I guess that Swine Flu is, like, a real thing now. At least the WHO has kicked the warnings up a notch, and there are people that we know of, who are infected by it. As a result, Reagan’s friend who flew all of the way out here from California, was only able to meet Piper for 10 minutes. When Reagan and her friend first arrived at the hospital on Friday, they were flat out denied from seeing Piper. The staff stated that the Swine Flu precautions has prompted a family only policy until the threat diminishes. Only after several minutes of sobbing and begging, was Reagan able to convince the staff to let her friend in to visit.

Because of all of this, we weren’t able to see Piper at all on Saturday. Sunday, when we visited her, Piper was not feeling too hot. She was running a fever and had an elevated heart rate. She also puked a couple of times. The puking isn’t very out of the ordinary for Piper. But her fever had us kind of worried. Her nurse had the doctor check her out, and they started Piper on some meds. They also took some cultures, etc.. The cultures, btw, came back negative for influenza (phew!). We are hoping it is nothing. She was a pretty wiped out little girl the whole time we were there, though. She did crack a couple of smiles for us, before we left. Such a little cutie. A couple of more pics, can be seen here.

This weekend was full of inanities and insanities, as usual. Two of Reagan’s good friends from high school came to visit, beginning Thursday. One of them became very ill on Friday and headed home to DC. Reagan’s not-sick friend hung out with us until Saturday afternoon. Friday night, Reagan and Terrah (Reagan’s not-sick friend) came down to the Financial District to meet me after work, for dinner. Then we took a little stroll around the south end of the island. I had a good time practicing taking photos in low light. The shot above is on the top deck, behind the South Street Seaport Mall. The shot below is at the promenade in Battery Park City.

Saturday morning, we rose nice and early to catch the local running A train downtown to Central Park. Reagan and I had a 10k there. Terrah was a great sport, to tag along, and hang on to our bag, so that we didn’t have to check it. She also took some pretty good shots of us. Here we are with our friend Mike Cuomo before the race.

Here is a great shot of Reagan approaching the finish line.

Originally the race was called the “dash and splash” because there was going to be a huge pool party after the race, for all of the runners. Ultimately, it turns out that the pool doesn’t open to the public until July 1, so the race was changed to just “Dash 10K.” We definitely could have used the splash part though. It was 71 degrees and over 60% humidity. Lucky, the majority of the race was overcast. The race staff also had the foresight to provide frozen juice bars in the post finish area. I clocked a 43:11. I was fairly happy with my time, given that I haven’t really had time to run, for about 2 weeks leading up to the race. Now that the Chrysler thing is all wrapped up, I should have a bit more free time to log some miles.

… is lining the bottom of the cage this week.

I’m hopping on the nerd train for this post. Ok, I guess that I always have at least one foot on the nerd train (despite my attempts to act like I don’t). I have been extremely busy for the last little while, in just about every area. There have been a few moments that were really frustrating. Most of them involved not remembering where I put something. Or, leaving something somewhere, that I meant to bring with me, etc.

Each time this occurred, I thought how much easier it would be if human brains had a search function. For example: at some point my brain told my hand to take my b-berry out of my hand and put it on the table. Maybe it was subconscious, I don’t know. The fact is, next time I reached for my b-berry, it was no longer in my pocket, and I didn’t know where it was. How great would it be, if I could have just done a search for it, the same way that I can search my inbox, or Google or pretty much any type of digital file? Instead, I had to do the old school analog-type of search. Instead of just typing “where did I leave my blackberry” into some field and striking “enter,” analog searches are performed by frantically walking around to every room passed through in the last day, cursing under the breath, and looking around like someone pryed your eyes open during a REM cycle. My life would be so much more efficient if  I could just skip over the pain of analog searching. I hope that at some future point, all brains come standard with a search function. Tadd, could you work on inventing something like that?

What is McFlys email address? and is Dougie from McFLY gay?

Name, Kate

Answer–

Kate Good question. I think that you must be friends with Izzy. Since you have obviously not read her question, the email for this Mcfly is mcfly@####.com. But Since you are also asking about Dougie, I’m assuming that you are asking about this Mcfly . Which is kind of disturbing to me. It is scary enough that there are boy bands at all, but a Brit boy band? That is over the top.   If you want to email that Mcfly go Mcfly and click on “contact us” in the left hand column. The answer to your second question is a little more complicated. If you mean to ask if Dougie is homosexual, the answer is that, although I know, I cannot disclose for legal reasons. If you mean to ask is Dougie “gay” in terms of the socially constructed derogatory (totally lame and effeminate in unnatural ways), then the answer is… absolutely. I mean, he is in a boy band.

