PLANET3RRY

Here’s something to hopefully color and brighten your day.

In this video, one of my friends has reached CULT status in Wilmington, NC from his appearance. Simply known to the world as “Devaney”, he is going to take The WORLD Coastal North Carolina by STORM (unless a Hurricane does first).

For those that don’t recognize him, he feels like a woman

It’s race time in the Higgins household and that means… well, lots of things. But for me it’s time to figure out what crap I can find to offer as a prize for the winner of Guess My Time, Win Crap Contest. I don’t have any clue what number this is, but it feels like a million.

I was thinking that this contest would be different seeing that my designated goal time IS 4 hour and 45 minutes. It was kinda not fair to actually have people guess what my time would be… but while I was in room of “rest”, I thought… “It’s hard enough to guess the time, and I will axe (no, not ask) the provision that ‘whatever time is close enough (read: To Get a Winner)‘ and make them get it on the dot”. Now, I was thinking that I would cruel enough to get down to the THOUSANDTHS of a second, but that is too much of making me an a-hole that I thought… eh, I’ll go [HUGE GRIMACE] with only two significant digits.

So, Here are the rules (in no particular order): Click on the Contest Arena of my website. Hint: It’s at the top of the website next to the link to send in your gold to me for hard cash. You’ll see the entry form… wait. IF the entry form is there, you can still play. If it’s not there… I can’t go for that… no can do. You’ll have to wait until later in the month. I’ll make sure that your county public health department puts you on suicide watch until the next contest.

So, you fill in the form. Send it in and wait patiently for the results. My guess is that they will post them later in the day. Of course, if I do that Twitter thing that all the cool kids are doing, then you might find out my time earlier. But, I have been known to be a jokester in the past and could Twitter the “wrong” time. Hehe… that would be funny.

However, as with all of my crappy contests the official race time as published by the race entity or its affiliates will be the end all and be all of the results.

The Race: The 5th Annual Covenant Health Knoxville Marathon on March 29th 2009 at 7:30am AST (Anticipated Start Time)

History: Doesn’t really matter does it? My Goal Time is 4hour 45minutes and 00seconds. However, if you must know, my 2006 time was 4:21:44

Accuracy: Given the clairvoyant nature of my finishing time, you must Guess My Time exactly. Well, I might be persuaded to relax it to within one second… but that’s all the flexibility I am going to give!

Official Entry: Your official entry will be the time stamp on my email of your guess. You may enter more than once, but your most recent time will be your official Guess. IF for some reason you can’t use the comment form, you may use other methods to get to me. Check out Where To Find Me on the right Side Bar, but there is no guarantee that your guess will make it… but I’m a pretty nice guy, I might let it slide.

Running in a Springtime Waterland

Alarm clock rings, are you listening,
In the lane, street is glistening
A horrible sight,
It rained last tonight.
Running in a Springtime waterland.

Gone away is the snowbird,
Here to stay is a blue bird
He sings a love song,
As I contemplate,
Running in a Springtime waterland.

In the greenway creek, we can cross train by swimming
Then pretend that he is Race Director Brown
He’ll say: Are you Trained?
We’ll say: No man,
But we’re trying to get it done
When it’s dry in town.

Later on, we’ll conspire,
As we surf by the notebook
To face unafraid,
The runs that we’ve made,
Running in a Springtime waterland.

On the trail we can trudge through the mud,
And pretend we’re a thoroughbred at The Downs
We’ll have lots of fun going through the woods,
Pretending we win the Triple Crown.

When it rains, ain’t it irritating,
‘Cause your nose gets a sniffle
We’ll visit and pay, our medical co-pay,
Running in a Springtime waterland.

Next week, I am going to be guest blogging! That’s right! ME! I couldn’t believe it either.

The Blogger, who calls himself Jake at Tales of A Dysfunctional Family is taking exams, so instead of just blowing off his exams, he’s getting some guest blogger to do his work for him. A delegator.

Now, I didn’t know of Jake until he contacted me, but his website is pretty funny. From what I read so far, it’s basically his tale of being in a dysfunctional family which is really convenient given his blog name and all. I had thought that it might have been on of my second-cousins (maybe once removed, maybe not) but then he talked about falling asleep in Church and his brother singing “This Little Light of Mine” (which I hear ‘might’ on the next Guitar Hero: Tent Revival Tour). So that’s defintely NOT of my kin that I was thinking…

But Jake and I share something else in common… the supporting players in our blogs have really cool nicknames. Where as I have My Lovely and Talented Wife, The Elder, The Younger, Our Responsible and Resourceful Au Pair and The Loud and Loveable Skipper Doodle; he has Ricky Bobby, Scuba Jean, Busch, Cinderella, Noob, Hurricane and Tornado.

But now I have to go meditate on what I am going to write about for my guest blogging stint.

