I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the Kindle has to be one of the most deadliest toys ever produced. Well, not deadly in terms of actually out-right killing people, that's more a landmine's designation. No, I mean in terms of expense, convenience and addictiveness.

No, really.

Here, here's my list of all the bad things with the Kindle Kris bought me for my birthday this year. I can tell you, I hadn't expected to love it as much as I do, I'm an old fashioned paper gal, myself. I lurve the paper, you know.

So, the bad things:

1. I can get a book any time I want

   With three button pushes, the first to turn on the wireless, the second to access the store and the third to say, "Yes, yes, yes, I want to purchase this already," I have a book in my hands. Is it 1 am and I should be going to bed? Sure, but with these three clicks, I can keep reading the Dresden Files when I should be going to bed. What? I just finished this book, and should start working sometime today? Clicky click click, nope, I'm still reading the day away.

   It's too darn easy to just keep reading with this thing. Too darn easy and approaching too darn expensive, especially if I decide I want to have the paperback or hardcover and have to buy it again anyway. Damn Dresden books.

2. I'm worried about breaking the darn thing

   The screen on the Kindle is good sized. It has this large surface area where it can be hit or smooshed or otherwise impacted. Having seen pictures of broken Kindle screens, I feel justified in being nervous about breaking the screen accidently on my Kindle. I'm not exactly, uh, easy on my electronics as all 22 pounds of equipment goes into my backpack each day.

   And since I do carry that backpack pretty much everywhere, water is another source or possible damage to the Kindle. Now, I know I can purchase an Amazon Kindle cover for the Kindle, only $29, but it's leather. I feel way uncomfortable knowing a cow died so that I could have a cover for a darn expensive toy, so I have a Waterfield Kindle Sleeve. I like it a lot, and it has an impact resistant insert to prevent most small bumps. It's the big, unexpected ones I worry about.

3. There are typos in the converted-to-Kindle books

   And some of those typos are quite annoying.

   In the last two books I've read (yes, yes, Dresden Files books, why do you ask?), the first two paragraphs have typos like two paragraphs have typos where the content is duplicated in the content is duplicated in the middle of a paragraph, and not even a complete sentence, either.

   That was annoying, eh? Yeah, I think so, too.

   Grammar errors are bad enough (yes, I'm coming around to the Shakespearean use of "they" as a gender neutral pronoun, so, dammit, the rest of you should learn how to use the possessive pronoun in front of gerunds already!), but typographical errors are unforgivable (in print, of course, let's just ignore the typos here in blog format, shall we?).

4. And then there's the DRM

   Purchasing titles on the Kindle isn't really like buying a book, where you own the paper (if not the words on the paper), and can share that glued block of paper with words printed on them.

   No, it's more like you lease the words, and Big Brother Amazon can remove them at any point if it wants. It's in the lease agreement you "signed" when you linked your Amazon account to your Kindle.

   I happen to disagree vehemently with the practice of removing titles from the Kindle (as happened recently when Amazon sold an unauthorized version of 1984 to Kindle customers, and "fixed" the problem by removing downloaded copies from Kindles in the middle of the night and crediting the purchasers the price of the book) without permission. Emailing customers and letting them know what was up is one thing, just deleting the titles is another, and it's the latter I have problems with.

   Which I hope to never have a problem with, and try to work around by having a backup of my files in triplicate as well as the wireless always off unless I'm purchasing and downloading a book (see bad thing #1).

   We'll see. If it's really a bad thing, the DRM can be broken so that I can access that which I have legally purchased.

Okay, so that's all the bad I've found. I'll balance it with the good, too.

1. I can get a book any time I want

   Yes, the top good same as my top bad. Being able to purchase a book even after the stores are closed and have it in my hands 15 seconds later is POWERFUL, people. Incredibly liberating.

2. I can look up any word immediately

   Yes, I have a problem with my vocabulary. I've been struggling since high school to increase its size and my understanding of more words in general. I confess some words confuddle (yes, a slang term) me, especially when I kinda-sorta-maybe know the definition, but not really. The Kindle has this feature where you can hover the cursor over a word and the definition will popup on the screen.

   Holy moly do I love this feature.

