Friday Finish — Caboose ‘08 #24

June 14, 2008 | in Hella Sound | 2 Comments

Friday Finish—Caboose is a new weekly feature to help you mentally wrap up the work week and hit the weekend in stride.

Ahhhh the weekend.

For many, Saturday and Sunday means shedding the work week yolk, taking time to spend with family and friends, going on a long run and potentially catching up on action items for your domestic vertical.

Okay, I was kidding with the business buzzspeak—if you're thinking of groceries as deliverables, you know you need a few days off. Here's some suggestions for what to do with your newfound freedom:

Got a long run planned for Sunday? Mix things up a bit and find a new running route with MapMyRun. MapMyRun allows you to search by city or zipcode for a route. Details include distance, elevation, user reviews and starred ratings. The route is charted on a Google map, and can also be viewed in Google Earth.
Speaking of Google Earth, if you get a kick out of maps and geography and haven't played with this, put aside an hour, download the application and get sucked in. It's an absolutely fascinating way to explore the world, and has a million supporting (free!) resources like integration with Wikipedia, real-time flight data and seismic information for the fault line curious. Third-party features are offered in KML, an XML variant, and are extremely easy to use. You may get hooked.
Racing this weekend? Check out Paul Stofko's Marathon Tips: Nutrition and Planning. They're intended for marathoners but are applicable to folks of almost all race distances. Go kick some butt!
Gotta mow the lawn? Or maybe do some similar household manual labor? Might as well check out some music while you're at it. Here's a couple recommendations from one of our favorite bands, Pinback:
- Autumn of the Seraphs
  
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  Pinback's newest release (although almost a year old), this is a solid, tight, cleanly produced album showcasing their unusual "math rock" song structure, unique instrumentation and harmonies and distinct vocals. We purchased this the day it was released and it remains in our regular playlist.
- Summer in Abaddon
  
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  Probably Pinback's "breakthrough" album—although most folks have no idea who they are. Fortress received quite a bit of radio play in San Diego (their hometown), but Non Photo-Blue is a beautifully crafted song from the opening riff through the denouement. Yes, I said "denouement"—I didn't go to college for nothing.