More on My Running Now, Then, and the Near Future

One important difference between this year and 2010 concerning my running is that, after that January 23 Ocala Marathon that I hobbled to the finish line in, I haven't entered any public races. Last year by this time I had run several races: LifeSouth Half Marathon, the Climb for Cancer 15K Run, and several 5Ks. I reached the point where I did not enjoy five kilometer (3.1 miles) races for various reasons. And longer races were few and far between. Besides, for much of the beginning of the year I was recovering from a leg injury and didn't want to aggravate it.

So now here I am in the middle of July, with no races set ahead of me to run. Sure, there's that Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon that is held in November and which I ran in last year (and enjoyed), but at least in the Gainesville vicinity there is nothing else longer than those annoying 5K races. I am thinking, though, about trying to get over to Apalachicola (Florida) and run in their half-marathon in late October. But I'll need to get the day before the race off from work to swing this, not yet a done deal.

I am still wary of running full marathons. Frankly, I don't see the extra benefit that running 26.2 miles carries over sticking with the 13.1 mile half-marathon distance. 13.1 miles is in itself quite a chore to carry out and requires a good deal of training. Besides, just about every marathon event I see out there has an accompanying half-marathon, usually with the same starting times (and less expensive entry fees). Also, there are several half-marathon races without accompanying marathons, that Tom Walker Memorial event a good example.

So maybe now that I seem to be injury-free, I might just sit down at my computer and check out the upcoming cooler months for opportunities to participate in half-marathons. Of course, money doesn't grow on trees (at least for me) and I probably won't be hopping on any planes soon for distant events. But any place in the southeastern U.S. holding a half-marathon should be fair game...as long as I can get time off from work, that is. And December, due to the nature of my job, is problematic in that although it has a great selection of races in my area, I am also very, very busy then at my job with slim prospects of getting extra time off.

Comparing My Recent Running With 2010

I thought it might be interesting (to myself) to compare my running workouts during the "hot" months of May, June and July (up through today, the 11th). In May this year, I ran on 13 days of the month, totaling 94.61 miles with the longest run being 10.5 miles. Last May I ran on 15 days, totaling 82.64 miles, and enjoyed 8.44 miles as my longest run. In June 2011 I ran 13 days, totaled 87.13 miles, and had a long run of 9.0 miles. For June 2010 I ran on 14 days for 96.76 miles and had a peak run of 9.08 miles. And for July so far, I have run on 6 days (2010: 5), totaled 32.1 miles (2010: 40.64), and had a long run of 7.18 miles (2010: 8.53).

For the most part, I have been keeping up with last year's numbers, but I did slip some in June largely due to the record high temperatures and sometimes almost unbearable smoky haze due to neighboring wildfires. Still, I find myself feeling more sensitive to the summer heat and humidity this year than I did in 2010, often resorting to the air-conditioned setting of the treadmill.

Also, I have been training in my current running shoes for more than a year, and it's time to get a new pair. I like the Reebok brand and plan to go see if my local Sears has some similar to what I have been running in. I'm a little hesitant to try a different brand, since the last new running shoes I got hurt my foot and may have been a contributing factor to my leg injury earlier this year. But I can't keep running with the shoes I currently have: they're starting to fall apart on me!

Last year, I was more regular in my workouts, with a set strategy: set the distance I wanted to run, wait until late in the morning for the humidity to lower, even as the temperatures rise (sometimes into the 90's), and just run my course. I tell you, though, neither in 2010, 2011, or in any other year is it easy running here in north-central Florida in the often almost intolerable summer heat and humidity.

Make Soccer and Bowling More Interesting

This past Saturday afternoon in eastern Orlando, Melissa and I decided to have lunch at the Ruby Tuesday on University Drive. During our excellent meal, I noticed what was on the TV sets ringing the dining area: sports. Specifically, soccer and bowling. Ugh! I can't think of two more boring sports to have on TV.

Soccer was fun to play during physical education class at school, but only because the coach would back off and let the kids freely run around playing without getting hung up on positions and strategy. I think the different youth soccer leagues around nowadays are full of adults who are so full of themselves and soccer's intricacies that they spoil the fun of the sport for the children. But back to TV...

When I watch soccer highlights, all I see is scoring and excited celebrations. This is the complete opposite, though, of how actual games develop. For the most part, the two teams just keep kicking the ball back and forth, rarely even getting near the others' goals. Boring, boring, boring. Heck, it's getting now so that the game highlights themselves are so predictable with all the goals that even they have become boring. How can the game be changed to add some "pizazz"? One suggestion I have is what we did in elementary school soccer: add a second ball to the game, creating all kinds of chaotic possibilities!

Bowling for me is not only extremely boring to watch, but it is also boring to play! And what is it anyway with having to shell out the extra dough at bowling alleys for (smelly) bowling shoe rentals? Dammit, just get off my back and let me bowl in my regular shoes! But returning to this sport as it is seen on TV, I recently saw a bowling tournament being held in a large football stadium. Incredibly, there were actually people sitting up in the nosebleed sections watching it! I just don't get it: the tournament was still just as predictably boring as ever and holding it outdoors on a football field didn't change anything.

I also have a suggestion for "sexing up" bowling: instead of giving strikes the highest score, give bowlers the opportunity to make even bigger scores by setting up splits and then sparing them out. This would give the game an extra, more tactical dimension instead of the tedious repeating spectacle of bowlers just stepping up to the line and rolling the ball in excruciatingly predictable patterns.

Then again, while chomping away on my delicious lunch at Ruby Tuesday (crab cake with onion rings and macaroni & cheese), I came up with an instant sure-fire way to make the annoying soccer and bowling that was on more interesting: switch balls! Watch the soccer players try to kick a bowling ball around and watch the bowlers try to roll a soccer ball down the lane straight and long enough to knock down pins!

