Blog of Chris

I know I say it a lot, but this whole not being busy renovating a house thing is just fantastic.  Who knew you could have two days off a week? Sure, I have been done for over two months, but I still fully appreciate how scarce free time was from November 2006 to July 2007.  It’s great to be free again.

I’ve now had a dog for over a week,  as he’s calmed down and become more used to his new home, I have gotten more and more sleep and cleaned up less and less dog pee.  He’s very inconsistent when it comes to peeing on my brand new laminate floors, but if he keeps finding new places to pee, eventually I will Mr. Clean the entire floor, a few square feet at a time.

O.P. is awesome, and settled in pretty quickly.  Of course, he’s the cutest, smallest puppy on the block and gets lots of attention wherever he goes.  When I walk him he’ll sit and stare at me for about 10 seconds as I walk ahead of him and extend the full length of his leash.  When I reach the end, he’ll resist for a bit, and then come running up to me.  Repeat, and this is how my 7 week old puppy takes his walks.

On Friday night, James, Jimmy, Susie, Shannon and I went out to Thirsty Dog and Howl at the Moon in celebration of Jimmy’s 26th birthday.  Thirsty dog was pretty standard, though I wished I could bring my dog there (it used to be the place to bring your dog and eat and drink, but have since banned pets… I think they had to bow down to the city health inspectors).

Howl at the Moon is a piano bar, with two pianos and a complement of other instruments.  It must be an incredibly fun job, but these guys take requests and just jam out all night.  You never know what you’ll see or hear, and they get the audience involved at every chance they get.  I hadn’t been to Power Plant Live in years, and it was just as I remembered it.  I think it depends who you’re with, because I had a blast this time around.

On Saturday night I packed up O.P.’s crate and drove down to D.C.  I dropped him off at Mike’s house while I went to Jimmy’s Birthday dinner at Charlie Palmer steakhouse in D.C.  It’s right downtown on Constitution Ave. by the mall, and it’s the kind of fancy schmancy place you’ll find lobbyists and congressmen spending way too much money to eat at.  There were two Ferraris parked outside when I pulled up to the Valet.  It was a terrific dinner in a private room.  I’m not a huge steak person, but at Jimmy’s request I got an 8 oz. well done, and it was great. Happy Birthday Jimmy.

Following dinner I went to Union Jack’s in Bethesda.  It was great to see my high school friends who I don’t get to hang out with much anymore.  There’s something to be said for smoke-free bars down in Montgomery County.  Billie and Jean, friends whose wedding I am attending this weekend in Las Vegas, came back to Mike’s apartment to meet O.P., who they also fell in love with.  It’s a long way to get from his apartment to any sort of grass, so we had to keep an extra close eye on him.

Today, Mike and I hit Bethesda for lunch, then I stopped at my cousin Shelly’s house in Silver Spring to introduce her to the dog. Her greyhound Andy was freaked out by O.P., who is about 1/20th his size and probably looks like food.  I headed back to Baltimore, stopped at Federal Hill Park and took a breather on a park bench.  O.P. loved going down the hill, and you might even describe his downward gait as “roly-poly”, as he wasn’t quite in control of his decent, but seemed to love every second of it.

Now it’s off to Target…  another work week begins tomorrow, but I am headed to Vegas on Thursday so it’ll be a short one followed by yet another exciting weekend.

-C

O.P. went to the vet yesterday, and spent all afternoon sound asleep (he was exhausted from being up the entire night prior, keeping me and my roommate awake).   Now he likes his crate, most of the time anyway.  I got him some more squeak toys and mini-tennis balls, and made his cage a castle.

He’s also learned to walk up my front stoop, with steps that are taller than he is.

Last night he cot a bit more cozy in his crate and only cried a few times.  I took him on a couple of late night walks, and he went back to bed quickly.

That’s all for now.  I am still tired.

-C

I’m tired. You might say I’m dog Tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night due to the constant crying of my new dog, O.P. (pronounced “opie”). I hope he calms down a bit. He had a long day yesterday driving up from Virginia.

On Saturday I attended the 2nd Annual Memorial Ride for the fallen soldiers of the 243rd Engineer Company. It was good to see familiar faces and see what everyone is up to almost two years after the accident of October 14th, 2005. The scene was not as tense as last year, and were a lot more cheerful memories shared with the group.

My folks and I at the Ride.

I went straight from the ride to the wedding of 2LT Erin Grier, one of the platoon leaders of the 244th Engineer Company. The wedding was at a small church in Crystal City, and the reception was at a very fancy hotel, also in Crystal City. Above is a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Ron Sherman. The joke of the night was that he was too lazy to become an officer himself, so he married one… now she’s 2LT Sherman. It was a great time with a lot of great people.

Here’s O.P. On Saturday I headed down to the breeder just outside of Richmond, and picked him up. He was surprisingly well behaved on the ride up, but a little squeemish once I let him loose in the house. I have already cleaned up a few accidents, so if anyone has pointers, please fill me in.

