Woo… up to 4.7 miles.  I might make my goal of 6 miles by the time I go back to Cali.

Also, I managed to a dance a manageable cha cha a few times yesterday night.

Currently downloading some music to practice to.

This weeks increment in my run (3.8 mi) took all three attempts (ending today) to complete without stopping because part of my rerouting took me into a 60 ft 20 degree hill that just about killed me on Tuesday and Thursday.  I have ambitiously set a 4.2 mile run to be completed within the next week.  I am also dancing Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week.  I have private lessons on Tuesday and Thursday, a group lesson on Wednesday and the dance party on Friday night.  I am really getting addicted to this.

I went to Best Buy today and bought the boxed ubuntu edition.  Even though Ubuntu is free to download, I thought I’d give them $20 to satisfy my curiosity about what was in the box and what was advertised on it.  I was really hoping for some stickers, but there weren’t any   The boxed version comes with 60 days of support from Canonical, however.  So, if anybody wants to try Ubuntu out with support, I’ll send them the package for free.

This article was in this week issue of Time magazine.  This has go to be the most unhealthy thing you could do to your daughter.  It seems like a great way to make girls feel bad about their body/sexuality and to screw them up in the future for any guy other than daddy.

<Begin Plug> I have been using a website called mapmyrun.com to record my runs (I increment the distance approximately once per week). You can see my history and all my runs here. You can also look up other peoples runs in your area. <End Plug>

I buy jalapeños to put on my sandwiches and omelets (egg white omelets that is) every week, and they are usually pretty tame. However, this week I went to Earth Fare and got some of them. About 10 seconds after biting into my sandwich at lunch I was in physical pain. Sweat was beading on my face, my tongue was numb, and my sinuses were gushing – i.e. a bit embarrassing. Note to self: organic jalapeños are much hotter than Kroger jalapeños . . .

Since I have nothing to do at my apartment (and the people at the lab are mostly anti-social scientists), I have been taking weekly group dancing lessons in Knoxville. So far, I have ‘learned’ (and by learned I mean learned the basic steps of) the foxtrot, basic swing, and waltz. Learning to dance well is one of my life goals, and, like finishing a marathon, I am trying to do something about this summer. Besides, the ratio of girls to guys at these classes is generally 4-1. Every Friday night, the studio has a dance party for the join purpose of having fun and practicing. Tomorrow I will go for the first time, since I think I might actually not embarrass myself too badly after four lessons.

I finally got one piece of forwarded mail from Berkeley. It was a Time Magazine from May 26^th. If this 2 month delay keeps up, my mail from July in Berkeley should come to Oak Ridge in mid-Septemeber – a month after I leave… I am not sure I can use the Postal Service as an example of something the government doesn’t screw up to the “Fair Tax” people anymore.

I am going hiking in the Smokey Mountain National Park on Saturday.

Thursday: 3.1 Miles – 27 Minutes

Below are some pictures of my apartment and cubicle:

When you are up 8% in the polls, I don’t understand the decision to start pandering to the center and voting like a Republican.  Why not just stick with what is working?  Ah well, I suppose your advisers have more election experience than I do…

Since I got to Oak Ridge, I have started working out 3 days a week and running 3 days a week (and substantially improving my eating habits) in order to beat Giustino in the Marathon.  After a couple months of not training, I started mid June with a first run of an incredible 0.75 miles (in fairness, it is really hilly here).  Anyway, because I think that the threat of being publicly shamed might make me keep at it,  I will start posting my miles at the bottom of my blogs.  Starting today…

7/15/2008 – 8am – 3.1 miles (22.9 to go).