#2 Impending divorce – The papers need to be worked on and signed and then the 6 month process of sitting around to get it approved will happen. But by 2012, I should be a legally single man and I hope to dear god that my current wife and I are on good terms when it does. It would not help Molly in the short, nor long term, if we are at each others throats.

#3 Professionally grasping the reigns of other marketing channels and making sure that I understand them to round out my entire marketing knowledge. I think my biggest issue is broadcast, the online world I understand, but it is the offline piece that I have to get a better grasp on. So there will be times that I need to pop my head in there and muck around a little bit.

#4 Financially – I have been able to get things to a point where they are manageable, by the fist quarter of the year I should in theory have it at a point where everything is situated and taken care of. So I am excited about that. This of course will change with the impending divorce as I have no clue what is going to be dictated to me in regards to the divorce. But with everything, I will have to adapt to things and work through them.

#5 40 – yes, the big 4-0 is on the horizon and I am looking forward to it.

When it comes to me it is simple, I see something that needs to happen and I do it. When it comes to interacting with others and having them do what I think is right is where things start to crumble. I see things as how they can work out and I know they will, but others are just to hard headed to think things through and they directly effect me. It is infuriating and instead of solving an issue quickly, the issue drags on. It is almost like killing something, instead of killing the problem slowly, someone decides to do something to prolong the death and make it torturous.

I keep having this sense that she is undermining me. She is already expressed her dislike that I have been going to the gym, she has already spent a good amount of time questioning my motives. I really am looking to do the marathon. I am looking to finish something that came as a thought 13 years ago. My motives have always been out there, like a handful of cards turned upright on a card table for everyone to see. It annoys me when my motives are questioned, when there is nothing to prove that I am being malicious, or anything along those lines. It just happened that 2012 my birthday fell on the exact day of the LA Marathon and then the ball started to roll, getting bigger and bigger and bigger, like a snowball. I feel good about myself, I feel good about what I am doing, for the first time in a long time, I feel alive and willing to do what is needed to achieve one of my life’s goals. At every turn, when I need to do a workout, especially after the last two weeks, I have been shamed that I would prefer to do a workout than spend time with Molly. When that is not the case.

We have a schedule and I want to abide by it, but sometimes if I can alter something, or get Molly at a later time, she should work with me on this. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get to the point where someone can actually do the distance and the last two weeks have been a total crap shoot when i can work out. I hate it.

I feel that I am hitting walls at every turn with her and it annoys me.

I do not miss the arguing, the late nights, the mind games, the constant bickering. Those were obviously the main reasons that we are not together, but I do miss the relationship. I miss the laying in bed and hearing the breathing, I miss the hand on the hip, I miss the random kiss to the top of the head.

Maybe it is the emotion of the holiday, maybe it is the fact that the loneliness has just overcome me, but the last few weeks have been difficult to say the least. I try to keep my mind occupied with other things. I think I have hand written the start of at least 5 different short stories/books that may come to fruition. I have started running/walking in anticipation for the 26.2 mile torture rack known as the LA Marathon on my birthday, so that has worn me out pretty good at nights, but with Molly being off for two weeks and timing being bad I have not had the ability to do that. So I find myself just laying in bed with my eyes open looking at the ceiling wondering if I will ever be in a position to enjoy the little things in life again.

I crave human contact. Not sex, sex is easy to get and it really does not solve the inherent need that I have at the moment. I want to hold someones hand, I want to have someone lay on me to watch television. I yearn for someone to just sit there laying next to me in bed, hearing them breathe, having them roll over and have their arm drape over my chest. I seek the the feeling of being “liked” and respected, I want someone that I do not even have to speak to, rather a subtle glance tells them the story. I want to sit down and just reach across the table and hold their hand and feel comforted. I had this with Jocelyn, but everything else surrounding it just was not functioning and she made the decision to part ways with me. I completely understand why things are the way they are, and I agree with it. But what I miss the most are those little things that mean so much.

I am just so damn lonely. If I were a drinking man I probably would have drank myself into a stupor almost every night this past month.

