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For a little while there, I was fairly certain that God just didn’t care for my presence in this world and was attempting to cause my death. Strike me down, Sith-style, if you smell what The Hearn is braising. In an effort to limit my girth, which has once again neared Rosie O’Donnell proportions, I have taken up running. Sadly, the good Lord appears to want me to be overweight, because as it turns out, running hurts. A lot a lot.

I was even going slow! We have a track around the buildings at work that I measured (with my bike, which has an odometer computer thingy) to be .55 miles (designed by Etruscans, or something, I think), and I was doing laps at a pace of nearly 7 minutes per lap. For those of you adding at home, this means I was running a mile every 12 minutes, 44 seconds, which isn’t enough to outrun a Swiss glacier. And I actually managed to run 5 solid laps, a distance of nearly three miles.

I’m told that after a short distance, your body wakes up to the fact that you are causing it INTENSE BLOODY PAIN and begins to flood itself with endorphins, which amount to naturally secreted heroin. For me, this was never happening. I began to think that God, in His wisdom, had simply not granted me the ability to create endorphins. I nearly gave up.

Then I had a brainstorm. Well, two, actually. The first was, “Screw this, let’s just see if we can get over 300 pounds and get on disability.” The second was, “Hmmm…perhaps I’m simply not causing my body ENOUGH pain to start the endorphin rush!” The next day, I laced up my venerable New Balance cross-trainers, stretched a bit, and took off. I wasn’t running flat-out, but roughly 85% of my maximum effort. By about halfway around the track, I was sure I was going to die, but I didn’t let up, and lo and behold, just a few hundred yards later, I had the unmistakable feeling of calm and lightness that comes only from high-grade opiates. It was delicious! It was delightful! It was probably Gordo sticking a dirty needle in my arm. Still.

I ran a bunch more laps, setting a personal record time for 3 miles, and went inside to shower. It was hours later before I figured out the downside of running without pain: the pain just hits full-force when the endorphins wear off, usually by dinner. And I was crippled. Oh, was I crippled.

Which is why it was probably foolish for me to have done it again the following day.

I have decided, unsurprisingly, that I really really really REALLY like hanging out with my son, babbling and tickling and drooling and all that. In a similar vein, I have also discovered that I really really REALLY don’t like showing up to an office every day, during which time I have to go for like 8 hours without seeing my son.

(This is something you sort of have to have kids to understand, but I can probably, in the space of this massive parenthetical aside, make an analogy for my pet-owning readers: imagine you have acquired a pet. A cat, dog, gerbil, whatever. Now imagine that your spouse attempted, for 13 1/2 hours, to squeeze this pet through an orifice on her body that is, normally, much smaller than the pet itself, and in the end they had to actually cut her open to get the pet out because the pet turned out to be ridiculously large. Imagine that this pet is completely unable to fend for itself, and you are required to tend to its every need, including feeding and elimination of poo. Then, imagine that this pet looks just like you. And lastly, imagine that every morning when you wake up, you go into your pet’s room, and he is so happy to see you that he grins from ear to ear and giggles. You can probably begin to grasp the nature of the awesomeness of this.)

So anyway, I think I need to figure out a way in which I don’t have to work anymore. My Plan A, inheriting the Viscountcy of Sidmouth, doesn’t seem to be working out, so I’m trying to figure out a Plan B. Possibilities include:

• Inheriting from actual relatives – a possibility somewhat limited by the fact that I am descended from no one with any wealth to speak of.
• Winning the lottery – In order to do this, I would actually have to play the lottery with some frequency, which is something I can’t bring myself to do.
• Writing a book, or recording a Grammy-winning CD, or something – That still seems like an awful lot of work.

Any ideas? I’m willing to try anything at this point. In fact, if you are interested in having me do some difficult work (political assassinations, wedding planning, etc.) that only requires a day or so of work per week but pays exorbitantly, I would entertain any offer.

You should totally call me.

I feel James Lileks’s pain, I really do. He probably wouldn’t believe me; his response would be something like “That’s ridiculous. You wear XL. Everything is XL or bigger,” which is true. But there’s XL, and then there’s XL.

