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#5329 – running and photography

after i made that post about wanting to run the marine corps marathon and not even trying, since i still needed to get my 10-mile run in, i decided that i’d run until i found the race and that i’d stop to cheer the runners on. that was a good plan, but with one problem – i wasn’t able to find the race! the runners had already passed through much of downtown dc by the point i made it down there – all i found were the remnants of the roadblocks and tons of tourists.

since i was still frustrated that i didn’t bother even trying to run part of the marine corps marathon, instead of running my usual route when i have to run ~10 miles (from my apartment to the capitol it’s about 4.5 miles, so i run to the capitol and circle the building and run back home), i ran to the capitol and then headed down the mall. i ran past pretty much every monument in dc – from the capitol to the washington monument, past the wwii memorial, around the lincoln memorial, past the vietnam memorial, and then up to the white house. once i passed the 5-mile halfway point and decided to keep on running i figured that i’d still have about 5 miles to go to get back home, so that really changed how i looked at the distance i had left to run. “oh, i’m only at 6 miles now, so if i turn around now i’ll have run 11 miles. i can still run some more.”

i felt like i probably still had some oomph in my tank, so when i got back to the apartment with 16.3 miles complete i contemplated turning around and running 5 miles out and 5 miles back to push me over 26.2 miles. it would have been just as if i had run the marathon that morning! thankfully common sense won out and i called it quits after 16.3 miles; i had already run that whole distance without taking in any additional liquids, i still didn’t want to injure myself before my annapolis half-marathon, and i’d only be even more upset with myself for running a full marathon distance with nothing to show for it. as it was, i set a new personal record for distance by about 4 miles (the farthest i had ever run was just over 12 miles), so that’s still nothing to sneeze at.

i’m still inching toward my fundraising goal for the american cancer society for the annapolis half marathon. thanks to some generous donations, i’m very close though! 1 week to go until the race.

caryn and i have still been facetiming each other pretty much every night to chat, and since she heard me mention something about livejournal (her: “you have a livejournal?!”) we’ve added each other on here as well – she’s lovethiscaryn. she came down with a cold a few weeks ago but when she was feeling better we started to make some plans for her to meet up with me on halloween – mom and dad were out of town visiting feisty_fitz for a week so i was staying in annapolis to cat- and house-sit – but those plans fell through since one of her friends was disappointed that it seemed nobody was going to be around for her birthday that night, so caryn went to visit with her friend instead. so, it’s been about a month since i really saw her last.

last night was “outernational”, an event during photo week dc where the photojournalists i support as part of metro collective teamed up with eric hilton of thievery corporation for a multimedia presentation where the photographers’ photos were displayed on projections and set to music. it was a neat concept: one guy was on a video mixer, and eric hilton was on turntables, and the projections and the music fed off each other. there were a few technical difficulties with electricity, audio, and one of the projectors had some issues. there was an open bar (bar… singular), and that wasn’t enough to support the hundreds of people who showed up – about 600 tickets were sold online beforehand, then probably another 200 or so people showed up and bought tickets at the door. we were a little sensitive to the technical issues as we were producing the event, but i’m not sure how much it impacted the audience. as for us, whenver we wanted a drink, we just bypassed the line and walked behind the bar and helped ourselves, hah.

it’s funny, but after supporting metro collective for the past 4 or 5 years there was still a local member (gabriela) that i hadn’t yet met until last night. i also was finally able to meet clary, their current intern; i had been on a conference call or two with her as we were preparing the current website, but that was all i knew of her. she had to leave around 10 to get ready to drive to a photoshoot she’d have to do early in the morning, though. i also met a photographer friend of hector emanuel (pablo martinez monsivais) who has won pulitizer prizes and so on, so that was very cool.

afterwards, hector and his wife and my old photojournalism instructor michael and some of their friends and i went to 18th street lounge (owned by eric hilton, and we were invited there by him afterwards) to chill. though i was worried about my sneakers and any dress code we made it in, but decided it was too loud to really chill so we headed out to adams morgan to rhumba café for food and drinks. hector and his wife invited me to crash at their place nearby if i had to, but i caught the metro and rode back home. got to see some pretty inebriated folks on my way to the metro, though.

i was showing hector photos on my phone of the ccrg championship bout since he was telling one of his friends how i used to play roller derby, and i think it was the first time hector had really seen my work. he was very impressed and suggested he and i work together to pull together a tight edit of about 15 of my shots that we could submit for a world press photo award. considering he’s had his work published in various newspapers and magazines like newsweek and so on and won a world press photo award himself, i’m very excited about working with him to see what might be possible.

i’ll say this about the cute girls i’ve seen out running and seeing so many stylish people in and around town and at the outernational event last night: it’s kept me in a perpetually frisky mood. argh!

