Yesterday.

Morning:


Afternoon:


Day's end:


Of course, you can see the subtle difference in height that was originally problematic and required adjustment. By "adjustment" I mean I had to hack off that one corner of the roofline, there. It wasn't pretty. But, I guess you can't see the damage now, and everyone is happy. The inspector comes today, and I won't be there. I'll be here. Doing today, what I was supposed to be doing yesterday, and demanding payment from these folks.

Do I get paid twice for this one? Boy, do I wish it were so. But that's the way it goes sometimes. The other workers on the job were duly impressed with my adroit aluminum-handling prowess, but at the end of yesterday I had to endure the same joke a hundred times: Ha! Looks great, but now it's too high! Oh, you're all hilarious.

So I'm all sore, again, which is not the week of tapering I wanted pre-race weekend, but like I said, it's the way it goes sometimes. It should be a fun weekend. Great weather for it. I think I'll carbo-load with steak, wine, and a half pound of hearty, aged cheese.

Have a light-on-your-feet weekend!


~

Remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned that job I was on where the general said the inspector could "bite him"? Apparently, he did. I got a panicked call yesterday that the patio cover was too low, by about a few inches. Now, I had called the guy before I installed it to tell him that there would be an issue with the height, and that's when he said "height is not an issue on this job" and "the inspector can bite me". So I went ahead and built it. But there were issues, and there was biting. Today I am tearing it all down, and then building it again, a few inches higher.

I'm trying not to get upset about this. There are other things I was going to do today, like watch the kids as Mrs. Ditchman went on some estimates, and maybe clean my desk, or the garage. But now I have to go out and re-live last Tuesday, which wasn't the greatest day ever, and not one high on my days-in-life-to-re-live list. Oh, well. If this is the karmatic price I have to pay for having such beautiful children, a loving wife, a fine home, and good health, then I will pay it cheerfully (or at least give it my best shot.)

The job I'm on is a whole-house remodel for a quadriplegic war vet. He's having this elaborate motorized crane system installed in his house that will move him in and out of the bath, among other things, and then granite countertops, jacuzzi tubs, hardwood floors, elastomeric house coating, new roof, windows, and all the other home-and-garden trimmings you can think of. It will be bitchin'. His next door neighbor's house, meanwhile, burned down because they were growing pot and it got out of control. Different worlds, equal work for contractors.

The disabled vet is also getting a terrific aluminum patio cover in the backyard, with a full 88 inches to the ceiling, and exactly 80 inches to the bottom of the header. My God, it will be beautiful. Again.


~

I'm just digging the new Dylan album. I respect those who can't stand Dylan, can't understand Dylan, and just don't get him entirely. I used to be like that. And then one day, some trickster angel flipped a previously unnoticed switch in my brain, and I suddenly changed my mind, and fell for his music.

The old minstrel is 68 now. In 1988, when I graduated from high school and hated him, he went on tour. He called it The Neverending Tour and it's been going on ever since. So, now that I like him, I could still make it.

As I get older, I've found myself, more and more, listening to distant, lasting music from dead people I've never heard of. Historic blues and jazz stuff, real music, American music, and I think what I like about it is the sheer anonymity of it, with the sounds just standing for themselves. (I swoon over Big Bill Broonzy singing "Black, Brown, and White" with that one eternal voice and single instrument, recorded in all its glorious mono.) So much music is hype, ego, and pretense. I can't hear a single single nowadays without considering the musician's current or last girlfriend, their dumb politics, that dumb movie they were in, or that dumb thing they said at that last dumb awards show. (I can't even look at Springsteen anymore.) So if you had told me to go out and buy the new Dylan album, I most likely wouldn't have. But then a month ago I heard "I Feel A Change Comin' On" and couldn't help but be moved by the simple textures of it, and soon found myself humming along, loving it, asking, Is that Dylan? It sounds like Dylan. Really? It's Dylan?

Someone on iTunes wrote this Customer Review of the new Bob Dylan album, "Together Through Life":

Imagine you've never heard Bob Dylan before -never heard Greenwich Village Bob, Protest Bob, Poet Bob, Surreal Bob, Electric Bob, Hit-Maker Bob, Nashville Bob, Christian Bob, Jewish Bob, or State of the Union Bob. Imagine someone said 'we just found these recordings from some obscure old blues guy no one's ever heard of living near an abandoned coal mine in Minnesota. Give this guy a listen.'