For example: I have long arms and a fairly sizeable neck, like a football player crossed with a spider monkey. As a result, I buy shirts of neck size 17 1/2 inches, with 36 inch sleeves. Just finding shirts like that is a major challenge; most shirts are built such that the sleeve length is exactly twice that of the neck, so a 17 1/2 usually has 34 or 35 inch sleeves, depending on maker, leaving my wrists exposed, which leads to much tut-tutting from Goodwife Smith next door. (I think they already believe I’m a witch. I don’t wish to be branded a trollop as well.) When I do find a shirt that fits my extremities, however, I’m faced with another sad fact: major clothiers seem to assume that if you have a 17 1/2″ neck and 36″ sleeves, you have a 72″ waist. It’s like wearing a tent with buttons. I end up tucking 2 or 3 yards of material into the back, which is basically a signal to everyone “I BUY FAT MAN CLOTHING.” Luckily, my mother-in-law is able to remove most of this extra material and make my shirts look non-ridiculous.

My size problems exist with pants as well, though. I have an inseam of 34 inches. Luckily, pretty much every store carries pants in that length. Unfortunately, they tend to stock them up to only a certain waist-size, which is invariably smaller than what I wear. It’s as if the buyers make a certain assumption: people heavier than 225 pounds do not exist in their reality. Anyone who is tall enough to wear a 34″ inseam is also going to be built like bloody tent peg and require a 30″ waist. Anyone who needs a 38″ or 40″ waist, well, they can’t possibly be more than 5’8″ tall, so we’re not going to offer those pants in anything longer than a 30″ inseam. My favorite store shopping experience on earth is the mecca that is Target, but I can’t buy pants there. Their 34″ inseam pants stop at 34″ waist. The only things I can get in 36″ or 38″ waists are 32″ and 30″ inseams, respectively, and it’s getting too cold out for capri pants (though my ankles do look stellar in them).

I won’t go into great depth about hats, but there’s a certain fact that I wish hatmakers would realize: when a person’s head gets wider, it also gets deeper. I can get most ballcaps on, at the very end of their adjustment band, but they sit atop my head like a bloody beanie. Two notable exceptions: a John Deere hat that I bought in Texas many years ago that’s big enough to hold a moderately-sized watermelon, and an NRA hat that I got back in college when I joined for a year. (Don’t ask.)

All of this is frustrating, but compounding the situation is the fact that I appear to be on the cusp of “big and tall” status. If I go to an actual “big and tall department,” everything is WAY big. Like, 48″ waists and 40″ inseams. Ridiculous, gigantor stuff. Plus, it’s all made by Dickie’s, and looks like something my grandfather would have dismissed as “awful conservative.”

One shining beacon in the darkness has been Old Navy, which James doesn’t like because it’s Staggeringly Hip, but which I like because they have pants and shirts aplenty in my varying sizes. At this point I get 90% of my decent clothing there.

Now if I could just convince Nike and Adidas that some of the people walking the earth have feet requiring more than a C-width shoe.

I’ve decided I should get a job with Microsoft, or some other large company, to come up with better error messages. The old “fatal error: 0x03F33B458C out of memory” just isn’t cutting for me, because it doesn’t have much meaning to the average computer user.

“Fatal error? Am I going to die?” they ask, and I have to reply, “No, it’s just fatal to the program.”

“Oh. Am I going to have to buy a new computer?”

And I weep.

No, what we need are error messages that convey the true importance of the problem at hand. Here are a few suggestions I’d like to make:

I think this would be totally way better than the current messages, right? At least it’s entertaining. 404’d!

Whew. Things seem to have calmed down a wee bit in my office, and I think I finally caught most of the way back up on my mail and various tasks. By which I mean, I’m only like 2 years behind at this point. As the old saying goes, “God put me here on earth to perform a number of tasks. Right now I’m so far behind that he’s probably going to smite me and give my tasks to someone competent.” Or whatever.

Does God still smite people, or are we assuming that it’s just dumb luck and poor medical care? Discuss.