Rooftop Mystique

Today I went back to eastern Orlando with Melissa to help her with a graduate school class project of hers. This entailed us going to her school's main six-story building and making a video. While waiting to use the video room on the sixth floor there, I excused myself for a few minutes and went out into the empty hallway for a few minutes. I walked toward the end of the hall, where there were some tables, chairs, and a window presenting a nice view outside. On the way, though, I noticed a door marked "Stair Access to Roof". I turned the knob and it was unlocked. I picked up an eraser from a nearby whiteboard and used it to keep that door slightly ajar (having seen the movie Thank God It's Friday, I know how possible it is to get locked in stairwells...at least in movies, that is). Then I scurried up the last flight of stairs to the roof. To my surprise, the final door to the outside was unlocked, and I stepped through it. And, it felt, into another world.

Even though this building's roof was relatively clear and flat, I still somehow felt vulnerable being there. Not because I was doing anything illegal: there was nothing I could see prohibiting me from visiting up there. Rather, I was in a completely different type of environment, much more exposed to nature and the reality and hugeness of the surrounding earth and sky: the crest of a tall (for this area) building. I strode over to one of the edges, leaned over, and took a couple of pictures with my Blackberry. After a few minutes up there, I made my way back downstairs.

Walking around on the roof of a six-floor building shouldn't be that big of a deal, but it was for me. There is a kind of unexplainable mystique about it, perhaps akin to reaching the top of a mountain. I just remember it being almost dizzying standing there and wondered to myself how ridiculously excitable I can be at times from simple experiences!

List Madness: Arcade Fire Songs Ranked

In yet another installment of my continuing endeavor to list songs by artists according to my liking, I present my rankings of Arcade Fire's LP songs from top to bottom. Arcade Fire is an independent/alternative rock band that has captured much critical and popular acclaim for their their three albums Funeral (2004), Neon Bible (2007), and The Suburbs (2010). The Suburbs was so good that it won the best overall album award at the Grammys last year. Their music has an epic, grandiose, and urgent quality to it, with each individual song they do demanding the listener's undivided attention, as if the fate of the entire world hinged on its message. So yes, they're a bit on the dramatic side! There is also a good mix of male and female vocals on the songs, something I appreciate. Look them up on Wikipedia or their own site to find out more information about the members. Oh, one more thing: I like ALL of their songs, even my least favorite! (Note: they made an EP in 2003 titled Arcade Fire, but I'm not yet familiar with its songs.)

Here's my list, with the albums they belong to indicated by these abbreviations: Funeral [f], Neon Bible [nb], and The Suburbs [s].

1 Neon Bible [nb]
2 Rebellion (Lies) [f]
3 Windowsill [nb]
4 Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) [s]
5 Suburban War [s]
6 Black Mirror [nb]
7 Neighborhood 1 (Tunnels) [f]
8 We Used to Wait [s]
9 Neighborhood 3 (Power Out) [f]
10 Rococo [s]
11 Neighborhood 2 (Laika) [f]
12 Intervention [nb]
13 Modern Man [s]
14 The Suburbs [s]
15 Antichrist Television Blues [nb]
16 Wake Up [f]
17 City With No Children [s]
18 Black Wave/Bad Vibrations [nb]
19 No Cars Go [nb]
20 Empty Room [s]
21 Deep Blue [s]
22 Neighborhood 4 (7 Kettles) [f]
23 The Well and the Lighthouse [nb]
24 Haïti [f]
25 Half Light I [s]
26 Month of May [s]
27 Keep the Car Running [nb]
28 The Suburbs (Continued) [s]
29 Lenin [Dark Was the Night compilation]
30 Une Anneé Sans Lumière [f]
31 Ready to Start [s]
32 Half Light II (No Celebration) [s]
33 Ocean of Noise [nb]
34 Wasted Hours [s]
35 In the Backseat [f]
36 Sprawl I (Flatland) [s]
37 Crown of Love [f]
38 My Body is a Cage [nb]

Colmes Top Liberal Tweeter

Not being someone who has ever warmed up to Facebook, I recently began to reexamine my other "trendy" social Internet application: Twitter. And I discovered that Twitter is very fast-loading on my Blackberry, regardless of the general Internet conditions around me.

I decided to follow various political advocates, both liberal and conservative, on Twitter. On the liberal side, I had begun with Keith Olbermann but quickly realized that his use of it wasn't designed for the public in general. Bill Maher was good, although he was often promoting upcoming gigs of his and some of his jokes were way over the top. Michael Moore's was also interesting but definitely a little too hard-core left. But that's good; I need to know the spectrum of how people react to the news. Finally, I was engaging in one of my (very) rare viewings of The O'Reilly Factor on FoxRepublicanNews when lo and behold, there he was: Alan Colmes as the liberal in the forum that was going on. And he was pretty good, holding his own well against criticisms and succeeding in making his own points against the other side. He is quite a persuasive speaker, and also seems committed to his views. I checked him out on Twitter and found out that he sends out pertinent short messages every couple of hours or so throughout the course of each day. He quickly became my favorite on Twitter.

Al Franken once lambasted Alan Colmes as being a convenient, submissive, and ultimately insignificant foil for Sean Hannity and FoxNews. He also called Colmes a "moderate", which surprised me a bit. Alan Colmes isn't far left, but he isn't in the political center either. I don't think he deserved Franken's criticism, especially since he and Colmes have an almost identical political outlook on things. One thing that does distinguish Colmes from Franken was that the former has consistently been more respectful of those with whom he disagrees (although he tends to interrupt too much, don't they all), while the latter has (at least before becoming a senator) repeatedly personally attacked their character (a problem that I also have with Olbermann).

