Runners’ Immune Deficiency
ARGGHHHH. Remember how I got sick two weeks before the Sydney Half-marathon? I’ve done it again, four weeks before the Melbourne Half. THIS SUCKS. Presumably my final long runs are stressing my immune system to the point where I get susceptible to bugs. I had two nice easy recovery runs this week, but Friday I noticed myself feeling headachey at work. By the time I got home Friday night, there was a definite sore throat happening. Today I feel stuffy and muzzy-headed, and my left ear is popping. (I should just get my tonsils cut out already.) So I’m doing the whole vitamin C and garlic thing again – the Snook made bagna cauda for dinner – and trying to take it easy. It’s just really frustrating that it’s happened again. I’ve got the 9K Bridge Run next Sunday, and my goal for that had been to run the whole thing without stopping. Then I’ve got three weeks til the race, during which I was planning on doing one more long run. Maybe that one will have to get shelved. I keep telling myself that taking a few days off doesn’t result in much fitness lost, but the runner side of my brain is having a hard time staying optimistic (especially when the lazy side is going “Woohoo! An excuse to be a big lazy failure!”). And the worst bit? I’m doing a fancy expensive four-day training course for work starting Monday, so I can’t even really have a proper sick day…

Women Against Sarah Palin. They’ve received 100,000 letters from women expressing their disagreement with McCain’s choice of a running mate. The letters come from Republicans, Democrats, octogenarians, community organizers, judges, Midwesterners, mothers, African-Americans, Catholics, school board members, hunters, librarians, teachers, wives, Alaskans, Hillary supporters, grandmothers, nursing home residents, college freshmen, and “hockey moms.” Palin is BAD FOR AMERICA.

Cat versus printer. HA! The funny thing is, other than the markings around the eyes and the long tail, that cat is the spitting image of Dr. Amy Jones.

Six-Foot-Long Pizza. Oh man, now I want a barbecue smoker!

Ebert talks about the candidates’ favorite movies. (One gets the impression he really doesn’t like Palin. Hee.)

Trying out iTunes 8
I was actually just saying to the Snook recently that my #1 wished-for feature in a media player is the ability to make playlists that are musically similar. There are plenty of services on the web that can say “If you like artist X, you’ll probably like artist Y,” but I wanted the ability to go, “I’m in the mood for jangly upbeat folk pop songs. Play me some of that.”* Imagine my surprise today to see that this is a major feature of the new iTunes! You highlight a song in your library and click a special button, and it creates a “Genius” playlist of things that are similar. I’ve been playing with it all day and so far it seems to work pretty well. I selected a Del Amitri song (the aforementioned jangly pop) and I got lots of other things in the same sort of vein. It worked pretty well with a Cure song too. The only moment of FAIL so far was when I used XTC’s “Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” as the basis. Somehow the fourth song on the playlist ended up being “Alfie” by Cilla Black! I really want to see the algorithm that produced that oddity.

* And no, using the “genre” tag in iTunes to make a smart playlist doesn’t really work. You can’t have more than one genre on a song, so you’d have to be REALLY SPECIFIC in your tag. Not to mention the fact that there are still thousands of songs in our library with missing or incorrect genres…

All Your Base… Rubber Stamp. Awwww, man! They only ship to the U.S. That sucks.

Doing a crossword together…

Snook: Tippecanoe’s mate. Five letters.
Me: Oh, I think he was an Indian! Try SQUAW.
Snook: Nah, that Q doesn’t look so good there.
Me: Wait! “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!” It’s TYLER!
Snook: What the hell does that mean?
Me: I have no idea. It just popped into my head. I think it may have been some historical political slogan. Maybe Tyler refers to the President? But I’m pretty sure Tippecanoe was an Indian; there’s a lake named after him in Indiana.
Snook: “Tippy-canoe?” Isn’t that like “Why-kick-a-moo-cow?”
Me: What?!
Snook: It’s a place in New Zealand. That’s what it’s called.

Well, upon further research, we were both half-right and half-wrong. “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” was a political song, but Tippecanoe actually referred to William Henry Harrison, the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe. I can find no reference online to an actual Native American named Tippecanoe, so maybe it was just a local place name. As for this town in New Zealand, it does exist… sorta. It’s actually Waikikamukau, and it’s a slang term for a small town out in the middle of nowhere. (The Kiwi term for “BFE”, if you will.)