“Yes”
“$6.50”
“I hope one of the firefighters comes down and says, ‘Everything is gone, but we managed to save Hot Shots.'”
“Why is it silly? It is an ad. No, that’s fine, I was stretching to make it two pages anyway.”
From a runner’s diet website:
Endurance athletes in particular benefit from fuel-efficient complex carbohydrates because of the extra calories burned each day. You need to aim for even more total carbohydrates than the suggested 50 percent. You can eat (in fact, may need to eat) more total calories without worrying about weight gain. The average runner training for a half marathon and running 20 to 25 miles a week probably needs a daily caloric intake near 2,500 to maintain muscle glycogen stores. As your mileage climbs beyond that, you need to eat more and more food, not less. In all honesty, this is why a lot of runners run, and why they train for marathons. Their common motto is, “I love to eat.”
Hooray!
So much for all those “long-form” blog entries I promised. There will be more.
In my last post, I messed up the name of the restaurant to which I went with my cousin and brother, and both of them were quick on the trigger to shoot me down. The restaurant was Alchemy, not Atria (Both exist). One of the boys deserves praise for their keen eye; the other, balder one can stfu. Guess which one is which.
I’m back at work today in the third day of the common cold. It was only three years ago that I first heard the truism “Feed a cold”(slash starve a fever), and I took it to heart without any real thought of whether it was true or not. My simple calculus being: eating makes me feel good so if I am A) sick and B) eat lots of food, I will C) feel somewhat better regardless of whether my symptoms, in fact, persist. This cold, contracted on the rainy Friday afternoon or some time thereafter, is relatively minor or has become so after I slept from 8 p.m. Saturday through 8 a.m. Monday with a few two-hour breaks Sunday to attend a work-mandated event and do some other stuff, then it was back in bed for B. Now I’m at work and still sleepy and my stomach is yelling “Enough Already!” with all the food so it’s probably time for some more green tea. See, I told you this was fun.
I just returned from a week-long trip home. I left during the fury of the Rainstorm of ’07, plugged up I-95 on the Peter Pan (née Bonanza) Bus and headed to Vineyard Haven on the brand-spanking new Island Home ferry, a vessel so advanced that it features televisions and free Wi-Fi (which wasn’t working). I played some travel Yahtzee on the boat with Grant and two friends we ran into. Grant and I split the two games. And then I was home.
My house is no longer occupied year-round, so it has a very unlived-in feel about it, and I actually kind of like it. Instead of stepping into the past, it feels like I’m stepping into a world of my own making. That may have sounded strange. Basically, instead of falling into my old childhood habits like watching TV, fighting with my brother and going to the pool it seemed a lot easier to relax in my new, adult style: reading, going to the beach and merely receiving broadside verbal and slightly physical assaults from my brother.
But seriously, it was a good time. I saw my uncle and his family for the first few days, as we went to a great meal at Alchemy* the first day and had a barbecue at his house the following evening. I can call it a barbecue because they are from Texas and there were ribs. I have come under fire lately because of my tendency to conflate the term “barbecue” with “grilling” or “cook-out” from a certain southern foodophile, but we even had actual smoked woodchips to add flavor, all down home style.
Friday was a gloomy, rainy day and I achieved my goal of having coffee with Louis and Ben while engaging in an exceptionally wide-ranging conversation; it was precisely as I imagined it would be. The rain having spirited away our energy, we bought pizza and watched the Red Sox lose a nail-biter to the Orioles in my rec room. The following day was the Chilmark Road Race, some beach and some basketball — it was chock full 0′ outdoor activities, and Sunday was rest day at the Joiner house where we did some honest to God grilling.
Monday I went for a run with my Nike+, as I’m still very much in the honeymoon phase, and played some more basketball with the old crew and followed it up with a Toots and the Maytals show in the evening. Grant got up on stage. Then he stayed up until four in the morning while I tried to sleep — the third straight year he has kept me awake on my final night on the island. Some things never change.
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* I starred Alchemy** here because it is one of the five pretentious/cloying one-named restaurants on the Vineyard. The other are Atria, Détente, Water and Balance. From what I understand, they’re all excellent (I’ve been to two of them). But seriously, can we do something about the names?
** The first time I wrote this I confused Atria and Alchemy, as you can see from the comments. That’s my bad. But it’s a symptom of the one-namers. And my stupidity.
