Run the Republic

It took a while to get the photographer to cough up these pictures so this post is not exactly real-time. Turns out one of my workmates organized a team for a fundraising event sponsored by the American Lung Association. The event required participants to "run" up 53 flights of stairs to reach the top of the Republic building in downtown Denver. It was chosen because it is the highest skyscraper in the city.

I use the term run lightly since not many people are actually running past the 3rd or 4th floor, and it becomes strictly an exercise in survival. You would think that the American Lung Assc. would choose something that would be good for your lungs, but I can say with certainty that I nearly coughed up a lung upon reaching the finishing line. I think they were pumping in extra cold outside air into the stairwell, and coupled with the exertion my bronchial tubes must have gotten over stressed. I wasn't alone...it sounded like a TB ward up there.

Being the oldest team member (by a number of years), and in keeping with the current political spin-doctoring on TV, I felt it was my obligation to set a low expectation of my personal performance. Consequently, my goal was to arrive at the finish line ahead of the guy with the kid in the backpack. Mission accomplished...(but not by much). Ok so I did get to start ahead of him, but Cathy and I both finished in a little over 14 minutes beating the 15+ minute average time for all participants. When asked about the rumor that Cathy beat my time by 6 seconds my official response is "No comment".

"Dude Looks Like a Lady"

In the theater days of William Shakespeare the parts were all played by men, be the character male or female. But in the days of Golden High School there aren't enough males in the theater to even cover the guy roles so the men are sometimes women... but sometimes the men are men, and women are women...well, you get the point. Anyway, Jaimie was recently cast as the role of sword slinging Capulet servant, Gregory, in the most recent Golden High play presentation "Romeo and Juliet". This was a bigger part than Jaimie has had in some of the other productions, and included several speaking parts which she performed very well. It was also a full length production, uncut, and unedited. I can attest to this 'cause I sat through the whole thing in the extremely uncomfortable hard wooden (and sometimes broken) seats in the high school theater. Luckily, for the theater parents, Golden High School is being completely rebuilt, and that includes a brand new theater which is reported to have padded seating. On the other hand, this was a bit sad for the theater kids as this is the last production to be produced on this stage. The new school should be ready for next year.

The play even got some live press coverage, and we got to see some of Jaimie's sword-play on the morning news.

I was never a scholar of classic literature, although I'm sure some cruel english teacher forced me to read some of these "classics", but as the bodies began to pile up in the first scene I had to wonder how this ever got billed as a love story. They say that today's TV is violent, but apparently in Shakespeare's day it didn't take much of a dirty look to get yourself skewered. The sword fights were very well done, and, in fact, a professional stage sword fighting coach was hired to teach the kids how to choreograph the fight scenes. In the end, with more bodies piling up in the crypt, I had to wonder; if only they had had e-mail instead of inept messengers maybe Romeo and Juliet could have lived happily ever after.