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Exercise:  We registered for the Covered Bridges Half Marathon with our friend Heather, and we’re officially halfway there as of today based on training runs.  Brian and I booked 6.8 miles today, our first run over 6.5 miles this season.  It was a bit cloudy but reasonably warm for March.  We’ve been enjoying the hills around the Artichoke Reservoir and back roads of Newbury. Today’s attractions, in addition to a few more hills than last week’s 5.2 mile loop, were hearing spring peepers and seeing a farmer walk his bull up the road.  Yes, that’s right, it was definitely a bull (horns and other anatomy indicative of a male cow) being led and cajoled up Rogers Street.  We mused why the beast was not out roaming the plentiful pastures.  Maybe he’s a show bull learning to be walked on a leash and heed commands, or a stud being loaned to a neighboring farm?

Travel: I had been heading to DC about once a week, then had a break in early March before a week-long trip to Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA.  They kept us busy with classes Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm plus two evening networking sessions (the latter one at the golf course – nice!), and a dinner for the BAE Systems group.  After a delayed flight getting in on Sunday, that only left two evenings free!  I was not able to see everyone in SF – but don’t worry, I’ll be back in June and September.  I did manage to squeeze in a dinner with Mary at Andalu and headed to Morgan Hill to catch up with Betsey and the boys on Friday.  She also let our cousin Darren know, so he and his family also joined us!  It was so fun to catch up with them after too many years, to be in the hub of family activity, and to enjoy a delicious and healthy meal together.  The first training session on Converting Strategy Into Action was excellent too, by the way.  I was not used to homework, but the flight delay enabled me to do all the required reading for this round.

Home:  The kitchen has been getting a bit cluttered with all our appliances, and with Brian’s reinvigorated inspiration for cooking, he started looking at additional counterspace and storage for the kitchen.  He did some reconnaissance during the week, but we decided that today’s empty calendar would be a good opportunity to shop together.  After cruising the Newburyport antique stores and mulling over the offerings at Gallagher’s in Salisbury, we found what seems like the perfect piece!  Kudos to the furniture store owners for letting us take it home and see how it fit before we bought it.

You can see our theme of a breakfast space where we can enjoy looking out on the backyard.  Moving the juicer, coffeemaker and toaster allowed us to clear the center island for cooking prep.  We also moved the dish drying rack to the left side of the sink, so the right side near the stove is another prep area.  The kitchen looks a lot neater and more open, and the new cabinet fits perfectly in the space as well as reflecting our eclectic decor!

Food and health are two topics that are very important to me. Over the past century I believe the average person has lost track of how food is produced and consumed in this country. By losing track of this process I believe we’ve become dependent on large businesses to feed us to the detriment of our individual health and welfare. This is why I’m writing a serious post this morning rather than my normal “look at where we hiked” or “does an armed Scotsman defeat a hillbilly in one-on-one combat.”

This morning while reading an article online about the planned Obama vegetable garden, I discovered the existence of HR 875 – Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. On the surface this bill appears to be aimed at improving food safety through more thorough government regulation of the food supply. Upon deeper reading the bill appears to grant nearly unlimited authority to several government agencies that could regulate food supplies for any food producer from giant farms down to individual family farmers.

I had a very hard time finding what I considered credible information to make a decision myself. You can read the text of HR 875 here. Unfortunately, like many government bills it is a lengthy collection of statements that taken together can make it very difficult to discern the consequences of passing such a bill. Much of what has been written about saying NO to this bill comes across somewhere between overly alarmist and tin-foil-hat-wearing. I did manage to find a 14 page walk through that focused mostly on the bill and not on overly broad generalizations about how we’re destroying the world. On the same website a rebuttal by a representative of Monsanto.

After reading through the available information I’ve come to the conclusion that at best this legislation is an overly broad and poorly written attempt to enhance food safety. At worst, this legislation puts into place an overly broad government organization which could be used to dictate what I am allowed to produce and eat. In either case, this bill as written would be extremely harmful to local and organic farms and to anyone who wants control over what they put in their mouths.

My biggest area of concern is how the legislation could be used to control seed production which is addressed in the criticism of the bill. Monsanto’s response does not give me much comfort: “Nowhere is there any mention of seed banks, loss of property rights, or GPS tracking of animals. The bill seems to be nothing more egregious than a well-intentioned effort to improve food safety laws and processes. It was no doubt written in response to public concerns with relatively recent incidents with peanut butter, ground beef, spinach, etc.”

