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Showing posts from July, 2013

Tales of Running: The 1st Half--Marathon of the Season: Or, OUCH!

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Optimistic at the start. On Sunday, I plunkered down for my first half-marathon of the season, the Shipyard Old Port Harbor Half-Marathon in Portland, Maine.  It was a brutal run overall but one that I needed to get done.  It's been about 2 months since I last wrote about my running .  And while I've been logging in mileage as best I can, I still haven't upped the running to the point where I feel like I'm at a good training level for tackling the upcoming marathon (now clocking in at 3 months away--gulp!).  Thus, I needed a good kick in the ass like this run in order to get me back on a more serious focus on running.  Granted there have been distractions such as going away in May and having a very busy month in June, but the summer's here in full force and I need to charge ahead! Onto the Race What were some of the challenges of the race?  The first was the heat.  It was harsh.  Though the race started around 7:30AM, it was already in the 80s (F) and conti

What's in Your Travel Pack?

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So as many know, I recently went on a trip .  Well, over a month ago now, so this post is wildly overdue, but June got crazy, so here it is now.  This is what I've come to find my essential travel pack.  What I mean is the stuff besides thing like toiletries.   I have listed things that would be useful in your day to day adventures or just a good resource to have on hand. Plastic Baggies of various sizes :  These will come in handy for carrying small amounts of food or trying to keep something protected from rainy weather.  They can fit easily in your day-bag (see below) and you can toss your phone into one if it starts raining hard (and you for got your umbrella). Loc k:  Particularly if you plan to stay at a hostel, many of which will have storage you can lock stuff up.  I'd go with a combination lock, doing your best to remember it and to store it on a digital device or something along those lines. Umbrella :  A small 6-8 inch umbrella is a must.  It takes up a litt

365 Books a Year Challenge: 25 Books in June!

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So I wasn't as successful with June as I was with May, but alas, getting caught up from being away for nearly a month, starting classes, and picking up on my training left me with less time to get a lot of reading done.  But I did manage reasonably enough.  25 out of 30--not bad and with the bump from last month of 41 books, I'm still in good shape to hit my target.  Like every month, I had some "meh" reads but also a good share of good reads and these three are the ones that I found most appealing.   A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert "Believe It or Not!" Ripley by Neal Thompson.    I've know of Ripley's "Believe It or Not!" but have never been in any of the actual museums or even watched the TV show (I think it was a TV show?).  But when my editor sent this to me, I was slightly curious and that certainly paid off.  I was familiar with the outrageous and borderline-spectacle that Ripley is known for, but I had n

Favorite Freebies on Amazon Part 2 of 2: Horror & Sci-Fi Edition

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So last Friday, I talked a bit about my favorite ways of finding free ebooks on Amazon .  I saw that a lot of people visited the site and shared it with others (thank you!).  I hope part 2 is equally rewarding.  In particular, I've focused on Science-fiction, fantasy, and horror.  So enjoy and let me know what you may have found that I didn't know about! A couple other places that I found that regular post free Kindle books include: There is of course, the Free Book Collections site on Amazon itself.  There's also Freebook Sifter , which sorts books into categories for you to explore better than the Amazon interface. There's also these Twitter accounts that are fairly prodigious in their outpouring: EbooksAddict FKBT Blog Free eBooks Daily Free Kindle Books Free Kindle Ebooks Free Kindle eBooks Free Kindle Fiction FreeKindleEBooks.com Kindle Free Books Hundred Zeros And here are some more of my favorites "free" purchases that I've found