Although I use Twitter to pick up on what some others are thinking, I still think that it is an inappropriate forum for adequately expressing opinions in a comprehensive way. But as a starting point, it has its advantages. However, I still don't see myself using it to send messages anytime soon...

Make Me a Yearbook

One of the high school nostalgia websites has been putting out various complete yearbooks for sale, apparently the same versions that were originally published during the high school years (or in the case of my own senior yearbook, the year AFTER I had graduated, the turkeys). I can see some alumni jumping on this opportunity and picking up some yearbooks from their "favorite" years. I happen to own the 1972 and 1974 yearbooks from my sophomore and senior years, respectively. My sister owns the 1970 yearbook (her senior year and my eighth grade). Sorry, nostalgia website, I probably don't need 1971 or 1973. But how about...

How about 1994? Or 2005? Or 1983? Why not one of these years? Have a yearbook specially designed for someone who gives the necessary information about all of the events and circumstances going on in his or her life at the time. I worked in a Chinese restaurant in Gainesville in '83 and lived in a certain apartment complex nearby. Here are the businesses I frequented then. Who worked there? Did I go to a church? If so, who were the members and what happened there? What were the big local news and sports stories of 1983? Put the publicly-available pictures of the people involved in my life in 1983 according to their context, much in the same way that class directories are presented in yearbooks. Put it all in one very personalized book and you can kiss good-bye the idiotic notion that somehow your high school years were oh-so much more significant than anything that happened since.

For much of the time I was in high school, I was prevented in different ways from enjoying my experiences there to their fullest. It was not a happy time at all for me, and I harbor no paulsimonesque "Kodachrome" delusional false memories of my life then. Just opening up one of my yearbooks has been something I have come to avoid doing, since it just brings back more vivid, brutal memories of my generally miserable time back then. My years since then, especially since 1979, have all been much happier and more fulfilling by contrast. Pick a year since 1979, ANY YEAR, and make me a yearbook for it!

Or...hey, self, here's an idea...it's never too late: make up your own as you live through each year!

A Little Political Rant

There have been stretches of time on this blog when I have been more active commenting on what was going on in the news. Recently, though, I have stepped back a little with my reactions, especially regarding the political give-and-take (and grandstanding) that will most assuredly only intensify in the coming weeks as presidential campaign fever settles in on the media. I pretty much know where I stand on the issues, which more approximates the Democratic viewpoint than the Republican.

I find it extremely disingenuous of long-established GOP lawmakers, who scarcely raised a brow during the George W. Bush era of massive deficits and who rubber-stamped that deficit spending with their votes, suddenly "getting religion" on this issue the moment that a Democratic president was sworn into office. I resent the phony stances that the Republicans have taken over the years (flag-burning amendments, anti-gay rights ballot initiatives, the Terri Schiavo fiasco, opposing any reasonable immigration reform) that fly in the face of reasonable political debate. The idea fomented by a perverse alliance between libertarians and the Christian right that government is evil unless it is used to pass into law and enforce a particular moral/religious code on everyone is in itself evil, in my opinion. And don't get me started on the right-wing media and how it has taken over the Republican Party to the extent that otherwise reasonable politicians like John Huntsman, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney now feel the need to pander to the peculiar worldviews and egos of ideological talk jocks of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

By contrast, I see the Democrats as representing more or less the status quo, the party that is more likely to keep things stable and predictable in America. I don't like everything they do, though, and there is an extremist wing of this party that I find unrealistic in their agenda. But compared to the extremists running the Republican party, they are much weaker and fewer in number.

As of now, I sadly see the Republicans as the party of ideology and the Democrats as the party of centrism and looking for practical solutions to the many difficult problems facing us today. I hear NONE of the Republican politicians speaking to my interests and concerns, only to the far right, be that the corporate far-right or the religious far-right. That's a shame, for I do think that conservatism is an important part of political debate but has been demagogued to the point where mainstream, reasonable conservatives have been marginalized within their own political party by the more extreme elements.

Ghost Town Holiday Runs

Last Christmas I ran an uncomfortably warm (outside temperature @ 70 degrees) 20 miles, trying to prepare for a couple of marathon races in January and February. Today, on another holiday six months later, I ran 7.18 miles in 84-88 degree conditions, just trying to maintain a consistent training routine without any particular races planned for the foreseeable future. In both runs, I was uncomfortable with the weather (the Christmas conditions were also humid) but acquitted myself well by covering the distances with "honest" pacing and having decent recoveries from both. Another factor tying these two runs together was what I observed around me.

I expected last Christmas to be a bit of an ordeal, anticipating a lot of families outside with children trying out their new toys and running out into the street (and annoyingly getting in my way). But instead, the whole area seemed like a ghost town, reaching the point where it was starting to feel creepy. Now fast forward to today: I began my run around noon, having waited for the customary morning humidity to dissipate. I expected to see a lot of families outside, including a lot of cookouts. But like Christmas, it seemed as if everyone had gone into hiding (except for a handful of souls outside doing yard work). It wasn't until the 35-minute mark in my run when I saw my first cookout: it turned out to be the last as well during my slightly more than an hour-long jaunt (1:05:44). Other than that, the only people I saw out anywhere were a couple of groups sitting together outside their homes near the end of my run.

I think, our so-called terrible economy notwithstanding, that people still like to pack up the car and do outings on holidays instead of celebrating at their homes. I wonder, though, if I had done today's run straight down Main Street in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, whether the streets wouldn't suddenly be empty of people as well (common sense tells me it would remain impossibly packed). The effect reminds me of the opening scene in Vanilla Sky, when Tom Cruise's character is driving straight through Midtown Manhattan...and finds the place utterly deserted, sending him into a panic. With me, though, the relative absence of people would send me into fits of joy!

