Sunday Mar 30 |
 | Walking 20:00 [1] | |
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| This time I toured the Buddhist temples at Nikko. Amazingly detailed carvings all over the walls and ceilings. The phrase, "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" comes from a carving of 3 monkeys above a door here.
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Saturday Mar 29 |
| Walking 20:00 [1] | |
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| Walked up to see the snow monkeys hot tubbing at the Jigokudani onsen. Very fluffy monkeys. Paula was supposed to see me on the monkey cam that they have set up for the web, however, it was shut down for the day. My theory is that they turned it off because the royal family showed up an hour after I left. I saw them pass by when I was waiting for the bus. I policeman filled me on all the details. It would have been cool to see them at the onsen, then again they probably would have cleared the area, so that they could have it all to themselves. I wouldn't have seen them at all had I not screwed up by missing my stop in the morning. I ended up riding the bus all the way to the top of the mountain where the ski resorts are, then I rode it back down. It added an hour to my travel time, just enough to see royalty pass by. |
Tuesday Mar 25 |
| Note | |
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| In Tokyo. Won't be doing much working out while I'm here. |
Sunday Mar 23 |
| Note | |
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| Paula and I finished up the taxes. No time for running. |
Saturday Mar 22 |
| Note | |
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| Mostly just set out controls and picked them up. Didn't have to spend much time doing this because Avery Park is pretty small. |
Friday Mar 21 |
| Note | |
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| Had to run some errands at lunch time. The more experienced mappers have weighed in on the basemap discussion, so at least it is more balanced now (at least towards my point of view). |
Thursday Mar 20 |
| Running 1:01:00 [1] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| Another rainy day at Bald Hill with Annie.
There is a conversation going on at O-Map about making basemaps. It is probably no coincidence that the non-competitive orienteers prefer to use GPS, digitized elevation data (which is essentially digitized topo maps), and field computers to do their mapping. They poo poo stereo photos as old school. I'm noting their names so that I don't make the mistake of traveling to one of their meets. |
| Bicycle 50:00 [1] | |
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| Commute to work, Avery Park, and home. |
Wednesday Mar 19 |
| Walking 1:50:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Keen Targhee II |
| Walk to work, lunch, and home.
Beautiful day at lunch time. Finally. I get antsy this time of year for more sunshine. Of course, the forecast for tomorrow and Friday is showers. |
Tuesday Mar 18 |
| Running 1:00:00 [1] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| Ran with Annie at Bald Hill. Another crappy, rainy day. |
| Bicycle 40:00 [1] | |
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| Commute to work.
When I entered the building at work, I heard someone coughing. Crap, I knew just who it was. As I got closer, I verified that it was the person who sits next to me. He was out yesterday feeling horrible, but vowed that he would be in today no matter what. Thanks. I made a u-turn and went home. Time to try the old VPN.
Stock markets went up a bunch today. I'm kind of hoping that they will tank some more so that I can scoop up some more bargains. |
Monday Mar 17 |
| Walking 1:50:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Keen Targhee II |
| Walk to work, lunch, and home.
Saw a flock of quail not too far from the house.
Had a big party for Paula this weekend in Portland. I set up an Amazing Race type of thing for them, my sly way of getting them to do orienteering without them realizing it. They went to Niketown, Portlandia, across the river to the Convention Center, Cupcake Jones (where they did a rather tame eating challenge--eating cupcakes), and Powell's Bookstore. Cupcake Jones was the turning point for the race, because it wasn't on the map. I meant it to be, but apparently the online version of the map had it, but the ones I gave them didn't. Those that resorted to asking people got there the quickest.
In the evening, we had dinner at Andina's, a nuevo Peruvian restaurant. I meant to show some pictures of Paula, but when I got the laptop set up, I realized that the pictures were on a flash drive back at the hotel room. Our friends offered to lend me a car, but I decided to just run there. Turns out that it was faster than a car anyway, because I didn't have to look for parking. I could tell because on the way back, I was keeping pace with a big white limousine hummer with rap music playing. The hummer would get ahead, but then had to stop at lights and stop signs where I would catch up and pull ahead.
The next day a couple of us went to Powell's and got some drinks. We found the only available seats and sat down. Actually one of the seats looked like someone might be using it because there were some gloves there and a few books. We figured we would move if they came back. We sat there for awhile and chatted, then we noticed the titles of the books that were sitting there--The Most Dangerous Women in History, Murderous Women, and another book in the same vein. We thought it best to move at that point.
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Friday Mar 14 |
| Walking 1:50:00 [1] | |
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| Walked to work, lunch, and home. Rained all day long. Wore my hiking boots today, because I didn't want to sit at work with soggy feet. |
Thursday Mar 13 |
| Running 59:00 [1] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| Another rainy day at Bald Hill with Annie. Still to muddy to wear the new shoes.
Playing with my new camera lens this morning, I discovered that the lens with the 2x converter that I got are not compatible with my camera. Damn! Back to Ebay they go. I have a lot of camera stuff to sell right now--these 2 lenses, my old film Olympus bodies and lenses, and a pentax digital camera and 2 lenses that I got for my 20-year work anniversary. |
Wednesday Mar 12 |
| Walking 1:50:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Keen Targhee II |
| Walk to work, lunch, and home.
Saw Sal Salcido today. He said that he has seen me walking to work lately. He is one of the few witnesses to the incident that caused Paula and I to start dating. This made me think about how the US Champs was an instigator for someone else's wedding. |
Tuesday Mar 11 |
| Running 57:00 [1] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| Soggy morning at Bald Hill with Annie. I usually retire my shoes at 100 hours, but I couldn't bring myself to run with my nice new white shoes in the mud. |
| Bicycle 40:00 [1] | |
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| Commute to work.
