I've been doing these monthly reports on my blog for years summarizing my running activity. Usually, I reveal how many miles I ran for the month, my longest single run, and how many days I ran. But in April I decided to stop that, only because my running tends to now be indoors in my own house, running up and down the long hallways and through rooms. I know I get good training workouts this way...I completed a half-marathon and a ten-mile race earlier this year...but it's next to impossible to accurately translate what I do into actual miles run. So let me just say that my running is as good as ever and that I will continue doing it primarily indoors with the air-conditioner blasting full force. If I decide to go outside, then I have a relatively large back yard to run laps around as well. I had opportunities in May to run on Saturday morning in one of the weekly, free Depot Parkrun 5Ks that Gainesville is fortunate to have. But then something else comes into play to work against that...which is that my evolving emphasis with my running is in pacing, not racing. And my experiences in that race...I think I've run it some six times so far...are that they tend to stress fast finishing times and personal records, and for good reason: it's a race, after all! But my vision of where I want my running to go is more oriented to covering longer distances at what I personally regard as a reasonable pace for me...I frankly don't care how my speed stacks up against other runners. And, with this in mind, I'd like to participate in races of at least 10K in length...since none are on the agenda around here then I'm content to run around the house instead and generally avoid the sweltering summertime heat and humidity. As for my walking, I just measure my mileage on my Fitbit and record it, most of it coming from the extensive walking I do over the course of the week at my job...
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Monday, May 30, 2022
On This Memorial Day
On this Memorial Day I honor those courageous fellow Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the armed forces. We are such a blessed nation, and sometimes I feel that not only others, but myself as well, sometimes lose sight of the many things we have to be thankful for. Included in that are our precious liberties...which brings me back to remembering those wonderful men and women who died protecting them.
Sunday, May 29, 2022
My #29 All-Time Favorite Album: Let It Be by the Beatles
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Last Public Phone in NYC Removed
I was watching Good Morning America this morning and saw that New York City's last public payphone station...the enclosed booths disappeared long ago...has been removed, to be placed in a museum. I remember in the old Superman fifties TV series how the Man of Steel would use telephone booths as a convenient changing station from his alter ego Clark Kent whenever a need for his superhuman heroics arose. Then, in the 1978 Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve the first time Kent needed a phone booth he looked at an open-air phone station...like the one they just removed...and realized that it just wasn't going to work. The old movies are full of folks using those good old phone booths...Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and The Birds, James Bond's Doctor No, and the classic spoof Airplane! instantly come to mind. Oh, and the 2002 Colin Farrell thriller Phone Booth naturally puts the outmoded old structure center stage. And there's that old Gomer Pyle episode where Jim Nabors tries to put coins back into the phone that had earlier released them all...and gets arrested for theft. Just think, back in those primitive bygone years people used to actually go outside without any phones to serve as a lifeline to whatever services they might need to access...scary times, scary times. I guess it's our era's version of the old cliché where the wise old man would tell the spoiled young'uns that, in his day, he used to have to walk five miles in the snow to school. Sadly, a smartphone is nowadays often deemed so crucially essential that some even feel hesitant to leave it behind them when they go into another room in their own home. It's the real-world version of Bilbo Baggin's "precious" ring when one day he realizes he misplaced it and goes into a panic...
