Chuck Milam

…and I did a little of both yesterday when I completed my very first “official” road race in downtown Nashville.  I ran the Nashville Predators Fangtastic 5K, which I would have never thought I would do even a month ago, but now I am so glad I did.  I confess at one point, I considered not running, but I decided I had to complete this race no matter what.  It was kind of a symbol of being able to push through adversity, even if I was going to go it alone now.

It was just over a month ago on the evening of December 26^th when I got the sudden wake-up call that I needed to start doing something to improve my fitness, as well as burn some energy to help clear my head over some things I was working through in my personal life. I got started with the Couch to 5K program, which slowly works you up from walking to running longer and longer intervals.  There were several great iPhone apps to help keep me on track as I worked through the program.  Even though I was only to Week 4 of the program, I did manage to run most of the race yesterday.  I did resort to “speed walking” one uphill when I realized I was walking up it faster than I was jogging it.

Yesterday, right before race time, I remembered about the “Map My Run” service and figured that might be fun to gather data while running the race.  I downloaded the app, and it worked great.  You can see the map of my run route and even do a 3D video “fly-by” of the route.

According to the official results:

My Gun Time: 33:38
My Chip Time: 33:15

“Gun Time” is the traditional time measurement from the sound of the starting gun to crossing the finish line. It’s more of a what people would think of a race vs. the other runners, i.e. “I crossed the finish line first,” but doesn’t take into account the large crowd at the starting line, which can take 5-10 minutes to clear out. “Chip Time” is measured from when I actually crossed the starting line (I was in the middle of the pack) to when I crossed the starting line.

My overall pace: 10:44.  A little slower than the 5:40 miles I used to post in high school, but then again, I was a lot younger and lighter then. I placed 51st out of 75 in my age group (Male 35-59). I placed 675th overall, and If I’m reading the results right, I placed 384th out of all males.

As I ran through downtown Nashville, I passed several landmarks that brought back some memories and helped me come to peace with things.  Places such as: The YMCA I almost joined on the very same night I found out things were going to change for good, the road I would have turned down had I bought a house there, and the farmer’s market where we spent some great times shopping for international foods that I rarely got to prepare because of the calorie counts.  Running past these places was cathartic for me.

Most importantly, I think I’ve made my peace with Nashville again. I’m looking forward to the next event, and yes, also the next race.

One of my friends recently posted on facebook:

“Why do people ‘fall in love’ with things they can never have?”

She then followed up with:

“… I just think it’s wierd how “people” are so obsessed with things/people they can never have in their life and miss out on other things/people that would make them just as happy if not more… I do it too… I just don’t understand it…”

After some reflection, I responded:

I’ve often pondered the exact thought you pose here, especially when looking back at what “could have been.”

We have all looked past the person right in front of us while pursuing the unattainable shiny new thing standing on the greener grass in the next pasture over.  Why do we do it?  Human nature, maybe?  Fear of “settling” or making the “wrong” choice?  Why do we do it?  It’s hard to say.  Maybe there isn’t one answer.

Regardless of why, when I think, “I really shouldn’t have chased after Lady A, I should have paid attention to Lady B,” it starts to get me down.  I start to think I really screwed up and missed out—I’m sure we all know how that goes.  However, when I REALLY think about it, I come to realize that one of the main reasons I didn’t pay attention to the otherwise perfectly (probably more) suitable Lady B at the time is simple:  I just wasn’t ready.  She may have been, but I wasn’t.  Do I still wish I could go back and do it differently sometimes?  Of course, but I have to remember that life’s all about timing, and if you’re both not fully ready, it’s not going to work.

So, that’s how I make peace with this question, anyway.  Your mileage may vary.

Does this make sense to you, dear reader?  Or am I blowing smoke here? Comments welcome.

Since I was snowed in this weekend, I tackled a lot of chores around the house that had been neglected for far too long.  See, here’s the thing:  For most of the last year, I really haven’t been living on the farm more than perhaps half of the time.

Why?  Is not important.  Not anymore.

Simply put:  Things have changed.  I will be spending my time here at home again.

“Home.”

Frankly, it still feels a little strange to call this place home again.  Maybe that’s just the cognitive dissonance talking.  Just when I was getting comfortable with the idea of calling Nashville “home,” I now find myself back on the farm.  Despite my current state of confusion, it is good to know I can always come back.  For years, this farm has been a place of refuge and support for my family.

So, with all that explanation and back story out of the way, we now resume our regularly scheduled blog posting.

