Screws In My Coffee

Last night I watched Howl's Walking Castle .  It was another wonderful animated film by master storyteller Hayao Miyazaki. I love all of Hayao Miyazaki's work ever since I watched My Neighbor Totoro . Howl's Castle is simpley incredible.  There was so much detail in the story and the visuals.  I was was transported to another world and completly forgot who or where I was while I watched the movie.

I removed Joomla from my launiart.com web site. Joomla is great for a community site so it was not getting the use it deserves at my personal art site. I decided to redesign the site using static XHTML pages. The site only has one page but I look forward to developing it into a site that will showcase my drawings. I like hand coding XHTML pages. I will experiment with making the site as graphic as I want and not care about making the layout appeal to my usual corporate or education customers.

Finally got a Facebook account.  My La Jolla High School 40th class reunion committee made the incentive for me to create it. I am in the Austin Network and the Huston-Tillotson Network. I am having fun exploring something that I have avoided for so ling.  I created this badge and I am testing it here on my Blog.

Well I made my goal tonight running in the dark at Saint Edwards Park.  I was running hill workouts on the toughest hill in the park.  I ran 5.22 miles in 76 minutes. On Monday I ran 8.39 miles in 82 minutes on the street.  There is a big difference in my speed on a flat street compared to running up and down rocky hills.

I have made my goal of running 1,000 miles in one year.  When I started in January I had not enrolled myself in the idea of running 62 miles.  All I wanted to do was run around LBJ Lake and rack up the miles so that I could say that I ran 1,000 miles. Well much to my surprise I have made a lot of discoveries and friends along the way to running 1,000 miles in 2008. Running on rocky trails is like feeling the force with a light saber in your hand and your eyes blindfolded. Rocky trails are natures way of giving you the ultimate chance to do ballet tap dance and jazz all at once. You can learn a lot about people by running two or three hours with them on a trail. If you do not fuel your body on a long run the brain is the first thing to get cut off on energy. I can run for over 8 hours but my Garmin 405's battery can not. For me setting goals is more about how I am being on the way to the goal instead of reaching the goal. I did not drag myself through 1,000 miles of runnin...

Today was a sad day for my musical world.  Today was the first day that my favorite satellite radio station was not on the air.  I had come to love listening to Sirius Disorder, but today after the merger of Sirius and XM stations I discovered that Sirius Disorder was cut. I got a Sirius radio when I purchased my Dodge Ram 3500 Cumins.  I had not listened to any radio regularly for about 10 years.  I had grown tired of commercials and had developed a passion for Internet radio.  I grew up listening to free form FM radio in the 1970s.  I remember disc jockeys playing whole sides of albums like Genesis and Santana.  Today that just will not happen.  I remember a station in Pasadena KPPC where the DJs played anything they wanted.  This is how I discovered the music of Frank Zappa. So much to my surprise I discovered a wild free form station on satellite called Sirius Disorder.  I loved it and listened to it in my truck and online 90% of the time that I was listening to music. I will surv...

Where ever you are in your exercise plan is where you are suppose to be.  There is no right or wrong there is just you. One of the nice things about just being yourself (I repeat this to myself a lot so it is positive re-enforcement for me to write it as well) is that you do not have to rely on what others think or about what the voice in your head thinks about you.  You have the freedom to be you, whatever you chose.  Sometimes I have let the voice in my head tell me to do things because of what other will think.  More often lately I have been breaking out and discovering a lot of nice things about the world including meeting people that I would normally not talk to. My co-worker Stephanie introduced me to getting me beyond the barrier of just running and not being social.  I sue to run by myself until I started running with Stephanie.  Running and talking is actually fun.  Now when I run I always seek out a group and I love to talk.  Now for a woman talking in a crowd may not be a ch...

Technical Yesterday I ran from 7 AM to 4 PM and a distance of 37 miles.  This is the longest that I have run to date.  I ran in the Barton Greenbelt in Austin, Texas . The last time I attempted a long 30 mile training run I ran out of fuel and only completed 28 miles.  During that 28 mile run on 10/25/2008 I now know that the lack of fuel for my body directly affects the ability of my brain to focus on running. There are several hurdles that I will overcome in my quest to do my 62 mile run at Bandera in January 2009 . One of these hurdles was how to fuel my body on long runs.  During my run yesterday I tried Spiz for the first time.  I used Spiz exclusively for fuel with the exception of two handfuls of cashews and two sticks of dried sweetened papaya. The Spiz really helped because on my last lap at mile 30 from Zilker Park to the Hill of Life I was able to run the whole way with confidence and energy.  I only slowed my pace to go over the really rocky spots because I really wanted ...

I voted in the court house in La Grange, Texas.  This is the same courthouse that my dad told me that he and his mother were denied access when they went to discuss land business because they were Negros.  After I voted for Obama I came out side and I started to cry.  I could feel great joy from my ancestors that I was standing in a place of their past suffering and that I had voted for the first president of the US of African and European descent. I also think that it is really cool that Obama is bi-racial and has lived in a Muslim country.  Change is truly here.

October 2007 From Lonnie I have been taking pictures of myself with my Canon EOS 10D for a few years.  I was uploading some files to Google's Picasa and I noticed an album that had a picture of me that I took this time last year.  I decided to take another picture of myself and compare them. October 2008 From Lonnie One thing that I notice is that the picture from last year was taken using ISO 100 under an indoor incandescent bulb. The picture that I took today is using natural sunlight from a window. Last years picture shows that I am a little fatter than this year. Check out the rolls on my chin. My hair si also a few inches longer. Taking close up pictures of yourself is very scary (at least for me). My camera shows all of the pores, scratched and scars on my face. My face is quite interesting. Here is a self portrait that I drew last year. From Launi's Art So now I think that on Halloween I will continue this tradition of taking my picture. I will see how I change e...

I set my goal to run 1,000 miles in 2008. so far I am averaging 91 miles a month. I have run a total of 918 miles this year. In September I ran 137 miles. In October I ran 122 miles. My longest run so far is the 30 mile trail race that I did on October 18 in Palo Duro Canyon. I am getting comfortable running trails at night with my green flashlight. I can comfortably run 10 miles in about 2 hours. A 10k (6.2 miles) run is just a warm up run for me now. What I am dealing with now is how to get fuel into my body at mile 25.  I have been experimenting with eating PPJs, protien fruit smoothies and gels, but they do not last.  I am going to try a product called Spiz next.  I have placed an order with a local doctor and I will get it next week.