   I can look up words instantly. Some references are missing, especially those that refer to some esoteric minor Greek god whose name has been changed slightly to fit in the story line, but for the most part, I'm thrilled with the definition coverage.

   Having started reading a few paper books instead of electronic books, I have to say, wow, I miss this feature a lot in dead tree form.

3. Reading lying down is easier

   Okay, this one may be a little silly, but I notice it a lot now.

   Normally when reading in bed, lying down on my side, I'll hold the book open with one hand, usually the hand on top, and have to turn over to the other side to read the opposing page. The problem with this technique is that I have to turn so frequently, usually every minute or less. The seeming trashing does little to help Kris sleep next to me.

   With the Kindle, I just lie on one side until I want to move over. Holding the book takes little effort. With a Next button on either side of the Kindle, I can just click click click to "turn" the pages. Easy enough, and Kris doesn't need to keep waking up.

Honestly, there are more bads than goods, but the goods, oh boy, are they pretty wonderful. The one bad I'm truly worried about is the DRM, and even those worries aren't too strong.

Still.

The Kindle is one dangerous little toy.

Kris commented to me once, "You don't like people much." I readily agreed at the time, but I'm not so sure anymore. As near as I can tell, it's not the people I don't like, it's the stupidity, disdain and laziness that people in aggregate show. It's the lack of personal responsibility and the lack of a desire to make things better in most people that I completely and utterly detest so much.

Take today's incident, for example.

I had been dragging my feet for the last few days on running some errands. The errands weren't ones that I could just go on my merry way, interacting with people not at all, avoiding cars and carts alike. No, these were errands that required interacting with people whom I needed to actually do their job, which was to help me resolve a problem. Knowing that I was 99% likely to leave frustrated, I went 100% out of my way to try for a happy solution.

I smiled.

And I went in pretending the person behind the counter was my best friend. Think about it: why wouldn't my best friend try to help me solve my problem? Seriously, she'd bend over backwards and do a front flip to help me, just as I'd do the same for her.

So, into Bank of America I went to deal with some banking issues. For the record, Bank of America sucks ass. They are the worst bank I have ever dealt with, starting back when I was in college and they stole $100 from my account (that $100 being a large sum of money when you make only $2000 a year). When I asked for proof of a withdrawal I didn't make (and couldn't have, as the withdrawal was made local and I was out of town at the time of the withdrawal), they refused to show me the video surveillance of the ATM. They stonewalled me and jerked me around then, knowing that a 20 year old college student couldn't make much noise.

So (yeah, I like that transition word), I went in, and was called over to a woman behind a desk. I explained that I tried to make a wire transfer to an international account. Bank of America refuses to allow you to make wire transfers in person, you have to make the transfer online. Except that the wire transfer part of their site is convoluted: you have to ADD the foreign account as an external account in your online account, permanently storing that account as part of your account, even for a one time transfer. Worse, the final destination account I wanted the money to go to was declared "invalid" each time I tried to enter it. The new online form doesn't correspond to the old paper STANDARDIZED ACROSS ALL BANKS form, not even with helpful hints like 'This is the same as field 70 "Details of payment".' No, THAT would have been too helpful.

My funds ended up going into the superaccount above the final destination account. It's somewhere at my vendor's bank, they just haven't received it yet. I've spent the money, it's out of my account. They haven't been paid, though.

The woman behind the desk listened to me, took my documentation, came back a few minutes later and said, "You transferred the money to the wrong account. There's nothing I can do."

Well, no shit, it's in the wrong account, lady, I JUST TOLD YOU THAT. I explained to her, AGAIN, that I knew it was in the wrong account, the Bank of America website wouldn't let me send the funds to the CORRECT account (all of this with a smile on my face), that I sent it to the closest I could send it. How could she help me fix this problem?

Once again, she basically said, "Not my problem. There's nothing I can do."

Not, "I'm unable to help you at this moment. I can leave a message with the department that can, and on Monday they'll call you to help you out."

Not, "I'm unable to help you at this moment. Here's the number you'll need to call on Monday when someone else is able to help you."

Not, "I'm unable to help you at this moment because this isn't my area of authority. I can have my manager call you on Monday when he's back in the bank."