In a break of “This State is Blue, This State is Red”, I have this YouTube video that Roon Posted on his site.

One of my Fave Musicians is in town this weekend. And No, I don’t have Tickets either. I never put them on my wish list so they never magically appeared. Here’s some of my fave lyrics:

Upgrade my system at least twice a day
I’m strictly plug-and-play, I ain’t afraid of Y2K
I’m down with Bill Gates, I call him “Money” for short
I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support
****************
And I forgot the next verse
Oh well, I guess it pays to rehearse
The lyric sheet’s so hard to find
What are the words, oh nevermind
Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know, ooh no
Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know…
****************
It’s Christmas at ground zero
And if the radiation level’s okay
I’ll go out with you and see all the new
Mutations on New Year’s Day
****************
I’m the pious guy the little Amlettes wanna be like
On my knees day and night scorin’ points for the afterlife
So don’t be vain and don’t be whiny
Or else, my brother, I might have to get medieval on your hiney
****************
And I was singin’
My my this here Anakin guy
May be Vader someday later
Now he’s just a small fry
****************
Don’t play that song
That “Achy Breaky” song
The most annoying song I know
And if you play that song
That “Achy Breaky” song
I might blow up my radio, oooh…
****************
Elmo’s got gun, Elmo’s got a gun.
Big bird’s on the run.
Bernie’s dialin’ 911.
****************
Don’t change the channel
Don’t touch that dial
We got it all on UHF
Kick off your sneakers
Stick around for a while
We got it all on UHF

And if you are still clueless it’s Weird Al Yankovic. He’s here in Knoxville this weekend at the Tennessee Theatre

There’s the sales that stores put out there to get people off the water and into the stores, the Christmas in July Sales… mainly because there’s not much else to use as a catalyst for sales in between 4th of July (not a big Sales Weekend) and Back to School (which varies from school & state).

So the other day, My Lovely and Talented Wife colored my hair. Well, more specifically she added some highlights to my hair. As I was really bored waiting for the whole process to start, I messed around with my hair and came up with a great Halloween costume. After all, It’s only 104 days (as of the posting of this post) until the Day of Free Candy.

with slightly minor photo-editing, I present a candidate for employment at Wonka this year’s Halloween costume:

Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-do

I think this is a bug that made it from the Nuclear Lab from Oak Ridge, Tn

This was long time in the making and decided to finish it… As Tagged by dPeach.

How would you describe your running 10 years ago?

I was a brand new runner. I was 3 months into my running career with 8 road races and 1 sprint triathlon under my belt. I was constantly looking up information online on how to run, trying to find races, etc.

What is your best and worst run/race experience?
Best:

My best experience was the 2001 Richmond Marathon where I PRed (at the time) with a 4:09:03. I started off slowly and avoided the early traffic, something I use to this date. By Mile 6, I had my groove on and at Mile 17, I was excited to pass the scene of previous “Walls” for this race. I was still strong at mile 20 and realized that I might be able to PR. At Mile 22, I knew that I was going to PR, it was just a matter of how much.

Worst:

Same Race, one year later. The Richmond Marathon in 2002. By mile 14, I realized that I was going to hit the Wall. At mile 15, I hit the Wall and had to start walking much earlier than previous races (1999, 2000). I was pissed by Mile 17. I was ready to DNF when I would meet my friend Gray at Mile 19. He was going to run with me a few miles. I did a lot of walking from Miles 15-18 and became very angry at myself and just ready to call it a day. I had never wanted to quit a race before, not matter how bad I felt, even my first marathon. This was different, I hit the Wall REALLY early and I was angry. However, when I found Gray, he “forced” me to run with him and I ended up finishing, but it was pretty grueling last 7 miles.

Why do you run?

I run now because I have to, it’s much like an addiction. I have assimilated to running: If I don’t run, I feel bad. It’s part of my core and essence. Plus with just about everything in life, I can associate to my experiences with running.

What is the best or worst piece of advice you’ve been given about running?
Best:
Probably the best advice was to do different types of runs at different paces (tempo, easy, long, speed). Until you incorporate this into your running, you aren’t going to see progress in your running.

Worst:
I can’t say that I have had bad advice, either that or I have forgotten it. If something sounds decent, I might try it, and if it works great, but if it doesn’t I move on.

Tell us something surprising about yourself that not many people would know.

Bonus surprise:
Oh geez, something surprising? I think that I got most of my surprising and weird things about me covered already. And I am not sure that some people would really be surprised at some of the stuff that I do, I mean, have you read this blog?

Oh, here’s something surprising… I have used Dark and Lovely hair coloring before. (and here’s a surprising question that I found when looking for a link for those that do not know what Dark and Lovely is to begin with)

Rules of the game: I am now supposed to tag 5 more people and get them to answer the questions. I was pretty slack at getting this out, so if you are a runner and you haven’t done this yet, then considered yourself tagged.