You'd listen to these songs with dropped jaw, wide eyes and palpitating heart. You'd shout from the rooftops that we've just found an undiscovered master of authentic American, from-the-gut, honest, unflinching, been-on-the-road-and-lived-life-hard, music.

Overstated? Yes. But I bought the album anyway, and now I can't stop playing it. It's got some dark stuff in it, stuff about life's redundant unfulfilling meaninglessness, the looming specter of death, and the hopeless nothing that may or may not wait for us at that End, but with some upbeat chords, so it feels a lot like life -hopeful, bluesy, misery frosted with love. Yes, he's still got that funny voice, and he's still an ugly old guy, but somehow all this music fits him better now (as does his look, his face timeworn and ragged from the adventure of a lifetime.) He's a legend, and can't seem to shake it, so he just moves along and makes his music. (As long as he stops doing stupid stuff like this, the genius will go places! Seriously, what's going on there? An angel in her underwear is being stalked by some spooky sexual predator?)

Dylan has been all over the map with his spirituality, but instead of being insipid about it, you get the feeling that he's done some honest searching in his life. He's got a reputation for changing his religious tone over the years, so recently he's kept his faith pretty close to his chest in interviews, but it's out there in his music, and I kinda like it. Is he a Christian? Well, evidently he was for a while, among other things; Jewish, Bohemian, etc. I found this quote on Wikipedia from his Christian days:

Years ago they ... said I was a prophet. I used to say, "No I'm not a prophet" they say "Yes you are, you're a prophet." I said, "No it's not me." They used to say "You sure are a prophet." They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, "Bob Dylan's no prophet." They just can't handle it.

And that, to me, is the quintessential Dylan. He can speak some truth while diminishing himself, all the while knowing that the truth will inevitably fall in unappealing ways, to some.

In 2000 I was 30, and I was in a desperate period. I drove a hundred miles by myself one day to see the movie Wonder Boys at the last theater I could find it playing at, during the end of its run. I loved it. And I loved the Dylan song in the credits, "Things Have Changed", which ended up being a bigger hit than the film. I bought the CD and couldn't stop playing it. The words were speaking to me in sharp, hard-hitting verses, like a heavy, leadened dart thrown at everything I thought I was standing for at the time. A few months later the CD was on the driver's seat in my car one day and I accidentally sat on it, and broke it into a million pieces. I'd never seen a CD break like that before, and I remember that I was kind of shocked by the sight of the shimmering mess, but I stopped listening to the song then and there, out of necessity, and started making some changes in my life.

But it takes a long time to make some changes.


~

Neither will I be running today. I am still experiencing soreness, though I suspect that it's from that episode of incidental digging yesterday. Seems I've been digging a lot lately. No good reason, really. I dig. Dig? When was the last time you dug? I mean really dug -throwing your back into it, quickly-blistered palms, earth-rising-around-you digging? You envy me, don't you?

I suspect not. Get someone else to dig for you, and you're a smarter man than me. Than I. Whatever. No digging today, though. Just building, which is better, but takes more thought. That's the hard part -all that thinking. You go to college to learn to think, so you won't have to dig. Or so they say. I went to college. All I know now is, do enough thinking in the sun, and you'll soon find yourself yearning for some blessed, mindless digging.

Had an engineer recently come up with some design specs so we could legally load solar panels atop the aluminum. Plans suggest two footings at 38"x38"x38". That's a hole, half my height! I'm not even sure my Tundra can haul that much concrete for even one of those footings. What is that- like, 1500 pounds? Looking forward to hand-mixing all that concrete with my little mixing shovel, I can tell you.

I suspect the engineer just guessed, and padded the figure. I mean, he doesn't have to do the digging -what's a few inches to him? But do they really teach you these specifics at engineering school? Because they should also teach you how heavy aluminum is. Which it isn't. Which is why I can ordinarily do these jobs by myself. Ordinarily. Anyway, we paid the guy to do all the thinking.

So I could dig properly. Without being bothered.




~

I will not be running today.

And, thank Jehovah, it is a relief. My hip flexors and iliotibial bands are ready to abandon the tour altogether, and leave me in a slump here at the house. I've run 31 out of the last 34 days, in some vague attempt at peak performance, or, at least, fitness, discipline, and consistency. I succeeded! Well, okay, somewhat.

