A few days ago, I strained my back a little while playing "double soccer" with my 40-pound mixed breed puppy Daisy in the back yard...I was losing my balance and instinctively jerked my back in a probably unwise way to keep it. But I've kept myself functional and active over the past few weeks, still available for races although a confluence of factors has seemed to impede me from this. The main running race I wanted to participate in during February was the Florida Track Club's Micanopy Ten-Miler on Saturday morning of the 11th. Unfortunately, not only do I get off from work late Friday nights, but they had forecast 90% chance of rain with thunderstorms for the entire Saturday morning in question. I had signed up for it but as a FTC member was spared an entry fee, so Friday night I decided to skip the race. I woke up the next morning and discovered it wasn't storming after all...I felt bummed out from the faulty forecasting. I ran the same event in March of 2022 and had wanted to establish a tradition with it. And although here in Gainesville we're blessed with a free 5K race (the Deport Parkrun) every Saturday morning, I just never got around this month to pulling my sleepy body out of bed to get out there by race time at 7:30. Still, I've been consistently running at home and walking, keeping myself in shape. As for March, on the 25th there is the annual Trail of Payne 10K run that's in Paynes Prairie south of Gainesville...I've always managed to avoid it over the years and, of course, it's on a Saturday morning. Looks like I'll have to change my sleeping and waking times if I ever want to run another race...and I'm now more than a little skeptical of my local weather forecasts. I'm looking a bit ahead to April 8th when there will be yet another half-marathon held from Hawthorne, going down the same Hawthorne Trail stretch I ran in another half-marathon on January 15th. What I would like is to get into the habit of running at least one public race per month, even if it is only the 5K Parkrun...but preferably a longer event...
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Monday, February 27, 2023
YouTube an Interesting Site for Exploring
Sunday, February 26, 2023
This Winter Ridiculously Warm Here in Northern Florida
Saturday, February 25, 2023
Just Finished Reading "And In the End" by Ken McNab
Friday, February 24, 2023
Quote of the Week...from Steve Jobs
Thursday, February 23, 2023
Podcaster's Notions about Gut Feelings Interesting but Possibly Flawed
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Weekly Short Stories: 1989 Science Fiction, Part 6
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Constellations of the Month: Canis Minor and Monoceros
Monday, February 20, 2023
The "Four" and My Imaginary Double Album
Sunday, February 19, 2023
Strong, Accurate Drives Crucial to Pro Golf Success
Saturday, February 18, 2023
Just Finished Reading Fit to Die by Ellery Adams
Ellery Adams is the pen name of prolific cozy mystery novel writer Jennifer, or "J.B." Stanley, who has produced a number of series of different-themed books since 2006. One of her earliest is the Supper Club Mysteries...I just finished reading the second installment, from 2007, titled Fit to Die. As in the opening book, Carbs and Cadavers, the setting is the fictional west Virginia town of Quincy's Gap as James Henry, a former college literature professor and now head of the area's public library, finds himself in need of shedding a few pounds due primarily to overeating...especially those pesky cheese puffs he just can't seem to resist. He befriends a circle of like-minded people, and they create an informal group called the Supper Club in which they encourage one another with their eating habits...not easy to do when temptation is all around! In Fit to Die, two opposites spring up suddenly in the form of two businesses. One is an ice cream shop and the other is a fitness studio...their owners, respectively Willy and Ronnie, both have their appeal to James and his friends...but one night Willy's store burns down, with a fatality, which is attributed to accident although the circumstances seem suspicious. As for Ronnie Levitt, her enthusiasm and energy convince the Supper Club to join her program, which is a mixture of purchasing special meals, abstaining from the "bad" stuff like sweets and fats, and painfully exercising their buns off. The author's descriptions of their travails in this regard are both funny and sad...the latter because I, too, tend to go for foods that tend to lean to the "junk" side. As in the first novel, this one contains a murder mystery that gets satisfactorily solved at the end. Add to this the subplots of James' slowly developing romance with Lucy, another Club member, her attempts to get promoted within the police department, and the emergence from bitterness of his widowed father Jackson, and you have a good formula for a developing series with compelling characters. Also, Ellery Adams has a penchant for hilarious book titles...the next one in this series is Chili Con Corpses...
Friday, February 17, 2023
Quote of the Week...from Marcus Aurelius
Thursday, February 16, 2023
The Times We Live In
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Weekly Short Stories: 1989 Science Fiction, Part 5
Tuesday, February 14, 2023
Happy Birthday, My Dear Melissa
Today I'd like to wish a very, very happy birthday to my wonderful, beautiful, darling wife Melissa...and of course a happy Valentine's Day to you as well. I love you so-o-o-h, so much, Sweetheart!