Need Pocket Scanner/Translator

The other day I was astonished to find a high-quality Russian language magazine on sale at my local Barnes & Noble bookstore. Titled Сноб, it is full of interesting articles spanning the breadth of topics covering the human condition. Skimming the pages from article to article, I found myself partially understanding the material but was very, very frustrated at the many words that stumped me.

Seeing how readily entire pages of text can be almost instantly translated (sometimes admittedly with severe imperfections) on my computer screen, I thought wouldn't it be great to have a small scanning device that would highlight a word or phrase in a foreign language (like the Russian I was reading) and deliver a rough translation? That would really speed up my language learning and free me from my computer screen as well!

It isn't that difficult, at least for me, to handle the grammatical details of a different language. With Russian, I have pretty much cleared that hurdle. But learning and retaining its thousands of words can be daunting. I can learn word lists (which I do), but encountering new words in the more meaningful context of a sentence in an article or story is much more desirable. So if I can't procure one of those possibly-nonexistent pocket/scanner/translators, I'll have to improvise with the old fashioned pocket dictionaries and all of that time-consuming page-turning.

As far as Russian is concerned, you can't beat the Romanov's pocket dictionary that translates words between Russian and English both ways. Not only does it provide an extensive vocabulary, but it also presents grammatical constructions in a comprehensive, detailed manner that I haven't seen even in a larger dictionary. This is important for a language like Russian which, like Latin, relies heavily on verb conjugations and vowel and adjective declensions to convey meaning in a sentence. Unfortunately, this Romanov's dictionary may be out of print as I haven't seen it in any bookstores in years. Fortunately, I still have on old copy at home (and possibly even a second one up in the attic). But it would be nice to have a fresh Romanov's...

Today's 7.18 Mile Run

My idea of cooking cheap pasta at home and taking it to work for some moderate pre-run carbohydrate-loading worked perfectly. Friday afternoon I boiled a box of bow-tie pasta that I had just bought in a buy-one-get-one-free deal and mixed it with a jar of spaghetti sauce that I also got BOGO. I took a large portion of my concoction to work and ate it cold during my early evening lunch break there. Today I started out on my planned 7.18 mile run around noon, after waiting for the humidity to abate to a reasonable level. When I started my run, the temperature was 89 and the humidity was 63%, better than that 80% humidity I struggled through earlier this week. When I completed the 7.18 miles winding up and down through my neighbood streets, the heat had gone up to 89 and the humidity down to 55%.

Because of the summer heat, I couldn't characterize today's run as being pleasant. However, thanks largely to last night's pasta, I had plenty of energy, running at a pretty high (for me) pace and finishing it in 1:05:19. As usual, I kept myself hydrated throughout the run by carrying with me a bottle of G2 and taking a gulp every seven minutes or so. I also listened to my own personalized MP3 mix of favorite songs, which helped to take the edge off the run's severity. I felt no sign of the foot and leg pain that were problems in previous weeks and months. The post-run recovery is also going quite smoothly.

In spite of the heat-induced discomfort, today's run was successful in that it reestablished my ability to run in the heat of the summer without feeling the need to duck indoors and run on the treadmill. Not that I am forsaking the treadmill, which has served me well during the last few weeks: I just like outdoors running more!

Oh, it also helped that I was off from work today and could start my run later than usual, giving me the chance to better wait for that oppressive morning humidity to dissipate. It might be better in the long run, though, for me to run around sunrise, when the humidity is very high but the temperatures are more reasonable. For where I live, summer lasts a long, long time! And at least that way I wouldn't be concerning myself with "running" out of time before work. But it can be quite an ordeal trying to drag myself out of bed that time of day...

What Do You Do? (or Moment to Moment, Day by Day)

How do you define yourself? By your nationality, what you perceive your so-called "race" to be, gender, sexual preference, political alignment, philosophical creed, religious (or nonreligious) beliefs, biographical/childhood narrative, friends, or family? Do you say I like this music, that movie or TV show, or a particular author, a type of food or drink in order to reveal your nature to others? Or maybe you're one of those who plasters bumper stickers all over your car to broadcast your identity to the world.

I'd like to offer my own view of what constitutes one's identity. Any or all of the above-mentioned items can contribute to describing one's life, to be sure, and I engage in some of them on this blog (especially with my "favorites" lists). But there is something I believe is far more profound and telling about oneself: what you DO with your life. Specifically, how do you spend your day? Or more immediately, what do you do from moment to moment?

And isn't that really what people think defines one, anyway? Just think of all those popular behind-the-scenes biographies of celebrities: for example, I have enjoyed reading such accounts of the classic rock groups The Beatles and The Doors. Sure, their artistic accomplishments, staged public appearances, and news headlines defined them to an extent, but actually discovering how they spent most of the time in their daily lives was enlightening, to say the least.

We already tend to see those with whom we are more intimate, like family and close friends, by how they spend their time. Yes, we'll cheer with them when they reach their peaks and console them through their personal valleys. But we'll also be more likely to frame our view of who they really are as we observe them doing what all of us have to do: tackle a day, from moment to moment, from beginning to end... and then start afresh the next day!

Carb-Loading Strategies for My Running

Today I ran 5 miles under pretty much the same weather conditions I struggled with so badly on my 5.69 mile run on Tuesday. However, although the heat and humidity made the noontime run unpleasant, I found myself abounding with energy once I had recovered from the tough start (sometimes I struggle a bit at the beginning of my runs). The only reason I cut off my run at 5 miles was the limiting factor of time: I began my run too late in the day and had to get ready for work! But why was today's run more energetic than Tuesday's?

