Chicago radio

We were in Chicago a few weeks ago for Stefroni's wedding, and everything was really wonderful. But that's not what I'm posting about.

Chicago's a big city, right? Well, as you would expect from a big city, there are a lot of radio stations. You can't go more than two clicks on the dial without getting a new station. I'd say there's about 800 FM radio stations around Chicagoland.

The part that surprised me is that only about 5 of those stations are devoted to popular music. I don't mean popular music as in Brittany Spears and the Backstreet Boys, I mean mainstream music, including country and rap and everything. So, between these 5 radio stations they pretty much need to play all of the music that normal people would listen to. The other 795 stations in the area are split pretty evenly between Mexican rachero music and talk radio.

Now if I had just 5 quality radio stations to choose from in an area that'd be plenty. The problem is, I don't want to listen to just any mix of mainstream crap. I need a rock station. Kelly and I spent all weekend scanning the spectrum for any semplance of rock, and the oldies station was the only one we could find.

So, in conclusion, Chicago radio stations suck.

Saving lives, one marathon at a time

Ronnie showed me this article today.  Y'all should be thanking me.

The Story of Marathon

Last week I looked up the legend on which the marathon event is based. This is the account in Wikipedia:

The name marathon comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek soldier, who was sent from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon. It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the Senate, exclaiming ['We have won'] before collapsing and dying of heartattack.

Any of this strike you as a surprise? I'd heard the basic idea of this story before: that some guy ran from Marathon to Athens, which is the same distance as the race named after the city. But no one ever mentioned that it killed him to run it. That should probably be in some kind of disclaimer.

Mr. Rogers' birthday

I stumbled across this post today while working on a blog for one of our clients. Apparently it's Mr. Rogers' birthday tomorrow. The video almost made me cry.

I'm ready to admit it

Around November Annie suggested that we get some friends together and start training for the Salt Lake City Marathon. I'd been running for exercise (dogs notwithstanding), but a few laps of the park are a long way from the 26 miles of a marathon. I can't just run a marathon. I'm no Ryan Daniels, after all. So, naturally I thought Annie was crazy. She insisted that we could start training even if we couldn't yet run very far. After Jason showed me a training schedule and I realized that the first few runs were actually doable, I agreed that I would try training for it.

And so, for the past few months, the three of us have been training. Until recently I was a little bit embarrassed about it. It seemed like saying that I was training for a marathon would be like saying that I was going to run for president of United States. Seriously, if I saw me and if I told me that I was running a marathon, I'd be like, who does this guy think he is?

So, on Saturday of last week we ran 18 miles, our longest so far and second longest of our training. It was brutal, but I finished. I feel like now I've finally reached the point where I can say that I'm training for a marathon and not be embarrassed about it, like maybe I can actually do this thing.

As a side note, this training has made me a big fan of leash laws. If one of the presidential candidates would make that their platform then I'd definitely vote for them.