Well, our band is still better....

The college football national championship game between the mighty warriors of Troy and those...admitedly pretty good cowboys from Texas was certainly an awesome game. Despite the tragic, horrifying outcome of Texas winning 41 to 38 at the end of the night of course. The Texas QB, Vince Young, had a fantastic game; however, all of the chumps calling up the sports talk shows today and *trashing* on USC and in particular Reggie Bush are demonstrating amazingly poor class and sportsmanship. Luckily, Jim Rome called them all out on it and stopped it on his show pretty quick, observing that *nobody* was calling to defend Texas prior to the actual game, and that now they were essentially all pumped up on false pretenses and were, essentially, all jerks. And, he observed, probably fat ones who couldn't run a single yard on a football field themselves, let alone the numbers Reggie Bush has put up, to say nothing for the combined numbers of VInce Young AND Reggie Bush. Shut those fools up pretty quick, I must say.

But, now with that out of the way (and the sooner fogotten the better) I can focus more on my own ability to run a yard. I am delighted to state that after nearly a *year* of ongoing joint and other health issues I once again have a 100% clean bill of health, and I am so ready to get ACTIVE again to remove the fine layer of fat that has settled over my muscles. They are still there - I can feel them, damn it! And for motivation, I am now formally starting training for the 12K Bay to Breakers run in San Francisco in May. I've done that race twice, and it's a great challenge and a lot of fun. I should be well ready for it by May. The best piece of training equipment I purchased was the dog, frankly. With Sebastien, I am going on at least one 45 minute walk a day. The goal is to do two full walks a day - a 30 minute one in the morning and then the 45 one at night. It will certainly make Sebastien happy. I'm already back up to walking the 45 minutes to an hour a day without A) aching knee, B) aching back, or C)cramping afterwards. Add to that the fact that I was *beyond* horrified to see the pictures that came back from my cousin's October wedding - fat, pale & looking ill. Granted I was fat, pale and quite ill at that time, but it was one of those deeply depressing moments where you are staring at someone you don't recoginize for a second, and then have that horrible realization that it is YOU. Now, the next family wedding is in July. I intend for those to be pictures I can both recognise and be proud of, damn it. And then comes the diving trip in September, which I cannot really indulge in unless I am back at fighting speed becuase it is too dangerous, so that is goal #3 to keep me moving through the year.

As for work, my co-worker is back so things will be *so* much easier now that I don't have to carry two workloads. We are also through having 7 open projects at once; 1 project was successfully competed on Monday when the check for the new land purchase went through (happy dnace) 2 projects are formally submitted to the higher authorities and are on their way to final approval from the Board of Directors (translation - the seriously heavy lifting is over, and now it is Q&A only from this point on). My wonderful co-worker is in charge of completing another case I was moving - as her supervisor I have to keep an eye on it and help her as needed, but it is not my full responsibility to do all of the work on any longer. Now, the 3 projects that are still my lead are interesting, and 2 are frankly huge, but if they are the only thing to work on, that is doable. Plus, they are really really cool (for a geek like me) so I am only to happy to throw myself in there.

The only thing I still have to figure out is my play-time; I generally take at least one class a semester in art over at Cal Berkeley. However, they are not offering anything I want to take on the weekends this time, and week night classes are complicated for me. First of all, I have to get into The City, which can be a looooooooong commute sometimes. Second, now of course I have the dog and it cannot be left alone for 15 hours while I go to work AND go to play. Well it could, but it would be mean and, frankly, messy. We do have 2 months of basic manners dog classes to look forward to (/sacrcasm) but I'm a little off put by this turn of events. - Right, after I typed that I decided to deal with it, and have just signed up for a 10 week glass working class at a local art comune. It is weeknights, but it is about 10 minutes from my house, so that's much better than going to San Francisco, which is a minimum 30 minute door to door trip. Class description:

Come explore incredible possibilities of glass casting. Learn the ancient art of lost wax casting as you create colorful glass sculptures. We’ll cover wax working techniques, various mold making procedures, the kiln firing process and casting using different types of glass. You will be able to complete four to five finished projects. Come prepared with drawings, ideas for projects or use ours. This class is suitable for beginners, as well as students of all skill levels.

Coolness!