So, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock the past couple of years (or are merely very adept at avoiding the media), you know about the evil sweetener used in so many US food products that’s called “high fructose corn syrup” and which converts to fat much faster than sugar, doesn’t stimulate insulin production (which means you don’t feel “full” as fast), and also kills small kittens simply by being within a 5-foot radius.

Now, ever since I spent most of 2004 on Weight Watchers, I regularly look at the packaging of what I eat; calories, fat, ingredient listings, and so forth. So while I knew that I don’t eat many things that have HFCS as an ingredient, when Butch and Chris mentioned they were cutting it entirely out of their diet I found myself a little curious as to what I still ate that had it these days. (It does help that I’m not a big soda person.) So, I went through the fridge and pantry, because there’s a certain appeal in the idea of striking the last bits of HFCS out of my life. (After all, if it’s easy to go from “some” to “none” then why not?)

The end result? Only a few things, happily.

• Box of individual Kellogg’s cereal servings
• Pepperidge Farm 100% whole wheat bread
• Kudos granola bars
• 100-calorie snack packs
• Gatorade

The nice thing is that all five of those are pretty easily replaced. The other cereals in my house (Kashi Strawberry Fields, and various varieties of Puffins) don’t have HFCS and I really eat them more often these days, anyway. Bread is easily switched back over to Nature’s Own 100% Whole Wheat, which I used to buy anyway but had only hopped brands because I could get the Pepperidge Farm bread at CostCo. The Kudos and 100-calorie snack packs are a little frustrating to go because they were also regular CostCo purchases, but similar alternatives from Trader Joe’s are a-ok. And with Gatorade, I switched over to buying the powder (which doesn’t have HFCS) and am going to just keep a pitcher in the fridge. Less plastic being used that way, really.

It does help that I shop a lot at Trader Joe’s, don’t really drink soda (happily my one occasional vice of Jones Soda Cream Soda uses sugar cane), and also enjoy doing some shopping at H-Mart/Han Ah Reum where the products just don’t seem to use it.

Do I think I’m going to magically drop weight from eliminating HFCS? Probably not. (Besides, I still have to eat what’s left of those snacks. That may take a month or so. But as they run out they aren’t getting replaced.) But it is nice to know that it’s pretty easy to cut that substance out of my home. It does make me wonder how easy it is for others to do it, too. And I do plan on writing letters to the makers of the products I will miss (Kudos in particular (*sniff*)) to let them know that I’m not buying their stuff anymore and why. Hey, it can’t hurt, right?

(And no, I’m also not going to go crazy about this. I know that sometimes you’re out and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. I’m not worried about that.)

Just don’t tell the corn farmers about this. Between talk about switching ethanol from corn to things like sugar cane or switchgrass, and now this, they might get a little pissy at me. I promise that I’ll buy a lot of corn this summer, though. Mmmm, black beans and corn and avocado and tomato… Now I’m getting hungry.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I’m happy to say the new camera’s test drive was a rousing success. Hurrah!

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Two quick items of note!

First off, I now have an official “these are some of my better photos” website put together. I think it’s a pretty nifty site, and I’ll be adding to it as I finally get my new camera up and running and it takes pictures worthy of going there. Consider it a “best of the best” selection, and it’s at http://photos.gregmce.com. Very exciting! (Well, for me.) It’s the closest I have to a portfolio online.

And second, for those in the DC area, Artomatic opens today! It’s running through June 15th, has free admission, and is one block from the New York Avenue metro station. (There’s also some street parking, and I think also some pay garaged parking available.) It’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but the rest of the week has some pretty reasonable viewing hours. (Wed/Thurs: 5-10pm; Fri/Sat: noon-2am; Sun: noon-10pm.)

So if you’re interested, try and head on up to the 9th floor and check my stuff out! And then check everything else out while you’re there; there’s a lot of really interested and neat art being exhibited this year, and I’ve only seen a small fraction. This year was a big learning experience for me and hopefully the next time the show comes around my stuff will be even better. But I had fun getting things ready.

End of self-promoting plugs! (Next time I’ll talk about something riveting like high fructose corn syrup. Mmmmmmm.)