Monday, February 13, 2023
Podcaster Discusses Ways to Increase Energy
On his Mindset Mentor podcast last Friday, personal development coach Rob Dial listed five suggestions to increasing energy throughout one's day. I liked how he personalized his presentation, giving examples from his own life while encouraging the listener to follow their own experiences and what they have learned from them. The first item was to select and listen to music that serves to energize...this to me makes a lot of sense because, for example, when I am doing long distance training runs I do better when listening to rousing music...in my case usually alternative rock...that does seem to energize me more. Dial's second idea is about the people surrounding him...some are energizing ("batteries") while others are draining ("black holes"). He suggested hanging out with the former while diplomatic putting distance between oneself and the latter if possible. While understanding his point, even though I tend to have a reclusive personality, I also acknowledge that we all live in community with one another and the diversity of "people types" is something that is a given and not necessarily open for much manipulation...nor should it be. Thirdly, Dial emphasizes the need to control one's sources of information, and that includes social media like Facebook. He claimed that recently he unfriended more than three thousand people...I've gone through some pruning in that regard as well while recognizing that my notion of "friends" differs from the shallower interpretation that Facebook gives it. Dial avoids the news and all that opinion-piece blather plaguing cable news networks and social media...me, too, bro! Number four on Dial's list is to pay attention to the food one eats...he recognizes that we have our own notions as to what's good or not, for himself he avoids processed foods and extolls occasional fasting. Finally, he urges listeners not to depend too much on their own feelings when setting out on something, instead taking action up front in order to give themselves a chance to be motivated as well as summon up that energy that they may initially think is lacking. Sometimes I think Rob Dial is right on target with his podcast message and sometimes he seems to be a little off the mark...this one worked for me...
Sunday, February 12, 2023
Super Bowl and Phoenix Open Headline Arizona Sports Today
Today the Super Bowl for the 2022 National Football League season will be held in Glendale, Arizona. The Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, two teams I actually rooted for (once the three Florida teams were eliminated in the playoffs), are facing off in a battle between Chiefs head coach Andy Reid's present and former teams. For some reason I'm usually not all that into the Super Bowl and its hype...this year's no exception. But I'll probably watch at least some of the game this evening...maybe with the sound down...and also probably completely avoid the halftime show, this year featuring recording star Rihanna. Apparently, she's in some kind of social media feud with extreme narcissist Donald Trump because an old Tweet of hers from 2020 panning the Orange Man in profane terms resurfaced, and he read it and responded in his typical manner of belittling her and her talent. I think Rihanna is definitely talented...I'm just not into the celebrityhood angle or the type of music she is involved with, so I'm skipping the show. Down the road a few miles in the same state, the WM Phoenix Open in golf, with its strange stadium-bracketed 16th hole, is playing its final round with the leaderboard currently showing Scottie Sheffler with a two-stroke lead over a crowded field at the top...I'm more interested in how that turns out than the Super Bowl. The game is supposedly evenly matched, but I've seen my share of Super Bowls that quickly went one-sided in spite of the surface equality between the two contestants. Let's just hope that everyone gets out of it all in one piece...
Saturday, February 11, 2023
YouTube and YouTube Channel Both Good Resources
Lately I've been exploring different YouTube channels and video series that teach and review mathematics and foreign languages...it's pretty amazing how you can choose just about any topic you want to learn about and get instruction on this excellent site. In our household, we also switched from our cable-based television service to the YouTube Channel...different from YouTube itself...to provide at a much cheaper rate the same channels we were previously receiving, using Roku. To supplement them we purchased an inexpensive indoor antenna and through it pick up all the local stations as well as spinoff channels like MeTV and Comet. And, of course, I like to listen to the music that YouTube provides...sure, I get a lot of commercials but that's cool. Maybe in some future article I'll discuss some of the things I'm studying in greater detail...
Friday, February 10, 2023
Quote of the Week...from James Clear
Thursday, February 9, 2023
Just Finished Reading Carbs and Cadavers by Ellery Adams
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
Weekly Short Stories: 1989 Science Fiction, Part 4
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
Warmer Winter Than Usual Continues
Monday, February 6, 2023
Just Finished Reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Andy Weir is a science fiction writer best known for his novel The Martian, adapted to the blockbuster movie hit starring Matt Damon. Last year he published another space-based book, titled Project Hail Mary: my sister gave me a copy this past Christmas, and I just finished reading it. I haven't read anything by Weir before, so I was pleasantly surprised at his deft, personable writing style. After all, this is a "hard" science fiction story, meaning that an enormous amount of the narrative is spent describing often technical concepts that one would need to take advanced courses for in order to fully understand...yet the author made the narrative flow easily as the protagonist, a young middle school science teacher named Ryland Grace, takes the reins recounting his experiences in resolving a debacle of truly cosmic proportions. It has been discovered that the sun is suddenly dimming, with its heat output projected to cause mass extinctions on Earth at an unprecedented rate...including possibly the eventual extinction of all life. The cause appears to be a cosmically borne microorganism that thrives in a carbon dioxide environment and draws its energy directly from whatever star it has infected. Grace, earlier in his career a biology professor having written on potential extraterrestrial microorganisms, is recruited by the hastily assembled international research and rescue team to plan a mission to another star system where a similar phenomenon is not causing the same effect as here...why the difference? Weir toggles with Grace's narrative back and forth between the flight preparations and Grace's experiences on his largely automated spaceship after he is resuscitated from an artificially induced coma. It's a mystery how he might solve the enigma of the Astrophage, as the organism causing all the harm is called. And it brings into play the notion that we are not alone, and wouldn't it be a cool thing to make common cause with other life in the cosmos. In spite of the technical material covered, I think you'd like this book even if you weren't a scientist or engineer...I'm certainly not, and I plan to check out The Martian (never saw the movie) and Artemis, which he wrote in between the other two books. Thank you, Anita, for a thoughtful gift...
