Resolution 9 - Clint Eastwood Quest - 50% Complete

I never heard of today's film, 1997's Absolute Power, I am covering for the Clint Eastwood resolution blog entry today before buying this BluRay collection it was a part of. Not even two minutes into it I was hooked as I was introduced to Eastwood's character, Luther Whitney, a retired Korean War vet turned cat burglar vet. Whitney is in a routine heist when someone with....absolute power (Gene Hackman)....stumbles in and becomes part of a greater crime right in front of Whitney.

Of course, the movie turns into an edge of your seat mystery thriller where I was just jonesin' to see which direction it would go in next, and I was constantly kept guessing on every twist and turn the mystery took. Would Whitney break the perfect cover for his heist to expose this crime, or would vice versa happen upon him, or would ace detective Seth Frank (Ed Harris) manage to figure it all out and bring everyone to justice?

Eastwood is once again outstanding. Of course I am biased towards him, but the man is just so damn convincing with every line of dialogue that trickles out of him. Do not mess with Eastwood or he will seek revenge! When the bad guys try to mess with Luther, you cannot help yourself but to get behind the antihero. Like the last film I covered here, Dirty Harry, there are several standout quotable moments, but this time delivered in a far less hokey and quite deadly serious type of way that really made an impact with me at the film's pivotal moments.

The last time a mystery/crime film had its hooks in me this good was The Town, and exactly like that film I just loved how this kept me on my toes on how everything unfolded and played out. I cannot think of a single role that was miscast, as everyone brought their A game, especially with Eastwood, Hackman and Harris being absolutely amazing in their roles. For a little while I was surprised to see 24's Mr. and Mrs. President Palmer (Dennis Haysbert and Penny Johnson) in this film in supporting roles I never saw them in before, just a few years before they were brought to the mainstream as the first couple in one of my all time favorite cable dramas.

As if you could not tell already, Absolute Power is an easy recommendation! Especially if you find yourself craving a good mystery/crime drama, then go right this instant add this to your Netflix Queue now! It is not on streaming unfortunately, just the disc, but if you want to follow along on the Clint Eastwood collection fun with me, here is a link to the box set I have off Amazon.

Past Eastwood Collection Blogs

Dirty Harry
Kelly's Heroes
Where Eagles Dare
Gran Torino

Bonus Resolution 3 - 30 Days of Running - Halfway There!

We are halfway through June and I have only missed running on one day for Altru's #30daysofrunning promotion. Only day I missed was procrastinating too long to see if the rain would let up where I should have just hit the treadmill at the gym instead. Speaking of rain, we have had a ton of it lately this month. I do not think I am exaggerating too much by saying that 15 days into June it seems like we only went three or four days without rain.

I mentioned last blog how we started a running group with several friends. Week two of the running group was quite the run as myself, Ryan and Justine ran and Justine's husband, Mike joined us on bike. It was a heavy overcast and you could definitely smell rain in the air, but I was hoping we would manage to sneak by the brunt of it in our planned 40-45 minute route along the greenway. It was not to be however, about 10 minutes in it started sprinkling, and not another 10 minutes later it was full on pouring for the final 15-20 minutes of the run. I guess I am lucky I went this long running and not getting caught in a downpour. Part of it felt great, but my super squishy shoes were not appreciating it afterwards.

Yesterday was the third meeting of our running group which consisted of myself, Ryan, Justine and Adam. I was really looking forward to this day as it was the first time I ever went trail running. We drove about 20 minutes out of town to Turtle River State Park, and hit a variety of trails. I was a little trepid on our way there as there was another overcast looming and a few scattered sprinkles on the way there, but luckily it cleared up by the time we started running. Hitting the trails was an experience like no other, I finally got to take advantage of the trail running shoes I have possessed for too long without going trail running, and the wide array of twists and turns on its narrow paths, along with a ton of hills made it a fun and challenging run throughout.

