2 bigshot Americans in town

If you haven’t noticed, there are a couple of big American stars in Melbourne at the moment getting everyone excited.

Britney Spears is here doing her Circus tour. It’s mildly controversial, due to her obvious and apparently very poor miming of her “music”. Still, I’ve met many women (it is mostly women) who seem to be almost hyperventilating at the thought of the concert. I talked to a fully grown women on the train last night who was seriously talking about camping out the front of her hotel. I’m not sure what she hoped to see that hasn’t already been splashed over the front of a thousand trashy magazines. God knows, I’ve seen enough.

The second megastar is Tiger Woods, who we’ve paid 3 million bucks US to come here to play in a golf tournament. Thousands of apparently sane people turned up to watch him practice earlier in the week. I assume they’re mainly men. As I write this, theage.com.au has a live leaderboard. For golf! Golf, for christsakes!!

I’m a bit underwhelmed by all of this. I’m sure Tiger Woods is a decent guy, and he can certainly play golf. I’m not much of a fan of Britney’s work, but I do have some sympathy for her: she’s obviously had a difficult couple of years in her personal life.

But it’s not very interesting. I have a better idea: let’s do a switcheroo. Britney can enter the Australian Masters this morning and Tiger can turn up in fishnet stockings and writhe around in a cage onstage at Rod Laver Arena tonight.

I’d pay to see that.

Running
None yesterday. I did get to the pool for a quick km of my special brand of unco-swimming. With any luck I’ll get to run tonight or tomorrow morning.

old and slow

I’ve been reading just now, a piece on the Punch about photoshopping pictures to make yourself look younger and more beautiful. For example, here’s a “real”, unaltered picture of a 50 year-old woman:

Quite a nice picture eh? She’s pretty attractive.

Here she is after photoshop:

Odd eh?

I’m beginning to think I need of photoshopping these days. In real life I can sort of wonder around in a blissful daze, providing I avoid mirrors, totally unaware of how I look. In pictures, however, it’s hard to avoid the awful truth. I take very few pictures for just this reason.

Here’s my most recent picture, also my new facebook profile shot, taken on Monday afternoon at the docks in Hobart:

Scary eh? Admittedly, I had was pretty grumpy and cold, hadn’t slept much and was feeling less than enthusiastic about going to some conference dinner.

Here’s an older profile shot, taken a few years back at Venus bay, when I was relatively young and fresh-faced:

It’s all going south rather quickly isn’t it? I blame years of hard living, destroying my skin’s youthful elasticity and dampening my joie de vivre.

Running
My joie de vivre is not the only thing a bit damp this morning. Some bright spark (me) thought it would be a good idea to go for a run early this morning. I was up at 5:20 and out the door quick-smart. Even at that time, it was warm and humid. I sweated around my usual 12.5km course in pretty much right on an hour. That’s 5 minutes faster than 10 days ago, but still 8 minutes slower than my PB.

When I finished, I was so sweaty there were complaints. Actually, the complaints were about the smell, but it’s the same general idea.

I use this morning’s course as a measure of my overall fitness. (here is is on mapmyrun.com) It’s 12.5km, but not at all easy. I could run that distance in a race at under 4 minute/km pace pretty easily, but I’ve never got close on this course. There are 3 sharp hills and a couple of long slow ones. They hills are all in the first 8km, so the trick is to keep it strong and steady through them, leaving enough energy to fang it over the relatively flat last 3km.

So that’s my goal (for the moment): pick up enough fitness and speed to be able to give 52 minutes a shot. I’d like to do it in under 50 minutes one day, but that’s a way off.

Passports

We’re taking a little family trip in a few months time. It’s out of the country (Vietnam, thanks for asking) so we’ve all had to get new passports. The kids because they’ve never had one before, and the adults because ours have expired.

Hoo-eee, has it been a difficult process.

Firstly, you have a go at getting 2 kids under 3 to stay still, not smile, not cry, have their mouth shut, hold their chin up etc. for a picture. It can’t be done, I’m telling you. Or at least it can be, but not without crying at such a pitch and volume that the whole shopping centre turns around at once to stare at you. And that’s just the adults!

Anyway, we got some pictures eventually, and I went down to my friendly local post office for the interview. It turns out one of the kids’ photos wasn’t right – the distance between the top of the head and the chin was less than 2 millimetres out. 2 mils! So we had to do it again.

Then there’s the form itself, which is available online. You can’t download it and fill it out by hand in your own time. No, you have to go through an extremely tedious wizard thing. At every second step it turns out you need some piece of information you don’t have at hand, so you have to do the whole thing again (because you forgot to write down the code they gave you at the start of the process).

I’m a little cheezed off with the whole thing, let me tell you. It might just be easier to stay home.

Running
A 10km run this morning, with AM. I’m not sure she (AM) was quite at her fleet-footed best, I know I wasn’t. So it was a pretty gently stroll along the river, but in lovely weather.

I’m tossing up doing the Maroondah Hospital fun run this Sunday morning. It pretty much goes past my house, so I should enter. I’m thinking about taking one of the kids in the pram. That might be fun???

things I don’t like

People who describe items of their clothing as “pieces”. I’m thinking mainly of people who have themselves photographed in MX magazine saying things like “I’m a vintage shop kinda girl. I like to find great unique pieces”. What this usually means is they wear exactly the same allegedly trendy, unflattering rubbish everyone else does, but they desperately want to sound cool.

