Running Man

I'm not one of those people who wax poetic about the joys of running. The early mornings with just your footsteps and your thoughts, the epic races where you squeak out a win, the runners high. I have one single great joy when I run. Finishing. I love being done with a run.
I'm an intermittent runner. I ran one year of cross country in high school. I didn't run again until my last year of college. I ran a bit when we moved to the south. I didn't start again until after my second was born. I've been much more on than off since then. I've run a number of 5k's, a 10K and one half marathon. I've won one legitimate award during that time. I'd love to tell you that it was for the Super Manly Death Race 5k, but it wasn't. It was for the City of Tomball's 1st annual Bunny Run 5K. I was third in my age group. I'm still pretty proud of it.
Around that time running became hard. It was sore a lot. My knees and my hips mostly. It was hard to just hop off the couch and play soccer with the kids. Running, which was supposed to be good for me, was making it hard for me to be active. It just didn't seem right. So I did some research and came across a group of people that were claiming that, perhaps, running without shoes was the answer. After reading hundreds of articles about which shoes to buy to cure specific running faults, it seemed counter intuitive that the real answer was no shoes at all. For me it was. Certainly the reduction in mileage that is necessary when you start running barefoot helped. I worked my way up to consistently running 4-6 miles at a stretch with no problems. No pains. It was beautiful. About a year after starting, the book Born To Run was published and a lot of other people were exposed to the idea of running barefoot, or at least with minimal shoes like Vibram Five Fingers. People still look at me like I'm a little nuts when I run, but at least a some of them know what's going on. I've seen a few people running and racing in five fingers since I started barefoot and I've had really nice talks with some of them, including a nice mile long chat with two gentlemen while running a night time trail 10K. They were cool guys.I've yet to see a pair of truly bare feet other than mine at a race. I'm still hoping.

Since my 3 year old started preschool a month ago I've been able to run more. I'm now averaging once a week stopping to answer questions about my lack of shoes. I always tell them it's not for everyone, but I think it's a good solution for some of us. My advice to anyone who is thinking about running barefoot is to read Born To Run, and start slow. Work up very very slowly to any distance over 100 yards. It's like learning to run all over again, and I admit, that's been my second joy in running. Being able to run smoothly, freely and without pain.


Books I finished this week -
The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker
Adventures Among Ants, Mark W. Moffett

The Blank slate is one hell of a book. It deals with our understanding of our minds. The parts that are innate, such as language and empathy and the drive to reproduce and it contrasts them with those that have been constructed such as racism. The main point is that there are some aspects to being human that are innate, we are born who we are to an extent. There are also things that our culture thrusts upon us. These have been and continue to be pretty complex to untangle. It's an excellent book and will make you look at humanity in a different light.
Adventures with ants is really cool. Moffett has been all over the world studying and photographing all sorts of wildlife, but it started with and continues to include ants.  The fact that one can still make a living as a naturalist adventurer is pretty incredible. When I smash ants that are trying to bite me I'm wishing for a magnifying glass and an identification guide. I want to know who they are and what's driving them to hurt me. Fun book, incredible pictures.

Picasso Upside Down Cake

Baking is just fun sometimes.
I like to buy fresh whole pineapples instead of canned ones. I use them for pizza topping for my wife, and usually we just eat the leftovers. Today I decided to make a pineapple upside down cake with them. When reading the recipe it occurred to me that, although I did have to put the pineapple on the bottom, I didn't just have to lay down rings. I could do any shapes that I wanted. I considered this a great opportunity. I though of trying some sort of tessellating mosaic but was daunted by the prospect of getting all the pieces the same. I considered writing a message of love to my wife, but I would have had to write it backwards to have it come out right. I finally decided on a portrait in pineapple. In my head I could see a fruity rendition of the renaissance masters. A pineapple Van Goh. A pineapple Renoir. What I ended up with was more of a pineapple Picasso. Perhaps if Picasso would have had a tropical fruit period instead of a blue period, this is what he would have created.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake - From Betty Crocker's New Cook Book
1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
sliced pineapple, either fresh or canned - drained
maraschino cherries as desired
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup shortening or softened butter
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg


The recipe is supposed to be baked in a 10 inch round skillet, I'm not sure why this is traditional but it's what I saw in several recipes. That's about 78.5 square inches. An 8x8 pan will work too, but at 64 inches will be a bit thicker. A 9x13 pan is 117 square inches, so it will be thinner. They will all work but your cooking time may vary.
Melt 1/4 cup butter and pour in pan, sprinkle brown sugar over the butter and arrange pineapple/cherries to your hearts content. Mix all of the other ingredients and pour them over the pineapple gently so as not to mess up your beautiful work.
Bake for 40-50 minutes at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean.
Pull out of the oven and immediately invert over...... something. A big plate, a cutting board, something. This takes a little finesse as the pan is 350 degrees and the cake is a bit sloppy and you don't want to screw up a fine piece of tropical fruit art.
The cake is best eaten warm but you can cover it after it cools and eat it any time. It's yummy.