I read Half-Fast from time to time, and it is the most honest blog on running that I've seen. The guy is good at conveying what all of us runners go through, and in his often-funny posts, he dares answer the unanswerable questions: How come I don't have the running bug? Why was I so stupid to sign up for that race? and How come I miss it so much when I don't run? A few months back he got it in his head to go on a 30-day running streak, for no very good reason. (Here.) He didn't report on it too much during the 30 days, but here's his first post, and here's his wrap-up.

So I decided to try it. Why? Because it sounded like a good challenge. Because I wanted to see how my body would react to all that running. Because I'm an undisciplined bastard and I didn't learn my lesson on over-training from last May. Like Half-Fast, I set up a few parameters of my own that I would abide by:

-It has to be every day, sometime between when I wake in the morning and when I go to sleep at night.
-It must be at least a 5K.
-Walking is fine, if you're too tired or have some pain or an injury, since it's about just doing it, and not having to do it well.
-Time and distance must be logged every day so the data can be properly analyzed.

I missed 3 days. The first day I missed I was sleeping over at my sister's place and had been up all night smoking cigars and sucking down mojitos, and let me tell you: this does not inspire exercise the following morning. It was 6 days into it, and I just felt like a failure, but I got back out the next day and just kept at it, thinking, So you missed a day. BFD. 2 weeks later I missed another day. I blame work. It was a Home Show weekend, and the time just did not manifest for a quick run. Oh sure, I could have got out there at 11PM and jammed 3 miles in, but after a long day of work, I'm sure I would have gotten hit by a car since I would have been flailing wildly about in the middle of the road, in the dark. I have two kids and a wife. It would not be considered responsible risk-taking, if there is such a thing.

The 3rd day I missed, I have no good excuse for. It was a long week. I was tired. So in the end I added 3 days onto my month, and just pounded the pavement to make up for the 3 lost. And then I added one more, to punish myself, which makes 31 out of 34. And now... I rest.

BECAUSE I HAVE A MARATHON SCHEDULED NEXT WEEK! Which seems so dumb, alongside it all. I am angling for a 5 hour finish time, and, if I survive, I'll tell you all about it next Monday. But for now I am resting on all my laurels and healing a bit. This past month has been really satisfying, and I have Mrs. Ditchman to thank for putting up with me disappearing for a half hour or so every day. I didn't tell her I was trying for a full month because I wasn't sure I could do it, plus: it was extraordinarily selfish of me. But she knows me better than anyone, and it was clear to her that I was up to something after the first couple weeks, and so, like a good wife, she let her husband be. She's the greatest.

All told, I ran about 138 miles. Last Saturday I put in a 20-miler where I ran down to the end of the Oceanside Pier and back. It took me more than a few hours, and in that time you consider the wildest things, like how 3 miles a day for a week is about the same distance, and here you are knocking it all out in a single morning. Somehow, none of it computes, because it seems so much more difficult to get out there and go at it every day for a week, instead of one long morning, but that's running.

Some days I didn't want to, and ran anyway. Some days I had pain, and ran anyway. And some days I built patio covers, and ran anyway. This was probably the hardest thing, and then it felt like some sort of bizarre, dispirited, one-man biathlon. And some days I felt I was running slow, only to find that I'd made a monthly PR. And then there were the days where I felt like I was flying, only to discover that I was merely gliding. 3 miles a day, every day, really gets you concentrated on the effort, and makes you consider every little thing, like which tiny pains are serious, which are to be ignored, and how when all parts of the body are pitted against your spirit, they rain down lies.

Because you can do it. I don't think I disliked doing it as much as Half-Fast seemed to, at times. I found that after a month that it had just become part of my daily routine, and when I was tired and sore I just ran a bit slower. It's true that my aged body would have benefited from some recovery time, but one thing was clear: every time I thought I was too tired to run, I found that I really wasn't. I could do it every day for 25 minutes, and after a week or so, it wasn't difficult to run at all. The body is made to run, and doesn't seem to have to use those aluminum patio cover-building muscles to do it. Really, the hardest part was always just finding the time and then physically getting the shoes on and getting out the door -and the difficulty of this should not be understated. But if the mind can get out the door, the body will follow. The body is amazing that way. It obeys. (Well, most of the time it obeys.)

