Step 2: Put your left foot in front of your right.

Step 3: Repeat 105,600 times.

Step 4: Have Chicago police tell you it’s no longer permissible to run and that you have to walk the remaining six miles - but that it’s okay, the clocks are off and your time won’t count.

Step 5: Find out your time does count and get really, really angry.

It was a brutally hot day, one runner died and nearly 11,000 of the 35,000 runners didn’t finish. Many runners are faulting the city or the race organizers - there wasn’t enough water, there weren’t enough aid stations, et cetera - but the real problem was lack of communication.

As we came around the bend approaching mile 19, someone on a loudspeaker was announcing that ‘the race is now over.’ That wasn’t funny. We’re dying in this heat, we’re trying to finish and you’re making horrible jokes.

Turns out it wasn’t a joke. Soon after, we were stopped by a race official standing in the middle of the course telling us we needed to walk to the next aid station and that we were not allowed to run. For the rest of the race, the clocks were turned off - lending credence to the idea that we weren’t getting official times - and police stationed around the course actively stopped participants from running, citing heat concerns.

The fire-department helicopter even did a low pass over us, blaring that we needed to stop running over its megaphone.

So we finish, feeling deathly hot but accomplished, only to find out that my 4 hour, 20 minute pace at the halfway point had turned into a 5 hour, 18 minute finish. Thanks, Chicago Marathon, for making me looking like someone who couldn’t manage his own body and pace.

The real problem with the marathon was lack of communication. Was the race cancelled? Could we still finish? What about times? Would they count? Who was in charge? No one, not even the aid-station workers who were in constant contact with the central authorities, seemed to know the answers. As I said, police were stopping us from running; the race authorities, however, took a softer stance, saying that we could finish if we wanted, but we needed to be careful.

And there doesn’t seem to be any information about this police stoppage. In fact, the only major media outlet I’ve seen with any mention of the situation was the Detroit Free Press, which noted

Organizers said they initially hoped to let those who had made it halfway complete the 26.2-mile race. But as the event continued, even those who had passed the halfway mark were told to turn back.

Some kept going, and helicopters hovered over the course while police officers shouted through a bullhorn and warned runners to slow down and walk.

But there are many people to be thanked and noted:

• The volunteers who stayed out for six hours on a record-breakingly hot day, who poured water and gatorade for us, who dug into their own pockets to purchase bags of ice, who cheered us on throughout the entire race. It’s an amazing feeling to have someone you don’t know tell you how great it is to be out there, watching.
• The two spectators who helped me, personally. When my legs cramped to the point where I needed to stop and stretch and I ended up with a Charlie horse, one guy grabbed my foot as I massaged the muscle back into place. As he helped me up and I began running again, someone else yelled out, ‘You’re a champion!’ I just wanted to finish, but thanks to them.
• My friend Tim, who raised more than $1,300 for the Children’s Miracle Network as a charity runner but was almost unable to finish. He trained hard for the race, he gave it his all, but he needed a little help to cross the final mile marker. Congrats to him.
• And, of course, my father, who drove up specifically to support me, and my friends Frank and Micky, who endured the heat just to cheer me on. As I came up to where they were standing near the end of the race, all I could think was that I needed them to be waiting for me … and they were.

While the entire thing may have been plagued with complications, it was quite the experience. Maybe next year will be normal weather, one where people don’t die while running. Until then, I’ll be running and getting ready.

I’m not much for spending a lot of money on my coffee; while I enjoy buying a good cup, it’s not something I do all the time. But the flavor of pumpkin is somehow the entire season, distilled: It’s playing soccer when you were a kid, it’s a crisp evening with a sweater; it’s going to football games on Friday night. So, naturally, I had to get a Pumpkin Spice Latte.

My first thought: Damn, that’s expensive. More than $4. The second: What’s in a latte, anyway? I bet it’s going to have whipped cream on top. I don’t want whipped cream on top. My third thought: Oh, they have pumpkin scones too.

‘Pumpkin Spice Latte and a pumpkin scone,’ I said.

‘You really like pumpkin, don’t you?’ she asked. Knew that one was coming.

In any case, it was great, I felt at one with the cool morning air, all that. Then my boss sent me the link an article on ‘the eight most fattening foods in fall,’ and instructed me to look at number three on the list. It was my latte.

I went to Starbucks’ nutritional information and discovered that I had just consumed nearly 1,000 calories. At least the marathon is this weekend. Looks like I’m going to need it.

Step one: You wake up to the sound of gentle rain, softly lulling you back to sleep.

