T-Minus 8 Days

8 days til marathon, and the final double-digit training run is in the bag. (Very rainy --- and cold! ---; my watch didn't find satelites until I was 2 miles in.) I don't want to jinx myself but, folks, I'm feeling pretty good about this one.

Waldo

Capitol Hill debut.


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Little League All-Stars

There comes a time in life when, after years of elementary-school triumph and perfect-attendance awards, you make your peace with the idea that you'll probably never win another trophy.

Then, along comes a summer in D.C. that sees you winning two.

First, "Tuesday Heartbreak," my motley crew of a Stetson's Pub Quiz team, goes the distance to win the summer league and take home the coveted [somebody somebody] memorial cup. Which we promptly ask to be filled with beer.

Then, one week later, I learn that across town at the Stanford Softball awards banquet -- an event scheduled against pub quiz -- Coach Chris announced this year's Rookie of the Year and, lo and behold, it's me:

Full disclosure: As the only rookie to string together enough appearances to qualify for, and then actually attend, the season's year-end tournament, I consider this a victory by attrition. Put it this way: it helped my chances that I effectively had no real competition.

Still, to victory, dear readers. To victory.

Capital Softball

It's the end of softball season in D.C. and time for the modest summer's-end tournament. Necessary elements?

First, acquire sponsorship and arrange the league's 70 teams into a seeded double-elimination bracket:

Second, encourage all 70 teams, with branded sun-tents and carnival games in tow, to show up to a NASA-owned softball complex: Third, obtain the services of a caterer to provide the teams with hours of grilled fare:

Then, finally, top it all off by requisitioning a truck that literally dispenses beer from taps protruding from its side:

And there you have it. Play ball!

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Update: After a heartbreaking 5-4 loss to Boston College in the opening round, Stanford defeated Colgate and Johns Hopkins to stay alive and advance to the next round of the play-in bracket. More next week.

Good to the Last Drop

I'm back from a week-long biking and mountain-climbing adventure in Alaska (where I took a still-unedited video and no pictures) and a weekend tubing-and-camping trip in Shenandoah (where I took neither video, nor pictures). But, fear not, dear readers! I do have one item to share from my travels: a single picture of what one must resort to when CVS runs out of Poland Spring. Meanwhile, in other news. . . .

After a 10-day break it was back to marathon-training today for a 10-mile run on the treadmill, which left me dead tired. And, of course, crazy thirsty for baby water.

Roosevelt Island

Found it on the second try.

A Few Historical Fibers

I finished James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" earlier this week (the same day, coincidentally, that Gov. Mark Sanford announced that he was continuing the long South Carolinian tradition of seceding from unions).

Commuting in D.C. is very compatible with listening to audiobooks, and at just under 40 hours, Battle Cry had been my faithful companion for around two months. Though focusing a little more singly on military history than I was expecting after David Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought (the preceding volume, covering 1815-1848, in the still not-yet-completed Oxford History of the United States series), Battle Cry was especially readable in D.C., given its helpful ability to breathe life into the area's statues and placenames. (I will now forever think of Farragut North as the "Damn the Torpedos!"-Metro Stop, for instance. "Full speed ahead!")

Double-bonus, the book also contained some pretty solid explanatory trivia--it's 1861 and the North needs thousands of new military uniforms; you're in the textiles business, but you're short on wool. What do you do?

To fill contracts for hundreds of thousands of uniforms, textile manufacturers compressed fibers of recycled woolen goods into a material called "shoddy." This noun soon became an adjective to describe uniforms that ripped after a few weeks of wear, shoes that fell apart, blankets that disintegrated, and poor workmanship in general[.]" (p. 324)

And just like that, a new word is born.

Beautiful.