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I’m sure there must be a “You can tell you’re an East Coaster when…” list out there that includes the item, “You get excited over a 1.8 magnitude earthquake.”

It certainly wasn’t as strong as the one a few years ago (that was around, what, a 3 or a 4?) which was piddly in its own right, so this one was even less so. With the previous one I at least got up out of my chair and stuck my head into the hallway to see if others felt it. With this one, the best I could muster was an instant message to Karon saying, “I swear I just felt our building shake.”

I’ve been feeling a little bleah for most of today, so it’s good to get excited about something. I skipped my run this morning (one of my legs was feeling stiff and tight this morning and even after several stretches today it’s still a bit that way) and I haven’t decided if I’ll attempt one this afternoon after work or not. (I am unfortunately leaning towards no.) I certainly didn’t sleep well last night, which didn’t help matters, too.

But on the bright side, my labels for Artomatic are printed and sitting on my desk, so I just need to pop by this evening and then I am completely done. People keep asking if I’m excited and the answer has been, “Not yet.” Maybe it’s because it was all so new and a learning process for me this year; I’ve already made a lot of decisions for potential future exhibiting on ways I would do it different. Hopefully once it’s all taken care of I will be a little more jazzed about it.

On the other hand, I have decided that if I sell some of the photos (which would be awfully cool) that I get to reward myself. So items I’m looking at include:

• Mario Kart Wii
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens
• Brother HL-2170w Laser Printer

Mario Kart Wii just looks amazingly fun, plus there’s the online play aspect. I would sure like to experiment with a “prime” lens. And I haven’t had a printer for over a decade, since the infamous moment where Kate sent me a cursed manuscript and my printing it out literally destroyed the printer. (It started printing jibberish about 2/3rds of the way through—and no, it was not the manuscript’s actual text—and never recovered.) So for those, I am excited.

(Not that I’m actually expecting to sell any photos, of course. But the thought is pretty fun to think about.)

Overall, though, things are good. I have some friends moving into the neighborhood next month, some beautiful orchids blooming in my office, we had salsa lessons in the office yesterday for Cinco de Mayo (which was fun), and an older gentleman at the gym yesterday asked if that was indeed me at the opera last week—and that he and his wife also left before the end because they couldn’t stand it. Hee hee hee.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Phew! April is finally over, and I think with it, the busy time is starting to wind back down. The past two weeks have felt like anything and everything was just crammed into it all at once, between returning to a full running/exercise schedule, book club, opera, an anniversary, Artomatic, reviews, and a billion other things that are temporarily escaping my mind.

That’s not to say it was bad things, of course. (Well, the opera was dreadful and we left after the first act.) Just everything happening at once. But it felt good after work yesterday to accomplish a lot of things off my list; stop by Michael’s and get some replacement frames, cook dinner with enough for leftovers, go running with Pacers in Arlington, eat dinner, feed Karon’s cats, head over to Artomatic and check on painting situation then clean everything up, and get home with enough time for Top Chef, Lost, and 30 Rock.

But anyway, after next weekend things are looking much calmer. Saturday has two birthday parties, Sunday is going to be hanging all of the photos at Artomatic. Then next week shouldn’t be too crazy, just finishing up my Artomatic set-up on Tuesday (labels for the photos, figuring out how to put a business card holder in my space, that sort of thing), dinner plans on Monday, spinning on Wednesday, running with the group on Thursday, possibly a 10k on Saturday and then a volunteer shift at Artomatic, and working at the store on Sunday.

And then… quiet time. It’s been surprising to me how much time Artomatic has taken up, especially as it gets closer, but it’s a good learning experience for me. If there’s another show in 2009 and I partiicpate, I will certainly be better prepared. And the next couple of weekends are much more open and free than mine have been as of late, too. So that will be nice. I want to just spend some time finally learning how to use my new camera (which is gathering dust on my desk because of everything else), that sort of thing. And as the days get longer, it somehow just feels like there’s more time to do things. That mental block that hits when the sun goes down can really slice into one’s day. Having my tv shows all come to a close again helps, too. (Although as of tonight I am now three weeks behind on BSG, plus two weeks behind on The Office and Ugly Betty.) I don’t watch that much these days but there’s only so many hours in the day.