On Monday I didn't eat very much. Yesterday though, I ate a whole large cheese pizza on my lunch break at work. Tuesday I ran with few carbohydrates to draw upon; today I was carb-loaded! Which makes me ponder...

Should I deliberately load up on carbs the day before every training run or just do it before an especially long run or a public race? I know one thing: I can't afford to be wolfing down whole pizzas 3 to 4 times a week! I'll have to just settle with some good old-fashioned home-cooked pasta instead...

I suppose, as with many things in life, the resolution of this question of carb-loading comes down to a matter of doing things in moderation. Sure, the day before a planned long run (10 miles or more) or before a race I can go all out with the pizza, pasta, or pancakes. And if an ordinary training run is planned the next day, I'll eat more carbs, just in moderation.

I would like to get back to running 7 miles minimum, with at least one 10-plus mile venture per week, so hopefully on Saturday during my next planned run I'll be able to pull it off. I'll just precook some noodles, mix them with some tasty stuff, and take it to work for lunch Friday. Mucho mas barato!

State and Regional Names for Pro Sports Teams

I don't care for the all-too-common practice of giving professional sports franchises the name of an entire state, or even in one case, an entire region of the country. Here is a list of some of the most notable culprits:

Minnesota Vikings (football/NFL)
Minnesota Twins (baseball/AL)
California Angels (baseball/AL)
New England Patriots (football/NFL)
Colorado Rockies (baseball/NL)
Utah Jazz (basketball/NBA)
New Jersey Nets (basketball/NBA)
New Jersey Generals (football/USFL)
Michigan Panthers (football/USFL)
Kentucky Colonels (basketball/ABA)
Indiana Pacers (basketball/ABA,NBA)
Texas Rangers (baseball/AL)
Florida Marlins (baseball/NL)
Florida Panthers (hockey/NHL)
The Floridians (basketball/ABA)

Teams like the Texas Rangers, Florida Marlins, Florida Panthers, and the old California Angels (now corrected to be the Los Angeles Angels) all have competing franchises in the same states (Houston Astros, Tampa Bay Rays, Tampa Bay Lightning, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Oakland Athletics, and San Francisco Giants). The Marlins are moving into their new baseball stadium next year in downtown Miami and will change their name to the Miami Marlins, a much more pleasant-sounding name that actually was the former minor league team's name before Miami was awarded a major league franchise.

I don't understand why the Patriots felt the need to change their name from Boston to New England: it is almost a "given" that Boston major league sports teams are naturally followed in New England states anyway.

Perhaps the Denver franchise called itself "Colorado" because "Denver Rockies" sounds a lot like the old ABA team "Denver Rockets" (which changed their nickname to "Nuggets" when accepted into the NBA in order to avoid conflicts with that league's already-established San Diego/Houston Rockets franchise). Besides, Colorado + Rockies makes sense.

I also get the fact that "Texas" is indispensable to its nickname "Rangers". But the name still implies some following even in the Houston area. On the other hand, Houston's NFL franchise did a payback of sorts when it was nicknamed "Texans".

And although I'm not cool with the Vikings, I can understand using "Minnesota" in conjunction with its nickname "Twins", which refers to the "twin cities" of Minneapolis and St. Paul. If you're going to identify yourself with TWO cities, then I suppose you might as well bring in the rest of the state!

Perhaps the strangest of all these was the old ABA franchise The Floridians. Formerly called the Miami Floridians (still an awful name), they sought to survive as a viable franchise by playing a handful of games in the Tampa area. Hence the strange name change.

Back before there were any Florida teams in Major League Baseball, the general regional team that fans supported was the Atlanta Braves. Now there was no need for the Braves to call themselves the "Deep South Braves". Just as virtually all of the state of Wisconsin follows its Green Bay Packers in football and doesn't need or want them called the "Wisconsin Packers", naming a franchise for a vast region or state is meaningless, and often a bit arrogant if other teams are located in the area.

Naturally, in college sports it is different because state universities go by the name of the institutions and not a specific location (unless the school in question is a branch). Hence, "Florida Gators" (for the University of Florida) is appropriate, not "Gainesville Gators" (although that sounds cooler).

My Fitness Training Of Late

I remember that at this time last year I was focusing on running as my one big fitness activity, trying then to work around the sweltering hot summer weather predominant here in northern Florida. This year I have diversified a little, adding swimming and some cross-training in the weight room into the mix. And I am still dealing with the hot and humid weather, although thankfully (as you can see from the picture above, taken at my local Magnolia Parke Starbucks) we have lately been getting a lot of rain to quench those obnoxious forest fires that had been causing the stinky smoky haze for the previous few weeks. That haze has all but disappeared, and the record high temperatures earlier this month have abated as well, leaving unpleasant enough conditions to deal with anyway. To counteract the heat and humidity, I have been spending some of my workouts at my local YMCA's workout room, which they call the "Wellness Center" (as opposed to their other places that are devoted to sickness, I suppose).

Last Thursday (6/23), I got up and out early to the YMCA pool to find an open spot in which to swim. I swam about 150 meters straight, alternating as usual between freestyle and my "easy" backstroke. Friday (6/23) I slept in and hurried down to the YMCA to run on the treadmill. I managed a "feel good" 4.1 mile run at a time of 35:51 before I had to stop and get ready for work. Saturday (6/24) I was back in the Wellness Center, this time using the elliptical cross-trainer for 35 minutes (level 12-15 resistance). Sunday I went back again to the treadmill, covering 7.0 miles at a time of 58:39 and increasing my speed up to a 7:30/mile pace at the end. Another "feel good" run. Yesterday I managed to drag myself out of bed at get back to the pool, which was more crowded (uh-oh), even at 6:30 AM. I swam 300 meters straight this time, using my usual format. I'm optimistic about getting my distance higher and improving my form. Today I tried a late-morning road run around my neighborhood. It was brutal, with the temperature being 80 and the humidity 81% at the start. Originally intending to cover my course of 7.18 miles, I had to cut it short at 5.69 miles due to the adverse conditions. My time was a typically paced 52:39. My recovery from the run seems to be going pretty well.

