Today's post is gonna jump around a bit, since I have no remaining ability for coherence. You'll see why shortly.

• The reason there was no post yesterday, and why Wednesday's post was thrown on at roughly 6:30pm despite being ready at noon, was that at 12:01pm we had a major outage here at work that kept me at the data center until about 2am. It was bad; one of those where I literally would try something to restore data, and then spend 30 minutes praying for God to help me. Additionally, the rest of the onsite team was in Philadelphia working a disaster recovery test, so I had nobody local who could come relieve me. Tough night.

  As an added bonus, I was on duty Thursday, so I worked from home and prayed that nothing happen that would require me to go to the data center. I'm still a little thrown off by the whole thing.

• I haven't posted a followup to the whole "How is Matt doing with his manbag?" question, so here it is. It rules. I can carry so much more stuff. For example, here is what is currently in the bag (the dreaded List Within A List!):
  • A lengthy Slim Jim. (No comments from the peanut gallery, please.)
  • A bag of Planter's peanuts.
  • One of Sarah's hair clips, which she threw in there at some point while we were in Boston.
  • My wallet.
  • My cellphone.
  • A pair of cheap sunglasses.
  • A box of anti-diarrheal pills. (I have issues with my colon.)
  • A disposable camera, bought in the Store 24 across from Fenway Park.
  • A receipt for gasoline purchased in Boston.
  • Multiple pamplhets from the Three Little Bakers dinner theater.
  • A copy of the "Boston Irish Emigrant," some kind of mick newspaper.
  • A book by Rupert Everett (yes, the actor) entitled Hello Darling, Are You Working?, which I purchased in a small used book store in Boston called "Diskovery." It is rad.
  And that's about it. So now I always have my reading material, I always have my pills for when I eat lunch at La Tolteca, and I even have a hair clip in case I tire of my hair being all up ins my grill, which it frequently is, since it needs cut.

  UPDATE: I have eaten both the Slim Jim and the peanuts.

• I forgot to put this into the Boston posts from earlier this week, so I'll alert you to the fact that our good friend Emily came up with this gem while drinking with us at Jillian's last Friday afternoon: "Matt, I'm just kidding, but I'm seriously serious." Good times.
• I ran two miles yesterday. It was really interesting; watching Doug run 13.1 miles last weekend inspired me to get in better shape, so I stretched and went out on Tuesday and did about a mile, broken up into chunks, interspersed with walking. I was out for about 20 minutes, and ran for 12 of them.

  Yesterday, I went out and figured I'd do about the same thing, so I stretched and took off at about 4:30. At the 3 minute mark, I felt fine, so I kept going. At the six minute mark, I felt very bad, but figured I'd see if I could go for an 8 minute run, so I kept going. At 8:30, I got to a location in the neighborhood at which I said to myself, "I swear it used to take me longer to get here." (I guess dropping 40 pounds makes you faster...who knew?)

  At 12 minutes (which is usually about how long it takes my slow ass to run a mile), I said, hey, let's go a little longer. At 16 minutes, I thought, hey, let's go to 18, get the mile and a half. At 18 minutes, I thought, well, crap. Maybe I can go for a full 24!

  At 22 minutes I prayed to God to help me breathe long enough that I could at least make it back inside my house so I didn't have to collapse and die on the street.

  At 24 minutes, I stopped running, and realized my calves really, really, really hurt. I also was chafing a bit in the groinial region. I got back in the house, drank a glass of water, and stretched. From the way my calves felt, I figured I wouldn't even be able to walk today, but surprisingly they're just a little tight.

  Much more noticeable is the pain from the massive rash I got from the chafing of the groin. It's nasty; all these little red and blue and black dots on my inner thigh, like individual bruises caused by the head of a pin or something. I thought about taking a picture of it, but realized there was no way to do it without including a significant amount of pubic hair in the photo, so I decided better not.