Went out for lunch today:

We did not eat the Rhode Island Red. He lives at the restaurant, though, which is kind of weird, I’ll grant you. The front is a nursery and out the back is a fresh fruits and vegetables store. Attached to that is the restaurant and we get veggie crepe wraps and stuffed squash there. Stuffed squash is good stuff.

The service is spotty. It is staffed by a bunch of students and sometimes they’re great but other times you just get the cute “Oops” smile. Not much you can do but stare at that and think I hope that takes you far in life.

And sometimes you think you didn’t want a veggie crepe, but maybe some fried chicken sounds nice …

We did some shopping today. We’re doing one of the Santa games for the holidays with my family this year. It is the polite Santa game, because it is a family environment and there are kids and there’s a price limit and you can steal presents and so on.

We have to find two things under $10. It took some doing, but we did it. (And some of those people read this, so I’m not spoiling that again this year.)

We saw some other cool stuff though. And I’m going to show some of those things to you. And when you see these things, remember how smart George Lucas was about the original Star Wars. The movie was the movie, but the vision was in the merchandising. He got sweet deals because no one back then believed that toys and shirts would be a revenue stream. That was Lucas’ real genius.

Now, with Lucas having sold to Disney for a song, and the Mouseketeers putting their muscle into merchandising, they’ve proven George Lucas an absolute piker.

We didn’t buy any of those things. I object on philosophical grounds. Darth Vader is a feared and despised bad guy throughout the galaxy. He is not the face that should be toasting your bread.

We did, however, pick up a little present for ourselves. Cool little nightlight:

And two presents for under $10 for the family Christmas game. Still no fried chicken, though.

I don’t eat these things. You could put boxes of them in our cabinets and I’d move them all out of the way on the off chance that there’s something else behind them that I’d actually like to enjoy.

Four miles into my run this weekend, some 61 miles into my day, I had a handful at an aid station.

And they were easily the most delicious things I’ve ever put in my mouth.

We walked a few miles yesterday, just to move around. I remain a little stiff, but in good shape. Just completely tired. This will last another day or two. But I was thinking about those Cheez-Its when I saw that box in the cabinet this morning.

You eat a light, nutritious breakfast before a race if you can. You eat what you’re accustomed to, really. I had some toast and fruit and jelly and honey. You don’t have anything in the swim, obviously. Somewhere along the way in your training you realize that really the entire experience is about fuel and water. So you have to regularly keep yourself in good shape with both. So you drink a lot of water on the bike and you start eating there, too. There were two or three water stops on the cycling loop and I started eating Shot Bloks and various energy gels. I do those about every 45 minutes, meaning I had … quite a few. (Because I’m slow. Have I mentioned that?)

That goes on through the 56 mile ride and throughout the half marathon, as well. So by mile four I was tired of lukewarm water and gels and bloks. At the little tent at the four mile mark they had a giant bowl of Cheez-Its. Just for variety at that point, because I’m hours into this by then, I had the best cracker snack ever.

Reminded me of the Eddie Murphy bit: If you’re starving and someone throws you a cracker you’ll be like “That’s the best cracker I ever ate in my life! That ain’t no regular cracker was it? What was that a Saltine? That was delicious. That wasn’t no Saltine, that was a Ritz! That wasn’t a Ritz?”

Everything tastes like that after a big workout, though.