Not, "I'm unable to help you at this moment. Here's how to cancel the transfer, and here's a number to call for a refund on the transfer, and another number to call so that a new transfer will get to the correct account."

No, she fucking said, "You transferred the money to the wrong account. I can't help you."

Yeah, I was trying not to curse there.

And Kris wonders why I hate people. I like my friends. I'd go to the end of the world and back to help my friends. This bitch, however, can go suck the wrong end of a running tailpipe and make the world a better place.

Worse, she probably gets raises for helping the most number of customers in an hour by abdicating any kind of professional ownership of her job. Here's the part that totally and completely frustrates me: there's nothing I can do about it. Talk about something that will send someone into either a furious rage or a deep depression: there's nothing I can do about the complete lack of helpfulness from the person who is BEING PAID TO HELP ME. The banks fucking screw up, starting with the fuck-up in customer service.

And that was just the first errand of the day.

It didn't get any better.

You can't cram for fitness. No, but you can set a new goal for yourself.

I ran track in junior high school, high school and college. I started running in junior high because that was the rule in our house: sports or a job. I didn't particularly like it, I wasn't very good at it, and I didn't exactly have the best experience with it. Yet, I ran because I was supposed to.

Did I mention I wasn't very good at it?

Yeah.

So, the way that distance runners are trained to run faster when I was running was to have them run speed workouts in addition to distance workouts. The theory being the distance running gives the runners an aerobic "base" and the speed workouts make them faster.

That theory may be all well and good, sure, but I'm not convinced it really works. Sure, the times for a runner's races over a season might drop, but they don't drop dramatically, maybe 10% faster for the longer distances, less for the shortest distances.

However, it's not particularly easy to make dramatic improvements without some SERIOUS work for two simple reasons:

1. The runner's mind doesn't believe she can run that fast.
2. The runner's body hasn't learned to move that fast.

The way I was trained was along the lines of "practice makes perfect." I'm arguing for "perfect practice makes perfect," and opting to train differently for an arbitrary goal I have set for myself.

I'd like to run a 6:30 mile.

Well, actually make that a 6:30 1600m time, which is about 9.3 meters (about 30 feet) short of an actual mile. I say 1600m because I really don't want to bother trying to figure out where the 1500m race starts on a 400m track. I might change my mind later, because a 6:30 1600m is a fast time. Kris clocks 6:00 miles in his race training pace, and I struggle to keep up with him for more than 300m.

Now, I recognize this is a fairly arbitrary goal. It's nominally a minute and a half faster than I've ever run a mile, an 18% drop in time from my lifetime personal best. So, why 6:30?

When I asked Lisa Timmins her best mile time, years and years ago, she told me it was around 5:30. I don't recall if her race was a 1500m race or a 1609m race (a significant difference really, if you're going for a goal). Lisa is an amazing athlete (just ask her what her best Boston Marathon time was), and 5:30 sounds incredibly intimidating. So, for my goal time, I arbitrarily added a minute to Lisa's best time. Given the speed I'll be running, yeah, I can believe Lisa would finish 3/4 of a lap in front of me in a mile race. She is that good.

I'll be training at a 6:00 pace

For this experiment, I have decided to try a new training approach.

Instead of training long(-ish) distances and run speed workouts, I'm going to run faster than my desired target race pace for as long as I can, then stop. I'm going to train my arms and legs to move the speed I want them to move. Since I'm not training to be faster than someone, and not training at all to go faster-faster-faster-as-fast-as-humanly-possible-to-go, I can try this new training plan, see if it works. If I were on a team, where I needed to win races, scoring points for my school, then I'd doubt this would fly, since you always want someone to run as fast as possible. Since I'm trying for a specific time, I can play around with this different training technique.

So, for 4-5 days a week, I'm going to go out and run 50 meters a number of times at an 11 second pace. Sure, that's 0.25 seconds faster than my target pace, but I'm sure the time it takes for me to check my watch for my pace will cover than quarter second.

For reference, 11 seconds for a 50m run is, by the way, incredibly slow, close to half the speed of my all-out top-speed 50m pace.

