Verbal Diarleah (The Diary of Leah)

I’ve done it. I’ve gone and bloody joined bloody Facebook. Go on; add me as your friend if you want. I’m in as Leah Barbee O’Donovan. The pressure finally got to me. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I am part of the Facebook massive. Oh well, at least now I can post pictures a bit easier and hopefully keep in contact with a few people more so than previously.

I just thought I would update you on my running. I’ve now signed up for a 10K (6.2 miles) on 12 July on Clapham Common here in London. I’ve also just signed up for a half-marathon (13.1 miles) on 18 October in my hubby’s hometown of Cardiff, Wales. I’m actually looking most forward to that one just because it’s in Wales. It will be nice to run in a different city. Keep checking back for race results. My charity 5K is 28 June, less than two weeks away. It’ll be a doddle. I did five miles through the park yesterday. Bring on the 10K!

Well, I’ll tell you where: with no computer, packing up our flat and moving to a house…that’s where. My computer has always had an issue with its power cord. It wiggles in the slot and sometimes even though the blue light is on, the computer is not charging. Without going into the whole ordeal, suffice to say it is currently in about four pieces in our living room while my dear husband waits for parts. God am I glad I married a computer geek!

Now to the best part: our new house! We have finally upgraded from a modestly-sized one bedroom flat that felt increasingly smaller with every day to a modestly-sized three bedroom house. We have moved from Wimbledon to Chessington; and from just down the road from the tennis to just down the road from Chessington World of Adventures theme park. It’s been a big change.

We’ve been there for just over a week now. We’re still living amongst boxes and still awaiting furniture deliveries but it is glorious to have all of those wonderful things that don’t always come with a flat: dining room, garden, office, second bedroom, garage; we even have a utility room. Our garden is full of beautiful flowers and plants left over from the owners. I just know I’m going to kill them. I do not have a green thumb that I’m aware of. I think I’ve killed several cacti in my life.

Hubby’s life is now complete: he has a shed and a barbecue. Mine is better now I have a dishwasher and a king size bed. I cannot say enough about how lovely our house is. It is not overly large but it fits us just fine. Eventually I’m sure we’ll grow out of it just as we did our flat but for the moment we are very happy bunnies. And now my friends have even less of an excuse to not come visit. I have a spare bedroom just waiting for guests!

Would someone please tell Dick Cheney he is no longer the Vice-President and his opinion no longer matters?

The president will address…national security, in his speech Thursday…

Former Vice President Dick Cheney…is slated to give an opposing argument Thursday morning. Cheney has charged that Obama’s national security decisions have left the United States more vulnerable to attack.

You had your eight years; now go retire somewhere like all the other former Presidents and Vice-Presidents. Or, if you feel you need to carry on, a la Al Gore, at least choose a topic on which your own administration didn’t cock things up so badly. Al Gore was arguably more respected after being VP because he took up the mantle of fighting climate change. Perhaps good ol’ Dick could start lecturing on the best paper shredders on the market or how-to guides on electoral fraud. Hell I don’t know; just someone get him off the national stage.

I got a very important package in the mail today: my Cancer Research UK 5K information package. It contains my very first race bib number, my souvenir t-shirt and, most importantly, the ‘I’m running for’ back bib for race day. I’m very excited to take part in my first charity 5K race but I don’t want to forget why I’m doing it, why I wanted to do it in the first place.

Virtually every woman knows another woman who has had breast cancer. My mom’s friend Debbie McLelland was one of the millions. She survived the first attack. She lost a breast to the cancer but she survived. Then a few years later it came back…with a vengeance. Not only did it attack the other breast but it moved to the liver and finally the brain at the very end. Debbie was so strong and full of life. She was a lot of fun to be around. She was irreverent, unapologetic for who she was and she was my mom’s best friend for many years. She was a single mother and left behind a son named Josh.

Every year Debbie would take part in the Susan G. Komen 5K in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She would walk the course rather than run it but year after year from the first bout of cancer she was there. When it had invaded her liver and she knew she only had a few months, she was still there. That was the first time I thought of doing one of these. I thought maybe she wouldn’t be up for walking that year and offered to do it in her place, in her honour. She politely declined because she was going to do it herself. She was a determined lady. Unfortunately that determination finally ran out in November 2004.

Ever since then I’ve thought of doing one of these cancer run/walks but until the last year I wasn’t physically fit enough. Now I can run five miles without much of forethought. Five kilometres is relatively easy these days. I’ve lost more than 30 pounds and am continuing to run and lose. This race is for both Debbie and me. I’m running this particular race for Debbie and for all of the other breast cancer sufferers and survivors in the UK and the world. But I’m also doing this, just a bit, for me. I’ve already run a timed 5K last autumn but this will be my first official race. I’ve got the bib number to prove it. I’m looking so forward to it. It’s going to be an emotional and physical day.