Still, I feel like I’ve been accomplishing a lot. So it’s not a bad sort of busy. Just one with a lot of things getting checked off. I’m ok with that, for a while. I just need to keep the list from growing as fast as I remove things, that’s all.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

My first exposure to David Hahn's comics was Private Beach, a bizarre sort of merger between X-Files and Love and Rockets. Strange things mixed with relationship drama and a sharp wit is my best description of the book. When I met him at San Diego in 2002, he was one of those people that was so amazingly friendly and likable that you were almost relieved that he was such a good artist, because you wanted him to succeed at everything.

Since then, he's drawn two Bite Club mini-series for Vertigo (think Miami mafia meets vampires), and is also drawing the all-ages Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane comic. The fact that he can switch from adults-only violence to fun and cute kids comics? Well, it's nice to see that the industry knows how good he is.

His drawing below is also a take on one of his Private Beach covers. I must admit that whenever I see it, I always wonder what would happen if this sketch would suddenly collide with J.G. Jones's wine sketch...



[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

My first exposure to David Hahn’s comics was Private Beach, a bizarre sort of merger between X-Files and Love and Rockets. Strange things mixed with relationship drama and a sharp wit is my best description of the book. When I met him at San Diego in 2002, he was one of those people that was so amazingly friendly and likable that you were almost relieved that he was such a good artist, because you wanted him to succeed at everything.

Since then, he’s drawn two Bite Club mini-series for Vertigo (think Miami mafia meets vampires), and is also drawing the all-ages Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane comic. The fact that he can switch from adults-only violence to fun and cute kids comics? Well, it’s nice to see that the industry knows how good he is.

His drawing below is also a take on one of his Private Beach covers. I must admit that whenever I see it, I always wonder what would happen if this sketch would suddenly collide with J.G. Jones’s wine sketch…

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Ah, Kelley Seda, how I miss you doing things in comics. Seda’s debut work was a strange little mini-series called Rare Creature that… it’s kind of hard to describe, to be honest. But it’s about a girl named Amelia who is pregnant, and in love with the boy with huge hands next door. It’s an odd, almost fragile-feeling story that was like nothing else on the market.

She did some work designing books for other comic publishers for a while, but she seems to have left comics entirely for other art forms. It’s a shame, although I don’t think the comics industry ever really caught on to her brilliance. Very, very much our loss.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

All sorts of exciting things are going on as of late in the world of Greg Photography!

The first and foremost thing is that my brand-new camera arrived today. It’s a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (known in other countries as the EOS 400D), and it’s my very first SLR camera. I am, needless to say, super-thrilled! I am also vowing to stop by the library today or tomorrow to get a book on SLRs because I’ve never actually used one. It’s a whole new world of lenses and f-stops and all sorts of other exciting terms that a decade ago made my eyes glaze over.

Almost all of my photos for Artomatic are now printed as well; I’m going to re-print one or two of them that need a slight tweak but generally speaking I’m really happy with them. When I picked them up, I opened up the package to make sure they were all there and the woman working the counter actually gasped out loud. Which was a nice ego boost, needless to say. She and another employee asked what camera I was using and were flabbergasted that it was a point-and-shoot. Frames are ordered and en route, as are my business cards. So now I just need to figure out exactly how I’m going to decorate my space. I worked a volunteer shift at Artomatic on Saturday night (it was gorgeous out, so the place was dead as a doornail—good thing I brought a book!) and it gave me some ideas to mull over. Artomatic doesn’t open until May 9th so I still have a little breathing room to get ready.

I’ve also put together a special sub-website spotlighting some of my favorite photography, and put about half of the photos into it. That’s the URL that I put on my business cards, and as soon as it’s done I’ll post a link here. But I’m happy with it, too; as great as Flickr is, I like the idea of having a very specific subset of photos to send people to instead of a photostream that also has, for instance, lots of pictures of my friends shoving french-fries into their nostrils. (Well, not quite that. But you get the idea.)

Between the new camera and seeing everyone else’s stuff at Artomatic, I’m thinking/hoping this will get me firmly back on the photography road again. It was nice having some time off after the 365pictures project, but at the same time I’m eager to start adding new photos to the collection.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

One of the best things I’ve discovered about taking a Benadryl before bed every night, now, is a side-effect I didn’t expect. Namely, I’m having dreams that I remember on a much more regular basis.