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#5328 – ambition

one of the photojournalists i support – a world press photo award winner – is going to help me edit my photos of the ccrg championship bout to see if we can win me a world press photo award. 🙂 he saw my derby photos and suggested we try for it, and so we’re going to rush to see if we can pull together a tight edit by december 15. if we can’t, then we know what i should work on for a possible entry for 2012.

more on this later. but, for now, sleep.

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#5327 – runner's sigh

last year i was registered for the marine corps marathon, but getting a stress fracture in my leg ended up putting a stop to my training. i was able to defer my registration to this year, and started my training several months ago, but fell out of my training schedule for multiple reasons. at least it didn’t cost me anything since my office was able to get me registered for free since we help sponsor the race.

i started seeing more and more talk about the race as it approached, and i was getting email updates and confirmations. at one point i was thinking how frustrated i’d be to go watch the race and not be running myself. when i mentioned that to festive and spelchec they suggested that i try running it anyway, even though my training is nowhere near marathon level – sure, why not? then yesterday i was sitting at home and i thought “hell, i’m training for a half-marathon and i need to do a 15km run (~9-10 miles) anyway. might as well just run the first 10 miles or so of the marine corps marathon. plus, since i’m already registered, might as well go to the expo and get my free stuff.”

so i went to the expo yesterday, got my free competitor’s turtleneck shirt and wandered the booths and tried a few free samples and products. (i need to get myself the stick sometime.)

i told zenmetsu and imzkat about my idea and said how i’ve read stories about people who accidentally finished marathons – either they were doing a 10k and took a wrong turn, or they were trying to find someone along the course and ended up running the length of the course, stuff like that. i joked that i’d end up finishing the race and be all “whoops, forgot to stop!” i didn’t really think that i’d run the entire course, but who knows? the tough elevations were only in the first 10 miles, and after that it was going to be relatively flat for the rest of the course.

went home from dan’s and carb-loaded, set out my running clothes and figured out what to wear/bring to keep warm before the race, and just figured out a few logistics. i wasn’t really nervous or anything because i kept thinking to myself that i was only going to run 10 miles and after that it was going to be up to me how much further i wanted to run. went to bed early since i figured i’d wake up around 5 am.

woke up at 5, wondered why i was waking up at 5 with the race not scheduled to start until 8, and set my alarm to go off about 35 minutes later. woke up later, checked the weather and it was 27° outside and thought of cold muscles and injuring myself and didn’t like what i was thinking. i don’t know what happened, but i apparently fell back asleep and woke up at 6:45 and for a second i thought that if i rushed that i’d be able to make it there, but then i figured who was i kidding? i’d still need to eat breakfast and get dressed, i didn’t know when the next bus was going to arrive (the closest metro stop is a 20 minute walk away anyway and i’d have to transfer, and probably a 30-minute walk away to a station where i wouldn’t have to transfer). it just looked like a disaster.

i patted myself on the back for not doing something foolish that i probably shouldn’t have been considering in the first place – i mean, seriously, what good is pushing myself too hard at this point when i’m trying to build myself up to run a half-marathon for charity in under 3 weeks now? – and went back to sleep.

i woke up a few hours later and checked my twitter feed and saw people i knew in dc posting photos of the runners or saying how they were going to help out at a water station and good job for the runners for committing myself to running a marathon, etc., etc., and the weather had warmed up to about 50°, which was all exactly what i wanted to see in my current mood. 😛 as if i didn’t feel bad enough already about not running.

i don’t know why i’m so upset about it. it’s not like i had been thinking for months and months that i was going to be running the race this year and then a few days before found out that i wouldn’t be running, but still, this is the second year in a row i had been registered to run the marine corps marathon and haven’t been able to. i was looking forward to seeing/hearing the crowds lining the route; i don’t know what sort of turnout the annapolis half-marathon will have, but while the annapolis 10-mile run i ran last year (on my fractured leg!) had a decent turnout, i’m certain it doesn’t compare to the crowds for the 4th largest marathon in the united states.

and i’m still worried about my half-marathon. not really the running bit, since i’m getting up to the half-marathon distance, but the fundraising and everything else. i’m over 50% of the way to my $750 goal, but i still feel like i’m rubbish at fundraising. and i can’t believe that it’s less than 3 weeks now until the race. november 19 still feels far away.

and i still have to go out and do my run for today. fuck it, i’m going for my run now, and i’m going down to the marathon route and i’m cheering some people the fuck on.