Last year at this time I think I was running some longer distances outside, but I was generally resting on the days between runs instead of cross-training. Also, I was waiting until the humidity had dropped considerably, even if it meant running in 90+ degree conditions. So I can't really tell whether I'm doing better or worse than before. But the good news I have to report is that neither my old IT band injury or the recent top-left foot pain has bothered me at all during my workouts, regardless of whatever I have chosen to do recently...

Bond is Back

Well, it's about time! I was beginning to wonder if James Bond movies had been banned from TV for their often embarrassing political incorrectness, but no...the SciFi Channel is showing Goldeneye and Casino Royale today. Yippee!

Goldeneye was Pierce Brosnan's first of four movies as Bond, and in my opinion, his best. Sean Bean, forever etched in fantasy movie aficionados' hearts as the flawed-but-courageous character Boromir in Lord of the Rings, plays a great bad guy. And for almost pure, sadistic evil, there may be no character in the entire James Bond series to rival Xenia Onatopp, portrayed by Famke Janssen.

Casino Royale, an original Ian Fleming story (albeit obviously modified to fit the early 21st century) that was perverted in 1965 into a horrible Bond farcical movie with the same name, introduced one of my favorite Bond actors in Daniel Craig. Gone, though, were the often very humorous characters of Q and Miss Moneypenny. Then again, Craig's Bond isn't quite as much of a "kidder" as his predecessors. To add a touch of continuity between the Brosnan and Craig movies, Bond's boss M, played by Judy Dench, was retained.

Sci-Fi picked the two best James Bond movies of the last six made to show today. But still, to me that's stretching the genre of science fiction a bit.

Is there a "spy shows" channel around? Just think of the possibilities: Bond, the Bourne trilogy, Austin Powers, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Prisoner, Secret Agent, The Avengers, Mission Impossible, Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, the Flint movies, the Harry Palmer movies, the Matt Helm movies, Get Smart, Honey West, I Spy, just to scratch the surface...

Exotic Scripts Impede My Language Study

One thing that has greatly impeded my study of certain languages has been difficult scripts. Even after mastering the writing and recognition of Arabic letters, it is still well-nigh impossible to determine how an unfamiliar word sounds just going by the writing, as short vowels are routinely omitted. Both Chinese and Japanese rely on ideographic characters (the former exclusively) that one already needs to know all about beforehand. And Japanese characters can be even more problematic, with their pronunciation varying widely depending on the context in which they appear and which words they are forming with other characters and the Japanese kana syllabary. But even beyond these seemingly insurmountable difficulties, to me it is very annoying to be slowed down in my drive to get a good sense of a language's flow and build up vocabulary and skill in its grammar while stumbling through a foreign script. For other languages like Korean and Hindi do have reasonably phonetic scripts but still impede my progress since I am so attuned to the Latin script.

So what should I do? For now, at least, I feel like continuing my painstakingly slow efforts with Chinese characters, but also focus my studies in general on texts providing romanized transliterations of the aforementioned "problem" languages. Later, I can tackle their scripts with a greater knowledge of what I expect to read.

With Russian's Cyrillic writing system (which I learned in 1976 and have used regularly ever since), this isn't a problem since I am quite adept in it on its own terms. But with the other scripts, well...the hurdles are awfully high and I'm not getting any younger.

Just keep in mind that language is intrinsically primarily oral as opposed to the written, its secondary form. Whatever helps the learner to better learn the spoken language, with its thousands of words that have to be learned to the point where they are recognizable during the ordinary flow of speech, along with unfamiliar grammatical rules (and the ever-present exceptions), is to be promoted.

Two Types of Rx Ads

There are two different types of ads I often see on TV these days that feature prescription medicines. One type promotes a newly introduced prescription drug suggesting to the potential user its benefits, while also indicating some of the drug's negative side effects (which sometimes includes "death"). The viewer is then urged to go to his or her physician and ask for the advertised drug.

Another type of ad also features prescription medicines, but in a much more negative light. These are the class-action lawsuit spots put out by law firms suing prescription companies over some of the nastier side effects of some medicines (also sometimes including "death"). The lawyers claim that anyone joining in on the suit won't have to pay them any fees if they lose, but I never hear them say whether the judge in the court won't force participants suing the companies to pay for court costs and the defendant's expenses. Of course, some of the cases have already been decided for the plaintiff and there is no risk of this happening, just an open invitation to sign up and join in on the spoils!

I have never felt at ease with the idea of medically untrained individuals choosing their own prescription medicine. Isn't this ignorance of medicine supposed to be the very reason they are going to a physician in the first place? Then again, I also realize that medical doctors probably don't know all that much about the actual drugs being hawked to them by aggressive salespeople (I almost always see one around whenever I'm paying my doctor a visit).

And to be perfectly blunt, although I know that certain prescription medicines are essential to maintaining some patients' health and even life, I wonder to myself (and now to you) how really necessary (or even desirable) many of them are. And how much of their sales are due to a manufactured, artificial sense of need created by advertising and the profit motive.

Late Night Stargazing

Last night after work I was at home "unwinding" in front of the TV set when I decided to walk around my backyard in the dark. Once I was outside, after noticing how really badly the lawn needed mowing, I decided to move the bench that was on the back porch over into the middle of the yard. Then I lied down on it, facing the sky above.