Sunday, February 5, 2023
British Alternative Virtual Band Gorillaz Keeps Chugging Along
Saturday, February 4, 2023
Just Finished Reading Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore
A few days ago, while browsing through Books-a-Million with Melissa, I noticed some young adult fantasy series on a table display. One of them was Graceling, by an author named Kristin Cashore. Being a fan of young adult books, I nevertheless didn't want to get myself committed to a long fantasy series, so I investigated this young writer's still-brief bibliography and discovered that she published in 2017 a standalone book titled Jane, Unlimited. I just finished reading it, and, sad to say, discovered that it belongs to a category of works that I have put down in frustration after only partially reading them. Yes, I did pick it back up again for the sake of attaining some closure to this reading task, but it was an overall unsatisfactory reading experience for me. I then checked Goodreads and discovered that readers either thought this novel was a masterpiece or they likewise quit reading it long before the finish, panning it unmercifully. For me, I'm somewhere in between the two extremes, deciding to go ahead and give it the old college try...oh well, now that I read it, I can now check it off my reading list! I liked Cashore's writing style and she created a very compelling character in Jane, a young college dropout orphaned twice, first from her parents and then her Aunt Magnolia, who was mainly responsible for her raising. Jane's friend Kiran invites her to stay over at Kiran's mansion of a home, called Tu Reviens, and Jane remembers her aunt once imploring her to accept any such invitation to that place. It's a strange house with a lot of strange people, and soon after Jane arrives a stray dog decides to adopt her...it seems to have a sense of wisdom about guiding her around. I liked the novel's setup with the mysterious house and characters, but the author decided to have the narrative split off into alternate stories that left me confused and, at times, angry. Yet I have to admit that writing unhinged books isn't a new thing, and James Joyce, Kurt Vonnegut and Jonathan Swift achieved great renown for some of that kind of stuff...maybe Kristin Cashore was looking at them when she wrote this, who knows. The problem I had with the alternative narratives was that sometimes the previous narrative "counted" and sometimes it didn't as the book progressed...there was no sense of the main character, Jane, achieving any sort of peace about her own life because before too long there would be a "reset" and it would all start over, with a completely different emphasis. I didn't care for that, but you just might. In any event, I greatly respect the author for writing this book and presenting some pretty interesting characters along the way...Jane's talent for creating artistic umbrellas was a good example...
Friday, February 3, 2023
Quote of the Week...from Alan Watts
I owe my solitude to other people. ---Alan Watts.
Thursday, February 2, 2023
Podcaster Discusses Sensitivity to Incompleteness
Podcaster Rob Dial recently presented a topic very worthy of my consideration, and timely in today's world of media manipulation. People are instinctively sensitive to things in their life that are incomplete, with the lacking element(s) tending to gnaw at their consciousness until closure is attained. That's why they give sly little teasers on the network news shows just before commercial breaks, hinting at some major revelation that usually fizzles...the same thing applies to Internet news feeds, the lead-in statement usually sensationalizing the often-trite "deeper" story, once you commit and click on it. With our personal lives, loose ends of unfinished business similarly gnaw at us, robbing our ability to be at peace and concentrate our attention on specific tasks. Dial suggests we make a list (he's a big advocate of sitting down with pen and paper) of the things we want to accomplish in a given day and then prioritize them as to the most important. Then further break those down to more "bite-size" time-consuming units that allow a sense of completion. He also recommends the Pomodoro Technique of cycled, complete focus for 25 minutes, followed by a break for 5 minutes...then resume. At day's end, review the list, noting what's been completed (celebrate this) and then put what's left over, in order of priority, on the next day's list. This helps to clear the mind of those creeping feelings of failure that incompleteness can instill. I know that for me there are several ongoing projects I'm working on, and a few that I want to start. Conceptualizing them by blocks of time spent working on them...and recording my progress on paper...helps me to feel...for the given day...that sense of completion that helps me meet the next morning with a more positive outlook. Of course, if you're Bill Murray's alter ego Phil Connors on this calendar date you can just relive the same day over and over and over again, taking your sweet little time getting better...