We all took turns leading and basically kept turning off at random forks in the trails as we saw fit. It was a recipe for disaster, but Ryan and Adam biked on these trails a few times before and had a general idea where we were heading and in the end we eventually found our way back. I guess I would be remiss if I did not mention one of my lows occurred on this run as we ventured off the trail off a rather steep decline for a shortcut back to the vehicle for a water and bugspray pit stop (the skeeters were out in full force after all that rain) and leave it to me to lose my footing on this treacherous, slightly muddy decline and slide on my stomach about a good 20-30 feet before I somehow lunged onto a nearby branch. I only suffered a few light scratches and managed to regain my composure and make my way down....all for naught because our shortcut turned out to be a dead end and we had to go right back up, luckily without hazard this time around. Minus that tumble however and I had a blast tearing up the Turtle River trails and look forward to doing it again.

One last run to recap, and that was from last Thursday on 6/13 when I participated in my fifth race this year, the Hillsboro 10k. Hillsboro is a small town of about 1,500 about a half hour away. I was looking at the results of their 10k last year where it featured only 30-some odd racers and with my new PR I set at the beginning of the month at 50:21, and comparing it to the top 10 of the 2012 Hillsboro race I thought I stood a marginal shot of cracking that top 10. There must be a big buzz going on in the running community this year, because after looking at the results the amount of finishers for both the 5k and 10k nearly doubled with about 300 in the 5k and 55 people in the 10k.

It was a pleasant surprise to bump into Chris and Lyzz again at this race after seeing them in Fargo. Lyzz definitely has the running bug and she was thrilled to be competing in her second race. I felt pretty good about my tempo and pace I was keeping for this race, especially considering I went on a good practice run with a few runners from the local running club the day before and was able to maintain a 8:40 pace for five and a half miles. However, I did notice a bit more of a competitive field at the front of the pack and my hopes of cracking the top 10 quickly went out the window. I still had a backup goal of breaking the 50 minute mark for the first time ever in a 10k, so that was what I was shooting for.

The race flowed about the same as the Dewey 10k where the pack thinned out after a good mile or so, but there was usually a few runners within reach of me. In the first half of the race another green shirt runner passed me and I tried my best to stay on pace with him for a km before he shook me off. A short while later a runner in a red shirt just snuck by me for a short while before I caught up with him and we ran side by side for at least 2-3 km before I finally went ahead. It felt a little weird intentionally running alongside him to maintain pace, almost cheating. All I know was we were side by side for about 15 minutes and then I went to quickly wipe the streaming sweat off my face with my shirt and when I looked up, he was (presumably) behind me. Yes, I managed to not look behind me again for this race, minus one part where there was a 180 turnaround in the track.

I felt pretty good about my pace on this race, and according to my RunKeeper app, I set a new PR for myself with a 7:56/mile pace. I never thought I would break the eight minute a mile barrier for that minimum of a distance. For the last half of the race I saw the same two runners side by side quite a distance ahead of me, I would guess about nearly a minute ahead. The last mile I really stepped it up into high gear determined to pass both of them before the finish. I only managed to pass one, and finished a few seconds behind the other, but that last push helped enable me to just sneak by my old PR from a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately I did not break my 50 minute goal mark, but I did vanquish my old PR by a whopping four seconds with a final official time of 50:17. As I was crossing the finish I was in disbelief at how close I was to my same time as before and thought for sure I would beat 50 minutes. Oh well, a new PR is a new PR. As far as my placement went, I finished 23rd out of 55 in the field. Not a bad day, and I definitely loved the small town vibe this race was held in. Hopefully, I will manage to stay on track for the rest of June and not miss another day.

Shout out to Chris for taking these pics, and props to coworkers Nikole and Danelle for the shirt I was wearing in the photos. I am in a volleyball league with several coworkers and Thursday night is usually our volleyball night, and Danelle & Nikole made some slick custom shirts for our team to debut that night. I was unable to make the game because of the race, but met up with Nikole before I left town to at least sport our team's colors at the race!

Resolution 8 - Beat 6 Specific Games -1/6 Complete!

I hate to call it this early, but I have a bad feeling I will not complete this resolution by year's end. I set it at the beginning of the year thinking if I concentrate most of the year on this specific set of adventure games and western RPGs I have been neglecting forever I can at least knock them out this year and have them out of the way. Of course, nearly halfway into the year I neglected these three things: all the running I have been doing has been eating away at my usual game time (a sacrifice which I am happy to make by the way), I am easily distracted by other games and that a lot of these games are long! Ok, ok, here are the six games in question:

Fallout 3
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I have not started Miles Edgeworth yet, and have only put 15 hours into Skyrim, and it has been at least a few months since I have threw it in. All I played in Mass Effect 3 was several rounds of its awesome wave based coop multiplayer with a friend and have yet to start the story as I am only just a few hours into the main story of Mass Effect 2.

