Blogging is therapy!

Must sleep...eyes droopy...can't concentrate...but must....blog...first...... (C:

Just a quick one before I hit the hay tonight. I was taking a look at CNN.com, and ran across an interesting story with the headline "Your blog can be group therapy." Great story, and it led me to a great blog, Snickollet.

The story, and the blog, just reinforce what I already knew--this is good therapy! Ahhhh...I feel better already.

G'nite, all...more later.

The Million Blog List

I was doing some poking around last night and came across a brilliant new Wiki site called the Million Blog List. It's an experiment to see how quickly they can get 1,000,000 blogs listed on their site.

I registered my blogs last night, and jtj3 is #575 on the list. The interesting thing--as I write this, it's up to #633...so 58 more blogs added in a 10 hour period. Interesting. They have a contest to see who can predict when they'll hit the 1,000,000th blog. I won't enter--I always stink at guessing games like that.

One other thing that is fun to do is look through the list and find blogs that you might like--then, visit them, trade blogroll links, whatever. That's my plan...

Today is Friday, which would normally imply a Flash Fiction post. Maybe today...not so much. But we'll see.

More later...

It's #100!!!!

I promised you something special for my 100th post, and I hope this doesn't disappoint. First, what's a celebration without a few fireworks?

OK so I'm starting with a bang. Uh, what about the content? Er, yeah, guess I gotta write something. OK you all know I'm a meme freak, so what better way to celebrate than a 10X10 meme. So here goes...
Type your summary here


10 ways my blogging has evolved
- New, custom format (thank you Hackosphere!)
- Expandable posts (Update - got them to work at 4AM!)
- I'm not afraid of changing/editing my blog code now
- People are reading and commenting
- I'm reading and commenting more on others' blogs
- More frinds on my blogroll
- Music Mondays
- Flash Fiction Fridays
- Writing for 3 other blogs now - here, here, and here
- I'm become an addict!

10 things about me
- My birthday is the 4th of July, and I turned 10 on the Bicentennial
- I'm passably fluent in 2 languages, speak bits and pieces of 3 more, and can say "hello" in about 10 additional ones
- I've been married to the same wonderful woman, Mrs. jtj3, for 16 years now.
- I'm only 5'4" but my height doesn't bother me.
- My friends call me "gadget guy" because I am a gadget freak.
- I can be scatterbrained.
- I love deeply.
- I get hurt easily.
- I can act like a 6-year-old if I don't get my way.
- I'm living my dream life right now.

10 things about my family
- I have a brother who is 9 years older than me and a sister 8 years older.
- I have no living grandparents.
- I have no cousins, aunts, or uncles--my parents were both only children.
- I have 3 nephews, 1 niece, and 1 step-nephew, and 1 step-niece. I enjoy being their uncle/step uncle.
- All 3 kids graduated from the same high school but I'm the only one to be in the same school district from K-12.
- All 3 of us didn't really like each other much we patched things up when I was in my 30s.
- When you throw in extended family, our clan extends--literally--from coast to coast. Hard to do when there's only 10 of us total.
- My dad died a little over 4 years ago and I still think of him almost every day.
- I have no living grandparents any more.
- "James" (my first name) goes back 5 generations as a first name on my dad's side.

10 things I like
- Listening to country music
- Baby animals, especially puppies and kitties
- Sunsets
- Making people smile
- Writing
- Hot coffee on a cold morning!
- Weekends
- Long drives, except in winter
- Woodworking
- Photography

10 dislikes
- Body odor
- Cranky people
- Big problems with no good answer
- Losing touch with friends for no good reason
- Too much stuff to do, too little time
- Clear-air turbulence
- Being bored
- Being embarassed
- Dishonesty
- People who act like victims and don't take control of their own circumstances

10 favorite foods
- Steak
- Cheeseburger and fries
- Pasta
- Pizza with sausage, onions, and green peppers
- Cheese of almost any kind
- Sweet potatoes
- Dark chocolate
- Coffee
- Bread (again, almost any kind)
- Hummus

10 CDs I'd take to a desert island
- The White Stripes by The White Stripes
- Tutu by Miles Davis
- My Town by Montgomery Gentry
- Careless Love by Madeline Peyroux
- The Nature of Things by Bruce BecVar
- For the Last Time: Live From The Astrodome by George Strait
- Passion by Peter Gabriel
- Any recording of Mozart's Requiem Mass
- Live: Live Those Songs Again by Kenny Chesney
- Permanent Vacation by Aerosmith