Friday, May 27, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Jean Yoon
If every time men had sex, they risked death, physical disability, social shunning, a life altering interruption of their education or career, and the sudden life-long responsibility for another being, I think they'd expect a choice in the matter. ---Jean Yoon
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Taking in Daisy as Our Newest Family Addition
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 4
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
About the Primary Results Last Tuesday
Monday, May 23, 2022
Personal Development Podcaster's Take on Technology Addiction
Sunday, May 22, 2022
My #30 All-Time Favorite Album: On the Threshold of a Dream by the Moody Blues
Saturday, May 21, 2022
Watching Golf and Horse Racing on TV Today
As I await the pivotal third game in the NBA Eastern Conference championship series between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat (go Al Horford and Jimmy Butler!) this evening, two more "minor" sporting events are going on this afternoon: the PGA Championship tournament (third round) in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, Maryland. If I told you that the temperature at one of these events was 57 degrees and for the other it was 91, you might think the golfers were sweating it out while the horse racing attendees would be wearing sleeves...not so, there's a record-setting heat wave going on right now in the American northeast, while the weather has been wreaking havoc with the golfers in Tulsa, for the first two days blasting hot air with strong winds from the south and today abruptly switching to cool, strong winds from the north...the wildly changing scores are reflecting the tumult. As expected, Tiger Woods...and I wish him the best...received an excessive amount of attention even though he just barely made Friday's cut and shot a 79 today to go into the final round, at this writing some 22 strokes off the lead. I expect the leaderboard to change a bit leading into an exciting final round...at this writing a couple of relative unknowns (Zalatoris and Pereira) are leading it while more recognizable names like Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson and Cory McIlroy are right behind them. As for the Preakness, the "second leg" of the annual Triple Crown of horse racing for three-year old thoroughbreds, Rick Strike...the surprise Kentucky Derby winner...won't be running in it. Still, the race should be interesting with Derby runner-up Epicenter the strong favorite and Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath the second favorite. The field has only nine horses...other than Epicenter, Simplification and Happy Jack the entrants did not run in the Kentucky Derby. The media fanfare is also much less than with the Derby, NBC televised pre-race coverage slated to start at 4 pm Eastern Time, with the race to take place at 7:01. I think I'll go for Secret Oath. The PGA Championship is being televised on CBS...wonder what kind of weather they'll get tomorrow...
Friday, May 20, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Regina Spektor
There's an artist I listened to for the first time, and I really didn't like them. I had some kind of adverse reaction, and later, it became my favorite thing. ---Regina Spektor
I can relate to Regina Spektor's above quote, because over the course of my listening to popular music... going all the way back to the early 1960s....there have been several acts that I initially disliked...well, some I even despised. Yet, a few of them redeemed themselves to me and I now regard them as favorites...some of them have made great albums that I have included in my Top 30 Personal Favorite Albums list that I will begin going through each week, starting in a couple of days this Sunday. And Regina, one of my favorite musical artists of this current century, figures to be on it. When compiling my list, it pained me to leave out many very worthy albums, but had I not done so then this project would have been too long...thirty albums over thirty weeks sounded more reasonable. Speaking of Regina Spektor, her new studio album, titled Home, Before and After, is set for release next month: I can hardly wait!
Thursday, May 19, 2022
Constellation of the Month: Virgo (the Maiden)
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 3
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
NBA Conference Finals Set
Being off more than usual recently has enabled me to better follow what's been going on with the National Basketball Association playoffs, which Sunday entered the conference finals stage with Boston handily beating Milwaukee in their Game 7 and Dallas doing likewise to favored Phoenix. Now it's Boston vs. Miami and Dallas vs. Golden State, the former starting their series tonight and the latter tomorrow, with subsequent games to be played on alternating evenings. With the Celtics and Mavericks prevailing, I saw two teams overcoming their opponents' star talent by coalescing as a team and beating their foes to the ball, play after play...that was especially true with the final Dallas-Phoenix game, although the Mavs' Luka Doncic is a premier player, a star on anyone's team. Three of the four series in this previous round went my way...Phoenix's disaster at home against Dallas was the exception. But I like who's left in the playoffs and can live with any of them taking the title, although I'd still like to see the Heat face off against (and beat) the Warriors in the final series. Well, at least through this coming weekend I should be able to watch some of the games until I need to return to work....
