What, a four-year gap between posts is like nothing! Cosmically or geologically speaking, it's barely a tenth of a second, really.
OK, so yeah, resurrecting this blog after a presidential term seems random, but it's truly not. Back in 2012, I'd been running for a while off and on, but consistency was a big problem and so I never really got back to the constant, scheduled running I enjoyed back in 2007-2009, to be honest. Without consistent running, there was little reason for me to consistently write, and so naturally the decline of one led to the decline of the other.
But, a lot has changed in the intervening 4 years. First, we moved from our crappy, small one-bedroom apartment with rodent problems in a busy, urban neighborhood with no parking. We bought a house, still in Baltimore City, but in a less busy, MUCH quieter part of town. It's got three floors, three bedrooms, and plenty of space for us. Plus, we pay $300 more per month for 3x the space and something we own outright. For us, that was huge and our rowhouse truly feels like home. Plus the house came with all-new everything from the studs up to the furnace and roof and two-level(!) deck. Plus a parking pad which, if you live in a city, you know is a life changer.
Second, I got a bit fatter, which actually was not a positive change in itself, but did provide the motivation to return to running with renewed commitment. Before moving,
Showing posts with label First Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Post. Show all posts
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Reset Button
So the whole idea of being better about posting? Apparently that was just talk, because as you can tell, I haven't posted a SINGLE THING since last June. Not even a pitiful, "I'm super busy so can't post!" post. Just awful. While I haven't been sitting around watching paint dry these past twelve months, I did take a complete hiatus from running for the last six (or so).
I continued to run off and on without much in the way of consistency throughout last summer and into the winter. But it really wasn't substantial and I never got my endurance (and thus distance) back up much beyond 5K range. A (the wife) actually got more in to running than I did (probably write a separate post about that later). We ran the Cincinnati Thanksgiving Day Race in November since we were visiting the in-laws for that holiday, but that was my last race, really. I ran intermittently throughout the holidays and into early January.
But then I started studying for Level II of the Chartered Financial Analyst exam and quickly became consumed by that effort. Not having ANY business or financial background when I came in to the industry a few years back, the CFA curriculum has been a whole new world for me. As a result, it's required a lot more time than many other candidates. Level II, as any candidate or charterholder will tell you, is probably the most difficult level of the three. Why that is, is not actually very interesting. Suffice to say that I was studying every night after work and eventually all day every day every weekend.
That, combined with the dark, coldness of early winter mornings helped ease me out of running into sedentariness (is that a word?). Once I stopped running in early February, I never started back up. But I did tell myself I would start up again after the exam, which was back in early June. And, within a week of being done with that test, I was back huffing and puffing on the roads.
So, after about 3.5 weeks of pretty good consistency, I think I should start posting again on a somewhat regular basis. When I posted regularly, it was a good motivator. And since A and I have signed up for a 6 miler at the end of August and a half marathon in mid-October (aggressive!), I'm going to need all the motivation I can get!
To that end, consider this a reset of the blog. A fresh start, with a few changes. Of course, the main topics of the blog will be running and all that. But I'm going to try to stick with consistency here as well when it comes to posting. So I'll likely integrate additional topics into my posts that are not running related. Why? Because it's my blog, that's why! I'm envisioning something like 75% running/exercise and 25% other stuff. We'll see how that goes.
Finally, in terms of frequency of posting, don't expect me to suddenly go from zero posts to 20 per week. Frankly, I don't think I have enough to talk about to make that happen. But some days will have one post, some none, some might have several shorter posts. Again, I'll play it by ear.
I continued to run off and on without much in the way of consistency throughout last summer and into the winter. But it really wasn't substantial and I never got my endurance (and thus distance) back up much beyond 5K range. A (the wife) actually got more in to running than I did (probably write a separate post about that later). We ran the Cincinnati Thanksgiving Day Race in November since we were visiting the in-laws for that holiday, but that was my last race, really. I ran intermittently throughout the holidays and into early January.
But then I started studying for Level II of the Chartered Financial Analyst exam and quickly became consumed by that effort. Not having ANY business or financial background when I came in to the industry a few years back, the CFA curriculum has been a whole new world for me. As a result, it's required a lot more time than many other candidates. Level II, as any candidate or charterholder will tell you, is probably the most difficult level of the three. Why that is, is not actually very interesting. Suffice to say that I was studying every night after work and eventually all day every day every weekend.
That, combined with the dark, coldness of early winter mornings helped ease me out of running into sedentariness (is that a word?). Once I stopped running in early February, I never started back up. But I did tell myself I would start up again after the exam, which was back in early June. And, within a week of being done with that test, I was back huffing and puffing on the roads.
So, after about 3.5 weeks of pretty good consistency, I think I should start posting again on a somewhat regular basis. When I posted regularly, it was a good motivator. And since A and I have signed up for a 6 miler at the end of August and a half marathon in mid-October (aggressive!), I'm going to need all the motivation I can get!
To that end, consider this a reset of the blog. A fresh start, with a few changes. Of course, the main topics of the blog will be running and all that. But I'm going to try to stick with consistency here as well when it comes to posting. So I'll likely integrate additional topics into my posts that are not running related. Why? Because it's my blog, that's why! I'm envisioning something like 75% running/exercise and 25% other stuff. We'll see how that goes.
