Category: Personal

I survived the first run. Brooke told me that the guy she called at The Running Room had assured her that on the first night, we only ran for one minute. Though that seemed odd to me, with the cold weather and the snow it was welcome news. It turns out the guy must have mistaken “1 mi” for one minute when it was actually one mile! Metric moron. But I survived. Of the pack of about 60 of us, I finished in the first quarter, and Brooke actually finished a few people behind me. So we’re off to a good start, and I’m actually kind of excited about it. For me, joining a gym has always been out of the question. Exercise has to be social or it’s boring. Running (er, jogging) in a group can be fun.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re one of my single guy friends living in Toronto reading this? Get your arse out to a jogging class. The ratio of women to men is about 10:1.

In a mild pre-emptive strike at my own corpulence, I’ve enrolled along with my lovely wife in a “Learn To Run” course with that great franchise of joggery, The Running Room. We begin our adventures in pavement pounding tonight, in the midst of an April snowstorm. And although Brooke, ever the cutting-edge observer of fitness etiquette, has warned me not to refer to our endeavour as “jogging,” I plan to refer to it just that way as much as possible, hopefully in an out-loud fashion. I’m fascinated to find out exactly what the “learning” will involve, frankly, other than substituting the word “running” for “jogging.”

P.S. Did I mention that Brooke has been running 5K several times a week for the past few weeks? The only thing she’ll be “learning” is how to slow down for me.

I need a shorthand for “hey, we’re having more freaky April weather again.” I guess I could just say look here and here. Just change 2002 to 2003 and it’s the same story all over again.

Sorry for the “cheese sandwich” entry.

Yesterday, I bought the DVD of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. Hard to believe that this film was directed by the same man (Robert Wise) who directed The Sound of Music.

But that’s not why I used the title for this entry. You see, today I was laid off from my job. It seems to be a trend. This is the second time in three years that I’ve come home from SxSW and lost my job. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, or even unwelcome, but it’s still a little bit traumatic.

As some of you may know, I came back from Austin energized to move on with my life and do something for a living that I actually cared about. Sometimes life has a way of making the hard decisions for you. So, today the earth stood still, for a moment. But just for a moment. It’s up to me now to shape the future, as much as that’s possible.