Most nights, once I fall asleep it’s (by my reckoning) an instant transition from falling asleep to waking back up. Dreams more often than not are only in-between the two if I’m extremely tired or have had alcohol first. So maybe it’s the medication, maybe it’s just having a deeper and more restful sleep, but more often than not these days I’m finding myself with dreams that were strong enough that I can actually remember them.

It’s funny because I’m not entirely sure when I stopped having regularly occuring dreams. Maybe in college? It’s that sort of thing that you don’t notice until they’ve been gone for quite some time. Someone asks you what you dreamt about and you realize that you have no idea. It’s fun, though, to have them back. I can more often than not pinpoint where some of the images are coming from as of late, too.

For instance, last night my mother was talking a lot about Dexter and Michael C. Hall and The Tudors, and I’d mentioned Artomatic to her. The end result? I dreamt that I was Michael C. Hall, but was also somehow an amalgamation of myself and his characters from Dexter and Six Feet Under. I was in a large mansion (and Peter Krause was there at one point) and the rooms kept shifting back and forth between the past and present-day, but a large room full of picture frames was in both of them. I ended up meeting a very attractive noble and was flirting with him (I’d gotten as far as an arm around him and there was no objection at his end) when I woke up.

Very strange, and funny, and a wonderful jumble of things I’d just been talking and thinking about earlier. It’s really nice to have them back. Another thing once the springtime pollen dips a little bit to monitor closely when I try and see if shifting to Allegra and/or valerian root at night will make a difference. Now that dreaming is back, I’m not quite ready to give it up again.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Ever had one of those mornings where everything seemed to just click?

This one unfolded perfectly. Got up and went to the gym early, snagging the last rowing machine. The woman next to me, Kathy, was chatty but in a good way. She said she didn’t recognize me and I’d mentioned that I was coming earlier these days, and a little more often while I took a week or so off of running. So we chatted about marathons (she agreed that Marine Corps is too crowded these days) and how she used to run them until her doctor made her stop, but how her husband runs ultra-marathons. She also laughed that I was “rowing too fast” her her to keep up and that she was competitive.

Now, I was thinking she was in her mid-to-late 50s. Turns out I was off by about, oh, 15 years. I want to be as in-shape and generally cool as Kathy in my 70s. And rowing next to her did wonders for my performance; a 30-minute set for me normally racks up the calorie counter in the 360-375 range, and around 6500 meters. Today’s set ended with it being at 404 calories and somewhere around 6750m. Clearly I will need to schedule my exercise around her schedule.

After a set on the elliptical and a nice chat over there with Roger (who had come in to hit the Friday morning spinning class, much to my surprise; turns out he had the morning off) it was back home, where after a shower (using a free sample from LUSH of their Buffy soap, which is great stuff) I took the brown rice out of the steamer, cooked some sausage and added it in, then seasoned the whole thing with coriander, chipotle pepper powder, cayenne pepper, and a few other spices and turned it into part of a bento lunch.

From there, it was off to work and the GW Parkway was just beautiful. I rolled the windows down, put the B-52s song “Hot Corner” on auto-repeat (and for those wondering how long the commute is, it was almost done with its fifth play when I got to work) and sang along while the warm breeze blew into the car and flowering trees gently dropped their petals. It’s just the right temperature out; no jacket needed, just a short-sleeve shirt and jeans and off we go.

There’s no big event in all of this. No “and then I found a million dollars” moment, no sudden turning point. Just a really good morning where you feel awake, and alert, and aware of everything around you, and alive. It was just about perfect, really. I wish all mornings were like this, but I’ll take them when they appear.

I hope everyone else is having their own version of a good morning.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I’m not even sure I can really begin to sum up the amazing talent that is Scott Morse, here. When he first appeared on the comic book scene with his book Soulwind (back when he was still C.S. Morse), it was a beautiful, contemplative work about swords and aliens and small boys and zen. Since then he’s done things in every genre imaginable and then some. He also creates animation for Pixar these days, with former stints at Disney and Cartoon Network.