I don't use any fancy computer thingy to keep track of all my runs, even though my iPhone has that Nike running ap built right in, and I just write them on a little calendar that I post next to my desk. Mrs. Ditchman started this house trend a few years back, and it's fun to see how many more days a month than me she works out -but this month I finally got her beat! The hand-written calendar is an Old School method, but this way I can see, at all times, how much effort I've been putting into it. It's never really been about quality for me, but my confidence is boosted by the quantity, which is probably why I run marathons. I just feel that if I get the quantity in, the quality, and desire for it, will follow somehow, eventually. And it does. For me.

So, hooray for me. I, more or less, did it, as Nike has been campaigning for, for years. And I did it with no injuries, save for that vague shoulder-to-ankle smartness from Saturday's 20-miler. Ooof. And then a 5K yesterday on top of it all the next day, just to see if I could.





~

It's a Friday, end of the work week, first Friday in October, and the only day of the week that begins with F -as if any of that mattered. I went to sleep last night with a thousand plans for Friday, and then awoke this morning with the will for none of them. Could barely make it through the first cup of coffee. I am pressing on, however. It's 10:30. The morning is half over, and that's half of a third of the day! I can make it!

I carbo-loaded last night, too, gearing up for a long run this morning, but when I awoke to find all my running gear in the laundry, all the hype was sapped. So here I am, all carbo-loaded with nowhere to go. Also, I burned my bagel, fed the tortoises some plants I had sprayed pesticide on earlier this week, and the Little Ditchman refused to eat her waffle and demanded a nap at 8AM. And the Little Digger was up at 4:30AM again, like he's done every day this week. Don't look now, but Friday clapped its hands and became F-day, without even trying.

It could be worse. You could be the CEO of the Wisconsin Tourism Federation, arriving at work every day with all those memos on your desk that read "WTF". (They are now the "Tourism Federation of Wisconsin", which is still funny, because now you just say it in your head backwards.) I can hear the CEO screaming But it's not our fault! No sir, it's not your fault, but you're gonna have to change the name anyway, and at your own expense. It happens sometimes.

Or you could be an executive working for the Office of Government Commerce, but you don't get along with the kid who delivers the inter-office mail every day. He hates his job. He hates you. Each morning, without fail, he hands the mail to you sideways, and you both know why. There's nothing anyone in HR can do about it.





Have a nice, long weekend. (Two S-days in a row!)


~

I believe the family has fully adapted to the automatically-opening, motion-sensing trash can in the kitchen. It was not difficult, though I admit there are side effects. Sometimes, late at night, when I'm tired, I wave my hand in front of the toilet seat and wait for it to pop up. This always ends the same way: with me looking around to see if anyone noticed.

But it appears that we are not the only ones who have mastered the automated, motion-sensing trash can.

I was sitting at the downstairs computer, which is on a small table adjacent to the kitchen. It was night. Everyone was asleep. The house was still and quiet, and I was enjoying the down time, alone, reading some news. Out of the silence, about fifteen feet away, the trash can opened. It seemed to have happened all by itself, and then, after holding its lid up for the three seconds or so that it's programmed for, it shut. I just smirked and shook my head thinking, Damn electronics. I knew that thing wouldn't last a month. And then, a few minutes later it happened again... *open* ... *shut* ... I figured it was a signal that maybe the batteries were going bad or something, so I got up to check it out.

I went to the trash can, stood there for a moment, and waved my hand in front of it. It dutifully opened as commanded, as per Asimov's Second Law of Robotics, and that's when I saw him: the housefly. He emerged from the trash, waved thanks! and flew on by. I guess the thing can't be opened from the inside.

I didn't believe it, of course, and went back to my seat at the computer. I waited. I watched. Sure enough, the fly returned, bored with wherever it had gone for half a minute, and it approached the trash can and alighted upon the corner, near the lid. It crawled around a bit, found its way to the infrared sensor, walked over it, and up came the lid. It hopped down onto the trash, and down went the lid.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I went back over to see for myself and opened the can. Again, the fly emerged, flew out and off. I thought, Impressive, young Skywalker.

Back at the computer, after about a half hour, I was beginning to go insane from the *open* ... *close* ... *open* ... *close* ... and this clever fly with his convenient new fly-thru buffet. The little insectoid genius seemed to have learned to escape before the lid closed.

So I killed it. Because the last thing I need in my life right now is some hyper-intelligent housefly controlling my kitchen.





~