I really hope you’ll donate to my fundraising. If you’ve visited the link (to the right and above titled race for life donations) and seen that I’ve already hit my fundraising goal, please re-visit and consider donating. I set a very low fundraising limit so as not to overwhelm myself. I’d never done this before so I wasn’t sure how much I could get. Please, please even just $5.00 or £5.00 is a great help. My friends in other countries can also donate. This probably won’t be the last you hear from me. If I get into the marathon it’ll likely be in a charity place so don’t give all you’ve got right now! Save some for later! On 28 June, please think of me, running in Richmond Park for Debbie and all of the other breast cancer sufferers, victims and survivors in the world. Thank you.

There is a very funny commentary in the Guardian today where the author is imagining what the first 100 days of a John McCain Presidency would have been like.  I’ve reproduced it here so you don’t have to go elsewhere, unless you want to.

Day 1: Having spent the nearly three months between election day and inauguration day being brought up to speed by Dick Cheney on effective concealment strategies for the Bush administration’s plethoric dirty secrets and giving Vice President Sarah Palin a crash-course in introduction to government, President McCain does not hit the ground running. He is stunned to find out that the September suspension of his campaign did not magically solve the financial crisis and that the fundamentals of the economy are not strong.

Day 2: President McCain nominates the only Republican willing to accept the position as secretary of the Treasury, whose appointment is fast-tracked through Congress in light of the growing economic crisis.

Day 3: Treasury secretary Ron Paul promptly disbands the department of the Treasury.

Days 4-18: The stock markets crash, precipitating a run on the banks, which in turn hastens the financial collapse. Mass chaos erupts across the country. Vice President Palin blames the economic catastrophe on University of Illinois professor William Ayers and calls for his execution. Texas announces its secession from the union. Chuck Norris is elected president of Texistan.

Day 19: President McCain tries to restore order by giving a televised speech which will later become known as the “My Friends, We’re F***ed” debacle.

Day 20: Dick Cheney shoots President McCain in the face.

Day 21: President McCain apologizes to Dick Cheney for all the trouble his being shot in the face has caused the former vice president.

Day 22: The National Inquirer publishes a story that secretary of education Ann Coulter is pregnant with President McCain’s love child. White House press secretary Jonah Goldberg denies the report, calling it “just another piece of liberal fascism, evidence of the secret history of the American Left, from Mussolini to the politics of meaning.” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd points out that Mussolini was not part of the American Left, prompting Goldberg to harangue MSNBC into terminating Todd’s employment. Todd returns to his previous role as Murray on HBO’s Flight of the Conchords.

Days 23-29: Photographic evidence of the McCain-Coulter liaison surfaces and is widely published across the blogosphere, eventually erupting in the mainstream press. Cindy McCain files for divorce. Education secretary Ann Coulter tearfully admits the reports are true.

Day 30: President McCain resigns, making his presidency the shortest in American history by one day. President Sarah Palin, the first female president of the United States, is sworn in. Feminists mourn.

Day 31: President Palin appoints her second-in-command. Samuel “Joe the Vice President” Wurzelbacher’s first order of business is to call a press conference where he explains his primary role will be “czar of shit-kicking.”

Day 32: With the country having disintegrated into utter pandemonium, President Palin tries to foster national unity by declaring war on Iran. The National Review declares Palin a political savant. The New Republic also backs the invasion, “reluctantly”. The American people, now largely subsisting on a diet of venison and Styrofoam, are too busy killing each other for shotgun shells and scrounging through trash piles to properly appreciate her alleged genius.

Days 33-67: 10% of the American population succumbs to rabies.

Day 68: President Palin becomes a grandmother for the second time when her oldest son Track and daughter-in-law Miley Cyrus-Palin have a bouncing baby boy, Trek.

Day 69: The US dollar is officially worth less than a Ron Paul Liberty Dollar, the national currency of Texistan. Canada and Mexico begin construction of giant walls along the United States’ northern and southern borders.

Day 70: President Palin finally releases her long-awaited plan for economic recovery. Lacking what Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, blogging from his fall-out shelter in an undisclosed location, calls “anything resembling a functional knowledge of finance, commerce, or even basic math,” the report inspires further widespread panic among the dwindling numbers of still-sentient Americans.

Days 71-99: The American military stages a coup, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, and redeploying them to the United States, where they remove from the White House and associated cabinet offices President Palin, Joe the Vice President, secretary of state Todd Palin, attorney general Judith Sheindlin, and the rest of the Palin administration, all of whom are deported to Texistan. Several suffer horribly during the swine flu epidemic that follows.