Step two: You arrive at the office and recieve a call from the PR director of the Golden Knights, the Army’s elite parachute squad. ‘Thanks for publishing the picture of one of our boys in the last issue of the magazine,’ he says. ‘Would you like to do a demo jump with us sometime before this weekend’s Air and Water Show?’ You reply in the affirmative and he says he’ll call later in the day to confirm.

Step three: You make hotel arrangements in Tokyo for an next week’s school trip, completing your Beijing-Shanghai-Tokyo triumvirate of travel.

Step four: Your boss takes you to an upscale uplunch then gives you an autographed copy of ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ that reads ‘To Brother Nick Ziegler, in honor of my dad, Fr. Bob, [screenplay writer] Peter Hedges.’ You’ve never even seen the movie.

Step five: You recieve an e-mail from your former roommate offering Cubs-Reds tickets for tomorrow evening just behind home plate. Naturally, you accept.

Step four: You receive confirmation that you’ll be jumping with the Golden Knights tomorrow at 8 a.m. and that you’re ‘allowed to do anything you want, because the colonel said you’re the guy in charge,’ according to the staff sergeant doing the booking. This completes a childhood dream that began when you were four, attending the Dayton Air Show, when you dreamt of being either a Golden Knight paratrooper or a Air Force Thunderbird pilot.

Step six: You leave work to throw in the Windy City Darters finals, where you (speculatively, as of 4:56 p.m.) win the city championship.

And that, my friends, is how to have a Good Day. Updates in the morning.

Yesterday morning, however, I found myself in Denver, a city where only the most insane of things happen to me. On my first visit, I drank seven Long Island Iced Teas and ended up at a club where I was frisked by a masked man, because it was the venue’s policy to search all entrants for weapons. The second time I was here – for a business trip this time – I was told explicitly by my boss that I was allowed to have a good time, but that I needed to be ready by 9 a.m. the following morning, as it was my turn to drive.

So I stayed up until 5:15 and, when roused by my supervisor because it was, you know, my turn to drive, I believe I looked directly at him and said ‘What’s your problem, man?’

That didn’t go over so well.

In any case, I was expecting nothing less than the second coming of Christ while I was in Denver this time. While the Rapture didn’t happen, exactly, in the first two days I’ve been here I’ve experienced the following:

- a shooting at the state capitol, which is three-quarters of a mile from my hotel

- one of the people I’m staying with storming off at dinner on the first night and refusing to talk to us for the next hour, causing quite a scene in the restaurant;

- a tour of the Flying Dog brewery, which features label artwork by Ralph Steadman, the artist for Hunter S. Thompson. Nothing noteworthily insane happened here, but it was twelve kinds of hip.

- and the near-coup de grace, when a bicyclist weaving in and out of Denver traffic during rush hour was absolutely annihilated by a car. We’re talking flying, arms and legs akimbo, in the air and rolling up on the hood destroyed. The guy got up and walked away, somehow, but the woman driving our car was in no state to continue driving.

So I found myself in the non-enviable position of having the guy in the back seat run out and check on this accident victim, leaving me with a hysterical woman behind the wheel of my own car while I tried to frantically re-route us to find where this bicyclist (and the guy in our car, who chased this miraculously walking man to try and convince him to go to the hospital) during rush hour in a major city, all while trying to process what had just happened.

Don’t worry: It turns out the guy was okay and refused our entreaties to take him to the hospital. The rest of the night, thankfully, was low-key in comparison.

Day Three brings the end of the urban portion of this vacation, as we head to the summit of Pikes Peak (and hopefully get away from insanity). We’ll see, however, as with this luck there’s going to be a landslide or a mutant robot monkey attack.

Transformers is awesome. Megatron rocked. Optimus Prime is a tractor-trailer who becomes an imperial badass and has a sword that comes out of his right arm. Starscream turns into an F-22 Raptor and shoots things with rockets. It was loud. The girl was hot. Transformers kicks ass. You should see Transformers.

A review of Transformers that is merely an aggregation of other reviews

Yes, it’s loud, explosive and silly, but it also perfectly embodies the concept of a summer blockbuster with its simple good-guys-vs.-bad-guys plot, cheeky humor and flawless special effects.

A classic Michael Bay mega-movie. Interested in plot and character development? Move along. You’re blocking the view.

The final scene is pure teen wish fulfillment: Imagine making out with your girlfriend on the hood of your sentient Camaro, as your own personal robot bodyguard looks on fondly (all right, that part’s a little creepy).

8-year-olds of all ages, prepare to storm the multiplex!

Bay, at heart, isn’t a fantasist; he’s a literal-minded maestro of demolition.

It’s all about the sheer visceral rush of mega action.

