Personal Fitness Progress

After experiencing some warning feelings during a five-mile run on March 22, around my right knee where my IT band injury was concentrated , I decided to cool it with the running for a bit and space out runs a week apart instead of every other day. So this past Tuesday, exactly a week later, I ran 2.7 miles on the treadmill with nothing negative to report. I'll wait again until next Tuesday, when I'll either step up the distance on the treadmill or run a short distance on the street around my neighborhood.

Meanwhile, I have been trying my hand (or should I say "feet") with speed walking on the treadmill. Well, maybe at least it's "speed walking" for me: 4.0-4.6 mph pace for 1.5-2 miles. If I could keep a sustained speed of around 4.6-4.8 mph walking and then train for distance, I could actually participate in half-marathons (or even marathons) as a pure walker and finish the race before the time limit imposed by the organizers, usually three hours for the half-marathon and six for the marathon. I feel encouraged with my speed walking, although I have only been at it a relatively short time.

My swimming has progressed well, too. I am now comfortably swimming in the 25-meter lanes at my YMCA pool. I swim freestyle in one direction and on my back in a relaxed manner in the other. Yesterday I swam 16 laps this way and then went to the shallower main part of the pool to work on my breaststroke form, about which I still feel pretty awkward and self-conscious. But even there I think I improved.

Today I worked out at in the YMCA fitness center with their weights and elliptical trainer. By cross-training, I believe that this will strengthen my body as a whole and enable me to avoid injuries like that of my right iliotibial band that happened on January 15, when I ran 26.6 miles around far-northern Gainesville.

Watching Yanks Opener a New Tradition?

The year has almost come around full circle from when my family and I visited Manhattan, New York. We had arrived and checked in to our hotel, the Marriott Marquis at Times Square, early in the evening on April 6. Discussing where we would eat dinner, my daughter mentioned a restaurant named Junior's she had seen just across the street (45th Street) from our hotel. So we went in there and had our first NYC dining experience. They had TVs positioned in a few locations, and by chance we were seated with me facing one tuned to the New York Yankees baseball season opener on the road against the Boston Red Sox. The major league regular season, at least for the Yanks, started on April 6 last year. This year it starts tomorrow, March 31, and the pinstripers will be at home this time, playing an afternoon game against the Detroit Tigers.

I had such a pleasant time for most of my New York visit that I would like to mark the occasion by starting traditions associated with it. One tradition that I think would be cool would be to mark the baseball season's start by watching the Yankees' opening game. Living in Gainesville, though, this is problematic as New York isn't a home team with any guarantee that their opener will always be shown on ESPN. Also, I will be at work in ensuing years (but not tomorrow). So I'll have to work some bugs out of this baseball opener tradition, I suppose, for it to take hold. My wife Melissa suggested eating cheesecake while watching the game, further connecting the experience with Junior's where we gorged ourselves on this dessert several times throughout our stay there.

I wonder what other traditions I could get going as well that relate to last year's New York trip. Well, I thought that I had wrung out enough material about my visit for several blog articles last year, but it looks as if there may be more in store!

Gainesville Still Not Bicycle-Friendly

Except for a brief period in 1987, I have lived in Gainesville, Florida since 1977. For most of that time I extensively used bicycle travel either for basic transportation, exercise, or leisure. I have recently been increasing my bicycle riding, largely in part due to a leg injury that sidelined me from running for a while. If there's anyone in Gainesville familiar with the road conditions for bicyclists, then I'm that one. And I sadly have to say that, in spite of this town's boasting of being so bicycle-friendly, it has a long, long way to go before I can agree with that assertion.

It is true that Gainesville has its share of bike paths, but upon closer examination those paths tend to encourage north-south travel and are noticeably lacking in an east-west direction through the central portion of the city. The major east-west roads running through the city's center, i.e. University Avenue/Newberry Road, North 8th Avenue, North 16th Avenue, and North 23rd Avenue, are all deficient in bicycle paths. It is hazardous for bicyclists to employ these routes. Instead, one has to go north to 39th or 53rd Avenue or south to Archer or Williston Road to be able to travel down bicycle paths east-west. Lately there has been much discussion about proposals to make a bike path down NW 16th Avenue, but there is a significant level of opposition to any change.