Monday, May 16, 2022
Podcaster Discusses Pervasive Brainwashing in Our Time
On one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, motivational coach Rob Dial discusses how our modern society provides ample opportunity for brainwashing us. To give an example as to how pervasive this is, he cites a Yale University study in which people were asked to read a short passage on an individual and then answer questions regarding him. But on the way to the study, participants were escorted to the elevator by one of the hosts and then asked to briefly hold a cup of coffee while he tied his shoe...lasting only about 10-15 seconds. Some participants were handed cups of cold coffee while with others it was hot. With that being the only difference in how they were treated in the study, the results showed that those who handled the cold cup had a more unfavorable opinion of the story's character, ascribing traits to him like cold and unreliable...the ones with the hot cups answered more that he was engaging and strong. The point Dial is making is that even with our carefulness about filtering through biased data from media, much more subtle, unconscious "brainwashing" is shaping our opinions. Maybe we can't catch everything coming at us, but at least we can control to some extent what...and who...we expose ourselves to in order to avoid undue and unwelcome influence. I don't know if there really exists a reliable news source that isn't trying to influence how I think...just the simple selection of a topic and the order and duration of its presentation send a lot of conscious and unconscious signals. I'm trying to tone down my exposure to TV news with all the nonverbal cues that are given along with the "facts" that divide the stories into the good people and the bad...maybe the old-fashioned newspaper is due for a comeback, its own built-in bias notwithstanding: at least there the reader can skip over what the editor deems as most important to other more pertinent stories. Dial also stresses that the very people we interact with, as well as the shows and movies we watch and the music we listen to, can cumulatively play a large role in shaping our opinions and outlook...although we may claim that they are only reflections and affirmations of what we already believe. In the past few years, I've noted how people on a mass level are irrationally swayed by emotion-tinged issues and how they are presented on social and mass media. Look, I can't even watch a random commercial anymore without the creepy feeling that I am being taught a lesson in social engineering. And speaking of commercials, Rob Dial also mentioned them and the shift in advertising strategy over the past few decades from stressing the need for the promoted product or service in favor of creating an emotional desire to purchase it, often through associating it with positive, unrelated symbols and humor: get the suckers to feel better and they're more likely to open up their wallets...
Sunday, May 15, 2022
Just Finished Rereading Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
I first read Stephen King's novel Wolves of the Calla, the fifth installment of his seven-part The Dark Tower fantasy/sci-fi series, around 2008 if memory serves me correctly. A pretty long book, it was published in 2003...with the series' last two volumes, also fat, released just the following year. It shows how an accomplished writer like Stephen King could sit down and get stuff done, including finishing a long, drawn-out series, if he is really serious about it: understand, George R.R. Martin? Wolves of the Calla, unlike the previous book Wizard and Glass, has several stories running concurrently and hops back and forth between them. The main story, reflecting the book's title, is set on an alternate Earth and the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis, in which every generation or so is beset by what it calls "wolves" invading it and abducting one of every twin pair of children...twins for some reason predominate there. The taken children are gone for some months and then return with their intelligence mostly gone, to live out the rest of their short existence as "roon". One of the townsmen, his own children threatened as the robot Andy has forecast the wolves to be coming again soon, rallies the others to finally stand up and fight the wolves...the "priest", a Father Callahan, helps him by saying that there is a group of gunslingers approaching that may be able to help. The group, or "ka-tet", is none other than series protagonists Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy. What happens between them and the townsfolk and the eventual encounter with the so-called "wolves" form the basic skeleton of the book, but there are other important subplots including Father Callahan's story and his origin in an earlier Stephen King novel, Susannah's pregnancy and a new multiple personality, and the heroes' attempts to save a cryptic empty Manhattan lot from being bought by nefarious interests...this last story goes to the heart of their quest to find and rescue the Dark Tower, which holds all of reality together through beams that are being destroyed through the efforts of the villainous Crimson King. Well written and easy to follow, I enjoyed going through this book once again and look forward to the next one, which I'll start reading as soon as I check it out from my library...
