Category: Daily Life

Patriot’s Day is a special day here with the running of the Boston Marathon. I run the Falmouth Road Race every summer because it’s as close to the thrill of running the marathon as you can get, at only about a quarter of the mileage (a huge difference in hours of training).

Thousands of runners line up in Hopkinton and run 26.2 miles to Boston. I ran in 2002 as part of a team that raised funds for the Franciscan Hospital for Children. The hospital runs a school and daycare program for children that require more medical attention than most places can provide and I was able to tour the facility. The photo below from the tour made the Annual Report for the Hospital that year.

The race is an amazing experience, I was lucky just to have finished before the course closed. It took me five and a half hours, plus another 15 minutes to reach the starting line because of the crowd.

While I was in training a friend of mine said “I say the same thing about the Marathon that I do about the Pan Mass Challenge – running the marathon does not impress me, training for the marathon really impresses me.” The wisdom in this statement is profound. In many ways the marathon is a celebration, spectators line the entire course, and the only time I’ve every caused a roar in the crowd was picking up the pace at mile 24 where the throngs of partying college kids hang out. It’s a good day to run.

The challenge is waking up three months earlier at 5am to run through 10 miles of ice in the dark. Worrying about, or having to deal with pain or injuries that you’ve never faced at lower mileage. This was where running for the hospital team helped me. Putting in the miles was often painful, but when I thought about the kids facing physical challenges greater than any I have ever dealt with, just to get to school, there was nothing else to do but stop whining and lace up my shoes.

We just heard the fighter pilots do the fly by, it’s time to walk over to see the race!

btw – My fundraising for the Run to Home Base has almost hit the $1,000 minimum goal (thanks to those who have helped, check out the link for more info).

And yet another indicator that I have become soft and weak, I actually consider my grocery buying routine worth blogging about. On the other hand the Food Marketing Institute shows 2008 purchases at supermarkets over half a trillion dollars, so maybe this is a big deal.

The supermarket is an interesting indicator of the economy, and a demonstration of how a market can evolve. When I was a kid we went to the grocery store. There was one of them and that was it. Worse yet, to make me sound like a frigging fossil, there actually used to be a lunch counter in the store where my mom would get me a grilled cheese and a chocolate shake.

Drive back to the future and suddenly there’s all kind of things going on with food purchasing. I go to the farmer’s market in the center of town on the weekend and shop at the Bacon Street Farm. It’s not as much the tree hugging “grown local”, it’s more of social/economic reality – I believe that if I can keep the local stores in business the odds of my house getting robbed by unemployed neighbors goes down.

I also make a trip to the expensive grocery chain with the organic stuff because I picked up an expensive addiction to fresh squeezed orange juice back when I lived in Florida (a place called The Greenhouse, which may be gone). I also buy mint water, which has allowed me to give up diet soda completely. I never buy protein there because the prices are insane (shout out to Tara, who mentioned the struggle of shopping on Paleo that got me thinking about my hunting and gathering).

We get a lot of the commodities at the local Stop & Shop just because it’s a short drive (and now next to the new 5 Guys burgers…). The crazy thing here is how they have gone over the top for productivity. I walk in with some reusable bags and scan my card at a machine that gives me a price gun. I then cruise around with the cart and scan the stuff myself and put it in the bags. If I have to go to the deli counter I enter my order via touch screen and the the price gun goes off when my order is ready (or they can text me if I don’t have the price gun).

After I have picked up everything on my list (the incredible J-Shopper for Palm), I go to the self-checkout, return the gun, scan my card and my whole order comes up. I check out as fast as I can swipe my credit card and sign, none of the goods already in the bags get touched. If it’s a busy night at 5 guys I can place my order, buy all my groceries and get back before my burgers and fries are up.

The only advice I can give is common sense that nobody follows – never go between 10am-5pm on the weekends. Another lesser known one – stay away from mid-day during the week because that’s when a lot of senior citizens go and they tend to both move slow and block the whole aisle. Please take my word for the fact that throwing an elbow at a cranky senior WILL get you kicked out of the Stop n’ Shop in Framingham.

With the first quarter in the books it’s time to look back on the results.

Family is going very well, there were a lot of things to get in order with my son, and most of it has been fairly straightforward. I’ve also continued duties as the family IT department and everyone can still access the web…

Financial is going well, the big Q1 job is taxes and I’m waiting on the refunds, so that’s all good. I’ve been meaning to refinance the m0rtgage, but I just haven’t had the willpower to do all that paperwork, and the first cut I took had me paying so much in cl0sing c0sts that it would take years to make it back in savings.

Professional is also going very well, nothing special to report there and that’s a great th   ing.

Personal is not as bad as it looks on paper. I’ve been working out more but didn’t meet my weight goal, but the good news is that my weight has been steady but I am stronger and faster (one of the problems of making the goal in pounds). I’m at the racing distance for the Red Sox Run to Home Base event I am doing in May (please consider donating to help Veterans with traumatic brain injuries and/or post traumatic stress syndrome). The good news is that if I stay at this distance I’m also ready to roll for Falmouth at the end of the summer, knocking down another goal.

The only real problem I have is in the Personal category, I have one goal to do something fun and I haven’t been able to decide what to do. I’m considering doing one of the Canon EOS photo clinics that are coming up, but I really don’t shoot that much so I kind of feel that it’s wasted effort. It’s strange, I don’t really have any hobbies that interest me so I end up doing a ton of reading and most of that is work or tech related. Kind of boring actually. I’ve completely written off golf and video games as a waste of time, I think I need another writing project…

On to Q2!