People who says they “have a passion for fashion”. See above.

Dogs who whine and beg to be walked, pull your arm out of your shoulder socket in the first 5 minutes, but who can’t keep the pace up for more than 20 minutes. I made my sad excuse for a dog run 3km last night and I had to practically carry her for the last 2.8km and then give her mouth to mouth at the end.

People who work at cafes who ask you for your name. It totally steps over the line in the customer-barrista relationship.

Connex customer relations officers who stand with arms crossed, glowering, in a line across the barriers at Parliament station in the morning like they’re in the Gestapo.

People who call themselves “barrista”.

Catherine Deveny. To quote a particularly under-rated poet (Axl Rose) “I used to love her, but I have to kill her”. She was pretty funny about 12 months ago, in a straight-talking, tell it like it is way. Now, she’s just descended to far into contempt-for-fellow-man territory. See her latest article if you dare.

Packed to the rafters: I can’t work out why this show is so offensive to me. Is it the incessant cheeriness? Is it Michael Caton? Is it the awful musical stings they have at the end of each scene?

Kevin Rudd: the only thing I ever liked about him was that he wasn’t John Howard. Now, it’s starting to dawn on me that there are 20-odd million people just in Australia who also aren’t John Howard, therefore it’s probably not such a claim to fame. He’s smug, and prissy, and too full of his own intelligence, but nothing worthwhile actually gets done.

Running
Just a little one last night with the slow dog (sorry Sara - I don’t mean to steal your gag). I’ll try to run tonight.

work

It’s been a busy old week at work, this one. Today was one of those days when you get to work super-early to do some extra work, and look up from your computer to discover it’s 5 o’clock and time to go home. Where did the day go?

My “lunch break” was a frantic dash downstairs to the take-away, which was shovelled into my mouth while writing a report.

So, not much time for blogging.

I have, however, done a bit of running. 3 out of the past 4 days have included a run, and the fourth day had a swim. So that’s good. If I can keep up some regular running, even if it’s of average quality, the fitness should start to come back in a couple of weeks.

Tonight I’m catching up on the various bits of news I’ve missed. A lot of it seems to involve kids in bad situations: one baby feel in front of a train, a 6 year-old American kid who didn’t fly away in a balloon (not sure I understand the significance of that one) and some 16 year-old girl who’s sailing around the world.

Strange.

cat massage

Just when you thought the internet had run out of crazy Americans, along comes Cat Massage. See:

If my cat thinks she’s going to get a massage, she has another thing coming, believe me.

Running
7.6km today at lunch-time. I’m getting more used to running, but it’s going to take a while to get back to peak fitness.

the penguins

I do believe I’ve found the single coldest place in Victoria. Forget the top of Mount Hotham in mid-August. Don’t even think about the morgue or Peter Costello’s heart. No, the most miserably freezing place in the state is Phillip Island, specifically the grandstands at the Penguin Parade.

We were there last night, and boy was it cold. The ticket lady told us we should get there early to make sure of getting good seats, which meant we had to sit out there for well over an hour, with a feral 3 year old and an 18 month-old baby girl well passed her bed-time, not to mention my wife, who didn’t appreciate being turned into a wind-blown, sandy icicle.

I swear the whole thing is a scam to sell hot chocolates ($4.50 a pop, and people were lining up around the block!). The penguins are probably in on it. They, no doubt, take their cut in milo, which is why they walk so strangely.

Anyway, once the penguins put in an appearance, the kids enjoyed it, though not as much as they liked the Nobbies the next morning.

Swimming
(God I miss the days when that heading would have been “running”. Sigh. It will come again.)

Anyway, I think I actually swam 4 times last week, for a grand total of 4.1km.

What a waste of energy!

Still, I found a way of swimming that’s almost enjoyable: swim alone. I’ve come to the conclusion that swimming is one of those activities that are definitely not improved by having company. (I was going to say “like masturbation”, but thinking about it, that’s not entirely correct is it?) Anyway, having hordes of would be olympians and/or water aerobic-ers choking up the pool really puts a cramp in my style.

Thankfully, the Ringwood pool is almost completely deserted at 7pm on a Sunday night. I could have had 2 or 3 lanes to myself if I wanted.

I did my usual 1km and it seemed to go relatively quickly. It’s certainly less stressful these days. I even kicked a bit. It looks like it’s taking me about 60 seconds to swim 50 metres. I go a little quicker at the start, and a bit slower when I get tired.

Is that super-slow?

triumphant return

I did intend to have a triumphant return to running yesterday. Truly, I did.

Sure, I’m more than a little bruised in the nether regions. Yes, I’m still coughing a fair bit. Despite all of that, I thought I should venture out for a little run.

But it wasn’t to happen – Melbourne decided to plunge back into deepest, darkest winter. Cold, wind, rain, it was all there. And I chickened out. Why go out and do something that’s probably going to leave you doubled over in pain, AND get wet at the same time?

So I went for a swim instead.

Still, it’s the first exercise I’ve done in 2 weeks, so a swim is better than nothing.

I’m planning a second attempt at a triumphant R. tonight.

Microsoft
For some reason, they had an article on the Guardian about the worst Microsoft ads ever. Geez, they’ve done some wierd stuff over the years. Check it out.