Martial law is instituted to re-establish institutional stability and general order across the 49 states. In what the history books will deem the “Great American Do-Over,” military leaders will convince the man who should have been president to come to Washington and assume the presidency, marking the beginning of a period of restoration after our long national nightmare.

Day 100: President Al Gore is sworn in.

I haven’t heard about (or sought out information on) Peta in a while nor veggie-fascists. I unfortunately came across this commentary on Guardian today from my ‘favourite’ atheist-bus-campaigner. Setting aside her whole ‘there’s probably no God’ malarkey it was a good article. I was intrigued by this sentence: “Despite the best efforts of Finding Nemo, A Shark Tale and the Peta marketing team who brought you “sea kittens” ”

Basically good old Peta have got their proverbial knickers in a twist about fishing. It’s probably been going on for some time seeing as their ultimate goal is the liberation of all animals. They are campaigning to outlaw fishing and are doing so by equating fish with their new term ’sea kittens’. The logic seems to be ‘you wouldn’t hurt a kitten, why hurt a fish?’

I would expect Peta to campaign against fishing; they are, after all an animal rights group. I suppose what made my blood boil the most was the inane nature of this campaign. Calling a fish a ’sea kitten’ does not make me any less likely to pluck it from the water, bash it on the head, fry it up and eat it; or stick it on some vinegared rice with a side of wasabi and soy sauce. As Shakespeare so eloquently put it (thank you complete works of Shakespeare iPhone application): “that which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.” That which we call a ’sea kitten’ smells just as fishy and tastes just as good.

And finally, if you go to the Peta website, please visit the Create Your Own Sea Kitten section. Someone out there explain to me why, under the Accessories tab, there are floaties? Fish swim; why the hell do they need arm flotation devices?! I can’t figure out if this campaign ’game’ is actually aimed at children or animal rights activists really have that low of an IQ.

I like running so much I’ve entered the ballot to run the 2010 London Marathon. That’s right, all 26.2 miles of it. I will find out in October whether or not I have a place.

Even if I don’t make it in with the ballot I can still run for a charity as they have guaranteed places. I’ll be applying to several over the coming months and look at some of the smaller ones come October should I not get in.

I’ll then start training November/December time. You need 16 weeks to properly train for a marathon. Anything less than that and you risk injury. I’m already doing well on long-ish runs. I did an easy four miles on Sunday. My 5K (3.1 miles) in the summer for Cancer Research UK should be a relative breeze. Next I’ll try and knock out a 10K and then possibly the Cardiff half-marathon in October. Let me tell you, once you start running, it can become addictive. Wish me luck!

Today I ran home from work. According to Google maps it is 4.2 miles. I walked .65 miles to warm up and another .26 to cool down. I ran 3.57 miles. Now that’s not that big of a deal normally as I’m currently running that every other day. The major achievement today was the fact that I ran home from work. That involved carrying a small backpack of my work clothes weighing 2.3 pounds and running up two very steep hills on the way. The first was relatively easy because it was at the beginning by Norbiton station (see map). The second was around the halfway mark at the top of Coombe Ln W (see map). There’s a real good reason why the school nearby is called Coombe Hill.

According to my fantastic Garmin GPS heart rate monitor software my highest point was 150 feet (I’m guessing above sea level) and the steepest gradient was 8%. I’m not entirely sure how gradient works, but trust me; it kicked my butt in both the figurative and literal sense. I’m quite proud of myself and thought I’d share this with you. It also gives me the chance to push my Race for Life 5K again. See top of the page to donate.

There are just a few things bothering me of late; therefore, let me dip my proverbial toe into the proverbial lake of political commentary as I have not done for a while.

Explain to me, please, why an anti-racism conference has as a key speaker someone who is, by all accounts, racist himself. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said publicly that Israel should be wiped off the map and has made very, very clear his anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic views. That just seems extremely hypocritical at best and extremely stupid at worst.

How can any interrogations using torture be labelled a ’success’? How can any intelligence obtained under torture and duress be a ’success’? Can you really trust that intelligence? If you tortured me I’d tell you anything you asked. Hell, I’d claim to be bloody Mary Queen of Scots if you pushed hard enough. Torture should never be an interrogation tool. If you are the ‘free world’ and you want to maintain that title without dispute, you cannot torture.

Why can’t we all just get along? Why do police feel the need to beat the ever-loving crap out of some hippie liberal douche protestor? Police certainly take mountains of verbal abuse from protestors but when is it ever appropriate to slap someone across the face, hit them with your shield or push them to the ground? Moreover, when the man is walking away from you at a leisurely pace, why do you need to push him to the ground? The G20 protests have brought out loads of questions that the police should answer. Unfortunately, the independent review will likely make no difference in the future, near or distant.