Saturday, May 14, 2022
Full Lunar Eclipse for Sunday Night/Monday Morning
Melissa brought to my attention that this Sunday night we're having a full lunar eclipse, dubbed "Blood Moon" by apparently melodramatic folks, that should be visible in Gainesville, barring overcast skies or fog. It is set to begin at 9:32 pm with the penumbral eclipse, progressing to partial eclipse starting at 10:27 and then on to the full eclipse starting at 11:29. The eclipse reaches its maximum point at 12:11 am Monday morning. Then the eclipse reverses, the full eclipse ending at 12:53, the partial at 1:55, and the penumbral at 2:50. A lunar eclipse is different from a solar in that in the latter the effect is caused by the moon blocking the sun while in the former the moon is on the opposite side of Earth from the sun, entering our planet's shadow (or penumbra) to cause the eclipse. This particular eclipse should be visible for most of North America and South America, but not for the rest of the world. I'm looking forward to watching it...
Friday, May 13, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Corrie ten Boom
Thursday, May 12, 2022
People Magnets
Some people are like walking Facebook accounts, attracting "likes" and real-life emojis everywhere they go. I call them "people magnets" as a general term, although the reasons for their popularity are usually more specific. It's hard for me to criticize any of them for this alone...it's the people hanging all over them that bother me. Yet, if for the sake of argument at school or my job I was assigned to tutor or train, say, famous pro basketball jock Kevin Durant or rock legend Mick Jagger, in a subject or my assignment for two or three days while in a public setting, I doubt that I could get very much done because of the clear distraction that their presence would cause with others continually dropping by to chime in with them and pour out their affection. Yet although I actually like both Durant and Jagger, I would be stuck in a situation where I was yoked with someone open to distraction and still being expected to perform my job duties in the middle of it all while both being thoroughly marginalized and thrown completely out of my normal work routine. But one doesn't need to be a famous athlete or entertainment celebrity to be a people magnet...people attractive to the opposite sex, as well as certain individuals with underground connections and influence, can fulfill this role and, I imagine, are much more likely to plague my humble existence. But the result is the same: instead of being able to function at work in a respectable manner I would have to endure the repeated encroachment of other people on what I am being forced to do along with being demeaned throughout the process. The only solace is that the "people magnets" tend eventually to move on to other conquests and leave me alone...
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 2
Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Rough Ocean Reminds Me of Upcoming Hurricane Season
Yesterday at Daytona Beach Melissa noted to me that the ocean seemed "angry", with lots of choppiness and medium-to-large waves...the color tended to be greyish-green, kind of stormy looking in spite of the clear skies. It was very windy as well...must be something brewing offshore. I was watching The Weather Channel this morning and Stephanie Abrams was discussing a big Atlantic coastal storm, centered off the North Carolina coast and causing problems on their shoreline. The whole storm thing reminded me that we're coming up on the start of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, officially beginning on June 1st. Normally talking about tropical storms this early would seem a bit premature, but in recent years we've seen quite a few named storms in the first couple of months of hurricane season...and even earlier. In any event, here are the names for 2022...at least through the letter "W": Alex, Bonnie, Colin, Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Ian, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Martin, Nicole, Owen, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tobias, Virginie, Walter. In case some of these names seem familiar to you, they're all recycled from 2016...except for M and O (Matthew and Otto were bad enough six years ago to retire). The general forecasts are for a slightly more active than usual season, so I imagine I'll be tuning in to TWC even more often than usual. Of course, my favorite scene is of one of their meteorologists "roughing it up" on a threatened beach while pedestrians are casually walking by in the background...I'm sure I'll be watching a few of those this summer/fall...