Faced with a house that had only been lived in at most three to four nights a week for the last few months, I had a lot of work ahead of me.  Besides all the usual dusting and decluttering one would expect from a house that had been idle for this length of time, this house brought several extra challenges:

This house is in the middle of a corn/soybean field, and that means…mice.  Lots of mice.  Back in the fall, the mice had begun to move in when it got colder and after the beans were cut, they full-on invaded.  Traps were not enough, so I had to resort to poison.  Mice gone, but then I had a lot of “mouse sign” to clean away.  With some help from Dad, and a lot of quality time with the Shop Vac, those little bits of nastiness are now taken care of.

I went through the bathroom cabinets and drawers, took everything out and put it on the floor to survey what I had.  Wow, that was enlightening…and more than a little embarrassing.  I was shocked to discover I had 2-3 of almost everything.  Let’s just say I won’t be needing to purchase any shampoo for the next few months.  Also, I found and tossed a lot of expired products—some of them dating back to when I was living in Wisconsin.  Everything is now neat and logically organized, and that feels pretty good.  I can now open the door to the master bath again when giving the “let me show you around the place” tour.

The kitchen had needed a major purging for a while.  Old baking materials and herbs and spices had to go.  The pantries were all emptied and sorted, long-expired things were tossed, and everything was reorganized.  Now that I can see what I have to work with, cooking will be much easier.

That was pretty much the whole weekend’s work.  So, what’s the next phase in Operation Move-In?  Well, there is the whole matter of the upper floor, parts of which have not been worked on since my first semester of Law School in 2004.  Seriously, there are old class notes and textbooks that probably haven’t been touched in six years—again, where did the time go?  In my defense, as I settled in here at this house, implemented wireless broadband internet access, and began to use a laptop exclusively, I found I didn’t need to use the office upstairs at all.  Regardless, I need to get that space cleaned up and organized.  I suppose this is my best chance, as I have about six weeks of what I call the “dead season” to go before spring hits and I’ll be outside more often than not on weekends.  The soccer fields and the lake should expect to see a lot more of me this year.

Well, it’s worth saying again:  It feels so weird to be back home.    After not really living in this house for the past few months, I’m back, and it looks like I’m back for good.  I guess I need to make the best of it.

So, we woke up this morning to discover:  Not much.  Sure, there was snow on the ground, and it had drifted up against the house and the doors, but there was nothing near the 7 to 10 inches they were predicting.  I’m guessing somewhere between two and three inches.  The grass is still visible in patches.

Dad used my snowblower to clear the paved portion of their driveway off, which had drifted in some places to maybe 10 to 12 inches high.  Honestly, that was probably more of a fun nostalgic activity for him rather than a necessity.  It’s good to know the snowblower that I stubbornly insisted on keeping from my Wisconsin house still gets the job done.

So was all the preparation wasted?  Of course not.  The fuel treatment and hauling, the generator maintenance, the evaluating and arranging of the extension cords, all that needed to be done anyway.  It’s better to be prepared and then not have to make use of  all those preparations rather than the reverse.  On the plus side, my generator is ready for the inevitable power outages that will come with the spring storm season, which is only really four to six weeks away.  I can’t believe January is over already.  Seems like New Year’s was just yesterday, but that story is for another time, another post, and probably isn’t worth telling at all.

Let’s be honest: I don’t have many regular readers here. This blog has come and gone, been active and stagnated for over eight years now. (Really? That long? Wow.) So, I doubt anyone has even really noticed that some posts from earlier this month disappeared.

If you did notice and wonder what happened, the explanation is simple: I took those posts down after some recent personal life events caused me to reevaluate how much I wanted to reveal to the world at large about my feelings and my personal life. These same life events made one post in particular look rather foolish. Hindsight can be a bitch sometimes.

Maybe someday I’ll put those posts back up when things aren’t so raw for me. Time heals, and all that stuff. For now, I’m going to be in a more private mode here. Not so much the “Heart of Chuck,” but maybe more “What’s Up on the Farm” and “Why We Make Irrational Choices About Computers.”  Oh, and yes, lots of Clark photos and stories, I’m sure.

There is a serious snowstorm raging outside. Clark is hunkered down in front of the fire here in the living room.  With the cold and swirling winds, the temperature in here is just barely reaching 68 degrees. Normally, the fireplace can get the temperature up to almost 80 in the living room and near 70 in the adjoining master bedroom.  I guess I could turn on the heat pump, but it would likely just hammer away all night and not raise much but my electric bill.  Sometimes I miss having a real basement with a real furnace like the houses I grew up in.  Then again, it’s really only about six weeks out of the year here that it gets cold enough to consider any winterizing effort.

Tomorrow, we will have to see what we wake up to in terms of snow accumulation.  They were predicting 7 to 10 inches here in Hopkinsville, but so far, it looks like we’re going to be on the light side.  Daylight will reveal the truth.