And the final analysis

And that, my friends, is how best to describe Transformers, the movie: Five-dollar words and $25 million special effects used to make a 12-year-old giddy. In short, it was awesome.

All went as planned – and I even found a restaurant that served caipirinhas in small-town Illinois, so that was gravy – until we left. The roads out of town were all under construction, so as we sat in traffic we watched the skies on the horizon darken and become more and more ominous.

Not two hours after we left, a supercell tornado touched down. Normally this would be a bad thing, but I’ve never witnessed one in person – so I chalked it up as a loss. In the meantime, I was kicking it in Dubuque, Iowa, preparing for a wedding.

The world just isn’t fair sometimes. At least there are, y’kno, strip malls here.

And, without further delay, the first 1,000 decimal places of pi:

3.

1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510
5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679
8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128
4811174502 8410270193 8521105559 6446229489 5493038196
4428810975 6659334461 2847564823 3786783165 2712019091
4564856692 3460348610 4543266482 1339360726 0249141273
7245870066 0631558817 4881520920 9628292540 9171536436
7892590360 0113305305 4882046652 1384146951 9415116094
3305727036 5759591953 0921861173 8193261179 3105118548
0744623799 6274956735 1885752724 8912279381 8301194912
9833673362 4406566430 8602139494 6395224737 1907021798
6094370277 0539217176 2931767523 8467481846 7669405132
0005681271 4526356082 7785771342 7577896091 7363717872
1468440901 2249534301 4654958537 1050792279 6892589235
4201995611 2129021960 8640344181 5981362977 4771309960
5187072113 4999999837 2978049951 0597317328 1609631859
5024459455 3469083026 4252230825 3344685035 2619311881
7101000313 7838752886 5875332083 8142061717 7669147303
5982534904 2875546873 1159562863 8823537875 9375195778
1857780532 1712268066 1300192787 6611195909 2164201989

Yes, I’m a complete loser. Thank you for noticing.

Sunday was the perfect embodiment of that last point.

Tragically, I was up at 9 a.m. that morning to cook pancakes. I say ‘tragically’ because a) I had been drinking until 6 a.m. the previous morning (as in three hours prior), b) the Daylight-Savings switch caused an already long night to become an exceptionally long night and c) when my phone rang at 9:19 a.m. with the cheery ‘we’re here and ready to cook breakfast!’ announcement, the only response I could muster was a preverbal ‘arrgHHHH.’

But I quickly rallied, drinking pomegranate-and-Champagne mimosas while pouring myself a Bailey’s and coffee. Before you judge, I was still drunk and the only way to get through the day was going to be a large, large quantity of adult beverages.

You might be wondering why I was up so early. Sunday was the annual South Side Irish parade, which is renowned throughout the city as ‘the place where green beer becomes green urine, mostly on homeowners’ lawns.’ I had pre-purchased eight tickets for a bus ride there and back to the tune of $120, and I was definitely going to get the most out of my investment. All we had to do was put on green apparel, show up at a bar two blocks from my apartment sometime before 11:30 a.m. and have our drinkin’ hats on.

We kept our end of the deal. Casey Moran’s, unfortunately, did not.

As we walk up, there’s a school bus out front. While this was not exactly the transportation I was expecting, I was tingly with the excitement of being able to drink beer in - and possibly do a keg stand on - the vehicle that used to take me to grade school. Apparently all of Wrigleyville had the same idea, however, because the woman in charge of the event was trying to cram 100 people on a bus built for 50. It just wasn’t happening.

‘We’ll just catch the next one,’ I said to my friends. ‘They’re leaving continually until 11:30. Let’s go inside and do shots.’

‘That’s the last bus,’ the woman in charge says, having overheard my comment.

‘It’s 10:48,’ I say. ‘When I bought these tickets, it said we could leave at any time up to 11:30.’

‘Well that’s not right,’ comes the reply.

I have been drinking, so I have no problem with confrontation. ‘This isn’t going to work,’ I say. ‘You need to get another bus.’

The woman, eager to avoid conflict with me, my seven friends and the other 30 people in line behind us, capitulates. ‘I’ll call the bus company and have them send a bus back,’ she says. ‘But it could take a while.’

This is where the ‘the venue doesn’t matter’ part of the equation kicks in. For the next hour and a half, our best friends were styrofoam coffee cups filled with Miller Lite and a parking meter, because we stood on the sidewalk at the 3600 block of North Clark Street drinking, taking asinine pictures and generally being nuisances.