Thanks for asking, Jake

I know that I said I was going to try to chill, with the whole ska thing, but dude, I guess I just can’t At least the song I’m sharing today probably wouldn’t really fit under that genre, although Madness, is definitely one of the quintessential Ska groups of all time.

Madness was formed in the UK (shocker [not that kind of shocker, sicko]) in the mid-70s.  They were on the 2 Tone Records label, with the Beat and the Specials. Madness brought us some insane hits that, certainly everyone remembers and love, such as “Our House” (in the middle of the street; and “One Step Beyond.” The song that I’m sharing is “Wings of a Dove.” Spin it.

Today started off great. The sun was shining through the curtains, when I woke up. The birds were chirping, etc. I went down to CP to shoot this race before church, and got an email, while I was there, that some stuff was going to be happening at work today.

The race was awesome. I wasn’t too stoked about having to go the rest of the way downtown afterward, to have to spend the rest of the day indoor. The biggest bummer is that a lot of what I’m doing today, involved a waiting around for things to happen. Since I had my camera with me, from this morning. Here are a few shots. The first one is the progress on the new 1 World Trade Center Tower:

The next one, is the view looking north, from one of the conference rooms that I’m working out of.

Not nearly as good as our southern views. But at least looking out this side doesn’t make me feel as bad about being inside today. It would be a different story, if I could see the promenade, and the water.

I opted out of the the 5k, this morning, so that I would have plenty of energy for the longboard race, in Central Park. Dude-ahhh, it was bananas. Around 100 people showed. It was super chaotic and fun. We started in the south west corner of the park and did one loop on Central Park Drive (6 miles). It took about 25 minutes. The beginning was the craziest part. A guy hit a rickshaw cab, right in front of me and went down. So I hurried and stopped, as not to hit him. Then people were plowing into my back. I picked up my board and ran past the pile up, so that I still was able to get into the front pack. I was one of the first 15, or so, finishers. Col Carter came down for the race too. It was cool to have a friend there with me. Because, I’ll be honest, I felt a little bit out of place at moments (with not tattoos, not smoking cigarettes, etc.). Anyway, after the race, we decided to roll down and check out the new Times Square, traffic-less Broadway. This is another one of Bloomberg’s ideas. It was pretty cool, save the lawn chairs. I felt like they should have set up some makeshift trailer homes on the side walk, or something to go with them. Or maybe some pink lawn flamingos. But the kicker was, that I have NEVER seen it so crowded down there. Col said that he hasn’t either. I took this crappy pic with my phone, which doesn’t really even do it justice.

After venturing into Times Square, we headed back up town, ate lunch and headed home. I showered and sped off to visit my little pumpkin. She was as cute as ever. But I could tell that she missed her mom. I’m not going to lie, I loved hogging her all to myself. She was a little bit cranky when I was bathing her, but once I got her all dried off and brushed her hair, she just wanted to play play play. She even cracked a couple of smiles for the camera (again, crappy blackberry cam. Sorry). I wish that I could have held my hand steady for this one.

When I got her all dressed and was cleaning up the bath stuff, I set her in her crib. There she just sat up and watched everything that I did. It was so freaking cute.

We have been talking a lot lately about how much Piper loves to stand up. It is true. If you lift her up, her legs go out straight and she wants to dance around. Well, I was goofing off with her, getting ready to leave and here is a video of her in her crib, showing off. Once again, I apologize for the extremely poor resolution of this crap that I took with my phone.

Piper Standing in her Crib from Piper Breinholt on Vimeo.

Reagan is going to be in the Silver State visiting her good friend Lacy to meet Lacy’s new baby. She said that she is also thinking about doing a drive-by of the chapel that we got married in, just for old times’ sake. Hahahah. That last part was made up. I have tried to stack my weekend nice and deep with activities, so that I don’t sit around crying my eyes out missing Reagan. Tentative schedule (work and weather permitting) is as follows :

1. Friday night: Shakedown at the Majestic (my old band mates) are playing at Alphabet Lounge.
2. Saturday morning: possibly a 5k for underprivileged Indian kids in Riverside Park.
3. Saturday afternoon: Central Park Longboard Race.
4. Saturday Evening: kick it with Piper.
5. Sunday Morning: attending NYRR Mini 10K (as a spectator, only).
6. Sunday Morning: church.
7. Sunday Afternoon: kick it with Piper.
8. Nap.

The New York Road Runner’s club announced the results of the NYC Marathon today. But Reagan and I were actually both able to login last night and discover that we had not made it in this year. She asked me if I was bummed. I said no. But now that I think about it, I really am kind of bummed. We have kind of been holding off, to see, before committing to any fall races for this year. I think that for now, I will just plan on running the Hartford marathon again, for my fall race. I think that we are also going to do the Philly distance run again, since we liked it so much last year. In the mean time, above are some photos of my dehydrated corpse finishing the BK half marathon.