Initially, the plan is to run these 50m runs at the 11 second pace, then rest for a minute, until I can't run that pace any longer. While I'm not in the best of shape, I don't know how well this initial training will go. I don't know if I'll manage 3 runs or 30 before I can't keep up the pace. The minute rest is also arbitrary, I might change that to rest until my heart rate drops to 120 beats per minute.

Once a week or so, I'm going to run as far as I can go at this race pace, until I can't maintain that pace at all. I'll set my watch to beep every 5.6 seconds to let me know when I should have run 25 yards, giving me fairly quick feedback on my pace and how well I'm maintaining it.

As the distance I can maintain the 6:00 pace increases, I'll increase the training distance, from 50m to 100m to 150m and 200m. I figure eventually I'll be running 90 second 400m, which is so dog slow, I swear. However, a 3:00 800m sounds FABULOUS to me, since it's only 1 second slower than my lifetime personal best for 800m. Oooooooo, that would be so awesome, since I could probably go for broke and push out a faster time for that ONE run I cared about.

What do I have to look forward to?

So, there are some serious disadvantages to trying out this new training technique, and I'm sure I'll think of more. The ones that come to mind at the moment include:

1. I'm two decades out from my fastest 400m time. I'm not exactly in the prime part of my physical life. This training is going to take serious effort.

2. My knee being sort and nominally injured means I'll be able to run only as far as it allows When it says stop, I'll need to stop, and not start up again until it resets.

3. The speed I train at is the speed I'll run. If I wanted to run a 5:30 1500m, I'd have to start the training process over again, relearning the new speed.

4. Since the training is slower than my sprint speed, I risk losing top speed. I'm not overly worried about this issue, since I'll still be playing ultimate and working out at Velocity.

Advantages I have now

1. I'm stronger mentally than I was when I'm running at school. I recognize that I choose to run these runs. In school, I ran because I was supposed to, here I'm running because I want to try this new training, and that choice makes me stronger.

2. The training is an experiment. Experiments don't always work. If I fail, I may still achieve a respectable 800m time.

3. I'll still be in better shape after the experiment than I would be without it.

I need to figure out how to track my progress. Right now, I think I'll just decide at the end of each training session if I should increase the time or number of runs. I'm also thinking that completing 10 reps of my training distance at pace is sufficient to increase the training distance. I might need to increase the number of how-far-can-I-go tries to more than once a week, too.

I'm very excited about this plan.

Not five minutes after we left the field yesterday, my phone rang as Chookie was driving the three of us back home. I answered, and Fatty Fat Andy (Fisher, a necessary distinction in this story) asked if I could pick him up from the airport, his roommate having just bailed on picking him up in four hours or so. Kris and I had plans with Skinny Andy (Crews, see? you needed the distinction), but figured I could sneak away as needed after dinner to pick him up.

A nice advantage to living 15 minutes door to door to the airport: picking people up from it is No Big Deal.

A couple hours later, when Kris and I arrived at Skinny Andy's house, I commented to Skinny Boy that I would need to dash away around 8 to pick up Fatty, I hoped that would be okay. Skinny Boy agreed it would be fine, and hey, if we go to the Cheesecake Factory (my current favorite dessert restaurant, trumping Cold Stone Creamery as of late), we could be even closer to the airport.

So, after dinner, the three of us, along with Blue and Shadow, piled into Andy's car and off we went to the Factory. After arriving, and realizing there were no bar seats available, we decided to order to-go, including a fourth slice for Fatty Fat. We looked at all our 1500 calorie choices, and found this one:

Yes, people, you see that correctly. Low Carb Cheesecake.

The three of us looked at that cheesecake, burst out laughing, and immediately agreed that Fatty Fat would receive the Low Carb Cheesecake Made With Splenda. After all, who else would be a better candidate for such a tasty bite?

I went to the counter, and ordered a slice of the French Silk Chocolate cheesecake, a slice of the Vanilla Bean cheesecake, a slice of the Key Lime cheesecake, and a slice of the Low Carb Cheesecake Made With Splenda.

The guy on the other side of the counter paused at the last slice, looked up at me and stated, "You don't want that."

Startled, I could only respond wittily with "I don't?"