If that’s not enough, he’s also one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Thoughtful, kind, always ready to lend an ear. I have really fond memories of the post-Ignatz Awards party from SPX 2004 of having drunkenly rambled to him about some relationship problems and him just nodding sagely and offering advice and being supportive. The number of people (of all genders) who have a crush on him is understandable.

One of his more recent projects at the time was a comic called Magic Pickle, about… well… a pickle created through experiments that has all sorts of super powers and fights other evil vegetables with the help of the little girl who lives in the house atop his secret lair. (The original comic just was republished by Scholastic, plus two more prose books with spot-illustrations from Morse hit stores as well.)

So to say that a sketch about wine was perfect for Scott was, well, an understatement. This one still makes me laugh, in a good way.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Dean Haspiel is someone that I’ve known in comics for at least a decade, certainly much longer than that. A mainstay of the Small Press Expo for many years, I remember reading his Billy Dogma comics and loving their over-the-top masculinity and hidden vulnerability all mixed into one. These days he’s illustrating books like Harvey Pekar’s The Quitter and posting his comics on the ACT-I-VATE online collective.

More entertainingly, he’s always been a good friend and a fun guy to be around; I miss chatting with him at SPX, and the inevitable jokes from everyone about how he only owned one shirt (seriously, there are five or six years worth of convention photos where he’s in the same shirt every time) and how sooner or later it would always come of. “Dean puts the X in SPX!” was a hysterical rallying cry at one of the picnics.

This drawing was actually begun by Dean at the first MoCCA up in NYC, but he asked if he could finish it off later in the summer at San Diego. The first day at Comic-Con that year, I sought him out and sure enough, he finished it then—putting himself front-and-center and with his characters Jane Legit and Billy Dogma in the background. It was worth the wait.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

As the pollen explosion began to hit the DC area about two weeks ago, my allergies—like every year—went berserk. Normally I take 60mg of Allegra in the morning and am all right, but during this time of year by early evening it starts wearing off. There’s only so much one little pill can do.

So, as a stop-gap measure, my original plan was to up my dosage to the recommended twice-a-day level. (My feeling has always been that if I can get away with half a dose that I should do so. My physician thankfully not only agrees with me but still gives me the twice-a-day prescription for whenever things do get bad so that I don’t run out mid-month with no refill in sight.) But then I decided to try a little experiment. So in the evening, about an hour before bed, I’m now taking a Benadryl.

The result has been nothing short of astounding. On the whole I fall asleep a little faster (except for last Friday night), and I do still wake up at least once or twice (drink some water and pass back out) but when I wake up in the morning—I actually wake up. For those who haven’t seen me in the morning, trust me when I say that it is not a pretty sight, to put it mildly. I am tired, I am groggy, I am slightly incoherent. I had to buy an alarm clock with an adjustable snooze alarm because 9 minutes would be too long and I would fall completely back asleep. (It’s currently set at 6 minutes.)

Now? When the alarm goes off I’m out of bed within 15 minutes instead of in the 45-to-75 minute range. This has been especially good for starting to go to the gym in the mornings again. I can get such an earlier start that it means I have time for a longer, more fulfilling workout; hitting half an hour on the rowing machine now means I still have time for a second half hour of something else. Or this morning, knowing I couldn’t hit my evening spinning class, I actually hit my first 6:30am class ever. Hopefully this will let me shed those five pounds of “winter weight” a little faster than normal. Maybe even finally help shrink and tighten my tummy a bit, that would be nice.

Once allergy insanity is over I do plan on some experiments to figure out what the key element is in the Benadryl solution. Do I need the allergy relief in the evenings more than I thought I did, and should go onto two-a-day for Allegra from now on? Or is it that I’m just needing that extra little nudge into sleepland and should perhaps look into something like valerian root or melatonin for my evenings? (I’m really curious to see what the end result will be.)

Either way, the end result has been just, well, great and exciting. I’ve really missed being able to wake up quickly in the mornings.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Being an adult means there is no one to stop me from eating a handful of chocolate sprinkles in the afternoon if I so choose.

