop for the last two hours. She literally stops humming long enough to mutter something to herself and then starts right back up again. I don’t even think she realizes she’s doing it.

She’s done this for all her life as far as I know, and I think in the last few years it’s started to get on my father’s very last nerve. He has to leave the room after awhile. So she’s over here with us in our office and is humming to beat the band with no one to fuss at her. It makes it easier to find her in the house, like a cat with a bell on its collar.

It’s one of those things I will miss about her one day. So while she’s been working and humming, I’ve been rummaging for my portable recording equipment to capture it all. At some point hopefully many years from now I’ll be able to just loop this track and it will be like she’s right here in the room with us all over again.

Mom humming (1:21)

I’m not a strong runner. I would really like to be, but if I run for more than 2 minutes I feel (and look) like someone is stabbing me in the side while I’m chased by a bear. At one point, I told myself if I just had music to motivate me, I could get out there and do something great. Needless to say, I still suck at running, but I’ve gotten pretty good at making running mixes.

First, some recommended tools. I used Mix Meister’s BPM Analyzer to sort through my iTunes library and set all the beats per minute. Once they’re set, you can display and sort by that in your list of music. Another handy tool, if you just want to do it yourself is this fun web site that lets you tap out the BPM yourself and you can enter the value yourself in the Get Info section of each song. There are plenty of other options available on this BPM detection page.

Googling around, I found a lot of sites where folks said they ran at around 180 BPM, sometimes for over an hour. I don’t know what these people are made of or if they all have tiny legs but that pace would kill. me. dead. Of course, your mileage may (literally) vary.

In this experimental play list, I tried to keep it to 30 minutes, have one warm up song and one crawl back home cool down song, with the other songs increasing in BPM overall. If you can make it through Fishbone (and it’s breakneck 183 BPM) at the end, you’re a better athlete than I. My legs hurt just thinking about it.

My First Jogging Experiment

As a note, I made the above mix using OpenTape, the free, open-source tool based off of MuxTape. In addition to this being a jogging experiment, it was a bit of a OpenTape experiment. I call it a success!

Do any of you still type two spaces after a period? I learned to type on a typewriter as a kid and that was the style at the time (insert Grandpa Simpson voice here). This entire entry, in fact, I’ll type two spaces after each period.

The first time I’ve been comfortable with one space after a period was once I started using Twitter, because I needed all the space I could get to squeeze my message into 140 characters. And the iPhone will automatically put a period at the end of your sentence if you type two spaces in a row (which then converts it to a period and a space).

But in all my typing I’m always putting two spaces after my periods. I’ve noticed that I can now figure out which copy is mine on our company website, just by looking at the spacing in the html file and finding double spaces after the periods. So apparently I’m the only one at the office who types that way.

Most web browsers will only render a single space after the period. But if you’re looking at the raw text, I find it easier to read with that extra space at the end. I’ve cruised around online and found people who feel strongly in both directions. I’m just not sure if it’s worth it to retrain my thumb after all these years.

So what about you? Do you type one or two spaces after a sentence? Do you hate reading documents that do whichever you don’t do?