Finally, in terms of frequency of posting, don't expect me to suddenly go from zero posts to 20 per week. Frankly, I don't think I have enough to talk about to make that happen. But some days will have one post, some none, some might have several shorter posts. Again, I'll play it by ear.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Inaugural Post (a.k.a. why I'm a Nats fan)
After much hemming and hawing and procrastination, I've finally gotten around to creating a blog for my favorite baseball team, The Mighty Washington Nationals. As a life-ling resident of the Washington-Baltimore area (grew up in a town about 90 minutes outside DC, went to prep school around DC, now live in the lovely Charm City), it was always a choice between the Orioles or nothing. You either loved the O's or you were a baseball orphan. It was a terrible choice thanks to Peter Angelos and Major League Baseball. But that's another post for another day.
My family, despite being pretty much equidistant from DC and Baltimore, has always been firmly entrenched in DC sports. We're Redskins fan for football season (a tough row to hoe, let me tell you) and Wizards/Bullets fans for basketball (go Agent 0!). We aren't really hockey fans but if the Caps win, I'm content. Baseball was always the sore spot with us. While I never hated the Orioles, per se, they were never a favorite team for me. In fact, I was more than happy to root for the other team whenever I went to an O's game, regardless of who it was. That dislike only got worse as the O's continued to try to spend with the bog boys in their division. It's not that they don't have the $100 million a year to spend thanks to rabid O's fans, but the long run of incompetent trades and acquisitions (the Sammy Sosa idiocy is just the first instance that comes to mind right now) pretty much insured Baltimore a paltry last place finish in the AL East until Major League Baseball felt sorry enough for them in the same time frame as their decision to expand the League to Florida and the sorry Devil Rays were born. The constant resistance by Peter Angelos and his band of merry owners to bring baseball to DC finally soured me to the Baltimore baseball way of life.
Sure, the O's have a great baseball tradition. I mean, it pains me not to be able to really root for the team of Jim Palmer, Earl Weaver, Eddie Murray, Brooks Robinson, and the Ripkens, just to name a few. But the core of the organization is rotten and decrepit. Angelos finally lost his battle to keep his stranglehold on the DC-Baltimore region with his mediocre team with its extravagant payroll and prices to match. However, he's still revered by many in this city, mainly because he built Camden Yards and keeps money flowing into the black hole that is the majority of the O's system. That's a shame. But I will give him credit for at least keeping the O's from going the way of the Expos...without that big payroll, everything else being equal, Baltimore may have lost their team during the lean post-strike years. Who knows for sure. Point is, the day Angelos goes (probably the day he dies, in all honesty, because I have yet to hear one peep about a sale of any sort), will be a good day for the long term health of the O's.
That's a very long way of saying, I'm not an O's fan and never will be. I can watch the team (hell, I live a 10 minute walk from the Yard) without feeling like I'm sacrificing some moral high ground. But I won't cheer for them with any fervency.
I've always hoped for the day when DC would get its own team and the great tradition of the Washington Senators would be reborn. I can't tell you how happy I was when the decision was finally made to move the Expos to Washington. Even though it was basically condemning the organization to several seasons of losses and rebuilding, I know that most of us DC baseball fans thought it'd be worth the pain.
And I still think that way. The summer of 2005 was the best baseball season I have ever experienced. Period. It was the first year I had a home team to cheer for and hope for. It was the first time that I could entertain the idea of seeing a Major League baseball game without having to go to Baltimore. I had an entire team to examine and analyze! It was all mine. Well, sort of. You get my meaning. I went to college in Connecticut and knew many a member of Red Sox nation. My girlfriend, who did her masters degree at Boston University from 2004-2006 bought a Johnny Damon T-shirt (before he went to New York and made half of New England cry like little girls). For some perspective, not only is my girlfriend, Annie, from Cincinnati, but she's an opera singer (soprano) and carries her music in a huge pink bag. She was not a baseball fan until we started dating and then became a faithful member of Red Sox nation. Now that she's here in Baltimore, she's less so, but given her druthers, I think she'd still cheer for the Sox.
Anyway, I missed the first few months of the Inaugural Season because I was completing my masters degree at the London School of Economics, where baseball is called cricket and a match takes 5 days, which is insane. But once I got back stateside, I watched every Nats game I could. The fact that they were in first place (FIRST PLACE!) approaching the All Star break was fantastic...their eventual slide to .500 by September was sad but not unexpected. Actually, .500 was a great first season, in my opinion. Last season was a little rougher, but my commitment has never wavered.
Now, living in Baltimore and working for Legg Mason Capital Management, where the Orioles are as much a religion as value investing and the Bill Miller Way, it's tougher to show my Nats pride. I have the Nats schedule posted on my desk and a Nats bumper sticker pegged to my wall, but anything beyond that is tempting the gods, I fear. One great bonus: being a Comcast customer (I HATE COMCAST WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND NOVA) I get the two channels of the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which means I get to see EVERY SINGLE NATIONALS GAME. It's incredible. 165 games X 3 hours per game = about 495 hours of Nats baseball available to watch.
