a long and busy week

I spent last weekend in San Diego to run the America's Finest City Half Marathon. I ran the race last year and managed to post a personal best, so I came in this year hoping to beat that time. Fortunately, I did, but only by about 40 seconds. My official chip time was 1:48:42. To top it all off I also beat Kiley for the first time in the two years I've known him. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday. Here's a link to my race pics.

This past week has been incredibly busy. Work from Monday to Wednesday, and I've been spending my days off on Thursday and Friday taking care of errands. I finally got a new phone and plan on Thursday and I took my car to for its 60,000 mile service on Friday. Susie kept me company at the mall while we killed time waiting for it to be finished.

I also saw three shows last week. Monday was another free show by Little Ones at Spaceland. Quite good. Thursday night was Oh No! Oh My! at the Echo. Closing their set with "A Walk in the Park," the band invited onstage an audience member inexplicably dressed as a gorilla.


The gorilla danced.

Friday night was the culmination. Liz and her sister were nice enough to wait in line three hours before the Wolf Parade show to get tickets and to ensure we got primo seats. We did. We sat in the front-center row of the balcony. Wolf Parade were on fire and showed a marked improvement from their January show when they seemed disorganized and unfocused. Friday night, the band was tight and energetic and, the biggest surprise, relaxed to the point that they seemed to be truly enjoying themselves.

Saturday night was a quick visit to a beer tasting party in Pasadena followed by birthday dinner and drinks with Liza.

Sunday was spent at home recuperating and watching the Emmys and dreading coming back to work tomorrow.