Half-Fast Friday

Today I’m introducing a new regularly recurring feature here at Half-Fast called updating your blog Half-Fast Friday. Here’s how it’s going to work: Friday’s post will be Half-Fast, phonetically speaking. This will make Friday’s post much easier for me to write and I deserve to take it easy on Friday. You know what? So do you. Some Fridays I’ll probably take it so easy that it will look like there’s no post at all, but don’t be fooled, you’re probably just tired from a long week at work. Take a nap and come back later.

For those of you wondering whether or not my neighbors responded to my open letter on Tuesday, they did. Well, most of them did but there’s always one. Just take a look at the minefield of snow and ice that I had to navigate through in front of this one Jerkwad’s house. It’s a wonder I survived!

Have a great weekend everyone!

The Winter Olympics

I love the Winter Olympics. Love it. I watch almost everything. I watch the hockey, I watch the alpine skiing events, I watch the sliding events, I watch the cross country skiing and the biathlon - it’s skiing AND shooting! I watch the speed skating (note to Sven Kramer: “What are you stupid?”). I even watch some of the curling. “The USA has a curling team? Awesome, TiVo it I’ll watch it while I’m running on the treadmill!” (Side note: Why is men’s and women’s curling segregated? Can women curlers not hold their own with the men? Keep it segregated I say, all the more curling events for me to watch). I watch the snowboard cross and the ski cross, I watch the aerials, the moguls, the ski jumping, and the halfpipe. It’s all very good. I do draw the line at the ice dancing though. When the ice dancing comes on that’s when I catch up on the other shows I’ve been neglecting in order to watch the Olympics.

The other night I was watching... I don’t even remember what event I was watching but I had a thought. You know what the Winter Olympics needs? A marathon. The marathon is the pinnacle of the Summer Olympics, you can argue that the 100m is watched by more people or that the swimming gets more coverage, but none of the other events have their medal ceremony incorporated into the closing ceremony. Only the marathon winners get to receive their medals during the closing ceremony of the Olympics. It’s like a tip o’ the hat to the marathon as the original Olympic event, so why not have a Winter Olympic Marathon too?

Now the Winter Olympics likes to have a bit of an X Games feel to it and we’d have to make some changes to the Winter Olympics Marathon course to keep with that theme. The race would be held in and around the host city so it would be a cold weather marathon. Perhaps the race would actually be an ultra marathon, what’s more X-treme than that? The course could traverse deep snow fields and treacherous frozen lakes, maybe it would even have transition areas so the runners could change into snow shoes or spiked shoes for the different sections. The runners could run up one side of a mountain and down the other side, it would make Heartbreak Hill look like a pimple. I think it would be a great event, but unfortunately we will have to wait for the next Winter Olympics to incorporate this idea because the Canadians would have tried to make the down hill portion of the race faster and more dangerous, eh.

An Open Letter to My Neighbors

Dear Neighbors,

As you are no doubt aware we’ve had some snow lately and I couldn’t help but notice on my drive to work this morning that some of your driveways and sidewalks are still unshoveled. This is quite disconcerting as you know that I’m scheduled to run tonight. (I trust that you all received my running schedule in the mail along with the rotation of whose turn it is to provide refreshments.) The temperatures today will be in the mid 40s and it’s expected to be sunny all day. This means that tonight when I embark on my run your sidewalks could be completely dry if you just get out there and shovel them so that they can benefit from eight hours of sunshine. I in return will take down my Christmas lights, or at the very least I’ll stop turning them on every night. Also while you’re out there shoveling your sidewalks it really wouldn’t be too much to ask for someone to shovel my walk too, would it? It would? Well then don’t worry about my sidewalk. It’s more important that your sidewalks get shoveled since they occur in the middle of my run. Those of you with north facing driveways whose houses thoughtlessly block the sun might want to think about putting down some salt and I don’t want to insist that you hook up your wife’s hairdryer to the extension cord but I think that basic human decency necessitates it. That snow’s not going to melt itself.

I write this congenial letter to appeal to you on the basic tenets of human decency, I know you don’t want to see me slip on your icy sidewalk and you definitely don’t want to receive a letter from my sue-happy attorney. Trust me, you don’t want to be on the defendant’s end of a lawsuit when a greedy fat-cat banker such as myself, teams up with an ambulance chasing lawyer. See? Basic. Human. Decency. I’m an expert at it. Try to emulate me.

Sincerely,

Ian (The guy with the Christmas Lights)

Site News: Please note that I have not posted an apology/excuse for not posting over the last few weeks. That’s not because I’m not sorry, although I’m not sorry, you’re sorry! The reason for the lack of an excuse or apology is because there’s a pretty good chance that posts are going to continue to be sporadic at best and if I have to apologize every time I’m gone for a week or two it’s going to get tiresome for me to type and for you to read, but most importantly for me to type. I think we’ve already established that I don’t care about you people. (Seriously, thanks for coming back and still reading.) Anyway, you’re just going to have to put up with my sporadicity sporadicness sporadicality sporadicism sporadicity as work has been consuming a lot of my time lately (like, easily 30 to 34 hours a week) and I covet the time I get to spend with my family (sometimes I even pause the TV and pay attention to them) so I don’t want to spend that time writing blog posts. Also, I think it’s funny that you would ask me where I’ve been when it’s been quite obvious (I have Google Analytics) that over the past few weeks you yourselves have not been coming here. Where have I been? No, where have YOU been?

Where Have I Been?

You have probably been asking yourself that question and it’s one that I hope to answer with this post. You may also be worrying that I’ve stopped blogging but hopefully this post today is enough to allay those fears.

Q. Where have I been?
A. I have not been posting.

I hope this clears everything up.