Quite the comeback, eh?

"No, you don't want that."

"Why not?"

"Low Carb? Cheesecake? They don't go together. You don't want that."

Skinny Boy piped up next to me, "But it's for a prank."

"A cruel one at that. You don't want the Low Carb," the guy behind the counter insisted.

Okay, okay, I relented, and ordered a slice of the White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle cheesecaske, my favorite after Pumpkin cheesecake.

As we were standing there waiting for our order, Kris piped up, "So, man, how far did you get with the Low Carb?" asking the guy who took our order.

He turned to us. "I haven't. I've never tried it."

"WHAT?!" Good lord, man, you haven't tried it but you won't let us order it? Dammit, man, "I'd like to order a slice."

He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, and rang one up for me.

The three of us waited for our order of five cheesecake slices, then wandered to the car to be greeted by two happy, cramped dogs, and managed to distribute our slices before Fatty Fat called, he had just landed, and would be walking to the pickup spot shortly. Off we went to pick him up.

After a round about the airport and a valiant attempt not to be shooed away from the curb while waiting for Fatty Fat, we found him. He piled into the car, and off we went back to Skinny Boy's house. Kris handed Fatty Fat his cheesecake, and we all waited with bated breath.

Two bites later, "MMMMMMMmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMmmmmmmMmm! Thanks guys! It's DEE-LISH-US!"

Unable to contain ourselves, the three of us burst into laughter.

Oh, sure, we eventually gave him the tasty raspberry slice, and, sure, we told him about what we had done.

And, maybe, just maybe, the second slice tasted better than the first.

But only in comparison.

All righty then, let's check out how things stand here.

Left foot: strained muscle.
Right foot: bruised small toe from being stepped on.
Both calves: tight and not working very well.
Left knee: sore from the 3 points I played without a knee brace
Right knee: bruised and tender to the touch where I knocked knees with another player.
Hamstrings: too tight to function well.
Abs: too exhausted and sore to laugh.
Right elbow: sore from being jammed
Right forearm: contusion, tender to even the softest touch
Right hand: outer bones bruised from being stepped on
Upper back: bad sunburn that may take 2-3 days to heal
Lips: also tragically sunburned

Attitude: unbelievably happy for having played in a two day tournament with Kris.

We played three games today, keeping pace with the number one seed in the chump division for the first half of the game. We seem to be able to do that pretty well: hang until sixes, scaring the other team sufficiently before they realize, holy crap, we better start playing for real. That, and the wind is the game's great equalizer. I had a good time putting on a hard mark in the cup, managing to chest thump a number of guys before they realized, hey, this chick is fouling me! I commented to Kris that I was probably being overaggressive on the mark, to which he replied, nah, I was putting on a Nationals Mark™: go over the line to find it, then come back to be in front of it. If you don't know how aggressive the other player is going to be, be overly aggressive, then rein it back in.

We lost the first game, 8-12, to the eventual winner of the chump division, so dropped into the 5-8 bracket. Our next game was against a team that I'd seen practice in the East Bay when the Women's Master's team I was on was practicing before Nationals. I recognized a couple women on the team who had tried out for Mischief, too, so my intimidation factor was low. Our two teams traded points until 3s, when Kris said stop playing zone defense, since it's clearly not working. Switching to man defense enabled us to spread out their players better, forcing longer throws, which resulted in more turnovers. We took half 8-3 and pretty much shutdown.

Yeah, we let our guard down and could not seem to reengage it. The cap went on at 13-10, with their scoring 4 points in a row to bring the score even close. We did win 15-11, but only because our top line went in to finish the game. That type of sloppy play, while understandable, is completely frustrating.

Because we won our second game, we were in the 5-6 position (yay, breaking seed by 6-7 places!), but were going to have to play against a team that we'd already played yesterday. I wasn't interested in that, and was actually interested in just forfeiting the next game and going home. Everyone else SEEMED interested in playing another game, so I found the other team to play. Except that we didn't really want to play that game. It was torturous. We threw away more discs and dropped enough more that the final score of 6-13 doesn't begin to describe just how poorly we played.

Still, I had a great time playing with Kris. Oh, my seeing him out there again was AWESOME.