So, all this being said, this blog is going to start out really simple: me posting about the Nationals. I'm going to let the layout and posting schedule of the blog develop organically but hopefully I'll be able to post several times a week, if not more.
And with that, I will end this very long post. I didn't mean for it to be so long, but that's what happens when I get going on the Nats. The rest of my posts will probably not be as long or boring...hopefully.
My family, despite being pretty much equidistant from DC and Baltimore, has always been firmly entrenched in DC sports. We're Redskins fan for football season (a tough row to hoe, let me tell you) and Wizards/Bullets fans for basketball (go Agent 0!). We aren't really hockey fans but if the Caps win, I'm content. Baseball was always the sore spot with us. While I never hated the Orioles, per se, they were never a favorite team for me. In fact, I was more than happy to root for the other team whenever I went to an O's game, regardless of who it was. That dislike only got worse as the O's continued to try to spend with the bog boys in their division. It's not that they don't have the $100 million a year to spend thanks to rabid O's fans, but the long run of incompetent trades and acquisitions (the Sammy Sosa idiocy is just the first instance that comes to mind right now) pretty much insured Baltimore a paltry last place finish in the AL East until Major League Baseball felt sorry enough for them in the same time frame as their decision to expand the League to Florida and the sorry Devil Rays were born. The constant resistance by Peter Angelos and his band of merry owners to bring baseball to DC finally soured me to the Baltimore baseball way of life.
Sure, the O's have a great baseball tradition. I mean, it pains me not to be able to really root for the team of Jim Palmer, Earl Weaver, Eddie Murray, Brooks Robinson, and the Ripkens, just to name a few. But the core of the organization is rotten and decrepit. Angelos finally lost his battle to keep his stranglehold on the DC-Baltimore region with his mediocre team with its extravagant payroll and prices to match. However, he's still revered by many in this city, mainly because he built Camden Yards and keeps money flowing into the black hole that is the majority of the O's system. That's a shame. But I will give him credit for at least keeping the O's from going the way of the Expos...without that big payroll, everything else being equal, Baltimore may have lost their team during the lean post-strike years. Who knows for sure. Point is, the day Angelos goes (probably the day he dies, in all honesty, because I have yet to hear one peep about a sale of any sort), will be a good day for the long term health of the O's.
That's a very long way of saying, I'm not an O's fan and never will be. I can watch the team (hell, I live a 10 minute walk from the Yard) without feeling like I'm sacrificing some moral high ground. But I won't cheer for them with any fervency.
I've always hoped for the day when DC would get its own team and the great tradition of the Washington Senators would be reborn. I can't tell you how happy I was when the decision was finally made to move the Expos to Washington. Even though it was basically condemning the organization to several seasons of losses and rebuilding, I know that most of us DC baseball fans thought it'd be worth the pain.
And I still think that way. The summer of 2005 was the best baseball season I have ever experienced. Period. It was the first year I had a home team to cheer for and hope for. It was the first time that I could entertain the idea of seeing a Major League baseball game without having to go to Baltimore. I had an entire team to examine and analyze! It was all mine. Well, sort of. You get my meaning. I went to college in Connecticut and knew many a member of Red Sox nation. My girlfriend, who did her masters degree at Boston University from 2004-2006 bought a Johnny Damon T-shirt (before he went to New York and made half of New England cry like little girls). For some perspective, not only is my girlfriend, Annie, from Cincinnati, but she's an opera singer (soprano) and carries her music in a huge pink bag. She was not a baseball fan until we started dating and then became a faithful member of Red Sox nation. Now that she's here in Baltimore, she's less so, but given her druthers, I think she'd still cheer for the Sox.
Anyway, I missed the first few months of the Inaugural Season because I was completing my masters degree at the London School of Economics, where baseball is called cricket and a match takes 5 days, which is insane. But once I got back stateside, I watched every Nats game I could. The fact that they were in first place (FIRST PLACE!) approaching the All Star break was fantastic...their eventual slide to .500 by September was sad but not unexpected. Actually, .500 was a great first season, in my opinion. Last season was a little rougher, but my commitment has never wavered.
Now, living in Baltimore and working for Legg Mason Capital Management, where the Orioles are as much a religion as value investing and the Bill Miller Way, it's tougher to show my Nats pride. I have the Nats schedule posted on my desk and a Nats bumper sticker pegged to my wall, but anything beyond that is tempting the gods, I fear. One great bonus: being a Comcast customer (I HATE COMCAST WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND NOVA) I get the two channels of the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which means I get to see EVERY SINGLE NATIONALS GAME. It's incredible. 165 games X 3 hours per game = about 495 hours of Nats baseball available to watch.
So, all this being said, this blog is going to start out really simple: me posting about the Nationals. I'm going to let the layout and posting schedule of the blog develop organically but hopefully I'll be able to post several times a week, if not more.
And with that, I will end this very long post. I didn't mean for it to be so long, but that's what happens when I get going on the Nats. The rest of my posts will probably not be as long or boring...hopefully.
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