Part of this opposition arises from the notion that spending public funds for bike paths is a waste of money since not that many people use bicycles as transportation. I find this argument circular: a lot of people don't use bicycles as transportation because there aren't the needed bike paths to make them feel safe! Another part of the opposition is more cultural: the country/rural "Deep South" culture is embedded in this area and tends to regard those choosing bicycle travel as being effete and highbrow. Then, there are also many thousands of university students from other parts of the state and country who are wed to their cars and have neither patience for bicyclists nor any desire to share the road with them. Finally, there is this strange, perverse notion that I have noticed among drivers that somehow being behind a wheel in a motorized vehicle makes their lives more legitimate than that of a bicyclist who is just as legally entitled to a place on the public street.

So I am still not at all satisfied with how far my Gainesville has gone to promote bicycle travel by creating strategically-located bicycle lanes. You don't have to put one down every road; just give bicyclists a way to design a course that allows them to reach their destinations without imperiling themselves at the hands of careless, selfish, and inattentive drivers!

Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson Series

I just finished reading the five-volume series by Rick Riordan titled Percy Jackson & the Olympians. Intended for Harry Potter devotees who wanted something similar to read, it partially filled the bill for me. And to shift the metaphor a bit, I'm trying to be a "glass-half-full" person. So I generally endorse it. Although...

The Percy Jackson books do introduce the reader to an alternative world running simultaneously parallel to our ordinary reality, much like J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter does. Except with Jackson, it's not the world of magic with wizards but rather Greek mythology with its gods and monsters that prevail. In both series, ordinary folks like you and me (Potter's "muggles" and Jackson's "mortals") are shielded from any direct awareness of this due to either magical spells, or in the case of Jackson, something called "the Mist". Although the presentation of Greek mythology as an alternative reality intrigued me, I felt that the way Riordan presented it was something of a ripoff from Rowling. But maybe that's the whole point: readers want to continue with Potter-like stories. While Rowling spent more effort developing her characters, Riordan's emphasis was plot, with a lot of heavy-going action. There were many violent battle scenes throughout the series, so many in fact that I became somewhat numbed to them. I think this ultimately hindered Riordan's attempts to build up suspense in his story.

The Percy Jackson books were all a lot shorter, too, with none exceeding 400 pages. To me that was a plus. There are some authors who pad their works with too much extraneous material when they should be leaving some things to the reader's imagination. I'm thinking of Eragon author Christopher Paolini as a major offender in this regard.

I felt that I was regressing a bit in my reading level while churning through Percy Jackson & the Olympians. Also, these series tend to grind on one with the mysteries and subplots that grow and continue from one volume to the next until, with the final book, a lot of the text becomes bogged down with reconciling and explaining them.

Still, as fun, escapist reading, I liked this series. For kids, it is also a good, subtle introduction to Greek mythology as well as United States geography. A great portion of The Last Olympian, the final volume in this series, takes place in Manhattan, which I visited last April. It was interesting how Riordan wove various locations there into the story. I understand that Rick Riordan is in the middle of writing and releasing volumes of the sequel to the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. But at least for now, I think I'll just try something else, thank you. Still, Jackson is pleasant, light reading.

Life's a Bitch...Get Over It!

Once, many eons ago, I was sitting by myself in the Waffle House that once existed on South U.S. 441 in Gainesville late at night, doing something esoteric like deciphering a Vietnamese translation of Jack London's short stories or codifying physics formulae into matrices while eating one of their classic breakfasts with raisin toast and cheesy scrambled eggs. A party was seated in the booth in front of me, and everybody seemed to have something to say to each other about what was going on in their lives. All of it was negative, one complaining rant after another about their problems with people in their families, people at work, people, people, people. I could tell that the group as a whole seemed to be getting off on each other's woes, almost as if they were passing around a joint. But there was one middle-aged, haggard-looking woman there whose only contribution to the conversation was the periodic interjection, "Life's a bitch." It could well be that this woman was drunk (they all seemed to have been drinking) and she was trying to fit into the spirit of the proceedings without being able to come up with any beefs of her own. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to a different conclusion. Maybe she was trying to tell others, in her own limited way, that all of their travails were normal elements of a typical life and that, sure, problems make you feel bad, but EVERYBODY'S got problems. So stop whining like a bunch of crybabies. Yeah sure, life's a bitch... get over it and move on!

Then again, most likely she was just stone drunk!

The Long Walk: My Version

Early in his professional writing career, Stephen King wrote several stories under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Among these was an intriguing tale titled The Long Walk. In it, a future or alternative America staged a walking race like no other: the contestants had to walk at a pace of at least 4 mph or they would be eliminated. Literally eliminated, i.e. shot dead on the spot. The race was over when all contestants had been "eliminated" but one, leaving the winner (and only survivor). I'll leave it to you to read it for yourself if you want. King has written better stories, but it did leave an impression on me nevertheless regarding race walking and walking in general.