42 15/115 Jake Gyllenhaal 26 M Beverly Hills CA 19:38.0 6:20
96 14/67 Tom Brady (Grant Joiner) 30 M Tempe AZ 21:20.9 6:53
543 90/115 Bryan Joiner 29 M Astoria NY 28:15.0 9:06
It should be noted that I started in the back and had to walk at the start for about a minute. My Nike+ clocked me at 27:20. Not very fast, but it’ll do. It should also be noted that even at that time, I lost to a 76-year-old. Hooray!
Complete Chilmark Road Race Results.
Fantastic article. “I like cervezas.”
This happened to me yesterday, and someone else had blogged it already, so I’m just going to point you there instead of drooling on the inside of your monitor myself. Things done changed.
The short description: Nike+ is freaking amazing. I borrowed my brother’s and my life will never be the same. Literally NEVER.
(Thanks to Alberto S. Lopez)
I also feel compelled to note that if you pay with a Mastercard, a two-disc set of The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy is TEN FREAKING DOLLARS at Best Buy. And that I love italics.
Saw The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday. Loved it. I mean, LOVED it. Unlike most action movies/movies in general, the films in this series seemed to get better as they went on, first progressing from director Doug Liman (who did a great job with The Bourne Identity) to Paul Greengrass, who sped things up with The Bourne Supremacy and blows the roof off it the newest film. Greengrass also directed United 93, and, at this point, deserves your complete attention in all matters of the big screen.
It’s not even “refreshing” to see The Bourne Ultimatum after the waste of $10.50, three hours of my life and several college courses worth of brain cells that was Transformers; the actual word is theoretical and still in the testing stages. Mathematicians are roaming the halls of ivied universities, more unbathed than usual, using various degrees of ∞ to quantify the experience. The findings will represent a seismic shift in human thinking, I hear, unless one man can stop them… and wouldn’t you know it, Michael Bay is planning his counterattack with Transformers 2 and 3. May Bourne save us, possibly by killing Optimus Prime with his bare hands (just imagine what he’d do to the BAD guys). But seriously…
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read from here if you’re super-sensitive about your movies.
This is probably the last Bourne film, unless they try to make another one with a new actor and director, and I’m happy for it. While I could watch these films literally all day, the three-movie plot arc was resolved nicely. I love that Supremacy and Ultimatum, a lá The Wire or other well-crafted movies/shows, are unforgiving in looking back on previous events in the service of a “complete” story. There are many “trilogies” out these days, but most are a movie followed by a bunch of sequels. Not this group. It’s essentially one long, great movie. (Though I do get the sense they can be absorbed individually as well, but they’re so good, why would you want to?)
Adding to the greatness was the fact that the all Joiner brothers saw this one together, which is about all I could ask for. We only get together about three times a year, we’re all big fans of the series, and took in the movie, followed by some gyros from the Ditmars Gyro Palace. If that’s not a priceless afternoon, I don’t know what is.
I saw a friend this weekend who is a big Hillary Clinton supporter, and for the exact reason which I discounted here last week — that she is Bill Clinton’s wife. This particular friend, an honest-to-God-old-school Texas Democrat, is a strong advocate of politics as a (tug-of-?) war where you maximize every advantage you have for the sole purpose of fucking over your enemy, whom you despise. To use a sports analogy, it’s like a Yankees/Red Sox type of thing; he thinks it’s not enough to support one side — you have to HATE the other side. He takes every Karl Rove- or Dick Cheney-orchestrated maneuver personally, every Rumsfeld “unknown known” right in the stomach, every Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzalez fuckup right to the kidney. He HATES Republicans, all of ’em, every last one. I know a few and they’re not so bad (!), so it’s harder for me to get up the urge to step on their collective throats. But I understand.
Anyhow, he’s voting for Hillary Clinton. And why is he voting for Hillary Clinton?
“Because after eight years of this fuckup president, there’s no better revenge than putting the Clintons back in the White House. You re-elected George Bush? Fine. Well guess, what? The Clintons are back. Load up the U-Hauls. Yee-haw, motherfuckers.”
This discussion/wonderful tirade opened my eyes a bit to how visceral the pain is for card-carrying Democrats these days. I’m not sure I agree with him enough to follow his lead — I think a better “fuck you” would be a better president than Hillary — but I definitely see where he’s coming from. I do think it would be a great “fuck you” to have the Republicans to have the virtual picture ofd Bill Clinton just chillin’ on the White House grass in a lawn chair, drinking iced tea and waving to passersby — you know, giving the job as much attention and GWB does now. But it’s going to take a bit more for Hillary to get my vote.
There are six “fucks” in this post. Seven now. Yikes.
I think as the election progresses, there are going to be a lot of political posts. Presidential elections fascinate me.
Bryan Joiner 