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#5326 – high-school in-jokes make turn me and my friends into old married couples

i went to the arlington cinema drafthouse last thursday for their “comedy film bucket list” club. the arlington cinema drafthouse is a combination restaurant / movie theater, and while they may not necessarily show first-run films, their showings are usually inexpensive. for example, on monday nights their films are $1, and tuesday nights their films are $2. they also have live comedy shows and other performances there too. i found out that once a month they’re doing this comedy film bucket list meetup, and if you rsvp on their meetup group then you and a guest can get free admission (i guess they figure that they’ll make the money up by packing it full of theatergoers who are buying dinner and drinks). they seat only about 300 people in the whole theater, i think. anyway, i rsvp’d and went to see “shaun of the dead” in the theater since it had been ages since i’d seen it, and even though i have it on dvd i wanted to see it on the big screen.

the next films for the comedy film bucket list are “this is spinal tap” for november (but i’m busy that day, oh well), and “trading places” in december.

this past saturday i went to the last charm city roller girls bout of the season. cynicalscribe put my name in to be on the photography list, but i just waltzed in since when i arrived it was still early and the ticket desk wasn’t staffed yet. things have changed since i was last taking pictures at roller derby – photographers who have been designated as “press” can stand in specific locations for their shots, but only those specific locations (rather than the “as long as you’re behind this line or in this general area then you’ll be ok” attitude from the past). apparently this is because at a different league’s bout a ref wasn’t looking where they were going and ended up falling over a photographer. at least, that’s what i was told.

there were a few other photographers there, and it was one of those photographers who told me about the designated spaces and how you had to stay in certain spots once the bout started. he also said that i had to get some special press credential from the ticket desk, so i went on up and talked to the skaters i knew at the desk and they really only gave me the same general-admission wristband that everyone else had. when i saw that i was the only one on the guest list under “photographers” and pointed my name out, one of the skaters at the desk said “yeah, yeah, i know who you are!” and the other joked “no, glenn, we’re not going to let you in!” it was kind of funny how other skaters i knew were coming up to me before the bout to say hi – i felt like i was practically a league mascot the way people were recognizing me and coming over to chat, haha.

just before the bout started while people were still taking their places i stepped out of my designated press photography box to take a few shots and the head ref barked at me to get back in my position. the one thing i didn’t like about the first designated spot i was shooting from was that it faced directly into the path of the skaters – usually when i take derby photos, i position myself just off to the side of turn 1, that way i can take more interesting photos than just head-on photos of the skaters, and i don’t feel like i’m blinding them with my flash as they’re skating towards me.

i stayed in this designated spot for a bit, but later i moved to another one of the designated spots during a time-out. the neat thing about this other spot i moved to was that it was in the center of the track, and i had never been able to take photos from such a location before. it was a bit like being in the eye of a hurricane with refs and non-skating officials running all around me. at one point i crouched down to change lenses and take a few shots and was barked at again. apparently you have to stand while in that spot the entire time – i had been told i just had to be within the designated box, nothing about standing, but it makes perfect sense as people aren’t going to be looking for some guy with a camera crouched down but rather will be looking for someone at eye-level.

most of my photos of the night were taken from that center of the track. i left my spot at one point to let one of those other two photographers take over if they wanted, but when i saw that nobody else was making an attempt to go to that spot i just went back and stayed there. it’s great shooting from the center of the track since i can just rotate at the same rate as the skaters circling around me rather than waiting for them to skate past me and then wait for them to skate by me again. as long as i’m rotating at the same rate as they’re skating, it was pretty simple to track them with my camera’s autofocus. although, in retrospect, i wish that i used my flash for more/all of my photos. even though i prefer the look of natural light over the artificial light from the flash, the photos that i took with my flash came out looking very nice. i made a note to myself to take all my photos at the next bout with my flash, but that’s not going to be until january.

i’m still editing my photos from saturday – i have about 150 more to do a rough edit on, and then i still need to look over things with a more critical eye.

after the bout this girl who helped with production introduced herself to me since she had never seen me before, and she asked if i was just a spectator or what. i mentioned how i’d been a league photographer for a few years and mya bloody valentine chimed in with “glenn? yeah, he’s a derby O.G.” i’m still cracking up about that.

speaking of photography, the photojournalists i help out in dc, we just got their new website to go live just a few days ago. i like helping them out, but there are so many things i can’t stand about the site (like the fact that it is flash-based) or that drive me nuts about the site (the template is very limited, the service feels quite amateurish). but, the site is now live, and just in time for fotoweek dc from november 5-12. november 11th is going to be our event, and it’s going to be a series of photos presented with a soundscape created for us by one half of thievery corporation, with dancing and drinks before, during and after. should be a fun time!