When Melissa and I walk around our block, we usually do so at a 3-3.2 mph pace. On the treadmill, I usually cool down from a run at 3.4 mph. But Stephen King's 4 mph is a pretty high level for me. And that got me to thinking...

While I am recovering from my leg injury and waiting to run again, why not just see how fast I can walk and for how long? And why not start with 4 mph as a minimum speed, conveniently using my YMCA's treadmill? Yes, I can still use the elliptical cross-trainer and the weights in my workout while enhancing it with a brisk walking session. I think I'll try this out tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I am also aware of how painfully funny race walkers look, with their exaggerated hip motions. This may be one big reason why more people pursue competitive running instead, in spite of the increased injury hazards associated with that activity. Also, I think it would be hard to police a public walking race as there would need to be race officials practically everywhere to scrutinize the contestants to insure that no one cheated by running here and there. But I'm not all that interested in competitive racing against others, anyway. Just knowing how I am doing with my speed and endurance is good enough for me. But I do like the idea of a public event dedicated to this activity in which, like with running, I could participate from time to time in a more social context.

A lot of the 5K public running races that are routinely offered combine the running with an invitation for walkers to participate as well. Usually though, this is just for the folks heavily into the charities that are running the events; these people tend to take their sweet time getting through the course and aren't all that interested in walking per se. I'd like a setting that attracted fitness walkers who wanted to test each other out in competition, but I don't see that anywhere. Not in Gainesville, at least. But that would be my idea of a fine "long walk".

Swimming Progress Encouraging

Yesterday at the YMCA pool, I finally made a strong effort to swim a few of the 25-meter lanes there. It was a timely decision as the rest of the pool was taken up by bouncers and scooby-doos (my terms for water aerobics exercisers and scuba-diving students, respectively). I hit upon an effective strategy to my lane swimming: I would swim freestyle in one direction and then paddle on my back in an improvised, easier-for-me backstroke in the other. Thus I was able to keep myself rested for more laps. I ended up swimming 12 laps in all, a personal record by far for lane swimming.

By doing lane swimming, I was also able to focus more on the one major impediment to my ability to swim longer distances nonstop: incorrect breathing form. But I checked out some tips on the Internet, especially swimming instructor Terry Laughlin's suggestions to help with breathing. And I intend to try them out the next time I go swimming.

I also think it's about time for me to get serious with learning the breaststroke and integrating it within my swimming practice sessions. I've seen other swimmers in the lanes who changed styles as they swam laps, and I have always wanted to be able to do that. Besides, the breaststroke looks like a simpler stroke than freestyle as far as breathing is concerned. I have seen swimmers doing the breaststroke with their heads always above the surface, but I want to follow McLaughlin's precepts and keep below surface for much of the stroke. Well, I should have plenty of time to practice, with the warm weather ahead of me here in Florida!

Running Recovery Hits Minor Snag

My running progress hit a bump in the road Tuesday when I set out to run around my neighborhood, with 6+ miles as my distance goal. This kept with my stated aim of gradually increasing my distance while taking notice of how my right leg felt around the knee (I am recovering from an IT band injury). On Saturday I had pulled off a similar 5-mile run without any pain or warning signs, so I was cautiously optimistic. Tuesday's run was unpleasant to begin with: it was warm and very, very humid. But I've run through those conditions without trouble before; the problem was that I begin to notice my right knee area between 4 and 5 miles. I walked much of the remaining distance, which I curtailed at 5.69 miles to prevent any aggravation to that area in my right leg.

So apparently I wasn't spacing my runs out enough over the week and will have to give myself some more time before I set out again. I think that when I resume running, I will stick to one run per week for a couple of months. Also, I'd like to confine my running to the treadmill since that seems to involve less shock to my knees.

This IT band problem has been really unsettling to me, but I have been able to partially compensate for my sidelining from running by doing other things. Like swimming, for example, which I will write about in tomorrow's post.

Learning New Chinese Characters

Lately I have been working to increase my knowledge of Chinese characters. While doing this I am also learning Japanese kanji, which are just Chinese characters adapted to the Japanese language.