But here’s the funny part: I really didn’t mind all that much. Sure, after 90 minutes it was time to do something, i.e., get my money back and demand free drinks (both happened), but for the first hour, I was having a blast. We met a girl named Ivy who didn’t want to be our friend, but we tried to adopt her anyway. We gave directions to a guy whose face and shirt were covered in dried blood. We waved our beer-filled cups at cops driving by. When we finally gave up and went inside for the free drinks we demanded as payment, the bus showed up (of course), but by that point no one was even slightly interested in the parade.

So I never made it on the bus. I never made it to the Land of Green Urine. I never made it farther than two blocks from my apartment, in fact. But that’s what the spirit of the South Side parade is all about: Drinking and good people. I’ll call it a success.

I’ll also call it ‘a 24-hour bender with only three hours of sleep,’ but who’s really keeping score?

I figured the show was worth another look, so I found an entire episode. It took a tipping point named ‘John C. Reilly’ to push me over the edge, and I can now faithfully say that ‘Tim and Erik Awesome Show Great Job!’ is brilliant. Fast forward to 2:16 in, when ‘the only married news team’ segment starts and Dr. Steve Brule, played by Reilly, plays your greengrocer.

Advisory: Neither eat nor drink when watching this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qlYoEdvJV8

And as an added bonus, you can see what my brother’s doppelganger looks like at 7:59 in. That’s just freaky … this kid looks exactly like my brother.

My friend Katie just sent me a link to McSweeney’s ‘Recommends’ section, and ‘Awesome Show’ is currently on the list. I do hope this show will stay on for the rest of my life. Thanks for the tip, dad.

It was great and nice and fun to have the Senate of the United States officially recognize the organization I get paid to publicize – and it took care of the ‘you need some sort of political acknowledgment for this ceremony’ part of the equation – but the concurrent resolution (109th Congress, second session, S. Con. Res. 81, for those of you who care), was about as bland as it gets.

Read it here. ‘Whereas, for 150 years, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity has blah blah,’ and so on.

In any case, I had forgotten all about the resolution; its impact on my life had been negligible. Then there was all this discussion about a troop surge in Iraq and how Congress wasted weeks debating a non-binding, concurrent resolution decrying the idea. A friend sent me a link to this op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle that quite nicely ties those two elements together.

So … we have a new Democratic-led Congress that wastes time saying things that hold no weight, that are said in the same tone as ‘good job, college fraternity’ and ‘we should have a National Horticultural Therapy Week.’

I’m just saying. Not that I’m saying.

One of the benefits – the *only* benefit, really – to staying home is that you feel awful. And feeling awful breeds food creativity. I know that I have one can of condensed cream-of-chicken soup in the cupboard, and I would prefer not to venture into the snowy outdoors to get more chicken soup, but I had a vision in my NyQuil-induced fog: I also have a chicken breast in the freezer. And vegetables. And noodles.

I was in business.

This may be old hat to those of you who are, say, Depression-era cooks, creating dinners out of necessity and maybe an old shoe, but for bachelors in the 21st century who enjoy cooking occasionally – but more often than not order in – this was a discovery on par with cold fusion.

Thus was born the Beatnik Industries Chicken-Noodle Soup Recipe. Gather:

• One chicken breast, frozen
• One can condensed cream-of-chicken soup
• Assorted chopped vegetables: carrots, onions, green peppers, et al.
• Noodles of some sort
• Pepper and basil

Boil the chicken for an hour or so, covered, on low heat in about six cups of water. After 30 minutes or so, add the vegetables, pepper and basil. Don’t add salt – the prepared soup will be more than enough. After an hour, pull the chicken out and rip it apart with forks for that ‘I made this on the farm without using a knife’ feeling. Add the condensed soup to the water and vegetables before adding the chicken again, as the meat makes it difficult to stir. Put the chicken back in and drop in some noodles.

Don’t add too many noodles, though, because they’ll soak up all your water. Cover and cook for another 20-30 minutes on low heat.

Eat it and marvel at how good a 19th-century nanny you would have made.

Bret Stieghorst was watching an adult movie … His downstairs neighbor … heard a woman screaming … ran up the stairs and broke down the door, all while brandishing a three-foot long military-style sword.

Read it all here. Only in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Of course.

I was searching for a ZIP code aggregator, and came across this fun piece of coding out of MIT. Go ahead, play around with the ZIPDecoder. Put in your ZIP and watch the map constrict to show your area. No matter what anyone says, there is some logic to the post office.

Link the second.

And, very quietly, Google Maps has added the Chicago Transit Authority stops to its repertoire.

Link the third.

I use a Mac at home but I use the Autumn picture on many of the Windows PCs I work with. It’s simple, it’s not tacky, and it reminds me of, well, autumn.

But where can one find Autumn? Luckily, Vanity Fair is on the case.