At Safeway, there was a black fraternity collecting cans to donate to the food shelter, so I bought a bunch of canned fruit and vegetables. Safeway had a sale, so I took full advantage of it. |
Monday Mar 10 |
| Walking 1:50:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Keen Targhee II |
| Walk to work, lunch, and home. On the way home, I saw a whole flock of turkeys at the top of Barley Hill. They didn't seem to concerned about me. |
Sunday Mar 9 |
| Running long 2:00:00 [1] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| Ran from the house to Bald Hill where I met up with Paula and Annie. Got to pet lots of dogs today as the weather was gorgeous!
Paula and I went out to Albany to try some pizza at a former coworker's place. They weren't open, so we tried some barbecue at the place next door. It was so so. Certainly not as good as the stuff that we had in Richmond, Virginia the weekend of the US Champs. That place was featured on an episode of Bobby Flay's Throwdown. The meat was falling off the bone. |
| Note | |
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| Paula birthday isn't for another month, but I just sent this out to some friends.
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Saturday Mar 8 |
| Walking 1:00:00 [1] | |
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| Put out controls and picked them up at Chip Ross. We had a good day for a meet. Mostly die hards came out to try the green course. The big news of the day was provided by Marieke who told us that she and Andy are going to get married sometime in June. Paula and I, of course, whined that we wanted the wedding in Scotland. |
| Note | |
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| Hit 100 on a set of bicycle crunches. First time ever. Now up to 500 three times per week. They say that you can work your abs everyday, but that is not true. They need recovery time like any other muscle. The year that I did them everyday, I plateaued in the spring time. But I had really big numbers for the year. |
Friday Mar 7 |
| Running 1:00:00 [1] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| Ran with Annie at Bald Hill. |
| Walking 1:50:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Keen Targhee II |
| Walk to work, lunch, and home. Went home early to get my truck so that I could drive waaaayyyy over to Fedex beyond the south end of town to pick up a package which wasn't there. Apparently the V:30 that the driver wrote on the tag is 4:30, so I get to make a second trip. |
Thursday Mar 6 |
| Orienteering 15:00 [1] | |
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| Checked out the remaining control sites at Chip Ross. The big boulder under the oak tree now has a giant broken branch laying on top of it. Don't know when that happened. My long course is going to have a lot of climb to it. Hope they have been doing their hill work! |
| Walking 1:50:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Keen Targhee II |
| Walk to work, lunch, and home. The weather was nice coming in. Had one little dog bark at me on the sidewalk. He thought he was so tough. He got spooked by his shadow after I walked by. |
Wednesday Mar 5 |
| Bicycle 1:00:00 [1] | |
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| Commute to work, to haircut, and home.
I usually stop in at the Taylor Street Ovens for a sandwich before getting my hair cut (and facial). Today, a kindergarten class was there getting a tour. After the tour they got a big cookie and a glass of milk. Very cute.
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Tuesday Mar 4 |
| Running 57:00 [1] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| Ran with Annie at Bald Hill. Heard a turkey near the devil dog's house. He must have been in the trees on the other side of the house, because I couldn't get a visual on him. Also, saw lots of new born calves with their moms (or maybe mooo-ms). |
| Bicycle 40:00 [1] | |
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| Commute to work. |
| Note | |
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| As of today, I work for Aptina Imaging. Micron spun off its imaging business into a separate division with a new name. One thing I like about it is the color scheme is nice. Kind of like the Xbox website. This makes the third company in 3 years. So far I have worked for HP, Agilent, Avago, Micron, and now Aptina without changing jobs. |
Monday Mar 3 |
| Walking 1:50:00 [1] | |
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| Walk to work, lunch, and home.
Couldn't read the whole way in, because it started to rain. As I was untangling my ear phones to my ipod, I gave them a final little shake and saw one of the ear pieces on the ground with about 6-inches of wire attached to it. Shit! I took a closer look at my headphones and saw that I still had 2 ear pieces. Someone else had broken their head set. Whew!
Saw a brown creeper on a tree trunk near work. |
Sunday Mar 2 |
| Note | |
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| Did some control checking at Chip Ross Park. Didn't have much time before we had to go up to Portland to take my mom out for her anniversary lunch. Was pleasantly surprised that all of the control locations were still there, ie no developers had bulldozed the needed sections of the map.
The biggest change that we saw was a big church was built right next door to our usual registration area. It has 2 parking lots and still the cars overflowed into the street. I don't know who is going there, but it already has a very large following. |
Saturday Mar 1 |
| Running warm up/down 24:00 [1] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| 10 min warm up to the barn at Bald Hill. 14 min cool down. Bared the pasty white legs for the first time this year. |
| Running hills 23:00 [3] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| 3x to the top of Bald Hill. The road was slippery and mucky. Was consistently under 8 minutes all three times. Probably because I was fairly fresh from the rest this week. |
| Running hills 3:00 [4] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| 6x 30s hill bounding. |
| Running 24:00 [1] | |
| shoes: New Balance1122 sz 10 w D |
| Down hill running. |
| Note | |
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| Saw lots of birds today. A red-breasted nuthatch, a house finch, maybe even a purple finch (but probably not), an acorn woodpecker, and the usual juncos, chickadees, mourning doves, jays, and sapsuckers.
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