So: Texas, and trip thereunto. I had purchased plane tickets back in June, not long after Charles popped out, and long before we realized an important fact about him: at about 6pm every day, he gets moderately cranky and displeased with his lot in life, mostly because he’s tired, and partially because of the whole Hezbollah thing. Our flight down was, of course, scheduled for 5:20pm. The flight back up: 6:25pm. Peak Charles Sadness Time.

Even better, we decided it would be best to fly into Austin, to which there are no direct flights from Philadelphia. So we were dealing with layovers, and plane changing, and the distinct possibility that a baggage handler would lose the base to our carseat, which would force us to secure Charles to the backseat with chewing gum and strands of hair.

Charles was, of course, a perfectly good boy. Sarah and I were, of course, sobbing wrecks. Imagine the last time you were on an airplane with a screaming infant, and how annoyed you were at being trapped in an enclosed space with it; now, multiply that stress by a factor of ten. Luckily, for most of the flights Charles didn’t make a peep. This did little to alleviate our stress level. Scotch, however, did.

We discovered at some point that airlines routinely don’t assign passengers to the first 2 rows of coach class, reserving them for who knows what, and when you get to the gate you can request to be placed in them, if you get there early enough. So we did. On the first flight, from Philadelphia to Austin, we were in a three person row with some poor soul who clearly had done the same thing, but hadn’t counted on the presence of a small infant, and was NOT pleased about it. He avoided eye contact with us at all times, except for once when glanced over his way and he immediately poked himself in the eye with the safety instruction booklet.

Charles must have sensed the animosity somehow, because he tried to pee on the guy. We were doing a quick in-cabin diaper change (simpler than carrying him all the way to the back to use the john), and Charles decided to let fly just as Sarah was starting to peel the diaper back. We caught it just in time, although I did get pee on my jeans. This is something I’ve grown to accept about fatherhood: I will, most of the time, smell strongly of urine and rancid milk.

We landed around 10:30 Central time, gathered our luggage (packing light is not an option where infants are concerned), and made our way to the rental car counter, which was right by the baggage return. Handy, that. Even better, the rental cars were parked right across the street! We didn’t have to take a bus driven by a toothless drunk to get to our car? I nearly wept for joy, which meant I dropped a suitcase on my toe, which caused me to weep fo’ realz.

We loaded up the car, and I drove while Sarah and Charles slept. The drive was about 2 hours, and was actually rather pleasant, except for when a deer ran out into the road and I discovered that the rental-car model of the Pontiac Grand Prix is not equipped with anti-lock brakes. Scared the bejeebers out of Sarah; Charles didn’t even wake up. I wasn’t able to ascertain the opinion of the deer on the situation, but I’m guessing it was “What the heck, man? It’s midnight! What are you doing out? Jeepers. I hate humans.”

We arrived in Mason late that night and got set up in Sarah’s parents house, which was originally constructed in the late 19th century, with additions and outbuildings built over the next century or so. It unfortunately burned a bit back in the 90s, but has been almost completely restored to its former glory. Sarah’s parents have been working hard on it for some time, taking up to 2 months out of every year to drive down and paint/decorate/repair. I myself spent a couple afternoons helping Charles the Elder rebuild the old fence that keeps cows from wandering onto the homestead.

The morning after our arrival, Sarah’s uncle Fred came over to greet us, and he and Sarah’s dad and I went out to do rancher things. We “moved water,” which means moving around the massive irrigation sprinklers that Fred uses to keep his fields moist in the drought that they’re currently experiencing, and also stopped by the cattle auction to watch them, well, auction cattle. It’s pretty much what you think; they bring a bunch of cattle in, and a guy is rattling off a patter that pretty much sounds like “heeeeeeey-batter-batter-batter-look-at-that-heifer-ain’t-
she-sweet-she’s-got-a-nice-wiggle-do-I-hear-50-no-60-no-that-was-just-a-
twitch-I-guess-how-about-55-then-okay-that’s-totally-cool-now-60-65-70-
okay-sold-to-the-fat-guy-in-the-hat-no-the-other-fat-guy-no-you-in-the-
red-yes-you-you-just-bought-a-cow-you-idiot-etc.” It’s pretty neat, and they had barbecue brisket available for lunch.