That leaves me with the two primary games I want to discuss in this blog with Fallout 3 and Apollo Justice. Fallout 3 I started when it came out late in 2008, and much like another Bethesda game, Oblivion, I only got the urge to play it in week intervals a couple of times a year. Thus chipping away at Oblivion at that pace took me just shy of five years to beat the core campaign and all the guild side quests that resulted in 1000 gamerscore. Fallout 3 was almost a similar tale, though I guess you can say I technically completed the core Fallout 3 campaign within two years after its release according to my achievement progress. I also immediately hopped into its DLC sequel, Broken Steel to pick up where the campaign left off and quickly plowed through that within a week or two. However the last two and a half years I have slowly been picking away at the four remaining DLC packs. I would just pick one and plow through it within a week and wait several more months before hopping into the next one.

About a month ago I threw in Bethesda's post apocalyptic open world RPG, Fallout 3 again and did as many as miscellaneous quests that awarded achievements that I could do from the core disc. I could not do a few of them because they became unavailable at certain points past the main story. I finally hopped into the last DLC pack, Point Lookout and am glad I saved it for last. I loved the big open world it delivered compared to the other smaller in scale DLC packs (for the record I loved them all except for Mothership Zeta, which I appreciate for being different, but was an absolute bore). Its core campaign was only a few missions long, but like the main game, there was enough side quest content to do and discover that I easily got a dozen hours out of it before completing everything there was to do in it. I had a final achievement score tally of 1160/1550 for Fallout 3 with 95 hours in total playing time. I am tempted to just put in another hour or two to get one or two more achievements I am close to grabbing, but I should really just move on.

Apollo Justice I officially hit the halfway mark on. It is the fourth game in the cult hit lawyer/detective Ace Attorney game series, and like the other games before it, is split up into four cases. The first case is usually a short tutorial case which takes about 2-3 hours, with the second and third cases being longer affairs that are around ten hours each with a final epic case being around 12-15 hours. At least was the case in the original trilogy. The original trilogy on the DS were all GBA ports, with the exception of the original game having a fifth bonus, DS exclusive case to show off the DS touch features and I vividly recall being shocked at what I initially thought would be a throwaway "bonus" ended up lasting nearly 20 hours.

Apollo Justice is the first Ace Attorney game designed from the ground up for the DS. Graphics are about the same minus a few noticeable little flourishes here and there with the 2D sprites which were previously unmatched and a few brief 3D modeled cut scenes which were never possible on the prior games. I just finished the second case and am loving the trademark witty dialogue and charm the series always had on display. I am still shocked at the surprising fate that has bestowed the series trademark protagonist, Phoenix Wright in this installment, but is definitely keeping me on my toes for the mysteries that are still to be revealed in the final two cases.

The reason why Apollo Justice is taking me forever to finish is because most of my DS game time is usually a few times a week for 15-20 minutes before passing out. I usually beat 2-3 DS games a year this way, but getting the Vita a little over a year ago has caused me to split up my handheld game time and my DS progress has since suffered. Now instead of DS time 2-3 times a week, it is more like 2-3 times a month. Last couple of weeks I stepped it up a bit to finish this case, so I hope to at least finish Apollo Justice by the end of the year. And I have a good feeling I can get to Mass Effect 2 and 3 as they are much shorter affairs compared to Bethesda games. We shall see how the year progresses, and while I would like to finish all six by year's end, four is looking more realistic.

Bonus Resolution 3 - 30 Days of Running - Week One Start

At the Fargo Marathon two weeks back I saw a booth from Altru Hospital promoting a local health trend to make June the month of running and calling it #30daysofrunning. The goal is to promote on social media getting out to run/walk/jog and promoting active lifestyles and to do your best to be active for the entire month of June. Well, June is now upon us and I made the pledge on their website to do my best and run every day this month!