Years ago, I once went through the extensive Defrancis Chinese textbook series published by Yale University Press. In doing so, I learned about 1,700 characters, which I memorized and still review on a weekly basis to this day. Later I picked up about 1,500 more new characters by reading various texts in Chinese, although these I have unfortunately allowed myself to forget for the large part over the years. Now I am adding them to the 1,700, along with Chinese characters used in Japanese kanji, for additional memorization.

My intent is to be able to fluently read Chinese (and eventually Japanese) without having to go through the arduous process of having to consult a character dictionary a couple of times or more for every sentence I stumble through. Even after increasing my vocabulary, I'll keep coming upon new unknown characters to look up. But at least that shouldn't distract too much from the flow of my reading.

My blog entries recently have been more sparse, largely due to the fact that I am spending much of the time I would have used to write my entries instead to study the additional Chinese/Japanese characters. But it sure is fun!

Libya No-Fly Zone Belatedly Established

Regarding the recent decision on the part of the United States government to seek UN and NATO cooperation to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya after two weeks of hemming and hawing around while dictator Gadhafi regained the edge in that country's civil war, I wonder whether the action now taken is too late. Anyone could see that there was a time when Gadhafi was on the verge of being driven out when he then began to use his nation's air force against his own people, employing a brutal sweeping bombing campaign against rebels with little or no regard for human life. And the U.S. under Obama just stood around with the president making tepid statements to the effect that Gadhafi was on the wrong side of history and needed to go. Now that the rebels have been driven back to a defensive stance and Gadhafi's loyalists have been allowed the time to entrench themselves, it looks as if we are now in for a totally avoidable and prolonged conflict destined to cost many more lives than if Obama had acted in a more timely fashion.

Now reports are coming out that it was Obama's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who opposed military involvement in Libya and who initially prevailed over Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who wanted a no-fly zone established and enforced from the beginning when it became apparent as to what Gadhafi's intentions were. Obama should have paid more attention to Clinton as she was in the White House throughout her husband's presidency when he had to confront similar crises in Rwanda and Bosnia (lives lost through inaction and delay) and Haiti and Kosovo (lives saved through quick action).

The Arab League has strongly endorsed the no-fly zone over Libya and welcomed the U.S. involvement, quite a departure from its reaction to the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld invasion of Iraq in 2003. And also unlike Iraq, there will be no American ground combat forces in Libya.

So I welcome the decision to set up a no-fly zone in Libya and give the rebels a fighting chance to survive. But the action may have come too late, a hesitation that I think is almost unforgivable.

Running and Swimming: Personal Journeys Continue

If you've been reading this blog for a while, then you know that I sustained an IT band injury to my right leg around my knee while completing my first-ever marathon run on January 15. And that I aggravated the injury by not recognizing it and instead running much more, even participating in the Ocala Marathon on January 23 (and completing it largely through walking). Also, you would know that I am in the process of reinventing myself as a swimmer, studying and trying to imitate swimming instructor Terry McLaughlin's Total Immersion method. So how am I doing in mid-March with my running and swimming?

I have been cautiously going out on short runs, being attentive to the first signs of pain in my right knee. This past week has been very encouraging: at the YMCA workout room on Tuesday, I was able to run 4 miles on the treadmill with no pain. Then, on Thursday I ran 3.54 miles on the road around my neighborhood. Again, no pain. So tomorrow, I plan to increase the distance a little while being cognizant of that area of interest just below my right knee. But so far I am very happy with my recovery!

As for swimming, I have to take my "progress" with a liberal dose of humor. I keep looking at other swimmers at my YMCA pool and shake my head: over and over again, sickly, overweight elderly people limp and struggle to get to their lane and...once they're in the pool, they swim lap after lap after lap, you get the picture. Meanwhile, I am still in the shallow part of the pool swimming fractions of their laps and struggling with my breathing. But I have no intentions of giving up or taking the easy way out by using buoyancy devices, snorkels, or flippers. After all, I am still giving myself a great workout each time I get in the pool, even if I look and feel clumsy and inadequate as a swimmer.

So there you are. My ideal scenario has me alternating my swimming and running days while developing similar endurance capabilities in each. I intend...no, I INSIST that this will work!

NCAA Hoops Tourney Really Starts Today

The NCAA basketball championship tournament, for all practical purposes, begins today with its traditional 64-team field. This year four teams were added and played against four others a couple of days ago, officially creating an initial 68-team field. Why they did that, I don't know. But now we're back to that mathematically comforting sixth power of two, eventually to whittle down with each round of play to the supreme "zeroth" power of two at the end of the final championship game.

