16- Me, Rockin It.

Well I spent all summer running my ass into the ground for this Chicago Half Marathon, cause Josh's sister asked if I'd be her running buddy. I went running like every other day, in the middle of the afternoon heat, all summer. Knees started getting tired of it.

But we did it. We did it kinda slow, but the weather was nice, and there were millions of people cheering us on (which was pretty awesome) and we got to run down Lake Shore Drive. They had bands, people standing on the overpasses, the radio pumped in through speakers, the works. And free granola bars, bananas, COOKIES, and LOU MALNATI'S afterwards!

Some pictures I uh, copied from the website of photos. You can even see our finish time! I got lots of cheers for "Nathan" because of my brother's shirt I like to wear running- he made it in kindergarten. People liked seeing your name and cheering for specific people- it was nice.

Here's Rachel and I. She got a few cheers for Marquette also. I saw this camera man, clearly.

I felt good that we finished the race, but we ran pretty slow. But my legs were also pretty damn dead afterwards. We all hobbled to the car (I realized there was no bloody way I could ever run a marathon simply cause my knees would die, without some serious painkillers) and I got a ride to the train- problem is, me hurrying out of the car at an intersection to the train station got my leg to cramp so bad I could barely walk. WOW that hurt :)

In other achievements, I got chosen to present at Pecha Kucha this summer. Basically its 9 people presenting 20 slides for 20 seconds each, on whatever in the world they want to- its a presentation event held in cities all over the world, a few times a year in Chicago- artists, architects, photographers, musicians, and all kinds of other creative people have presented. I was stoked and nervous that I got picked to present. I spent probably 10 hours putting together 6 minutes and 40 seconds of slides.

I talked about things that inspired me, hoping that they would inspire other creative types in the audience, since the inspirational slides that other people showed were always my favorites.

Here was a slide of macro (super close up) photos I took in Europe. One is from a smashed berry in a park in Barcelona, another is a berry on a tree in the gardens of the Palace at Versailles, and the last is a candy blue raspberry in a candy store in Zurich. Then on the side is my friend John, who is obsessed with macro photos (especially of gross stuff) and inspired me to take my own. And turns out my camera takes superb ones.

Here's a slide of the book I illustrated. I don't remember what I said about this... oh yeah, this was just a little "about me" (some self-promotion since I needed a job at the time).

Here's a good little shot my friend took, of me presenting. MAN I was nervous, and I knew it'd go by fast (I rehearsed TONS of times to get down exactly what I wanted to say in each 20 seconds). I didn't use my notes or the timer though- and still managed to say MOST of what I intended to :)

Afterwards they always like taking pictures of all the presenters together. There were a couple other architecture related people and I mentioned that I needed a job during the presentation.

I'd been to a couple Pecha Kuchas before this one so I knew what to expect, and knew that people either don't have near enough to say for each slide, or they stumble over their words trying to get everything out. I've been to a couple more and would definitely present again. So much fun, so interesting, such a novel format. And if someone sucks, they're gone in 6 minutes 40 seconds, if they're awesome then you're just enticed enough to Google them for later...

By the way Pecha Kucha is Japanese for "chit chat".