-C

 I finished off season 5 of Scrubs last night.  That is all.

-C

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbEXF5ozxfE[/youtube]

Yesterday, we ran from Locust Point to Fells Point and back… not in one straight shot, but all of a sudden 6.3 miles isn’t quite as far as I remembered.  I imagine I’ll make it there and back continuously either tommorrow or Sunday.

I rule.

-C

Today, James and I ventured to Federal Hill to run with the Federal Hill Runners, a free weekly running club. They start in Federal Hill, so we ran to the start point as a warm up (1.5 miles). Their route starts at a gym on Cross Street, and takes a nice little roundabout tour of southern Federal Hill, Riverside, Harborview, the inner harbor, and then back to Federal Hill. James of course ran up to the front of the group with the fast people, while I hung out somewhere in the middle.

It was a great run, and when I got home and measured it on Google Earth, it turned out to be 6.41 miles! It was noncontinuous, but that’s still the furthest I have run at one time, ever!

Tomorrow I am continuing my quest to run to Fell’s Point and back without stopping. It’s slightly less than what I ran today, but doing it without stopping is the hard part.

We’ll be running again with this group next Monday for those who’d like to join us.

-C

1.  James and I ran 4.92 miles yesterday, from Locust Point to Little Italy and back.

2.  I started watching the 5th season of Scrubs last night on DVD, and encountered the funniest scene ever, hands down.  Thanks to YouTube, you can see it too:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-bIhCBSrzU[/youtube]

Whoever writes for this show is a genius.  They seamlessly mixed the concept of immaturely ignoring your significant other’s concerns with dancing and 80’s pop music.

-C

Well, I figured it out.  What you are seeing here is a google map (using their API), which is actually loaded onto its own html page, and then displayed in my blog through an “iframe”.   (It has to be loaded this way because Wordpress doesn’t allow you to use javascript in posts).

The map html file is calling up two kml overlays.  One, which should look familiar to my regular readers, is my run route from yesterday.  (There is a dot at the start point which will tell you the date and distance of the run if you click on it.)  The other is several water valves in Baltimore County, a KML file I happened to have lying around which I used for testing purposes.

Coding all of this KML and javascript by hand was annoying, but the idea is that I can just edit one KML file for all of the overlays I want to show on this blog.  If I can generate the KML somewhere else, cutting and pasting it should be simple enough.

Now, associating blog postings with points on the map is the next step, and I am not sure how to go about it.

You will notice a new tab at the top of this page which reads “My Map.”  That’s where this map will sit, even after the one from this post is pushed into the archives.

-C

This image shows a specialized tiny container known in the geocaching world as a type of “nanocache” It’s a tiny cylinder with a magnetic base and a screw-off lid. This thing is about the size of a marble, and is very very easy to conceal.  It holds a teeny, tiny rolled up strip of paper, which you can write your initials and the date on when you find the cache.

Two weekends ago, I found my first geocache in a 35mm film canister, which was wedged under the runners of a metal fence. Last weekend, James and I hit Baltimore on bikes, and found several of these Box64 caches planted around the city. These kinds of containers make the hunt that much more difficult. The first one I found was magnetically attached to the backside of a metal strap holding a rain gutter to a building. The GPS gets you in the general area, but I was pure luck that I found this tiny cache.

There’s anther one of these attached to one of the iron gates on the shot tower. You’d never spot it walking by, it looks like a cast iron rivet! Apparently they get even smaller than this, but I haven’t found one yet. After looking online, I see they make caches that are shaped like acorns and leaves, for hiding in trees.

If you think you could find one of these things, I highly recommend you pick up a GPS and start searching.

-C

When I can gather the motivation to move all of the files to the right places on my server, and figure out the best interface for updates, I intend to add an interactive google map to this blog.  This will serve the purpose of linking a place to each of my blog postings where applicable, and allowing me to share geographic information that nobody cares about, such as run routes, geocaches visited, planted and found, sightseeing spots, traffic accidents, et cetera.  In essence, it will be my own little online GIS… clicking points on the map will bring up the appropriate blog entry, and blog entries will likewise be linked to the map.   If we add to this real time routes pulled off a vehicle GPS receiver that I have not yet purchased, you can track my road trips too.

All that is in the future… for now, you are looking at a screen shot of me measuring today’s run in google earth.  My present goal is to be able to run from Locust Point to Fells Point and back. It’s about 6 miles. Last Wednesday, Jimmy, James and I ran to the USS Constellation and back.  On Monday, James and I ran to the World Trade Center and back.  Today I ran to the power plant and back with no stops, no waiting for traffic, and no slowing down.  The weather was helpful, and I made it back, downed half a pitcher of gatorade, and dined on chicken breasts, couscous and green beans.

Today’s run was 4.2 miles according to the google earth measuring tool.  On Thursday I will try to run a little further, probably to Little Italy, before I turn around and head home.   My legs hurt, but it’s a good hurt.