The Florida Gators are seeded #2 in the Southeast Region. They play #15 University of California/Santa Barbara tonight in what for all practical purposes is a home game at Tampa. They should win tonight and also the following game. But upsets happen, and that is one of the appeals of this tournament: things don't always turn out the way the "experts" predicted.

Florida State, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina all made the tournament this year. I root for them as long as they're not playing Florida. However, I am a little puzzled by Tennessee's inclusion in the tournament as I don't think they are all that good this year. Now watch them do well!

Chandler Parsons, Erving Walker, Kenny Boynton, Alex Tyus, Vernon Macklin...the Gator starting five, they have a chance to go down in NCAA basketball history as another great championship lineup, next to the great teams of 2005-06 and 2006-07 featuring Al Horford, Corey Brewer, Joachim Noah, Lee Humphrey, and Taureen Green. Yes, they are good enough to win the whole tournament this year (although right now I think Kansas is the best team). Whether they will or not is another matter.

Governor Scott Nixes Strange High-Speed Rail Plan

Whenever my sister travels by car from her home near Dallas, Texas to my father's home near Miami, Florida, she spends a very long time within Florida. As a matter of fact, she thinks that most of this cross-country trip occurs within Florida's state boundaries! Which brings up an important point: Florida may not be the largest state, but for its size it has to be the most elongated state. This makes traveling from one end of the state to the other something of an ordeal. For those either living in south Florida or visiting it often, that highly-populated area can be seen as rather isolated from the rest of the state. For that reason, high-speed rail sounds like a reasonable way to connect that area to the rest of the state. And we just had a federally-funded plan for high-speed rail here in Florida. But...

The plan was for this to be America's first truly high-speed rail, destined for opening in 2015 and funded through federal stimulus money. But then teabagger Rick Scott came along and squeaked his way into the governor's seat in a very close election last November. And one of his first actions as governor was to reject federal funding for the project and scrap it outright. What a jerk, right? But...

The $2.6 billion-planned high-speed railway was to be built spanning two central Florida cities: Tampa and Orlando. Two cities that are only 84 miles apart! C'mon, I live in Gainesville and have no trouble driving the 100-plus miles to either city. And Miami, which is about 340 miles from my home? Well, south Florida hasn't had any political clout in Florida since Bob Graham left the Senate. Never mind that a Miami-Tampa or Miami-Orlando high-speed rail system would have closed the distance gap and been used much more heavily: it obviously would have entailed a greater financial investment, and we're supposed to do everything nowadays on a shoestring budget. So now we have nothing.

I have many problems with teabagger Scott being my governor, but the fact is that he is my governor. This is at least one decision he has made that I agree with, though. But his reasons may not have been my reasons. After all, I'm sure that he couldn't care less whether Miami ever got high-speed rail access to the rest of the state. For that matter, I'm not sure that he could care less if Miami just slid into the sea...

Voting Day in Gainesville

Today was election day in Gainesville for three city commission seats. I got to vote in two of them. When one considers how important these posts are by the fact that the commission decides how much they will tax the citizens and then how that revenue is distributed, it always amazes me how few people actually vote in these elections. That's sad because a low turnout often translates into a fringe candidate with extremist views and a zealous following being elected. Let's hope that doesn't happen today!

...Later that night....
No extremists won tonight, although the voting turnout was a disgrace at 14.9% of registered voters. One of my candidates (an incumbent) won without a runoff, and the other two races will be decided on April 12. I shudder to think what the turnout will be then!

My Local Starbucks Hangout

Here is a shot from the inside of the Starbucks I usually frequent the most, from my vantage point seated way, way, back at the end of a section. This store is very popular, and the people working here are pretty friendly (well, almost all of them are). They do seem to have a problem with their storage capacity because they tend to pile up a lot of boxed-up inventory around the customers' seating area, sometimes taking up a couple of tables. But I can live with that as long as I can find somewhere to sit. I've noticed that at the busiest time, on weekend mornings, I never have trouble finding a free table. But then again, most of the customers are doing take-out then, on their way to work or school. My most difficult time at this Starbucks is on Saturday afternoons, when as a general rule I can't find an empty place to sit. But I'm happy that they're doing so well, since this SHOULD mean that the mother company won't close them down as a corporate loss (as they did recently with some of their other stores).

I began coming here right after it opened in the summer of 2000. I don't think that there is any other single coffee establishment that I have patronized regularly for so long a time.