Where I live, the city lights aren't overpowering but still inhibit star gazing to the point where being able to see 5th magnitude stars is problematic. Still, at about 1:30 AM the sky was studded with stars. I instantly recognized the constellations (I was oriented toward the north): Hercules, with its trademark "Keystone" asterism on the left, and Draco's dragonhead beneath it to the north. Above Hercules I could make out the northernmost stars of Ophiuchus, a constellation that resembles Jabba the Hut when traditionally drawn and which technically should have been the 13th sign of the Zodiac (scholar William Harwood believes there were originally 13 signs and Ophiuchus was one of them). Overhead and to the right were the three great summer constellations of Lyra, Cygnus, and Aquila, which respectively contain the stars composing my own asterism that I call the "Summer Triangle": Vega, Deneb, and Altair. Beyond these on the right, to the east, was the murky, darker section of the fall sky introducing Pegasus. To the west, beyond Hercules, was Bootes and Corona Borealis, and then trees obscuring my view. And turning my head down toward the house, I could see the Big Dipper asterism of the constellation Ursa Major, sideways with its handle up and spilling its imaginary contents onto my roof.

As I watched the sky, I noticed that Vega was only a few degrees from being directly overhead. And then I saw something I hadn't witnessed in quite a while. A bright, slow-moving meteor, beginning at about the northern fringe of "Jabba", streaked across the sky eastward, ending just a few degrees west of Altair.

All of this brought back memories of me as a kid in the 1960's in Hollywood, Florida, when I would also venture out at night into my backyard and observe the night sky, full it seemed of stars, summer lightning, fireflies, meteors, and the thick, overpowering smell of jasmine everywhere!

Quizlet: a Good Site for Learning

A while back, my wife Melissa recommended to me a website she had come across that is a handy studying aid. Called Quizlet, it is a directory of different curricula submitted by the public, with various ways offered for students to self-quiz. There are many different categories of study topics offered, but I am particular to the language section. I take whichever language I want to practice my vocabulary from and choose a submission that contains what I deem to be an appropriate word list for me. Then I hit the "scatter" option on Quizlet and practice matching that language's words with their English equivalents. It's very easy to access, extremely flexible, and broad in the choices offered. I come away from sitting at Quizlet for about 30 minutes with the feeling that I have given my brain a good workout and that I have enhanced my knowledge and ability in whichever areas I have practiced.

Quizlet has a free membership and allows visitors to sign in. If you follow this course, then you can compete for "best times" in some of their games. For me, though, I prefer to simply visit and "play" anonymously without signing up.

I have been able to review the Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabaries, the Hindi writing system, and various vocabulary lists in languages like Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Polish, Hindi, and Arabic. I do have a problem with the Arabic offerings, though. The printed Arabic text here excludes the short-vowel markers that often accompany school texts. Without them, I can only guess as to the exact pronunciation of a particular word (unless of course it is a word that I have already learned). And all of Quizlet's Arabic vocabulary, sad to say, omits those necessary (for me) short vowel markers (an analogous situation exists with Hebrew).

There are other areas in Quizlet to explore besides languages. Just try it and get what you can from it! And if you are well-versed in an area and have an altruistic heart, you might consider submitting your own material to Quizlet to aid others in their learning quests!

Early Morning Swimming and Running

This morning I tried something I had been meaning to do but was avoiding because...well, getting up very early in the morning doesn't exactly fit well with my work schedule. I got up anyway and went to my local YMCA pool at about 6:15 to swim a few laps. Make that VERY few laps, as I haven't been there in a while and need to build up my distance again.

The outside temperature was a pleasant 70 degrees, expected to rise to near 100 today (it is already 96, just six hours later in the early afternoon when I'm writing this). The humidity was high at 89%, but who cares about that when you're swimming? The main thing was that there were no children there. Not that many of them aren't awake at that time of day: their parents (at least the ones at home with them) are probably still snoozing away in bed. But there were a lot of adults there this morning, taking up 3-4 of the six available lanes. The only one in the shallow section was an elderly lady doing water aerobics, so I picked that area to swim in. It was a positive experience and I plan to try it again tomorrow morning (easier said than done).

Upon getting back home, I decided to go ahead and run some as well, taking advantage of the reasonable temperature. My 4.1 mile jaunt around the neighborhood was both shorter and slower than usual. I seem to run better when the humidity is low, regardless of the temperature. But when it's very hot, like it is now at 96, my recovery can be slower. Right now I feel pretty good, except for a some static pain on the top of my left foot that seems unaffected by running.

I want to get back to alternating my running and swimming every other day. Let's see if I can drag myself out of bed consistently to do this!

Super 8, 1979, & Pop Culture

The movie Super 8, directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, brought back to me vivid memories of the personally tumultuous year of 1979. The movie's writers were very careful, down to the month, to capture the culture of the era, including the dress and general appearance of the people, ongoing news stories, technological trends, and popular music.

One element of this which touched me (because I was keenly aware of it at the time) was the conflict escalating in 1979 between the disco era and the encroachment that the two emerging branches of rock music called "punk" and "new wave" were beginning to make on disco's supremacy. It all came to a head in the early summer of that year when an unknown British group called The Knack released a single titled My Sharona. Suddenly My Sharona was the biggest hit around, played incessantly it seems on the radio and sung, air-strummed, and thudded to by people (mainly young people). Super 8 captured this phenomenon perfectly.

Another trend noticed by this noteworthy film was the personalizing of music listening through the use of portable cassette players with headphones. Now, of course, we have the iWhatever devices, with the next logical step to this trend being cranial implants, I suppose (read Tad Williams' wonderful science fiction classic series Otherland to see where we're going with this). But back then, Walkman cassete players were the big novelty.