Under Pressure

A good distracting man job is checking tire pressure.
Pressure affects mileage and safety in your car. It changes due to slow leaks, seasonal changes in temperature, and seemingly just because. With the change from summer to fall, your pressures will be falling. Keeping proper pressures will save you gas and prevent uneven tire wear. 
Any pressure gauge will work. Modern digital ones are cheap and reliable. You should always check your tires cold if you can, in my truck pressure varies by as much as 5 psi between cold and hot. You have two sources for recommended tire pressure. The first is the maximum pressure listed on your tire. The second is the sticker on the door jamb, or the owners manual. The best pressure is somewhere between the two. The tires on my truck have a maximum pressure of 51 psi. With them that hard the ride is really rough. The sticker on the door jamb says 35 psi cold. Splitting the difference gives me 43. That's a good starting point. I've found that if I go just a bit lower, 41, I don't lose any fuel economy and I think the ride is a bit better. Experiment within safe ranges.
You don't need an air compressor to add air. An upright bike pump will work. It will take quite a while to add much air. It's a workout, but it's cheaper and less likely to break. You can also drive to the gas station to air up. Takes a few minutes. That's nice sometimes.
So when you need a few minutes away from the chaos, tell your wife that you need to go check the tire pressure. It's probably the least made up excuse you have to get a few moments of peace.

The Case for Simplicity

I love it when I have all afternoon to cook dinner. I love it more when I know in advance that I'll have all afternoon to cook dinner so I can actually plan and shop and relax about the whole thing.
Usually, I either know I don't have a lot of time, or I think I'll have a lot of time but I end up not having that time. My usual Monday through Friday has me returning from picking up the kids from school at 3:30. Technically I have two hours to prepare dinner. In reality I have about 20 minutes spread over two hours to cook. I try to keep a quiver of meals that I can get ready with a minimum of effort. Not that they don't take a while to cook, but I'm only needed for a few minutes here and there to make it happen.
An easy one is grilled salmon and broccoli.

For the Salmon:
1 - 2 lbs salmon
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
Thaw the salmon early in the day or use fresh. An hour before cooking throw everything in a ziploc bag and put in the fridge.
Grill for 5 minutes a side on medium heat.
Total time invested is less than 15 minutes.

Steamed broccoli:
Cut broccoli into florets. Place in steamer basket in a pot with a bit of water. Cook on high for 5-10 minutes. Serve with butter if desired. Total time invested, maybe 5 minutes.

There is nothing fancy about this meal. It's simple and quick. You do need to be home to start the marinade on the fish, but if you're running around helping with homework or folding clothes or any of the other things that need to be done, you can squeeze that in. You can cut the broccoli and put in in the pot on the stove any time in the hour before dinner, just don't start the heat until you put the fish on. All you really need is those 10 minutes to get the fish cooked and everything on the plates. And really, it's grilled salmon and broccoli, it's good. It's better than most of the salmon that I've eaten at restaurants. My kids love it. My wife loves it. For the time invested, you can cook macaroni and cheese, or salmon and broccoli. If most of your life is busy, then most of the food you cook needs to be able to be cooked during a busy day. Once you build a list of 15-20 simple and quick dinners, you can have variety and quality on every very busy day.

Huge Turn Off

Everyone knows that you should have, and should be able to easily reach, a fire extinguisher.
You should also know how, and be able to easily reach, the water shut off in your house. After fire, too much water is the second biggest sudden catastrophe that can happen. Neither are likely, but both are horrible and being able to stop either quickly is the key to reducing damage.
Once upon a time I took a civil engineering class that required us to calculate flow through pipes and head loss per foot and then design fire sprinkler systems to code. That was a long time ago and I don't want to do that again. So instead I just did a quick search and came up with a typical 1/2 inch pipe at a typical 50psi will flow somewhere around 15 gallons per minute. That's 3 five gallon buckets of water on your bathroom floor before your son even starts to explain why he sat on the sink and ripped it, and the valves, off the wall.
If you have well water, you have a breaker to throw to shut off the pump. Clearly label this. You probably also have a pressure accumulator tank and should have a valve at the exit that you need to turn off so it doesn't spray it's pressure reserve inside the house. If you have municipal water you have a master valve somewhere. Something that shuts off water to the whole house. Mine is in a box by my porch. Others may be inside the house. If you can't find it now, stop and think about how much water could be spraying around your house while you consider where it might be. The fire department will rush to help you if you have a fire. It's harder to get a plumber to rush for water. Just the way the world works. If you live in an apartment or a condo, I'm not sure if you'll have access to the valve yourself. If you don't, you should know who to call before you and the guy who lives below you have a very very bad day.
Being able to shut off the water is also the most elemental start to any plumbing job. You might not need to turn off the whole house to replace the faucet, but it's a good idea.
While searching around, I found this pdf - Principles of Supply Plumbing
It's the best simple book I've ever read on household plumbing theory. I would have done a few things differently when re-doing my house if I had read it before hand. I'm going to talk a bit about basic household pluming in the next few months. I'll start with the toilet. The throne. After all, you are the king.