on sunday caryn came over to dc – she found out late last week that she has a job interview with the dc department of planning tomorrow, and she wanted to find out where her interview was going to be and how to get there and so on so she wouldn’t be in a panic on wednesday morning. she found the office, met me at my apartment, and then we headed back into the city and met up with spelchec and bruno_boy for lunch and the four of us took the metro over to the office she needs to go to so she could figure out how to get there from the metro station. turns out it’s right next to the waterfront metro station, so it’ll be a really simple commute. once she gets to the dc area from the eastern shore. we all then went for a walk around the city and ended up having dinner at the front page over by dupont circle. i wasn’t impressed with the food or the service for the price.

caryn’s been looking at housing options around the area in case she gets the job and moves out this way since she’d like to have a standalone house with a (fenced-in) yard for her dogs. but, one step at a time – she needs to get the job first. she’s still toying with the idea of just commuting to the dc area from her current place, but she also doesn’t want to have to spend 3-4 hours in the car every day, either.

one thing that’s been pretty neat is that now i finally have a use for facetime on my iphone / ipad / computer. for the past few days we’ve been us

ing caryn’s ipad and either my ipad or iphone to have video chats and see what each other’s been up to, and that’s been really cool. 🙂 …even if she did make fun of my cooking skills while i was making dinner last night. >:( hahaha. up until now my facetime usage has just been a quick “hey, let’s see how this thing works” with mom while we were in the same room together when she just got her iphone, but at least now it has a practical use! plus, imessage is going to save her a bundle on text messaging me, so that’s good too.

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#5325 – out of the blue

last wednesday festive and i went to a happy hour at a restaurant here in dc for people attending the white house tweetup and/or the nasa STS-135 at headquarters tweetup the next day. some of these people had flown in from across the country for these events, and it was nice to be able to get an idea of who else would be attending the events. at one point we were introduced to a very cute girl who happens to be in charge of the white house twitter account – apparently she started as a volunteer during obama’s campaign, moved up the ranks, and soon became in charge of the official white house twitter account and other new media for the executive office of the president. and she’s only 25 years old!

they said that the arrival ceremony for the president of south korea would be cancelled if it were raining, but that they would also make an announcement on a particular phone line at 4:30 AM on thursday morning after evaluating the weather that morning. i was surprised to hear that the ceremony would continue as scheduled since it was pouring like crazy, but i was glad to hear that it was still on.

we made it to the white house around 7 AM and through the long line of attendees and three levels of security (at the first two they checked IDs, and at the third they had people go through a metal detector and get wanded and turn on all their electronics to show that their devices were actually cameras and phones and such). i’ve had more invasive security screenings getting on to an airplane than when i was being allowed on to the white house grounds and just dozens of feet away from the president of the united states.

the ceremony was scheduled to take place at 9 AM, but it was still raining like crazy. at one point the rain let up, but then they made an announcement that because of the inclement weather the ceremony would take place indoors but that the guests could stay to see the motorcade. i felt bad for all those people that came from out of town just to see a car pull up, and many people decided to leave. michelle and i ended up getting to stand up against the rope line and we had a perfect view of the troop review after people started to leave, and then maybe about 15-20 minutes after that initial announcement they made another announcement that the ceremony would take place outside after all. unfortunately, we didn’t have a good view of the presidential podium, but i was able to get a few photos of obama and the south korean president from where we stood. i need to import my photos and see how they all turned out.

at the end of the ceremony, obama said that he was going to say hi to a group of schoolkids on the opposite side of the podium from where we were standing, and the kids went nuts. one guy standing near us said “quick! if anybody has any kids, send them up front now!” so obama might come over to our side, but unfortunately he didn’t come around our way to shake hands.

the rain came down again during the ceremony, and by the end of the ceremony it was starting to pick up heavily again. we ended up getting brunch at a mcdonald’s over by farragut west then headed back to my apartment to nap since by that point we had already been up for about 7 or 8 hours and it was barely noon.

we went back into the city to nasa headquarters around 4 to see STS-135 mission commander chris ferguson and mission specialist sandy magnus give a presentation; for about 30 minutes they talked about their spaceflight experiences, and then for the last 30 minutes or so they did a q&a with the audience. there were a few good questions, a few funny answers (apparently being in space makes you constipated until your body figures out how to poop in space), and even though it was a short presentation it was still very interesting. afterwards, mission commander ferguson was escorted off to another meeting or something, but mission specialist magnus was able to stay and sign some autographs, so i now have an autograph of one of the crew from the final space shuttle flight. i also was able to get a second autograph from her that i gave to anne for her (early) birthday this past weekend, too.