Then weighed myself, I ate like shit in Detroit, or so I thought, I actually lost a few more lbs, 225lbs right now, almost back to the weight I was 6 months ago. If I stick to the training schedule that I outlined on the plane, who knows how low that will get, but I would think that by the time the marathon rolls around that I will be below 200lbs. I do think that if I can get to 180 I will be in really good shape for the marathon, but anything below 200 will be a major win and less actual weight that I will be carrying during the run.

I am going to have to make sure that my downhill runs are constant as opposed to staggered, that is really how I will be able to finish this marathon. Looking at the elevation map a lot of the downhills are spaced out and are almost flat, so that means I should probably do more Lake running since that is more flat and little to no elevation. I do think that for the last three weeks I am in pretty good shape for this thing.

On the way there there is a steep hill right outside of my home, which is about .25 mile, then downhill for .75 miels, under the 56, a slight incline on the bike trail, then a steep decline into Mira Mesa on Black Mountain Road. Then a 2 mile slight incline all the way up to Mira Mesa Blvd. It flattens out for about a mile, then declines into the location my folks live. The areas that I can really cut time from are the decline after the first incline by my house, then the steep decline into Mira Mesa, then the flat area after Mira Mesa Blvd into the area where my folks live. On the reverse trip, the 2 mile slight decline towards PQ is really a time saver if it is run, the hill will be my bane for the next month or so. First goal is to be able to go up the hill without stopping, then will be to actually run the hill a little bit.

Goal by January 15 is to get the 12.45 miles in around 3 hours. That would mean an average speed of around 4.1 mph, while I am averaging around a speed of 3 mph with the stopping and walking. What I would love to do is get that average mph to around 4.8 by end of January to early February. That would get me at around 2 hours and 40 minutes.

I am under no belief that I am going to run the entire LA Marathon, but if I can run at least 7 miles of the race, I will finish it before they close down the streets. To finish the race in 8 hours, one must assume an average speed of 3.275 miles. With the law of diminishing returns, I will start the race at a higher mph than I will end the race. I need to get my average mph higher and then walk the rest, or at least run the downhill portions and maintain a decent speed on the uphill portions.

The goal was 6.2 miles and I got it, this is the distance of the first leg of my training and I did it in a respectable time. Though it was all on a treadmill and without a whiney ten year old following behind. This saturday will prove to be interesting.

weighing in at 233 today, that is down 22 lbs from early October.

The eventual goal will be to run from my place to their place, back to my place, then back to their place and then back again, which would put me at around 25 miles total. In the interim during the week to help build up the legs a little more for the duration, 3 miles a day on the treadmill at an incline and some weight work. I am looking at the calorie counter and it is saying to take my weight and multiply by 13 and then take that calorie count as the amount of food intake I need, but to reduce the amount by 300 to lose about 1lb a week. This would put me at about 2750 a day, I will probably get somewhere near that without issue.

View Larger Map

Actually really jazzed about this, the distance actually worked out perfectly, now it is just about executing on it. This week will allow me to get started on it at the gym, the Saturday morning is when I am targeting the first real test of the distance with the little girl. The parents can drive us back home where I am sure I will just lay in bed and be exhausted for a bit, but it will be good to get some road work done.

The one good thing about the LA Marathon compared to the Rock and Roll Marathon held in San Diego is that there is a lot of flat land in the LA Marathon and a lot of downhills as you can see from the LA Marathon route map:

LA Marathon Route Map

Mile 1 is straight up hill, mile 2 to 4 is basically all downhill, miles 4-15 looks to be pretty flat with a few ups and downs, miles 16-20 are downhill and flat, miles 21-24 is a gradual incline, but generally flat, the last stretch of the race is downhill into Santa Monica. The problems that I will run into is going to be out of the gate, that uphill is going to be difficult, the second leg is going to be a coasting leg, where the major issues will come are int he bulk of the race from mile 4 – 15 which is fairly flat with a few ups and downs, so a long stretch of relatively flat running will be tough, build up some energy on the next leg with a gradual downhill for 4 miles, then the pain will be brought with the 21-24 mile section as it is an incline basically. Then roll into Santa Monica with arms held high on my birthday, sweaty, exhausted, sore, smelly, turning 40 years old on the day I cross that finish line.