I have been to other non-Starbucks coffee shops across town over the years, but it has generally been Starbucks who seems to understand the importance of a smiling, friendly, and welcoming attitude on the part of its workers to the customer. Frankly, that should be a no-brainer, but it never fails to astonish me how poorly employees treat customers in the locally-owned mom-and-pop businesses I go to. So why go there? Screw them, just because they're local that doesn't mean that they are entitled to my money. When I experience coldness and frowning faces, I conclude that maybe they really don't think my money is important, anyway. So I'll just spend it instead where employees show some good-old fashioned professionalism. If the locals want to compete with this mega-corporation for my dollars, then they can grow some brains and learn to be friendly to me when I walk in the door to do business with them!

Obama Puzzling on Libya

I can't help but think that our president, whom I have supported in the past, is completely out of touch with the situation in Libya. Completely out of touch particularly regarding his appropriate role as leader of the United States, its role in the world, and how we should confront crises that involve mass slaughters still occurring in the 21st century. Does Obama really think that freezing Gadhafi's assets and imposing sanctions on Libya will make that tyrant decide to step down and hand over power to the opposition? Does he really think that trying to align U.S. policy toward Libya with what he terms "the international community" (whatever that's supposed to be) won't be interpreted by Gadhafi (and the rest of our adversaries worldwide, for that matter) as weak and faltering? Does he really think that by simply stating that Gadhafi should realize that he is "on the wrong side of history", then this brutal dictator will say, "Aw shucks, you got me, I quit"?

President Obama's press conference yesterday frightened me a little by his matter-of-fact, business-as-usual demeanor toward urgent matters like Libya's civil war. Libya is an important country whose citizens are rising up against a brutal, corrupt autocrat who has instigated terrorism against the U.S. and its allies while treating fellow Libyans as his own personal, private property to control and toy around with (and even kill) as he pleases. Why should America wait around for other countries, who most likely are taking their cue for action from Obama? If this isn't grounds for some kind of intervention, then what is? But instead, when we should have been hearing a strongly worded set of demands from the president to Gadhafi, all we get is an aloof, emotionally detached lecture. And the dictator continues to feel free to massacre his own people with impunity.

If Gadhafi prevails in this civil war with our president sitting on his hands, I predict that Obama will NOT be reelected. For this show of lack of will would start a chain of aggressive behavior on the part of other adversaries. Frankly, I am beginning to have second thoughts myself about Mr. Obama as my president. But I guess you probably already figured that out. Question is, which of the other turkeys now in the running would I vote for? Sigh...

Quake Makes Me Wake

I had a full day yesterday; normally I check out my kitchen and snack a bit after I get home from work, usually around 11:30 PM. But last night I skipped stuffing my mouth with food and promptly passed out moments after slipping into my recliner. About 1:30, my son, who is on spring break from college, came into the room and woke me up, telling me that there was a breaking news story that I might be interested in. I know that Will was, as he had just spent some time last summer traveling through Japan and is learning the Japanese language.

The massive, 8.9 level earthquake just off the east coast of northern Honshu island, occurring at around 1 AM EST, was devastating enough for those immediately affected. But although there sadly were casualties and much damage from this disaster, it would have been much worse had this nation not prepared for earthquake contingencies through strict building codes, civil engineering, and disaster preparation. Quite a contrast to countries like Haiti or Pakistan!

This is obviously going to be a headline-grabbing news story for some time to come, even after the last tsunami threat from this earthquake to Hawaii and the U.S. west coast has been long forgotten. It will be interesting to see how Japanese society works together to recover. Maybe some of those other countries should be taking notes (as well as the United States with its Katrina debacle)!

Charlie S's Personality

Extreme personality types like Charlie Sheen are almost like a drug in our society. The reason some people like to watch his rambling, manic, and almost incoherent interviews is that it gives them a sense of superiority and security to know that, at least, THEY'RE not that screwed up! Truth be told, though, I think a lot of it also has to do with the fact that many of us identify with Mr. Sheen; but through our own life experiences and conditioning we have learned to control how we express ourselves, knowing that only trouble could result in our lives if we didn't.

Egomaniacs and paranoids go hand in hand and may even be seen as flip sides to the same personalities in one individual. The common thread is an almost solipsist mentality: that one, while not being the universe itself, is at least the obvious focus of everything. When an egomaniac or a paranoid walks into a room where others are present, both presume that they are the automatic focus of everyone's attention. With one, the personal reaction is positive; with the other, it is negative. With Charlie Sheen, he seems to simultaneously take on both roles. He speaks as if he already knows the thoughts of those talking with him before they say anything. And by the way, there's no point in moving the conversation toward asking how anyone else is doing: there's only one person who counts!