we joined several of the tweetup attendees for dinner; a few of them i had been following on twitter for some time previous (one was a friend i made from the nasa juno tweetup, another was another attendee of the nasa juno tweetup that i didn’t get to meet, and a third was a tech columnist who i started following on twitter many months ago when he was a tech writer for the washington post), but we made some new friends there too including an australian who’s doing malaria research in baltimore and heads back home in 2 weeks, a girl from germany, and a few other people who drove or flew in to dc for the tweetup from other places in the united states.

friday afternoon i got a text out of the blue from caryn, one of the girls i met on okcupid months ago. she had originally messaged me and we had a good conversation going while she was out of town, and when she arrived back in maryland we ended up going out on a date in annapolis back in june and really hit things off. unfortunately, just after that first date, she was laid off from her job working in the GIS department of a college on the eastern shore, and i moved to dc. even from annapolis she’s about 30-45 minutes away, and she’s about 75 miles away from my place in dc. i was glad to hear from her, and she asked me if i had any plans for the weekend. when i mentioned that i’d be in salisbury (also on the eastern shore) on saturday with mom and dad to celebrate my sister’s birthday, we decided to make plans for dinner. specifically, we made plans for me to go over to her place for dinner saturday night (she offered to cook, and it was my job to choose a few recipes for her to pick from).

friday night i went to the hirshhorn museum for their “hirshhorn after hours” event. they turn the courtyard of the museum into a dance club with bars and a dj, and this time they had a live band too. even though the museum is free, and it costs money for the after hours events, it’s kind of nice to be able to browse the museum with other people dressed for the occasion and have a drink and dance. i was most interested in the warhol “shadows” exhibit, and the hirshhorn is the perfect venue: the curved wall makes it so you can’t see the whole exhibit at one time, and so it just appears to stretch on and on and keeps you guessing at what comes next. the dj was ok, but the band itself was pretty awful – a really acquired taste, and since i couldn’t get into them at all i figured at that point i might as well just go home. i couldn’t drink anyway and planned to get up early to go for a 9-mile run for my training on saturday morning before going to visit anne at salisbury.

saturday morning i ended up not going on my run, but i met up with mom and dad and anne in salisbury where we had cake and gave anne her presents (mom and dad gave her not one but two balloon sharks that are remote-controlled so you can have them fly around the room), and we went out for dinner. after dinner i drove the 90 minutes from salisbury over to caryn’s place in chestertown.

i had emailed her a few recipes that morning, and in response she asked “how do you feel about irish pubs? ;)”, which says something about my recipe choices, haha. so, we went to this irish pub near her house, went out for a drive to a local park and sat and talked and walked along the water and out on a pier to sit and talk some more before going back to her place.

probably the funniest quote from the night was when we were talking about tv shows and things we watch, and i mentioned how when i’m cooking i’ll put on old looney tunes cartoons, and she laughed and said “know what i put on when i’m cooking? NPR.”, so then i had to connect the two and showed her this.

we ended up cuddling on her couch watching tv until around 2 AM when we decided it was time for bed and she wasn’t about to kick me out since i wouldn’t get back home until almost 4 AM. as it was, we didn’t go to sleep for another few hours. 😛

sunday morning we talked for another hour or two on her back porch while we watched her dogs run around her yard. she felt bad that she pretty much disappeared 3 months ago: she’s still looking for a new job, and she said that in the past few months she basically became a hermit and didn’t leave her house that much. she’s just about resigned herself to the fact that she’ll probably have to move to the western shore of maryland to find a new job. she’s not a stranger to driving from her place out to columbia or dc or places like that – she used to go to a climbing gym over in columbia fairly often – but it’s not a very convenient drive to do on a regular basis. the difficult thing would be finding someplace to live – she has a large house (it’s inexpensive on the eastern shore, and she got her house back when anybody could get a mortgage… and i do mean “large”: her garage is as big as my entire apartment) but she’d need to find a place big enough for her and her three dogs and one cat. at least they’re small dogs (two are rat terriers, one is a dachshund), but it’s not like she can get an apartment like mine and expect it to work.

while a 75-mile drive isn’t ideal, it’s not so bad if we do want to try to start a relationship. i’m hoping that this might go somewhere, but if it doesn’t i can completely see why. i’m glad she reached out to me, though, since it sounds like she might still be interested in me. i really enjoy talking with her too, so we’ll see how things go.

sunday i went for my 9-mile long run that i was supposed to do on saturday, and then i was supposed to go to the embassy of sweden for a concert. the long run really tired me out and i ended up passing out on the couch for a few hours instead. oh well. :/