10 best blogs I read
- Snowelf
- Sue
- SuchSimplePleasures
- My nephew Ryan
- Penelope
- Tim Wilson's excellent running blog
- Confessions of a Runner
- Running Jayhawk

10 favorite moments in my life so far...
- Spending the summer of 1982 as an exchange student in Patras, Greece.
- Seeing the Matterhorn (1987).
- Marrying my best friend on September 28, 1991.
- Seeing Frank Sinatra live in concert (1994).
- Seeing the White Sox score 5 runs off one hit--July 5, 1995. The Yankees walked 4 batters (scoring one), then John Kruk hit a grand-slam home run.
- Doing my first (and only, so far!) tandem parachute jump on my 30th birthday (July 4 1996).
- Working and living for 3 months in Tokyo during 1996.
- Seeing the 2003 All-Star Game at U.S. Cellular Field (formerly Comiskey).
- Being promoted at work to my "dream role".
- Running the Chicago Half Marathon in 2006.

10 things to do before I die
- Write a book
- Build a Shaker-style tall clock (something similar to what you see in the link) using only hand tools.
- Visit all 50 states of the US by the time I turn 50
- Visit at least 50 countries by the time I turn 50
- Run a marathon
- Visit all 7 continents
- Become fluent in French, German, and Japanese
- Learn to play an instrument
- Climb the Great Wall of China (as Chairman Mao said, "Bú dào Chángchéng fēi hao hàn," roughly meaning "You're not a real man if you haven't climbed the Great Wall".)
- Ride a motorcycle
- Fly around the world


That, my friends, is #100. Thank you SO MUCH for being my blog friends and for reading and commenting on what I do here. My life is much richer for having met all of you, and for discovering this wonderful world of blogging. Y'all are awesome.

Oh yeah, one last thing--Music Mondays will return on their regularly scheduled timetable next week.

More later...

The joys of the bloggosphere

I'm a big fan of Steve Runner and his Phedippidations podcast. In one of the episodes he talked about blogging and said "Write as though you're writing for yourself--if anyone else reads it, it's a bonus." I'm starting to experience that bonus now...

Now that I'm checking out and commenting on other blogs, I find that other people are doing the same to both this blog and my photo/travelogue blog. Cruising around and following links is how I found my (now) good pal Snowelf's wonderful blog, and recently I've found several other good sites--Gerry Gomez's photo blog, a blog of photos from Saline County, Arkansas, and a few others I've bookmarked. Oh and OF COURSE the cult of 55 Flash Fiction Friday is growing, too!

What's my point? Well, as I was explaining to a friend in email the other day...when you write a diary or a journal, it's for yourself and you hope like heck that no one else ever reads it. But with a blog, you write for yourself but hope others will find you. If you're not a blogger, you should start. And if someone comments on your site, do them the courtesy of visiting their site and acknowledging what they do. If you're not a blogger and find this site (or other blogs), please do that same courtesy also...it's nice to get noticed.

More later...

What I did on my 6-month vacation...

OK, so it wasn't really a 6-month vacation, it's just that it's been that long (or almost) since I've written. I've decided to get back in the saddle yet again...nothing big, but just getting restarted. It's been a long, but a good, 6 months. Some highlights (in no particular order):

• Set a 5K PR of 26:39 (8:34/mile pace) in the Nike+ Rock 'n Run--that put me in the top half of my age/sex division, and almost top half of all finishers (first time!)
• Set a 4-mile PR of 37:17 (9:19/mile pace) at the 3rd annual 4 on the 4th race
  
• Started training for the Chicago Marathon (again...), this time taking it much easier than last year.
• Took a 12-day cruise to 5 countries bordering the Baltic Sea (see sidebar for links to my pictures!).
• Traveled, traveled, and traveled some more for work.
• Adopted a beautiful 2-month old kitten named Bella.
• Read a lot, hung out a lot, cooked out on the grill a lot, hung out with friends a lot.
  

It doesn't sound like much but believe me, it's been a lot and it was all fun. Well, most of it anyway. But I wouldn't trade any of it for the world.

So, now I'm in the last few weeks of my marathon training program...this past weekend was an 18-mile run. I crashed pretty hard at about 15 miles and had to walk almost all the rest, but this coming Sunday is another opportunity to do better. This week is 16 miles, and then the week after that (September 15th) is my longest run of the program--20 miles.

More (hopefully) to come between now and the 20 miler...