The Ides of March

really only remarkable because it was the day julius caesar was assassinated. there's an ides every month, you know

Can you believe it’s March already? The Oscars just happened. The Chris Rock/Will Smith thing was at the last Oscars, which happened a year ago. Impossible. Someone is messing with time itself. When I find out who, there will be hell to pay. *cocks shotgun that I was holding this entire time*

What’s New, Pussycat?

Not a whole lot, Tom Jones. My friend Will has started up a D&D game using the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book. I think it’s his first time DMing? I’m playing a sentient skeleton bard named Skelly.

Skelly has glued a mustache and eyebrows to his skull and inserted two glass eyes into his eye sockets.

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night and that’s staring right at you.

We had our first session on Sunday and it was a good ol’ D&D time. Lots of mindless killing, which can be fun with the right group (read: psychopaths). I’m glad Will is taking on DMing, he’s got the rules lawyer bit nailed down because he is actual lawyer, now it’s time for him to stretch his narrative wings.

Meat for Cats and Dogs, the place where I get meat for my cat but not my dog, had its 18th birthday on the 4th. It was packed to the brim with folks.

Like, more people than I’ve ever seen in the store. So many people that I actually had a bit of an anxiety attack and had to leave. Well, it was that plus I discovered while I was in the store that I basically had no money, or less money than I thought I had at least, and couldn’t buy anything. That + loads of people + pervasive smell of dog breath was enough for me to grab one of the free treat goody bags and then head out. I did end up stopping by a couple of days later and got to chat with Heidi, the owner, which was great. She’s a good egg and I’m glad her shop exists!

Speaking of anxiety attacks, I had another full blown one on the 8th. It was weird! I have some anxiety but it never really peaks like it did then. I went down to King Harvest to get some breakfast and half-price hummus and while I was drinking coffee I realized my heart was beating like crazy. I looked down at my watch and it showed my heart rate at 100bpm—too high for just sitting at the computer working. I got up and walked around and tried to meditate and ended up laying in bed/on the couch for about 30 minutes until it passed. Not sure what caused it. I think some of it was running/fitness related; my knee and leg is a little messed up lately (more on that later) and I’m a little behind where I’d like to be. Probably a bit of existential crisis in there as well. Thankfully it lessened after a while and I didn’t drink coffee for the next two days, just to be safe.

That’s life, baby. Sometimes you’re on cloud nine, sometimes you’re on cloud -132.

T-Minus Two Months

My 40th birthday is in two months. I should do something fun for it but I can’t think of a damn thing. I rarely celebrate my birthday anymore besides maybe getting drinks with friends. I don’t even remember what I did last year, and forget about 2021 and 2020, they didn’t exist. But this year my b-day is on a Friday, which is perfect timing for Weekend Shenanigans.

It’s weird, I’m still unpacking my time living on 174th and how that’s generally affected my mental and emotional health, and my interpersonality. Is that a word? I’m not getting any red squiggly lines underneath it. My ability to interact and be around/with people. Like, I’ve never been an initiator at a party, for example. I’ve always been a person who bounces off of other people’s energy. It’s hard for me to instigate shit, in other words. I’m noticing this a lot at parkrun, where I will happily respond to people chatting with me but find it nearly impossible to strike up the conversation. I know why this is, to an extent; living out on 174th by myself sapped me of a lot of my self-confidence and that plus the pandemic sapped me of my self-worth as well. It’s coming back thanks to running and exercise, but now I’m trying to figure out how to be human again, among other people, where we’re not pretending to be fantasy characters in a tabletop role-playing game.

Anyway, I never ask for/expect presents on my birthday but I think it would be neat if, for my 40th, people who wanted to sent me D&D dice that they thought best represented me. Like, color and texture-wise. Like mood rings, except I can roll them. But I don’t just want to give my address out all willy-nilly and I certainly don’t want to pay for a PO Box for just a couple of months. I just like the idea of people who don’t play D&D navigating dice sets, stepping out of their comfort zone a little bit to find something that they think fits me as a person.

My Dumb Knee/The Shamrock Run

If you thought I was done running races, boy are you a stupid dumb person! Just kidding, you are lovely, please don’t go.

If you are interested in a deep dive on my time at the 45th annual Shamrock Run, feel free to check out ye olde blog, where I post about every race I run as well as other stuff that might be boring, I don’t know, who knows anymore.

Here’s a brief summary otherwise:

About a week or so before the run, or basically after the snow finally melted in Portland, I started getting some knee pain while running. Long story short, it’s probably my IT band acting up from overuse. Nothing terrible, the doc says, just rest it and ease up on mileage. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was running the Shamrock Run that weekend.

The Shamrock is arguably the first big weekend event in Portland, and it is PACKED. There were over 4,000 5k runners as you can see in the image above, and roughy 15,000 people ran it overall. That’s a lot of people! I ran a 5k and did alright; finishing under 40 minutes was good, but I really wanted to beat my first finish time in 2012, which was 38:28. The atmosphere was fun and lively as always, and they run a tight ship there. I signed up for the half marathon next year because A) I am insane, and B) it’s the absolute cheapest price for it right now. Had to.

Shamrock is perhaps a little too corporate now and has that feeling of as an event gets bigger, the rewards get smaller. A shame, but it is what it is.

Also, my knee/leg/body feel mostly fine. Nothing exploded or imploded or … sideploded. They hurt, don’t get me wrong. But not in a way where I feel like I really fucked up big time. Maybe fucked up tiny time. Nothing a little RICE won’t fix.

I have another 5k a week later (the 19th). The Couve Clover Run. There is an option to walk it and I may have to do that. Or just get a really awful time. We’ll see, I have two whole weeks after that to recover, which I absolutely will be doing. I’ll let you know one way or another!

Brief Oscar Thing

GREAT results. Happy for everyone who won, really, truly! Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan!, Brendan Fraser, Jamie Lee Curtis!, NAATU NAATU, Sarah Polley with the Best Adapted win, hell even Wakanda Forever, which was a boring film but did have great costumes. I was a little sad to see Banshees of Inisherin get shut out but that’s okay, I think Martin McDonagh et all will be alright.

A Video for You

This one’s slightly off my usual video path. I watch a lot of running videos now, particularly from The Running Channel, based in the UK. Great channel, lots of fun videos and the presenters are chill and it never feels like that sort of empty flash a lot of US videos have.

A couple weeks ago they released a video where one of their presenters, Sarah, just goes on a 5k run and that’s it. It’s labeled as ASMR but it’s not like tapping microphones or eating squelchy foods or any of that nonsense. For me it was great to see someone’s run from start to finish. I can’t run a 25 minute 5k to save my life right now, so I have no idea what it feels like to do so. So it’s cool to see someone else do it. Maybe you’ll enjoy it, maybe not

If you think that’s stupid, well, uhhhh, here’s a lady and her husband eating at celebrity chef restaurants in Las Vegas. Randomly popped up on my YouTube and it was fun to watch. (Apparently she is very popular on YT with almost 10 million followers, and I had no idea she existed until now. The internet is weird.)

Okay Bye

See you in a couple weeks! I really should work on my send offs.

Until next time … This is Josh Belville.

Hmm.

And that’s the news, with Josh Belville.

One more.

Oops, I farted, Josh Belville.