The following day we stuck close to the house, because it was well over 100 degrees outside. I spent most of it shooting at things with Sarah’s dad, trying not to embarrass him too outrageously, but what can I say? If I can see it, I can hit it. I am that awesome. You do not want to step to this.

Wednesday we went into town and did a tour of the local shops. The town square has hit some kind of boom; when we were last in Mason, 3 or 4 years ago, there were one or two small antique shops and a few other specialty stores. Now, the stores completely ring the courthouse square, and we went into most of them so Sarah could buy presents for people that she likes. Luckily, Sarah doesn’t really like that many people, so it was a quick trip.

Thursday, we went to nearby Fredricksburg for more shopping and exploring. Fredricksburg is an interesting place; I sort of describe it as a mini-Austin. It caters to a sort of artsy, hippie crowd, and has a fair amount of upscale shops and art galleries and the like. It also has the Chester Nimitz Museum, celebrating the town’s favorite son. We bought a few things, and went to a hot dog place and had some seriously loaded down 1/4 pound dawgs. Mine: chili, cheese, and onions. I gassed up the car real good on the way home, if you catch my drift.

Friday was a travel day, heading to Waco, where Sarah’s grandparents live. We made a stop on the way at Harry’s in San Saba to purchase me some righteous new boots, as well as a stop at Weber’s gun store in Temple (also notable for being Sarah’s mom’s hometown) because I wanted a new pocket knife. We also went to a Dairy Queen for grub. The trip took, with all the stops, about 6 hours, during which Charles slept like a marathon-winner. That boy sure does love the car, I tell you what.

The time in Waco was spent visiting with family and relaxing; Saturday night was Papaw’s big 80th birthday party, so all of Sarah’s aunts and uncles and cousins were there, including Kelli and her husband Brandon and their Brood (the capital B is for big; they have 4 kids, all born within a year of each other, due to the magic of triplets and extreme virility).

We went to church on Sunday, and then just hung out on Monday and Tuesday, watching TV and playing with Charles. Wednesday we flew back home, and that was that. Then I went to work on Thursday and immediately wanted to kill a lot of people.

Worry not, I’m here. Team Hearn took a lengthy vacation to Texas to meet the relatives, all of which are awesome. I will have full details at a later date when I not swamped LIKE WHOA, so to tide you over in the meantime I highly recommend that you slide on over to CharlesHearn.com for all your baby photo needs.

They’ve moved me and the rest of my team to new digs, which so far has been totally sweet. The new office (which is actually an old office, but they got rid of a bunch of people (there’s a big mound out back that I assume contains the bodies) and so we were moved so they could consolidate and possibly get rid of the lease on my old building) is closer to my house and doesn’t require me to cross I-95 to get here. It’s farther from the data center, but I only have to go to NDC about once every couple weeks.

It goes without saying that I’ll have to go twice this week. Oh well.

This building is a vast improvement over the last one; for example, it has an actual cafeteria, instead of an eating area with some snack machines. Even better, the bathroom on the main floor has showers in it, and lockers, so as of today I’m riding my bike to work, as long as it’s not icy, which isn’t usually a problem in August. It’s a little under 5 miles, so it takes me about 20 minutes, which with traffic is about as long as it would take me to drive. And now I can burn roughly 500 extra calories a day, which is a pound of fat a week! If I can keep myself from compensating by eating entire freezers-full of ice cream, I should be Totally RippedTM by Christmas.

And while we’re on the exercise subject, my sister, Liz, and I have decided we are going to run a 5K in October. So that I might get a jump on training (and also because all my bike shorts were in the wash at the time), I went out Monday afternoon for a good jog. I was able to go a lot further than I had predicted; I ran for a solid 18 minutes (for me, about a mile and a half; I’m fat and slow) before the agonizing chest pains caused me to slow to a walk. In all, I calculate I went about 2.9 miles in 34:30, which definitely wouldn’t qualify me for the Boston Marathon. Hopefully in the near future I’ll be able to spend more time running and possibly cut a few minutes off that time; I’d like to do a complete 5K in under 30 minutes. Wishful thinking, perhaps. If wishes were horses, beggars would probably eat the horses.

