Thought Smorgasboard

Just have a number of (hopefully) quick ramblings for today. The biggest of which is probably this story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070307/ap_on_re_us/abortion_lawsuit) that I read a few days ago. A woman from Boston got pregnant in 2004 and attempted to have an abortion, only to find out several months later that it was performed incorrectly and she was still pregnant and by that time it was too late to have an abortion. She is now suing a planned parenthood clinic and 2 other doctors (who failed to identify that she was still pregnant a few weeks after the failed abortion) for the cost of raising her child, who is now 2. Honestly, I don't know exactly how I feel about if her case has merit or not because I just can't get past the idea that she is in essence suing people for failing to kill her child. Assuming that the kid is eventually going to find out about this, how in the hell will they ever manage any sort of normal relationship? How is she ever going to be able to look him/her in the eye and tell them "I love you"? I could definitely understand her case if the child had ended up having a birth defect because the mother, not realizing that she was still pregnant, had continued drinking, smoking, etc. But that does not appear to be the case. Of course, the other thing that bothers me about this is that I can see it being used as fodder for the more revolutionary right-to-life groups, and for once this is an argument that I won't be able to automatically dismiss out of hand.

Moving on . . .

Christy and I had a great time in Arizona last weekend. Time in the sun was desperately needed after a particularly miserable February in Chicago. Seeing three baseball games has me very keyed up for the season and very anxious for it to start, but at least I have the NCAA tourney to tide me over. We stayed at a very nice place (The Scottsdale Plaza Resort) that I would highly recommend to anyone. Rather than a hotel room, you get your own little villa and they have 5 heated pools and jacuzzis throughout the complex that are all open 24 hours. I even managed to get out and run twice to keep up with my marathon training. It was a great change of pace to be able to run outside instead of on a treadmill. Can't wait for it to warm up a bit more so I can run along the lake here.

Last Friday I saw two pretty good movies: 300 and Zodiac. Judging by the fact that 300 took in over $70 million this weekend, there's probably not very many people left who are going to see it that haven't already. In any case, it was everything it advertised itself as; stylized, ultra-violent, and epic (as well as keeping with the gladiator tradition of being unnecessarily homo-erotic). It's also another film (like Sin City and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) where almost all of the settings only exist digitally. I can't get over the fact that all three of those films manage to look twice as convincing as any of the new Star Wars films at about one fourth the budget. Zodiac was also very good, although since it's based on a true crime story that remains unsolved, it lacks the nice neat wrap-up that we've come to expect from most films in the thriller genre. Also, at 160 minutes it requires quite a bit of patience to get through and, while I can't think of anything in particular that should have been cut out, I'm certain that if some tough decisions had been made to trim it by about 20-25 minutes the result would have been a tighter, better-paced film. Still a good film overall for anyone who likes the thriller genre.

Speaking of the NCAA tourney (well, 2 paragraphs ago I was), as of today I've got Oregon, Ohio St., UCLA, and Georgetown in the Final Four with UCLA winning it all. That's liable to change about 4 or 5 times between now and Thursday though. Of course, last year my "lock" of the first weekend was Michigan St. over George Mason, which I was just a bit off on considering George Mason went on to become the lowest seed to ever make a Final Four. Just goes to show how much I know. In any case, Go Illini!

Marathon update: I'm up to being able to run 4 miles without stopping at just under a 12 minute pace. Trying to do that 5 days a week. I'm hoping I will be up to 5 miles by April 1st; at that point I might cut back to 4 days a week. I don't see much reason to run more than 20 miles per week.