And I do. So there.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Friday night, I didn’t get much sleep—I’m not sure why, to be honest. I got to bed at a decent hour (and I’d gotten up early to hit the gym Friday morning) but it was well after 1am when I finally fell asleep. I know it wasn’t any earlier than that because I stopped looking at the clock after that point, but I’m sure it was much later. Then, I woke up around 6am and much to my surprise was wide awake. No more falling back asleep no matter how much I tried.

Needless to say, I was feeling a little run down when Charlie and I went to Crystal City so I could pick up my Cherry Blossom 10-miler number and timing chip, but I was hoping all I needed was some brunch to pick me back up. After some food, though, things didn’t seem to get any better, and it was about an hour later in the National Building Museum that at the end of the first exhibit, I said I really just wanted to go home. (The NBM continues to elude me, alas.) I was feeling exhausted and a little shaky, and all I could think about was a nap.

I laid down for about three hours (sleeping for one of them) and that seemed to help a bit. But I was still a little iffy at this point on if I should run the Cherry Blossom or not. I figured I’d play it by ear in the morning. I did go to bed and fall asleep at a reasonable time, so all seemed ok.

Except it wasn’t. I felt like I was struggling from the moment I started running, much worse than I had during the National Half Marathon last weekend. (Which you may have noticed I’ve been a little quiet about. That’s why.) By the time I hit the 5K point, I was thinking to myself that it was a shame the new course was so good because I wasn’t enjoying it at all. And when I hit the 5-mile point, I did something for the first time in eight years of racing. I dropped out.

I quietly walked off the course, turned off my watch, unpinned my number from my shirt and stuck it in my pocket, and pulled the timing chip off my shoe. I was only about a quarter mile from the finish and it felt like another five miles. Half of my head was screaming at me, calling me a quitter and pathetic, the other half protesting that it was the right decision to make. I was feeling exhausted and my pace had been starting to crash, my shoulder was hurting, it was just bad all around. But I trudged back to the start—it was too late to go back now—and turned in my chip and went home.

When I got in the shower, I couldn’t help but note that I should’ve still been running at that exact moment. And I felt like crap about it. There was a guy holding a sign at the race last week saying, “NOBODY LIKES A QUITTER” (presumably some phrase he shared with a friend of his who was racing) and that’s all I could think about.

Part of me says it was the right decision. Most of me thinks there had been smarter, better options: kept running but slowed down and didn’t worry about a finishing time; stayed home in the first place; e-mailed the race officials this time a week ago when Laura had switched over to the 5K and done the same thing as well.

I saw Rick and Emma both run by in the half of the race I was in, and they looked great and strong. I’m envious. On the side of the road I saw Joe and Sonia from Pacers cheering people on, and it made me want to go back to their group and start running with them and try and get back into running shape. All things to keep in mind.

Right now, I’m going to take a week or two off of running and just do some other forms of cross-training and such at the gym. Start fresh when training kicks back up on the 19th.

But at the moment, I’m removing any other small races off of my agenda. (Battle of the Boulevard 10K or Capital Hill Classic 10K.) I don’t think I could take the disappointment yet again. I’m done with racing for at least a little bit.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I saw this via kristiseriously and in lieu of actual content... 34 questions, each answered with only one word.

1.Where is your mobile phone? pocket
2.Your significant other? adorable
3.Your hair? shaved
( more )

All sorts of things going on in Gregland as of late. Most of them? Pretty good. Let’s see.

I hit the big 35 yesterday, which went rather pleasantly. Work was super-busy and my 3-miler in the morning was less than thrilling, but hey, no big deal. Julie made cannoli pies and brought them in, and trust me when I say that they were as delicious as they sound.

(The crusts in the photos below are slightly different colors because, well, they were! One was graham cracker, one was chocolate.)

After work, despite a six-car pile-up on the GW Parkway, I made my way downtown to meet Charlie. He’d scheduled me a massage at BodyCo, which felt fantastic, and then we went to Kotobuki over in the Palisades neighborhood for a delicious dinner. Add in some lovely gifts from my family, Charlie, and Julie (some books, Patapon and Crazy Taxi for the PSP, BSG Season 3 DVDs, the new k.d. lang CD, a beautiful new shirt, some new shoes) and I must say it was a wonderful birthday indeed.

