SPEAKING OF

I just have a bunch of odd and ends to talk about today.

I love sitting back and watching a baseball game. Something about the game is just relaxing. If there’s one thing that bothers me about the sport though, it’s these batters that have to tighten their battling gloves – AFTER EVERY PITCH! Did your gloves really loosen that much in the last 4 seconds? Let me duct tape those to your wrist for you.

And how about Ivan Rodriguez? This guy makes the sign of the cross – BEFORE EVERY PITCH!!! Say he bats 4 times a game and the average pitch count per at bat is 5. That’s 20 crosses per game. Over the course of the season, that’d be over 3,000 crosses. What if I start doing that at work? I think every time I open a new file, answer the phone or send an email, I’ll make the sign of the cross. It’ll be like a little prayer – to ensure that I don’t have any spelling errors in my outgoing email – even better than spell check.

Speaking of email, I’m officially to the point where I don’t send enough letters through snail mail. Anyone else do this...put the return address label where the stamp goes? That's what happened when I was getting a graduation card ready this morning. Of course, it's a colored envelop that ripped when I pulled off the label. Now there’s a huge white spot showing through.

Our company is doing well and expanding. We’re hiring a bunch of new people – mostly recent college grads. I’ve seen a few resumes for the candidates and it’s scary. I’m not sure how some of them will ever get an interview.

Product Process Senior

 In charge of the merchandising and inventory teams.
 Receive, transfer, and move products.
 Got a MVP award as a senior.
 Recently received my fifth yearly review, in which I received a score of 4.6 out of 5.

Inventory
 Receive, transfer, and move products.
 Received multiple MVP awards.

Media
 Set planograms, put out new releases, and also sales.
 Learned a great deal about consumer purchasing habits in music, movies, and software.
 Spent a majority of my tenure in this department.
 Received multiple MVP awards in this department.

Merchandising
 Set planograms, ad sets, work trucks, and do pricing.
 Received multiple MVP awards in merchandising, which are given out every quarter.

Can you say “boring and repetitive”?

Speaking of work, one of the guys here is named Richard Payne. Get it, Dick Pain. Come on people, think a little when you're naming your kids.

Finally, this is a running blog, so I’ll end with a couple of running-related topics. Duncan’s Casey Moutlon interview posed the question “Who are your running heroes, and why?” To which Casey responded, “Bill Rodgers, Dick Beardsley, Derek Clayton, Joan [Samuelson], Jack Foster, Ron Daws, Benji Durden, Bob Hodge, Paula Radcliffe, Weldon Johnson, Brian Sell, Clint Verran, Trent Briney…I could go on forever.” What a great list, and from an 18, er, I mean twenty-something “kid”. That kind of got me thinking about runners I admired while growing up. Obviously there’s Rodgers and Salazar and being so close to Minnesota, there’s Beardsley and Bjorklund. Who are/were your running idols?

Normally I don’t like to post links to articles that are easy to find, but speaking of running heroes, this article on Boulder is a good read. Today’s quote of the day comes from this article;

Quote of the day:
"None of us knew how good we were. None of us knew how bad we were. We just all thought, 'If he can make the Olympic team, so can I."' – Steve Flanagan