My life, from time to time, has been cursed with people who have decided, like Charlie Sheen, that their personal narratives and opinions are the only thing that matters. Consequently, the only sustainable (but unsuitable) way I can interact with them is by nodding in agreement and offering terse affirmative interjections. I say terse because with these types it is difficult for me to even get a coherent phrase into the conversation, much less a complete sentence. And if I should accidentally let it slip out that I actually DISAGREE with any element of their idiosyncratic worldview... no matter how respectfully I express that disagreement...then they see that as a personal insult to them!

I see some tendencies of this narcissistic personality type within myself, unfortunately. But having experienced unrestrained behavior of the sort from others with makeups similar to Sheen, I have learned how offensive and demeaning openly expressing it can be, so I consciously try to avoid it. Instead, I deliberately look for things in others' lives that I feel they are interested in themselves and about which I feel enough interest to use as conversational themes, with me trying to be a good listener. Too bad Charlie and his types in my life never seemed to learn that. It reminds me of a line in Max Ehrmann's Desiderata:

Avoid loud and aggressive persons: they are vexatious to the spirit.

My Promising Return to Running

Yesterday I went to my local YMCA workout room to lift weights, do crunches and exercise on the elliptical cross-trainer machine. I spent about 39 minutes on the cross-trainer and performed 13 sets on the various weight equipment. Then I decided to see what would happen on the treadmill.

I had last previously run last Wednesday, a 1.25 trot around the two blocks surrounding my house. No knee pain then. Yesterday I tried the treadmill, setting it at a 9:40/mile pace with no incline. After 2.5 miles I stopped, with NO pain. What great news! This was the longest I had run since the painful Ocala Marathon this past January 23, so the healing of my IT band seems to be working quite well so far.

I plan on another run a few days from now, probably on Friday or Saturday. Maybe I'll run around my neighborhood and see if I can't step up the distance to 3 miles.

Still, I don't see more marathon runs in my future. Also, I need some new running shoes. As I continue make my recovery from the IT band injury, I need to go down to Tioga (west of Gainesville) and check out the running supply store there. I understand they analyze your feet according to your foot placement and arching and have shoes that can help to curtail future injuries. We'll see...

NBA Comments

I cannot believe that those running the National Basketball Association's Utah Jazz have taken leave of their senses and traded their franchise player, star point guard Deron Williams away to the New Jersey Nets, especially when the team is desperately fighting for a final eighth place playoff spot in the Western Conference against several other teams. Williams was the one reason I ever rooted for Utah, so that franchise can kiss my allegiance goodbye. And perhaps that's just as well...any state where the majority population regards drinking coffee as sinful behavior, well...

Besides, I have traditionally been a Phoenix Suns fan, also because of their star point guard, in this case Steve Nash. Yes, Phoenix does lie in Arizona, another state with, in my opinion, serious attitude problems. So you can bet that if Nash, who has loudly expressed his vehement opposition to Arizona's recent reactionary anti-Latino politics, ever leaves that franchise it will also go the way of the Jazz into my "non-support" category. But for now, Nash is still there and, thanks to Utah's incredible throwaway of Williams, the Suns have climbed ahead of the Jazz in the standings to be only one spot away from a playoff position.

With Deron Williams now with the Nets, I am now a New Jersey fan. That's the way I generally am with basketball: I tend to follow players and THEN the teams they play for. That's why I won't root for the Miami Heat (with quitter Lebron James) but instead tend to support the Boston Celtics and the San Antonio Spurs with their retinues of talented and gutsy team-oriented players.

More on Arab Unrest in Middle East

Massive anti-government protests in many Arab nations have either toppled regimes (Tunisia, Egypt), turned into a bloody civil war (Libya), are in progress with mass demonstrations (Bahrain, Yemen), or are being desperately forestalled by government through hasty reform measures (Saudi Arabia). In all countries, one common thread unites them: the political leadership has been closed off to the general population for decades, both in terms of them being able to pick their leaders and of those leaders having to be held accountable for their decisions. In the USA, popular sentiment is with the people although most of the challenged authorities have friendly relations with America. This country is also heavily dependent on foreign oil, supplies of which are being threatened in countries like Libya, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. However...