Monday, May 9, 2022
Podcaster's Not-So-Secret Ingredient for Success: Rest
In one of his Mindset Mentor podcasts last week, personal development coach Rob Dial stressed the need for rest as an essential element of successful endeavor. Well, I've always felt the same way...whether you are learning something new, working out at a sport, or tackling projects, taking breaks is an important part of consolidating gains and building the body and mind back up. Dial claims that there is evidence that the brain uses these periods of nonactivity to prioritize what matters most and build the necessary neural networks...sounds right to me. But in advocating rest, he emphasizes that crashing out in front of the TV or getting hooked for hours on social media or video games doesn't fill the criteria he means for refreshing, reinvigorating rest. Better to find a quiet, pleasant place to sit or lie and either let the mind focus on the immediate surroundings or give it a positive theme to think about...no point in trying to turn off the thinking since your brain always thinks, just as your heart always beats and your lungs always breathe...but you do have a degree of control over what you're thinking about. As for me, I find at work that just sitting down for a few seconds at times, taking some slow, deep breaths and looking at the wall facing me...temporarily putting my immediate work out of my thoughts...helps to greatly reduce built-up anxiety and makes me sharper as I return to my tasks while helping to interrupt any negative thinking that I had been engaging in. On a broader scale, it's also fun to take a day or two off every now and then and either hang out at the house or travel to a pleasant location, which is what Melissa and I just did the last couple of days with our trip to the beach...
Sunday, May 8, 2022
The Movie You Can't Take It With You
You Can't Take It with You, which I watched on DVD yesterday, was a successful Broadway play, adapted to screen in 1938 and directed by Frank Capra. It starred Lionel Barrymore, Jimmy Stewart, and Jean Arthur and garnered the Best Picture Academy Award for that year. The setting is Manhattan in New York with two families, the rich banking Kirbys and the eccentric Vanderhofs...headed by elderly Martin Vanderhof (Barrymore)...vying for control of a small, strategically located city block. The Kirby firm's young vice-president Tony (Stewart) has fallen in love with his secretary Alice (Arthur), who happens to be Martin's granddaughter and lives with him in their big house, along with her other sister (and her husband), her mother and father, and two friends invited to stay with them. Each resident is encouraged to engage in their own personally fulfilling projects, no matter how silly they seem or how much (or little talent) they have...a direct challenge to the "push-push-push" mindset characteristic of the dominant rat-race culture exemplified by the Kirbys. A culture clash between the two families in inevitable and it unfolds in great comedic form. It's clear that the Vanderhof way of life is the preferred way and that folks like the Kirbys need to just pick up a harmonica and play along, abandoning their pointless pursuit of worldly wealth: after all, you "can't take it with you". Although the Vanderhof philosophy of "doing your own thing" is tempting...and I follow it to an extent...I also believe in paying my taxes and see going to work in itself as good, too. Even Martin Vanderhof employed a couple for housekeeping and cooking at their home: these two weren't in a position to just stay at home and collect stamps. I thought the movie was great, but I first saw You Can't Take It with You on TV in a PBS Great Performances Broadway show in the 1980s starring Jason Robards as Martin Vanderhof...he was remarkable. As for Frank Capra, who directed several memorable movies of that bygone era, my first exposure to his work curiously wasn't with feature length movies, but with the Bell Science films we used to watch in elementary school during the late 1960s...my favorite one that Capra directed was The Strange Case of the Cosmic Ray. Going back to You Can't Take It with You, I guess the main thing I got from it is that you have to be true to yourself and not let your life become submerged and dominated by others...
Saturday, May 7, 2022
Enjoying Watching Televised Kentucky Derby Coverage This Afternoon
I've been sitting here at home today watching the afternoon's buildup to the annual Kentucky Derby, three-year-old thoroughbred horse racing's first jewel in the Triple Crown. Last year Medina Spirit, trained by Bob Baffert, won a close race over Mandaloun but was eventually disqualified over the failure of a post-race drug test while Baffert was suspended...technically, he is barred from active participation in any of this year's Triple Crown events although he has trained two of the more favored horses in the field of twenty, Taiba and Messier up to six weeks before race time. Other favorites in 2022 are Zandon, Epicenter, White Abarrio and Mo Donegal. I like Baffert and miss his presence...seems at least to me like the violation was a kind of "gotcha" thing that some in racing authority wanted to hang on him...well, that's just my own take. Still, I'll be rooting for both Messier and Taiba to do well when the race goes off, planned starting time around 6:57 pm...I also like White Abarrio. The event at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky is always a big fashion event with outrageously colored outfits worn by both women and men as well as heavily ornate hats...if you're into that sort of thing. NBC's ongoing coverage is showing other races on the program at Churchill Downs leading up to the headline Derby...it's fun picking a horse and seeing how it runs. If I were into horse racing more, I would be following earlier qualifying races in other locations such as the Florida Derby, Blue Grass, Wood Memorial, Santa Anita, Louisiana and Arkansas...I'm sure it would make what happens later today more meaningful. I just hope that whichever horse wins the Derby this year won't have the victory later snatched away...