Two things need to be done, which I will try and accomplish this evening. 1 is a training schedule, I need to run at least 3 miles a day for the next couple of weeks during the weekdays, one the weekends go 5. Then steadily increase the distances by increments of .25 each week after my conditioning phase. If by February I can run 10 miles without issue a day and 15 on the weekends, I should be in really good shape for March 18. 2 is a strict diet, this will allow me to convert my food into usable energy, as opposed to fats and reduce the amount of weight I am carrying for the race. Which will make me leaner and quicker. If everything works the way I want it to, I could see finishing the race in under 8 hours. Assuming a pace of 6mph, that would get me in around 4.5 hours, I will mostly likely average out at around 4, so that would put me in that 6-7 hour range, depending on how many times I stop to cry and urinate on myself during the race.

I knew that we would be getting our money around the time that Molly’s birthday would happen and just by pure happenstance she had the week before Presidents Day off. I quickly took the time off as well, determined to spend the week at home and hang out with her instead of working from home and just letting the week go to waste. Then I thought about a trip with her. Some place that she had never been too before, a place that she would appreciate. A place that I vaguely remembered, but had an excellent time at when i was a kid. Washington DC was that location.

My parents took Joe and I to the Smithsonian when we were kids and I still remember it, little flashes, nothing concrete, but this was a plan and it started rolling from there. Maybe this is where I got my love of history, I am not sure, but I do know that she will be immersed in it. She has been given a little notepad to carry around with her to put notes in and is required to write 5 things she learned every day while we are gone. This will be accompanied by pictures of the locations with her little blurb. I hope to dear god she gets inspired, this is the age that she needs to understand that she can start to make a difference in her own life. She needs to grab on to something and run with it. I want her to understand that her dreams can be reached with some work. I want her to understand that nothing is standing in her way of accomplishing anything, other than herself.

By understanding how our government works, understanding the amount of time that this country has been around and what this country was built on, maybe that will foster a sense of pride in her that I feel about being an American. Granted, i look at two flags with equal value, the South Korean flag and the United States flag, they are equal in my eyes. My mother is Korean and my father born int he United States. That is my legacy. Molly is from two parents that come from different ethnicities, but she is American through and through. She is what this country is about, if you want to talk about a melting pot, she is the perfect example. She is part Korean, she is part Filipino, she is part Caucasian, she is part Native American, she is part Chinese, there is probably more so in her background that we do not even know. She is the perfect example of multiculturalism today. I hope she takes this mantle and runs with it.

The United States is the mutt of the world. This is the most perfect line from Stripes. Nobody wanted us, hell, they kicked us out in some regards and we found a home. Molly is a mutt and she has to understand what this country is about, what she is about and I hope that this trip instills in her the belief that she can do anything.

I am a proud American, i love the red white and blue, I love the stars and stripes, I love this country and all that it has to offer. Hopefully my daughter will grow to appreciate it as much as I do.

They apparently did not know that Comic-con fans are rabid, they apparently did not know that jerk off little Emo fucks that follow twilight would be online as well to buy tickets. These guys apparently did not load balance their system for the massive amount of traffic that was about to go through their system. Apparently these idiots had no clue what they were about to get hit with. I sat there for 3 hours hitting refresh and seeing their ugly ass damn over capacity logo on the front page. It almost made me as sick as seeing the twitter whlae.

What made matters worse is that they had some fuck on twitter RTing people saying that they got their tickets, but apparently ignored the 10 bazillion tweets about how much they sucked.

I think the worst thing about this crap was when I could get on the ticket page, some days and types of tickets were already blocked out, but later on, they would show up.. then disappear, it was a cluster fuck. I ended up getting 2 adult passes for Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. At the time that I bought those days, Saturday was blocked out, but then I found out that Saturday did not sell out until 3 hours later which pissed me off even more. These guys are fucking jack asses and i am pissed beyond belief that the Comic-con organizers did not make sure that whomever they are contracting out to knows what the fuck they are doing.