Today was apparently “Greg Registers For Things” day. I put in my application for the NYC Marathon, so we’ll see if I get in this year or not (there’s a lottery system; I tried last year but came up empty). I also put in my registration to exhibit some of my photographs at Artomatic, which is a non-juried art exhibition here in the DC area. I went last year and while some parts were more interesting than others (I challenge anyone to truthfully say they liked all of it) there were some very, very good pieces there. So on April 12th I get to select my space at the exhbition (I got a nice and early slot, hurrah) and it runs May 9th through June 15th. Expect me to be talking about this more as it gets closer.

Oh! And I got a very interesting freelance offer yesterday, which I can’t talk about other than to say that I accepted it and it’s something that is really a logical extension to an existing activity of mine. But once that goes live, I’ll talk a bit more about that.

This Saturday will be the half marathon, and while I must admit I’m actually a little nervous about it (I have a bad feeling I will not be beating last year’s time, which would make me a little sad) we shall see. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. In some ways I’m looking more forward to cheering Charlie on as he runs the full marathon. That alone will make the day worth it.

Add in having just gotten my workout schedule for essentially mid-April through the end of October in front of me (thanks to a rigorous running spreadsheet courtesy Fred) and it feels like I’ve got a lot of great stuff mapped out in front of me. And I, for one, am all for that. I’ve got an adorable little patch of wheatgrass sitting on my desk, there are some balloons floating across the office, and the world is full of life and possibilities.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I was originally going to start this post by saying that there is no actual Hurricane Greg of note, because my name is trapped on the Pacific Ocean list of names for hurricanes, and as we all know hurricanes in the Pacific Ocean usually don’t hit anything. (Not to be confused with typhoons, of course, smashing into parts of Asia.) But I was wrong! Hurricane Greg in 1999 actually hit the Baja Penninsula in Mexico. So yay for Hurricane Greg!

Anyway, Hurricane Greg seems to finally be slowing down. Several weeks of super-busy stuff at work has kept me plowing through all sorts of graphics and storyboards and other such exciting things (ironicaly, some of the photos were of hurricanes), plus already-determined-in-advance commitments plugged in there as well, but things are a little more sedate right now. I knew things were getting better when earlier in the week I went home and the top of my list was “go through the stack of mail from the past two weeks” and “vacuum.” (The latter of which really couldn’t be achieved until the former had gotten rid of all the piles of mail scattered around my living room.)

I actually hate being overly busy; it gets me tired and a little stressed out the longer that it happens. And once it’s over, I usually end up veering sharply in the other direction so that people ask me if I want to do things and my answer is, “No.” I’m too busy recharging my batteries.

Meanwhile, I have two races coming up and they’re 8 and 16 days away. I’m honestly not convinced that I’m 100% prepared for either of them. I’ve got enough mileage under my belt that a half-marathon and a 10-miler shouldn’t kill me, but I don’t think at the same time that I will do as well as I could. We’ll see what happens. I’m absolutely running the half-marathon no matter what, but I can play it by ear on the latter. (And of course, Charlie is running his very first marathon as I run my half-marathon! He is quite well prepared and I expect him to rock it out, and probably beat my personal record to boot.)

Other than that, things are going normal as per usual. Charlie and I hit our one year mark next month, which is a little hard to believe that it’s already been that long. It honestly feels like it was just a couple of months ago that we met. We were talking about going away for the weekend, but prior commitments mean that it almost certainly won’t happen, unfortunately. Oh well. We actually have (through sheer luck) tickets to see Tamerlano performed by the DC Opera on the actual day, so that’ll do for a celebration.

I’m still trying to decide if I will renew my Shakespeare Theatre subscription for next season, or just pick-and-choose plays. The selection (and pricing) isn’t quite as top-notch as this season’s, although three of the seven are must-sees for me. (King Lear, Ion, and Twelfth Night.) The nice things about a subscription, though, include the ease in swapping out to a different night as necessary, the fact that it gets me out to see things I wouldn’t otherwise, and better seats. We’ll see, I have a week and a half to decide and I keep flip-flopping back and forth.

Now all I need is the temperature to go up just a wee bit and stay there and I will be one happy camper. Hurrah for the return of spring!

(And hopefully more regular updates from now on.)

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]