*********
Afterward...wow, in one of the greatest upsets in the history of horse racing, 80-1 longshot Rich Strike came from behind at the end, edging race favorite Epicenter for the victory. This horse, a couple of days ago, wasn't even in the field of twenty but only got entered at the last minute when another horse was scratched. UNBELIEVABLE!
Friday, May 6, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Eleanor Roosevelt
Thursday, May 5, 2022
Just Finished Rereading Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
Wizard and Glass is the fourth novel in Stephen King's seven-part fantasy/science fiction series The Dark Tower, published a year before the renowned popular writer was nearly killed when he was run over by a van while walking down a country Maine road...that incident would greatly influence how he concluded this series five years later. In Wizard and Glass, protagonist gunslinger Roland Deschain and his "ka-tet" of fellow quest travelers Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy have just survived riding on a maniacal train named Blaine, which has deposited them in an area very much like Kansas but different in various aspects. While they recover there, Roland relates his promised story about what had earlier happened in his life at the Barony of Mejis, in which he and two friends, Cuthbert and Alain, discover evidence of insurrection by John Farson, enemy of the established order and general destroyer of civilized society. It's all a part of the mystery surrounding the Dark Tower, which seems to hold all of reality together and which is under siege from a sinister power...this is Roland's quest, to find the Tower and restore order. In Mejis he encounters Susan Delgado, a young woman already promised to bear an heir to the town's mayor ...Roland and she fall in love, and the story is divided between their relationship and the simmering clandestine rebellion known to many of the area's residents. It's a tragic tale but very exciting, with the evil Rhea the Crone as a kind of witch with possession of an equally evil glass through which she can view others...very much like that globe the Wicked Witch of the West uses in The Wizard of Oz. Wizard and Glass is the most coherent of the seven main Dark Tower novels, and this alone makes it stand out. But you really need to read the first three in the series in order to know what's going on. I first read this series more than a decade ago...it's fun to reacquaint myself with its remarkable characters and vistas...
Wednesday, May 4, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1984 Science Fiction, Part 1
Tuesday, May 3, 2022
Three Good Teachers on Teacher Appreciation Day
Monday, May 2, 2022
Podcaster Rob Dial Talks about Our Amazing Lives and Gratitude
In his Friday Mindset Mentor podcast last week, personal development coach Rob Dial focused on how life is amazing and how gratitude is an effective tool to turn one's mind to what is truly important in it. He cites a couple of examples, the first being how people tend to complain about being delayed during their airplane flights instead of stopping to think how amazing that it is traveling this way, especially considering how people used to get from one place to another over the span of our collective existence: imagine, you're actually sitting on a chair in the sky! The other example he gives was how people either take their smartphones for granted or regard it as a bad thing. Dial counters that a cell phone is just a piece of technology, neither good nor bad. Yet it has tremendous power as he lists the myriad uses available from it...including the ability to access a huge portion of humanity's knowledge. I suppose that the younger you are the less impressed you are by the digital technology that pervades our lives, just as only a few decades ago there were people whose idea of traveling to Europe or other continents was to get on a boat for weeks, instead of hours by jet that we're accustomed to. Staying within a state of gratitude and aware of the amazing things in our lives, Rob Dial concludes, makes us more readily able to confront challenging situations with a sense of proper perspective while keeping us in a more positive and constructive attitude. This all sounds totally self-evident to me, but I admit to getting caught up in the stress of day-to-day living and losing sight at times of the remarkable things we have around us today...