I have heard the argument promoted by advocates for off-shore drilling (either off Florida, Virginia, or California) and in northern Alaska that "home-grown" oil will make us independent of those other unstable and often unfriendly oil producing nations and keep the prices down. While it is true that with more domestically produced petroleum we would at least be better protected from a complete shutdown of our oil supply (an unlikely possibility considering the diversity of petroleum sources across the world), the actual price of oil would still be based on world market standards and would be reflective of the overall price worldwide. Better to keep pushing hard for alternatives to petroleum for meeting our energy demands.

In Libya, the most bloodied nation among these uprisings, the entrenched leadership there has resorted to terrorism and war to keep their hold on power. Gadhafi is one of those deplorable people on this planet who, seeing himself as a leader of people, in term regards those people as his property instead of regarding himself as their servant. Since he doesn't seem capable of understanding that "his" people despise him, it looks as if he will only be toppled through force of arms, sad to say, with many having to sacrifice themselves to achieve this.

Wildfires Proliferating in Florida

It looks as if we in Florida are in for a rather severe stretch for the next couple of months, with wildfires proliferating throughout the state. This year's rate is much higher than last year's, due largely to the scarcity of rain, low humidity, and high winds. A formula for disaster, as I recall, that led to the scary 1998 fire season with its firestorms and even a county-wide evacuation (Flagler). My home Alachua county has not been spared, with several fires flaring up over the past few days. Nothing has approached the city of Gainesville itself, though. Yet.

I don't consider my home neighborhood at much of a risk of being inundated by a fire, but the smoke-laden air from fires even more than a hundred miles away can be almost unbearable to breathe if the wind is blowing the wrong way. For me, that would screw up a lot of my outdoors fitness activities, effectively driving me indoors. For others, especially those with breathing infirmities, it could cause much more serious problems.

Let's hope we get some precipitation, humidity, and calmer winds. And also that some bonehead won't start an uncontrollable fire with careless and illegal burning!

Brats and Bouncers

Lately at my local YMCA swimming pool, as the temperatures have climbed, so has the pool population density. Good for the YMCA, bad for me...

I keep thinking back to that South Park episode that features spoiled brat Eric Cartman trying to avoid the throng of little kids while going to the public swimming pool. His gripe was that they tended to pee in the water; my gripe with them is that they just get in my way. So they really aren't any different from the elderly ladies who go there for water aerobics, an activity that basically involves bouncing up and down in the water (thus I call them "bouncers").

I am trying to build up my swimming endurance to the point where I can just use the 25-meter lanes and completely avoid the shallow section. I may not be quite ready for the lanes yet, but I might just have to go ahead and take the "plunge". For I have had it with the brats and the bouncers.

Sunday afternoon: little kids all over the place. For someone who just wants to swim in a straight line and come back in the shallow end, trying to avoid them can become an exercise in futility. Monday was a different story: I went to the pool at 11 AM on a school day, thinking that I would avoid any hassles with the kids being at school. Wrong. Renegade bouncers (without a structured water aerobics class) were spread out throughout the shallow part, taking up way too much of the pool. I managed to find one little section that I thought I could swim back and forth in, but these ladies seemed to take a perverse sort of pleasure in drifting directly into my path. Finally, after only 20 laps I gave up and left the pool.

Maybe all is for the better anyway, if I want to become an endurance swimmer. I know I can physically handle the longer laps; my hangup is more psychological and simply won't be overcome without pushing through and gaining positive-reinforcing experiences. So either tomorrow or Friday I'll start those longer laps, which run through the pool's deep section. Hey, they've always got a lifeguard, hopefully prepared to pull my drowning ass out of the water!

Early Spring and Allergies For Me

Yesterday the unusually early and warm spring here in northern Florida hit me with full force. The previous day I spent two hours outside cutting down overgrown branches from trees around my yard. That in itself wasn't very helpful to my pollen allergies. Then yesterday I went out on a bicycle ride around the far northern part of Gainesville. The wind was a brutal 25 mph coming out of the south and the temperatures were climbing into the eighties on this, the last day of February. I finished my quite unpleasant ride after 73 minutes, but I'm afraid the effects went on much longer. I had since been suffering from all of the symptoms of the allergies I have undergone in previous years, in particular the nasal congestion, sneezing, and very dry, red eyes.

I don't remember having severe allergies like this last year, but then again back then in mid-February we were still experiencing temperatures dipping down to freezing. I used to take Zyrtec to help with the symptoms, but that made me annoyingly drowsy and I switched to Claritin, a less effective remedy but one with which I can function more effectively. Hopefully, these allergies will lift soon and I can enjoy life a little more. But I don't plan to stop doing what I usually do in spite of them.