First Things First

I'm not sure why we're so fascinated with experiencing and recording out babies firsts. First words, first crawl, first step, first solution to a quadratic equation. Parents love watching firsts. The switch from laying there as a helpless blob having to beg the world for things out of your reach, to mobility, is huge. The switch from a passive observer of the world to an active participant. Maybe that's why we're fascinated with it, because we realize that seldom, if ever, do we undergo such a dramatic shift in the way we interact with the world. They can't grasp that huge change, so we watch it, and remember it, and record it, so that we can them tell the stories when they get older. Maybe we can transfer some of our great joy at their great change back to them.
My oldest daughter was right at that point. Right where babies are just starting to become mobile. They can sort of scootch along on their bellies to get a toy, but they can't crawl yet. If they make it a foot over the course of 20 minutes, they've gone on an expedition. These are that last days of peace. You can still turn around and reasonably expect your baby to be in the same spot when you turn back.
I was checking email and eating from a box of powdered doughnuts at the desk in the living room. My daughter was being awesome and playing by herself with a couple of toys in the middle of the living room. She was happy. I was happy. I was thirsty. I went to get a drink from the fridge. The desk was a mess so I set the doughnuts on the floor next to my chair. I walked to the kitchen, pulled out a drink, and walked back. I couldn't have been gone for 60 seconds. Probably more like 30. The sight that greeted me upon my return will haunt me the rest of my days.
My daughter had somehow moved over 8 feet (I measured) in the time I had been gone. She had never eaten anything that hadn't come out of a blender, all natural homemade baby food. Somehow she knew, animal instinct maybe? She knew that those doughnuts were worth it. I found her with a doughnut in each hand and her cheeks packed as full as any chipmunk ever has. Her eyes as big as saucers. She was radiating joy and triumph. I was experiencing failure. This was a first for me, the very first time I had underestimated my children. It was not the last.
It took a lot of work to pry those doughnuts out of her hands. She was not happy that I was taking away her hard won prize. My wife is disappointed at me to this very day. Not about the doughnuts, but that I didn't take a picture of it first.

Wait a Minuet

I think everyone should do something that's hard. Sometimes just living is hard enough, I get that, but working on something that you can only do poorly is good for you. You're on the steep part of the learning curve, the part where you gain the most from your effort. It also puts other parts of your life in perspective. I may not be a great cook, but I'm not bad at it. I'm bad at the violin. Perspective.
Six months ago my violin came from Sharon Dee Strings. I was very excited. I tuned it, and could play for about 5 minutes before my hands were sore. Well, play is a pretty generous word. It made noise. Last night I made a video of myself playing. Poorly. I'd love to say that it was the pressure of the video that made me suck, but that's not really true. It's probably a pretty good representation of a run through of Bach's Minute No. 1. That's really the song I played. Sorry Bach. The sound is a little more off than usual though because I'm playing with a mute on. The kids were in bed and violins are pretty loud.
I bought a violin because I'd wanted one for a very long time. I didn't play an instrument as a kid. Well, I did dink around on the guitar for a few months as an early teen but I just couldn't get it. Not practicing didn't help much. Resources back in the 80's were pretty scarce. I had my mom's old guitar, a song book, and a one hour group lesson a week where I was too shy to say anything. The internet has really changed self teaching of an instrument. Go do a youtube search for guitar lesson. It's amazing what's out there. You can learn just about anything from the safety of your own living room, including the violin.
I decided that I couldn't go back in time to relearn anything as a kid, so I might as well hop to it and try as an adult. I ordered a violin, a tuner, a few books, found a bunch of you tube videos, and set to work. I've played every single day since that first day. Some days have been as long at two hours, but lately it's been about half an hour a day. I should really take lessons, I'm sure that would help me get better, but why? I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to accomplish. I love playing, even though I'm bad. I love making music. I really love taking a new page of music and sorting out the dots and turning paper into music. It's like audible soduku for me. Every song is a puzzle, a challenge that I get to sort out. I've learned so much about reading music and the structure of music and I've tried to read quite a lot about music theory. I play classical, Irish fiddle, American fiddle and gypsy music. I've also messed around with guitar, ukulele, a couple of fifes and the xaphoon, but I always play my violin. 
When I was a teen I picked up a guitar and though of being famous. When it didn't come easy, I figured out I wasn't going to be famous, and I put it down. Now that I'm old, and not so worried about fame, I can just have fun. That's what I'm doing, having a lot of fun.

Books I've finished this week. Nothing. I'm so close to finishing a great book about genes and psychology and the human traits that are wired into us. It's fascinating, but I'll wait until I've actually finished it.
In the mean time, if you want to read a book that will make you think about your parenting, try The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris. It should go on your shelf next to any parenting books you have.