I usually run three to four days a week as it is, so I am going to try and sprinkle in shorter two to three mile runs on my usual off days. Even though it is June 1, I guess you can say I am now on day two of running consistently. Last week I was running with friend and coworker Ryan, and we bounced around the idea to try and get a weekly group fun run with as many coworkers and friends that we know of. So we both sent Facebook invites to about 20 people to try and make Fridays a weekly group run sort of deal. We did not have the biggest turn out for the first day as a total of four of us made it out. Three to start off initially, and then another friend caught up with us on bike as we ran four miles around the local greenway. I am going to try and keep this up at least for the summer and try to think of themes to spruce it up a bit so we can hopefully have a group two to three times bigger come summer's end.

The official start of #30daysofrunning kicked off in grand fashion with a local 10k in town, The 8th Annual Dewey Du 5k/10k run or 5krun/25kbike/5krun duathlon. Ryan and another friend Adam are big into cycling and were debating on doing the duathlon, but my current bike I have had since 1995 is nowhere near up to snuff to handle a race. So I settled for the 10k run which started off at the fabulous new Choice Health & Fitness Center in town and worked its way down to the local greenway and looped back to Choice.

Mother nature was not on our side again today as it was a brisk 48 degrees at race time. That would not have been too bad in itself, but there was also 20-25mph winds and a decent rain going on as well. Luckily the rain stopped just minutes before race time, and the wind only got to be a factor in a few brief spots of the race. After a few minutes of running I managed to get the body heat flowing and shook off my prerace shivers in no time.

I ran my best pace ever with a 8:11/minute pace according to my RunKeeper app, and my first two miles I managed to just squeeze in under eight minutes, while the rest were under nine minutes! That is over a minute faster than the pace I ran in Fargo! Just goes to show you managing to get some actual sleep in the night before a race works wonders! Just under 300 people registered for the race, but I have no idea how many were for the duathlon, the 5k and 10k as results are yet to be posted, but I want to give a rough estimate of around 150-175 people at the starting line for the 5k/10k race, as the duathlon started a half hour earlier.

After the pack thinned out after first kilometer, I noticed I was near the front of the pack. I was worried about overdoing it again and flaming out early like in my first two races this year, but I managed to maintain a steady pace and kept passing people. I felt a little bad because early on near the front of the pack there were two kids who could not have been more than 10 years old just absolutely killing it, and I was about to pass them and they looked back and stepped it up a bit and kept me behind them for a couple of minutes. A felt a little guilty passing these adorable future track stars.

A short while later a guy in a green shirt passed me, but I passed him about a km later, and not too long after that he caught up with me and we were running side by side for about three kilometers. The pace felt a bit faster than what I am use to but I tried to convince myself I could keep it up for the remainder and finish strong. That was not to be the case however as after about three kilometers of running side by side he managed to shake me off and pull ahead. I never lost him in my sights though and he kept gradually pulling ahead and I think I only finished no more than two minutes behind him.

I did not flame out like I thought I would, and somehow, someway I managed to successfully not look back once during the race to see how close the pack was behind me as I just knew that would ruin my psyche. Early on in the race, going down a little hill I counted a dozen racers in front of me, and guessed there could not be more than 17-18 people ahead of me. Only two other racers passed me for the duration of the race after the pack thinned out, so I am hoping for a top 20 finish. We shall see when the official results go live and I will make sure to post an update to this blog once that happens.

I was hoping to catch up with said dude in green shirt after the race, but my mom and her boyfriend caught up with me after the race to congratulate me and we celebrated with a hard earned breakfast, and many cups of coffee. This was a fantastic way to kick off #30daysofrunning and hopefully I can manage to maintain it the rest of the month. If I manage to pull it off I am telling myself a great way to finish the month off would be to do a full loop around town on its four major roads; something I have always wanted to do!

Update - Results went online and it turned out only 56 people ran the 10k, but I finished 15th overall, way better than I thought when I was hoping I might have just squeezed into the top 20. I had an official time of 50:21, which is over three and a half minutes better than the 10k I ran in February with a time 53:57. Like I said I never looked back so I had no idea how close the next racer was behind me, and it turned out according to the finish times, the next person finished over two minutes behind me. Really proud of my performance out there, and from what I gathered from other runners is that breaking the 10k in under 50 minutes is a big feat in and of itself, and I nearly did it!