There were some interesting pranks this year, at the top of my list was the rumor that In n’ Out Burger was coming to the East Coast.

My personal favorite was this video showing some new features in Photoshop CS4. I totally bought this, hook, line and sinker.

On May 23rd at 8am I will be running a 9k road race. The last big race I ran was Falmouth back in the summer, and I was looking for an event to begin this year’s warm weather with. My co-worker Adam mentioned that he was in for the Run To Home Base, a race run by the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital.

There are two things that are a big deal about this race – the first is selfish, the finish line will be home plate in Fenway Park, and I’ve always wanted to run on the field. The second is more altruistic:

Funds raised for the Home Base Program will provide care and community outreach to the many veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with combat stress disorders and/or traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and their families.

If you are a runner, there are still open slots, but the field is limited to 3,500. You are also required to raise $1,000 (runners who can’t or don’t want to pay the balance if they don’t hit the mark).

To learn more about this event (and donate if you are looking for a chance to pitch in), check out John’s Run to Home Base page.

In the event that I hit the $1,000 goal and you’d still like to donate, I’m sure Adam would appreciate your help on his page. As usual, for anyone that donates, the next round of drinks are on me.

I was a bit surprised to realize that in the 3 years I have been writing here, I have never written about Chili. Then I thought “Well, that’s not a huge surprise, considering that Chili has absolutely nothing to do with Marketing”. If you are not into cooking or chili, this would be a good time to check out some other blog post or watch this hilarious video.

C.C. Chapman posted his 7 can chili recipe and I checked it out. It’s pretty far over on the 1970’s Mom scale, it reminds me of the shtick in “Undercover Brother” where everyone in the family has their own jar of mayo. Of course this is the trade off for complete convenience, it doesn’t get much easier than that recipe. Fortunately C.C. completely redeems himself with his 7th step – tweaking the mix with BBQ sauce, Beer and Tequila (actually in the chili, not doing shooters). Tweaking a chili recipe with liquor or other bizarre ingredients is a key attribute of chili aficionados. Pick up your latest issue of Chili Aficionado for more info.

And so you may be asking, “John, who gave you a chili pro sombrero and the right to critique anyone, let alone C.C. Chapman?”, or maybe you weren’t, but you sure are now. My Dad was on the Ski Patrol at the local ski area and every year for probably 15 years or so we would have a chili cookoff at our house to celebrate the end of the ski season.

While the adults all thought most of the chilis were great because they were so damn drunk, I was too young to enjoy a Natty Lite to wash it down so I actually tasted most of them. There were three key lessons I took away from those years:

1. It needs to be beefy. Exotic meats such as venison or buffalo are fine but if there’s no meat, it’s not for real.
2. Lots of chili that comes in a can like Dinty Moore (often used on hot dogs to create a “Coney Island”) actually taste fantastic but do all kinds of damage to your system that will remain unspoken.
3. Never have your dog around at a chili party because everyone will feed them little bits and nothing empties out a room faster than a gallon of dog puke filled with chili.

Years later I came upon two other important observations:

1. I used to think that it gave me indigestion until I went on a high protein diet and found out it was the bread/pasta/rice that it was served with that gives you the heartburn.
2. Tarantula Jack’s Chili Stand in downtown Seattle (long closed) had the greatest Chili on earth.

Jack’s won some kind of Million Dollar cookoff (ok, it was “only” $25,000) with the recipe and it’s been published, but I think he held something back. I’ve made it many times and it was great but just not as good as what he served at the store.

And so, to answer the question – Chili is important because it tastes so damn good here in the land of ice an snow. As my gift to you – Tarantula Jack’s Chili recipe:

This recipe is still up at the International Chili Society website where I first got it years ago, reprinted for you here (but go to the site for other killer recipes).

Tarantula Jacks Thundering Herd Buffalo Tail Chili

Ingredients:
3 lbs cubed beef
2 medium Walla Walla Sweet Onions (chopped fine)
3 large cloves garlic (finely minced)
2 10-oz cans of chicken broth
2 12-oz cans Hunts Tomato Sauce
7 tablespoons Gebhardt Chili Powder
2 tablespoons ground cumin
¼ teaspoon Tabasco Pepper Sauce
Instructions:
Saute beef in skillet. Put beef into your favorite chili pot and simmer with onions and garlic broth for one and a half hours. Keep your hands off and leave the lid on!

Add the Hunts Tomato Sauce, Gebhardt Chili Powder and the ground cumin. Stir.

Fifteen minutes before eatin time, take off the lid and enjoy the aroma of the greatest chili ever to slide into a melmac bowl! Add the Tabasco. Put the lid back on and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add salt to taste.

Its now ready top serve. Give out the Pepto Bismol samples to all small children and women who wish to eat your chili. Give your empty chili pot to the chili groupies and suggest they use new Dawn Detergent to clean it up. (Its the Official Grease Cutter of the International Chili Society) Comb your hair, straighten your hat and practice being modest before you receive applause OR the Championship Trophy if you are competing in a sanctioned ICS Cookoff. Serve with a cold Budweiser. This will serve 6-8 hungry Varmints.

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Thanks for your help!