I paraphrase it as, “Pay no attention to all this complex language and the man behind the curtain. We don’t say we want to wipe out local farms and control the food supply. We want to make sure that the food supply is safe.”

Forgive me if I don’t believe you, but I don’t trust the track record of Monsanto and as an individual I want to make sure I have as much control as possible over what I can feed myself.

I wrote my congressman urging them to kill/stop HR 875 this morning.

As some of you know each year a few of my friends and I enter a bracket of mascot picks in the NCAA tournament. These picks are generally terrible, but they’re great fun to discuss and they give you something to cheer for once your own sorry picks have been eliminated.

The basic rule is who would emerge victorious if these two mascots fought. Over the years we’ve added several guidelines to help us decide. For example colors (Syracuse Orange), are beat by nuts (Ohio St. Buckeyes), are beat by animals (Louisville Cardinals), are beat by humans (UNC Tarheels), are beat by predatory animals (Kentucky Wildcats), are beat by armed humans (Xavier Musketeers), are beat by forces of nature (Tulsa Golden Hurricane), are beat by angelic or demonic forces (Duke Blue Devils). Adding a color in front of your name gives you special powers. For example a Golden Gopher is much tougher than a regular gopher and could take out a human under the right circumstances. Also, who you choose as a mascot matters. The Texas A&M Aggies have a collie as a mascot whereas the Utah State Aggies are called Big Blue and have a giant ox (think Babe the blue ox) as their mascot. No contest who would win there.

This years final is predicted as ASU Sun Devils 66 over Cal Golden Bears 65. Cal gets big points for having a golden bear and a mascot (Oski) who is another name for the Norse god Odin. Hard to argue with a colored predatory animal named after a Norse god. Some of the more “interesting” debates we had are summarized below.

EDIT: Full set of mascot picks here if anyone wants to argue

A lot of debate centered around the Tennessee Volunteers and how well armed they were. We had them beating Cowboys, Buccaneers, and Musketeers (a close set of matchups) before ultimately falling to Blue Devils.

The Radford Highlanders threw us for a loop until we discovered their mascot puts them more in the mundane kilted drinker category rather than being like Connor MacLeod.

The West Virginia Mountaineers also caused a long debate about whether they could beat the Robert Morris Colonials. Both are armed humans but the deciding factor was that the Colonials mascot is named RoMo and the university features a national championship caliber bowling team. I’ll take Mountaineers over East Coast bowlers any day.

Huskies versus Moccasins caused some confusion with a friend until we pointed out that moccasins were snakes in this case and not shoes. Clearly a puppy eats a shoe, but a venomous snake is another matter altogether.

Purdue Boilermakers versus Northern Iowa Panthers. Much debate about how heavily armed the steelworker is. The mascot generally carries a sledgehammer and works on a railroad. Ultimately this was settled by picturing the steelworker having a few beers with his buddies after work and wandering home where a panther was waiting in the living room. Panther wins.

As usual Blue Devils, Sun Devils, Demon Deacons, and Golden Bears did well in making up the final four. It’s not that unreasonable, right?

Yesterday was the annual season ticket lottery for the Red Sox tickets we share with friends. This year we were picking #2 so we ended up with a nice weekend Yankees game in August rather than a random Tuesday night in April. Here are the games we have:
4/9 TB (opening series day game)
4/21 MIN (our last pick… stuck with this one)
5/6 CLE
5/22 NYM (Su claims she knows a Met fan or two. Have fun at the game with them, honey)
6/21 ATL (Fathers Day, summer solstice, afternoon game in sun. Prediction SPF 11ty billion)
7/7 OAK
7/26 BAL
8/12 DET (trying to entice a visit from my sister)
8/23 NYY (AAAAAAA ROID! AAAAAAA ROID!)
8/30 TOR
9/9 BAL (I think we’ll clinch on this date in a runaway with the AL East)
10/1 CLE (but if not, we’ll certainly clinch on this date)

Here is the video of my birthday song. What a wonderful serenade from Max and Theo! (And Dan and Sarah and Beej)

Despite our snow storm on Monday, it did feel like spring by this weekend.