Ok, so we are now twenty or so days into the year 2010, and I’ve come
to realize something:

This nice round-numbered year is making it really hard for me to
engage in what I’ve come to call “decade denial.” Allow me to
explain: In previous years, let’s say…2009, for example…it was much
easier for me to imagine that “…2005 wasn’t that long ago.” Here’s
where it hit me: I was just looking at an article dated 2005 and I
was trying to determine if it was still fresh information…and a month
ago, I might have used it. However, with that big fat “10” at the end
of the current year, the easy math gets me thinking, “Holy crap,
that’s five years old already.”

I bet I’m not the only one seeing this. Subtracting from 10 makes
for easy math, which means I can no longer deny that time is marching on.

For almost ten years, I have driven the same car: A silver 2000 Volkswagen Jetta. This was my first new car, purchased shortly after I started with 3M in the summer of 2000.  Considering its age and the miles it has seen, it’s been a great car. This car has been to Bismarck, ND in the dead of winter for New Year’s Eve; over to Richmond, VA for a consulting gig I did;  down to Wilmington, NC to visit friends; and even all the way down to Orlando and Destin, FL.  This car has seen some things–and it’s hit two deer, two cats, and at least one, maybe two dogs in the 300,000 miles that are on its odometer.

I always say that there are two types of Volkswagens: Total lemons, and those you can drive for the rest of your life.  This one is probably the latter–as long as I can get it to start.  While this car is “a great runner,” it recently developed a problem where it doesn’t want to start, but only intermittently.

The Jetta in the Great Ice Storm of 2009

Here is what happens when it acts up:

• I can almost tell as soon as I turn the key to start cranking the starter that the car is going to give me problems. It sounds like everything is normal, but the engine does not “catch” and start up. It sometimes seems like the engine is trying to start “harder,” but that could just be because I’m bucking it with the starter longer than normal and hoping it will finally catch.
• If it won’t start, I can “roll start” it by letting it go down the hill and then popping the clutch. When I do this, it will start up immediately.
  When the car is going to start, it does without hesitation.
• Generally, the problem seems to be more of a “hot restart” issue, meaning: If I drive to the grocery store, I park and stop the car for 20-30 minutes. Shopping done, I get back in…it won’t start—but not all the time. However, if I drive to work in the morning, leave the car for eight or more hours, come out at the end of the day…it starts right up. So far.

I posted this problem to facebook a week or so back, and got some suggestions from some of my more mechanically-gifted friends:

• Get a VAG-COM and read all the sensors, look for things out of spec
• Check the Mass Air Flow sensor
• Maybe a weak fuel pump? (But why does is start when I pop the clutch?)

My dad suggested I call a local retired mechanic who used to work on Volkswagens. I finally felt like I found someone who at least knew about basic troubleshooting. His advice was to perform some of the following procedures the next time the car acted up in order to try to isolate various systems and determine where the problem might be:

• Spray some starting fluid into the air intake and crank. (Fuel flow or air mixture problem?)
• Pull the center wire from the distributor and see if it will spark (be careful!)
• Put the same wire back, but only insert it partially—see if it will “pull spark.”

Ok, so these sounded like reasonable ideas to me. Here’s the thing: All of these procedures are to be attempted while the car is in its “stubborn state,” refusing to start. Since I talked to the guy, the car has not refused to start. Not once. I turn the key, the engine lights right up. Naturally. So, I’m driving around with a car full of tools ready to troubleshoot a problem that is refusing to present itself. Needless to say, this is very frustrating.

I think I’m going to give this car another week or two. Beyond that, I simply have to consider another vehicle. I can’t keep driving non-stop to every destination and refueling with the engine running. I can’t go on not knowing when I might get stranded. A “good runner” it may be, but if I can’t trust it to get me home from the grocery store, it’s not much use to me. God help this car if it ever causes me to miss a Predators game. I’ve got a streak to keep alive.

Hive mind, I need your help here. I have determined that the title of this blog: “Chuck Milam’s Musings – Random Thoughts From a Not-So Random Dude,” is hideous, weak, and lame.

I’m now taking suggestions for a new blog title from those of you that are better with the creative than I. Leave it in the comments below. Thanks.

I think this is the first time I actually show up on YouTube, courtesy of Jane Q. Public’s new video camera.  I do wish it was something besides me in mid-rant over fashion choices, but some people think it’s funny.  Enjoy!

UPDATE:  Hmm…I wonder if it was bad form for me embed the video here, rather than link directly to Jane Q. Public’s original blog post?  I’m so out of touch with current post vs. link etiquette.