Accepted Lunacy in Politics

It's election time again and I'm starting to see the typical barrage of political speeches on the news.  It occurred to me last night how insane election campaigns are and how we as the voting public just accept it as just the way things are.  Let me explain.  Let's say you got to vote for who was going to be the next coach of the New England Patriots, or the CEO of Microsoft, or the next quarterback for the Buffalo Bills.  Then the candidates for these jobs went on tv and did nothing but talk about how the guy who currently holds that job has done nothing right since he has held the position.  Literally NOTHING.  The current job holder can't put his shoes on correctly according to this new potential candidate.  How would you react to that?  Personally I would think the candidate was crazy.  Think about this for a second from a different angle.  Think about how much drive, sacrifice, intelligence, and plain old luck it takes to get hold the position of coach in the NFL or CEO of Microsoft.  Is it really possible that somebody could reach that pinnacle of success and be totally wrong about everything they are doing?  Now think about this.  There are 32 head coaches in the NFL and dozens of people who are CEO of billion dollar companies in the US.  There is only one president of the United States.   One guy made it out of 330 million.  How likely is it that that guy is totally wrong about everything he is doing?  It's lunacy and it's political bullshit and we as the voting public accept it without a second thought.  We accept that the candidate most likely does not believe much of what he is saying about the other candidate.

By the way, beware any recipe that calls for you to "wisk on high for 5 minutes".  You are basically signing up to have minor steam burns on your hand when you do that.

Staycation

I've been on quite a long run of stressful projects for the last 4-6 months and so I took it upon myself to get some vacation time in which I just stayed home.  Originally it was supposed to be 9 days but it was split because I had to come in to work for 2 days.  It was still very nice and I'm glad I did it.  I really needed to get away from work for a while.  I got some good running in.  Got a little house work done.  Almost mowed the lawn.  Mainly just relaxed.  One really cool thing I did was finally use the gift certificates for a place called the Flightdeck in Anaheim that mom gave me and Derek.  It was a good time and I think Derek liked it too.  They give you a lot of time in the simulator.  The guy giving the briefing on how to fly the planes asked if any of us were prior military and I said that I was a Marine.  He asked where I was stationed and I said Miramar.  Apparently he was as well.  I don't think I've ever met another Miramar Marine.  That was kinda cool.  Anyways, I think we'll be going back there again.

I've been debating with myself whether or not I am actually going to be able to properly train for the Long Beach Marathon.  If I stick the same kind of training plan that I had for the LA I will be finishing my 20 miler the week before the marathon.  Technically, this is possible although I still feel like I am rushing it a bit.  We'll see what happens.  I completed a 10 mile training run yesterday and it felt pretty good.  I have figured out that in order to go on a long run and not feel like crap for the rest of the day I need to eat a lot more.  How bout that.

Lakewood tunnel underneath the 405.  A rather uncomfortable place to run.