You gotta have a dream. (Hopefully you all don’t have any of my dream, with the homeless people eating livestock in a visceral manner. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.)

Worth noting:

• The News Journal was kind enough to finally print a review of My Fair Lady. Good job, what with us having just 2 shows left, one of which is sold out! Nothing like timeliness. On the other hand, they did say I have operatic flair. Unfortunately, they made no mention of my sweet booty.
• The heat has broken, apparently! It’s only supposed to hit 90 today, as opposed to the near-three-digit temperatures we’ve been rocking all week long. Woooooo.
• Happy birthday to my pops, who is 347 years old.
• I was afforded little sleep last night, as I got home from the show at 1:30, and my wife awoke me to attend to Charles at 5. So forgive me for what I’m about to say: Mel Gibson is responsible for all the wars in the world. Good night, sugar tits.

All right all you Jack Samsonites put on your face eyes and listen with your hair ears because I have a QUESTION and I know at least one of my readers has an IQ above 40 and MIGHT be able to answer it so HERE. IT. GOES.

Well, actually, there’s some background first.

I’m trying to get into good shape. I tire of the low-carb diet because

1. I like carbs, and
2. If you go off the low-carb diet for a day, you’re totally screwed and basically have to start over.

So boo to that. Right now I’m just trying not to overdo my daily caloric intake, and ALSO I’m biking between 50 and 100 miles a week. My reasonably conservative calculations would indicate that I burn about 45 calories for each mile that I bike, so hopefully my total caloric output is lower than my intake and I’m burning off my ass in small amounts every day.

This would be diesel.

My digital scale at home seems to indicate I weigh about 235, which is fine, although at the doctor’s this morning (I went for an allergy checkup: I have allergies, they are fine) they weighed me, in my heavy clothes, at 234. So who knows. I might want to invest in a scale that wasn’t made in an 8th world country. So I have some ways to go.

In addition to my bike-riding, I’d like to do some kind of calisthenic workout every day that would help with flexibility and strength without bulking me up. It might be out of reach, really, but I wouldn’t mind being mad ripped without getting large; I’m already massive and scary enough without being massively muscular, so I’m not much interested in lifting weights. Also: weightlifting hurts, and I hate it. I’ve done a little poking around online, and the only thing that I really found that approximates an actual “program” is this thing by Matt Furey, who by most accounts is a con artist.

My question that I pose is this: if I were to develop a calisthenic program for flexibility and basic strength, what exercises should it include? I’m assuming I’ll need the basics, like pushups, crunches, maybe some chair dips, lunges, etc. I’d prefer not to duplicate efforts, and I’d prefer not to use weights (so I’d rather do, say, pullups, than bicep curls with dumbbells). TELL ME, PEOPLE, WHAT YOU THINK.

Okay, here’s the word:

• I’m not dead, although I did fight off a nasty case of food poisoning this weekend that laid me heck of low. I’m still kinda feverish, I think, with the sweating and chills and JUICINESS IN MY PUPPISS. (Glavin.)
• The show is going outstandingly (note: not a real word), aside from a major miscue on my part on opening night in which I failed to enter and missed an entire scene. Reason: I am an idiot. Luckily my role in that scene was to wander on, mutter some things to Eliza, and then lead her off the stage, so she noted my absence, said something to cover it, and just walked off. This assuages my guilt not at all.
• Charles is awesome. He celebrated his 2nd-month-day (or whatever) on Sunday, and tomorrow will be 9 weeks old. He weighs 16 pounds. According to the CDC growth charts, this is well beyond the 97th percentile, and is also very hard on my arms. I usually put more pictures of him up on his website every week, but didn’t get a chance last week; expect to see some shortly, however.
• It’s hot. Temperatures are expected to reach 100 degrees tomorrow. I am DIS. PLEASED. Mainly because I have a brush-up rehearsal for My Fair Lady at an unair-conditioned location.

And that’s all I have to say about that.