Are You Kidding Me !?!

While running with my training group this week, a random thought popped into my mind. (BTW, this type of thing happens during running, all the time) Why the hell can I not keep up with this running group of mine? I've been running with them for about a year, now, and I should clearly be doing better than this. Or so I thought.

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Am I slow? Am I a secret lolligager and I just don't know it? I mean really. What happens is I'll be running along with the group for a while, keeping up and everything. And then...those bastards just sloooowly pull away, once they get warmed up.

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It's like the recurrence of a bad dream. About that time, a second thought hit me. One part of my little Scooter mind (the creative side, not the squirrely one) told the other part (the more analytical side) "Are you kidding me, Dude?" Those running group clowns are really freakin' fast. I mean of the total group of twelve, seven are Boston Marathon qualifiers !! My analytical side kinda took over at this point and came up with this about my running buddies:

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Ann-I-Am: 42, 3:43 (What a hoot.)

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Missy: 43, 3:37 (Silent but deadly)

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Gary-Gary: 41, 3:16 (A sneaky little devil, indeed)

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Coach Bill: 52, 3:01 (he actually paced the 3:15 group for the Austin Marathon this year...friggin' nutz !!)

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Jay Bird: 32, 2:36 (double friggin' nutz)

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What A Joy: 31, 3:17 (at one point, last year when she was seven months pregnant, I thought if she passes me...I quitting this running crap!)

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Wild Bill: 51, 3:31 (He's like the Energizer Bunny!)

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Santa Santos: 36, 3:17 (He's close...but you get the point)

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The bottom line is: what was I thinking? As my grand pa LaFleur was apt to say about these situations "You gotta eat a lot more cornbread before you can hang with those folks." Oh well...here I go. Wish me luck! ; )~

Que Paso ??

This much is true...the Republi-Crats have lied to you and I.
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The media tells us that "deregulation" and "unfettered free markets" have wrecked our economy and will continue to make things worse without a heavy dose of federal regulation. But the real blame lies elsewhere. In Meltdown, bestselling author Thomas E. Woods Jr. unearths the real causes behind the collapse of housing values and the stock market--and it turns out the culprits reside more in Washington than on Wall Street.

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And the trillions of dollars in federal bailouts? Our politicians' ham-handed attempts to fix the problems they themselves created will only make things much worse. Woods, a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and winner of the 2006 Templeton Enterprise Award, busts the media myths and government spin. He explains how government intervention in the economy--from the Democratic hobby horse called Fannie Mae to affirmative action programs like the Community Redevelopment Act--actually caused the housing bubble.
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Most important, Woods, author of the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, traces this most recent boom-and-bust--and all such booms and busts of the past century--back to one of the most revered government institutions of all: the Federal Reserve System, which allows busy-body bureaucrats and ambitious politicians to pull the strings of our financial sector and manipulate the value of the very money we use.
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Meltdown also provides a timely history lesson to counter the current clamor for a new New Deal. The Great Depression, Woods demonstrates, was only as deep and as long as it was because of the government interventions by Herbert Hoover (no free-market capitalist, despite what your high school history teacher may have taught you) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (no savior of the American economy, in spite of what the mainstream media says). If you want to understand what caused the financial meltdown--and why none of the big-government solutions being tried today will work--Meltdown explains it all.
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I highly recommend it...its the best book I've read this week ! ; )

Puzzle Du Jour

I really enjoy doing one of these, to start the day.
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Have fun with it !!
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9:57; 8:23; 1:32; 11:25; 9:13; 2:48

In what way are the start and end of each of these six times identical?
(answer is below...unless, of course you know it already)
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They start and end with the same letter:
9:57...Nine fifty-seveN
8:23...Eight twenty-threE
1:32...One thirty-twO
11:25...Eleven twenty-fivE
9:13...Nine thriteeN
2:48...Two forty-eighT
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As you were... ; )