Bond, Beers, and Bellyachin’

I guess it was last Saturday night, during SNL, when I saw the commercial.  It immediately made me scratch my head and mumble, “Whizza whazza whozzit?” into my beer.  I’m speaking, of course, of the new James Bond Skyfall-related ad for Heineken.

That is, this one:

Now, I heart me some Bond and, honestly, I have absolutely nothing against this spot as a piece of advertising itself.  Unfortunately, though, I do have a problem with Ian Fleming’s most well-known secret agent pimping a Dutch beer.  Of course, as it’s both Thursday and this is a beer-related rant (totally a coincidence, I assure you), I climbed up on the soapbox the Hoperatives leave out for me on Wednesday nights when they put out the dog.

Never you mind that the dog and I both end up outside for the night.  Just…shh.

Anyway, I wrote a bit about Bond and British Beer Betrayal today in a Hoperatives post.  Maybe you’d enjoy reading it?

Speaking of beer…just, you know, on a more personal level, it appears that I’ve finally come to the crossroads I’ve been both expecting and fearing for the past 6 weeks or so.  It’s time to pick a priority: either the running, or the beer.

For the first few weeks, I intentionally tried not to have to make a choice.  I figured that if I could have my cake and drink it up on Thursday nights after completing the week’s workouts, I’d both be more inclined to stick to the running and also have some kind of reward to offer myself.  If this all sounds a bit familiar, yes, I did, in fact, ramble on about this exact topic a few weeks ago.

The thing is, though, schedules sometimes have to be tried and erred before you know what’s really going to work.  And at this point in the game, it turns out that I really need to run more often in the morning than in the evenings.  That is, unless I want to do it after the kids go to bed.  But honestly, the thing is that the Puddinpop became my running buddy in the early stages of this thing, and I hate telling him I’m going for a run alone.  Also, I keep my pace better when he’s with me, since I intentionally don’t try to dash through it since he’s got long-for-a-kid-but-still-shorter-than-mine legs.

Left to my own devices, see, I usually end up not so much jogging as running like the Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse is finally upon us and there’s a host of grey-skinned meat-sacks shambling after me moaning, “Braaaaaaaiiins.” In other words, I’m gasping like a goldfish in the hands of that mean kid from your old neighborhood, Jimmy “The Fish Asphyxiator,” after barely half a mile.

That’s not really, you know, optimal.

So, long story short, mornings are better for running.  The problem, then, is that come Friday morning, I’m going to have a run to get in.  And as much as I hate to admit it, there’s just no way that enjoying myself thoroughly through Beer Drinking Thursday is going to lead to anything positive on Friday morning.

Here I am, then, finally forced to decide between my comfortable, well-established, Thursday beer traditions and a run that won’t have me hating my feet, legs, lungs, the pavement, and the stupid air for playing so hard to get tomorrow morning.

Believe it or not, I’m putting the easier run before the more awesome Thursday night.

And if that’s not a sign of the Apocalypse, I just don’t know what possibly could be.

Hopefully the world doesn’t end right away, though.  Because otherwise I figure I can make up for it with a newly instituted Beer Drinking Friday.

I guess I’ll survive until tomorrow.

So, yeah, I’m being all responsible and making decisions like, you know, “a grown-up.”

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

In fact, let’s never speak of this again.

Pud’n