Catchup: On Trips and Exercise Books and… and… and…
Wow. I do this. I go through long periods where I don’t post. Here’s to being better about it! Can’t promise I won’t immediately relapse. Past performance is likely an indicator of future results.
Anyway. Here’s a big update, just for kicks.
It turns out, Houston and Western Louisiana are both hot. I know this is shocking news. But we just returned from visiting my family in the south, and seeing some old classmates, and the trip was delightful. But while I acclimated and even did my runs after a couple of days, my northern flower busily ducked from air conditioned human container to air conditioned human container to avoid the sometimes-over-100-degrees-and-hey-we-haven’t-factored-in-humidity-yet crazyweather. The trip was good. But I kept thinking we were in a heat wave because I haven’t really lived there in over 10 years. No. It’s just, that’s the way summer is down there. It’s unusual when there’s a break in the heat. You end up wishing for a cool wave, which sounds much less poetic than a heat wave for some reason. Or a slip and slide. Either/or. You are more likely to get the slip and slide. You will REALLY want it in 6 to 8 weeks so order it right freaking now. Maybe pay extra and get it tomorrow.
Did I mention running? Oh yes I did. I’m still doing it. That’s notable. Not doing the distance work I was planning to do at this point, but… I’m doing it. I’m feeling MUCH better physically right now, though. So I may start ramping up distances soon. But I’m doing half hour workouts every other day and just getting things right in my body. Weights are also in there somewhere. It’s a health-recovering area that I needed and I need to remember that after the next half-marathon.
The runs in the south were… slow. Very. Slow. I. Was. Running. Kind. Of. Like. This. With. The. Out. Of. Fashion. Two. Spaces. After. A. Period. Typing. And. Everything. (And in preview it seems like Wordpress is removing my anachronism but rest assured - I hit the space bar twice after every period that ends a sentence like a CIVILIZED HUMAN BEING.) But in a way it was a good thing, because I know that the thing I need to do most is just SLOW DOWN. Many people tell me this. I’m currently browsing through this book and, among everything else in the world that you may want to learn about running, it also references the tried and true axiom that I ignore again and again. Train first for distance, second for speed. But man do I like seeing 8 minute mile times on my garmin. Discipline - it shouldn’t be just for breakfast anymore. I’m resolving to be better on this point. Let’s see how I do!
It strikes me that one can build a routine for almost anything. Travel, for instance. I don’t even think about the fact that all my pocket-stuff goes into a bag pocket while I am in the line for security, so that there’s little to no chance I’ll set off the metal detector. At some point my brain just started doing this stuff for me. The only real concern is that at some point, I’ll be doing this stuff at the wrong place and time. That may be the definition of senility. “Sir, why did you put your keys in your bag before you got to the front of the grocery check out?” “Where are the Burns-O’s???”
I had a fifteen year high school reunion while I was down in the south. It actually was really good to revisit and reconnect with people. Other than one guy who is over in Germany currently, I am the furthest out. I sometimes wonder what is it about myself that made me go so far away from any semblance of roots. I’d like to say it’s because I felt a need to go out into the world and prove I could be self sufficient. There may even be some truth to that. But mostly, other than specifically choosing Charlotte North Carolina to start out my career, many of my choices were binary or (uh) trinary (??) in nature. And never, after that first one, did I think… “I have to get further away to prove I can make it!” I went where they would pay me to go do things. One can try to be philosophical about these things as one ages, but doesn’t it sometimes seem, in retrospect, that whatever decision one made was the only truly logical one?
But family in the south would say moving up to Yankee-land is the furthest thing from logical.
The Book That Eats Like A Meal. I finished Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion while on vacation. I would tell you how long it took me to get through that book, but I am a little embarrassed by it and I also don’t remember back far enough, to a time when I was not reading it. Thoroughly wonderful book. But so dense. I interspersed lighter reading (comic books!) into it, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
After finishing it, I immediately started a short story collection my wife had on her person. After reading The Confusion, it was like some sort of brain candy. I seriously could skim entire paragraphs and not miss much! With Stephenson, I’m sometimes circling back because I missed something, and it didn’t seem important, but it was. Or maybe it wasn’t important but it just got interesting. With this new book, the pages melt away! It’s the difference between reading a technical treatise on which I have great interest but also on which I must pay attention to detail… and fun words. It’s a delight and a great reminder of Why I Need A Cleanser After A Stephenson Book.
I’ll be craving that last book in The Baroque Cycle soon enough, though. I’ll be embarrassed by how long it takes me to finish System of the World too. Don’t worry about that.
That’s all. How’s that for a mess of an update? As we might say in the south. You know. “I just went out and picked a mess of peas.” It’s great too because you don’t know if I mean it as in, well there’s a big old bunch of words in this update or… man, what a disjointed piece of junk this update is. Great fun! Fun words are fun. (I am in an odd mood as I write this).
One Response to “Catchup: On Trips and Exercise Books and… and… and…”
Ali - June 24, 2009
1. Yay for posting again!
2. I’m concerned about the child on the slip n’ slide package. He doesn’t seem to have a face. Also, he appears to be about to do a bellyflop into a very small amount of water, presumably with hard earth immediately underneath it.
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