• the snow is nearly all melted. (And yes the church next door cleared a path through the snow mountain without us having to complain)
• the crocuses are up!
• Slinky caught mouse #2, cornered behind our TV trays.  Smaller this time, and he lost interest so we did not have trouble extracting the little rodent from his mouth.  I really hope there isn’t a nest anywhere, and these are independent adventuresome mice.
• We ran 6.2 miles today, outside, without any fleece!  Beej even wore shorts and has a tan line.
• Daylight saving time!

And, here is the promised photo of my b-day dinner: Paul (also a B-day boy!), Heather, Nate, Dan and me. Thank you Beej!  (he was taking the picture)

We’ve lived in our house for nearly eight years now and the church next door has been a pretty decent neighbor. One area that has bothered me over the past three or four years is their snow removal. About 50% of the time whoever is snow blowing for them leaves a pile of snow on our property in the middle of the sidewalk. I suspect they changed who was doing their removal because this problem only started about four years ago.

When I initially complained about this I thought it was a random occurrence, but it is now occurring fairly regularly. My friend suggested I snap pictures so I can contact the church. This is the first time I’ve remembered to snap some shots before I go out and clear the pile. This bothers me because it’s extra work for me, but also because it’s a high foot traffic area with the elderly day care in the church, the nightly meetings, and church on Sunday.

Oh well, on with the rant:

Well, here it is, my birthday! I feel wonderfully loved and celebrated from all the cards, emails, phone calls and happy wishes. The Sheldons are staying with us this week, so I even got a happy birthday from my godson Max this morning before I went to work. I’m sad that I have succumbed to a cold, so I have a bad cough, not very festive. It makes me wonder if I’d rather get performance reviews done or sleep. (Any chance the performance reviews will write themselves while I sleep? No? bummer.) Yesterday I picked sleep. Today I’m choosing performance reviews. Luckily we have multiple days of festivities planned, so I’ll have time to perk up before dinner tomorrow at 10 Center St, dinner with the Hines/Phillips on Thursday, and Red Sox festivities on Saturday.

What else is new? The weather is cold enough to deter me from running, but too warm to have much snow for snowshoeing. I declared a tiny success in exercise last week – I did 4.8 miles on Valentine’s day, a Martina workout the 15th, 6 miles on the 16th (vacation day!) and got in a Jessica workout (she was my trainer at Fitcorp when I was training for the Danskin Tri) and a Yoga session (thanks to Rich and Sarah for my mat + DVD!) last week too. I figure if I get in a long run each weekend and a couple short morning workouts indoors, I will be building sufficient momentum going into spring. This week I did a morning stationary bike and yoga workout so far. Hopefully Heather and I will kick our colds and get in a run this weekend.

Between house cleaning and church meetings and various other activities, weekends have been uneventful. I am really enjoying cantata rehearsals – the piece for Palm Sunday is contemporary but easy to learn, and is thus a lot of fun to sing, as well as being in a good range.

I’ll bring the camera on Saturday to share pics of the official b-day celebration!

Well, I jinxed myself. After crowing about the terrific snow we’ve had, this week was warm, sunny, and had sufficient rain that most of the snow is now gone. Me and my big mouth. On the other hand, that means there is plenty of dry pavement and thus I can run outside. Between a busy week of work, the AILG plenary, IRDF meeting and WILG board meeting, I didn’t make it outside for a run until yesterday, but it was beautiful. I’m sure I’ll make it out at least once more this weekend.

In the mean time, it’s become a President’s Day tradition to write performance reviews over the long weekend. I already had one done and one mostly drafted, so it was a better start than most years. I hope to finish 4 more before Monday, leaving only 2 others to complete during the week. My typical approach is to make a fire, sit in the recliner with my laptop, and type away until I get tired and the fire dies down. I believe that a cozy fire and a glass of wine create the right mood for giving gentle but constructive feedback and reflecting on a year’s worth of accomplishments.

Snowshoeing this season has been fantastic.  While everyone else is bemoaning the weekly snows and sub-freezing temps, I’ve been cheering!  New snow every week!  No freezing and thawing to cause crusty snow!  Finally, the season for which I bought my snowshoes!

And even better – all this MA snow has meant that snowshoeing is plentiful around home, so we can avoid the pre-planning and driving to NH usually associated with snowshoeing.  There is a >18 inch base around here most places.  We have used this snowy winter as an opportunity to explore local state parks.  Here is a google map of where we’ve been already this year.  Maybe one of these trips we’ll remember the camera so you can see actual footage of the snow.  In the mean time, look at the glacier in our backyard and think of acres of snow-covered state parks and reservations.