I saw Super 8 this past Sunday and would like to offer some more thoughts about it without giving away the story. So prepare yourself for more Super 8 analysis from me...

Where's Bond?

I like watching escapist films, but not all. I like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings (both on TV lately), and tend to tune in whenever a Harry Potter flick is on. It matters not how many times I've seen these movies: I just like watching the same scenes over and over again. Apparently, a lot of other people feel the same way, else they wouldn't keep showing them like they do. But lately I have become a little disturbed about what might be the longest-running escapist adventure series around, and the fact that NOBODY'S showing it: James Bond.

As an honest popular culture history indicator, you can't beat James Bond. The first movie, Doctor No, came out in 1962 and ever since, movie after movie churns out displaying what the producers think represents what is "cool" in society at that time, some of which hasn't stood the test of time and today seems silly, crude, or even chauvinistic.

I wonder if perhaps one of the reasons the Bond series hasn't been on TV lately is how, especially in the earlier movies, women tended to be marginalized as sex objects. I find this awkward myself, but I also realize that at the time those movies were out, a lot of this was "mainstream" in society. I can be pious and self-righteous from my politically-correct perch in 2011 about this portrayal of women, but then again I wonder which movies I currently like will be panned in similar ways twenty, thirty years from now.

I like the action, humor, pretension-to-coolness, implausible plot twists, Bond portrayals by different actors, and probably most of all, the bad guys in these movies. I also think it's interesting how the international political situation has been played out in these films over the years. Early on, China was often seem as a villainous power manipulating the two superpowers (portrayed in the movies as the Soviet Union and Great Britain, with the U.S. serving as a dim-witted-but-strong ally of the brilliant Brits). Later, China's image was cleaned up considerably.

One theme that tended to make the James Bond films relevant through time, in spite of their often (very) anachronistic social conventions, was the depiction of the villains as sponsors and perpetrators of international terrorism. For decades, Bond movies featured independent terrorist organizations often pitting the superpowers against each other to their own benefit while in the real world much of what was going on then was part of a proxy conflict between those powers. Now, we see the major countries having to deal with independent groups that remind me in ways of the Bond villains.

But that's really a side issue for me. I just like watching the James Bond movies for fun! Bring 'em back!

Freckles

Freckles is our five-year old mixed breed dog we picked up as a puppy from Puppy Hill Farms, a local sanctuary for abandoned dogs. And yes, the lawn needs mowing!

Arab Culture Professor and Islamophobia

I have been carrying around with me an interesting article I tore out of May 24's Independent Florida Alligator. The article, written by Michael Sykes, is titled "Arab culture professor discusses fear of Muslims". And the first word in the article is "Islamophobia".

Stephen Sheehi is the University of South Carolina professor of Arabic and Arab culture who paid a visit to Gainesville's politically far-left Civic Media Center to speak and discuss this issue. So what is Islamophobia, anyway?

According to Sheehi, it is "an irrational fear or hatred of Islam and Muslims, one of the inherent racist tropes in America."

So with this one statement I could see the speaker's own inherent bias: when speaking about America per se (as opposed to other places), racism is inherent. But how about all of those wonderful Muslim countries out there? How tolerant are they of other religions? Not very. As a matter of fact, going by the horrible sectarian conflicts going on in several of them, they aren't even very tolerant of their fellow Muslims.

Sheehan went on, "Racism is the classic American way to divide and conquer. It is a linchpin in our society, unfortunately". Generally speaking, I sadly have to agree with him on this, but only in the broader sense of prejudice (not just racism). I see politicians all the time catering to prejudicial views about people of different demographic groups, be it "race", religion, gender, sexual preference, or nationality. Every presidential election sees conservatives place on the ballots in closely contested states referenda that would restrict gay rights, with the aim of motivating "their" voters to rush to the ballots (and vote for their presidential candidate as well). There is, I believe, some pandering to bigotry concerning undocumented Mexican immigrants, although the issue is much more complex. And look at the fuss some are making at GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormon faith! But perhaps the most glaring example of what I see as prejudicial anti-Islamic sentiment is last year's widespread public objection to the so-called "ground zero" Muslim center to be built in Lower Manhattan, with some politicians jumping in to fan the flames of anger.

So yes, there is prejudice in America. But Sheehi is full of it if he thinks that prejudice is just an American fault: it permeates all of humanity. I would respect this man more were he to balance out his criticisms of our society with criticisms of the bigotry and intolerance festering within Islamic nations. For it is from that pool of bigotry that the terrorists have emerged who are responsible in large part for generating Islamophobia in America, Sheehi's high, holy, and smug opinions notwithstanding.

Another objection I had to Sheehi's argument was his categorizing prejudice against Islam in America as being racial in nature. Oh, I wasn't aware that there was such a thing as a Muslim race. Chinese Muslims are Chinese, Russian Muslims are Russian, Bosnian Muslims are Bosnian, Indonesian Muslims are Indonesian, Arab Muslims are Arab, and so on. Where is the race in that? No, I'll tell Professor Smug what I think the three main causes of anti-Islamic sentiment in this country are:

1) Terrorism. People don't want to die and they are afraid of other people committing violent acts in the name of Islam, duh. Acts like, for example, hijacking jets and flying them into buildings! No, terrorists may commit atrocities in the name of a faith but that doesn't make the faith itself culpable, so the negative reaction, while understandable, is still irrational and needs to be resisted. But this fear isn't racial in nature.

2) The predominant religion here is Christianity, a faith that largely sees itself as exclusive and in competition with Islam for adherents. Christians and Muslims typically see each other as being in error and on the wrong side of God with their beliefs. Like it or not, this creates the phenomenon in a country, where Christianity is the prevailing religion, of widespread disapproval of a competing, aggressively-spreading faith like Islam which, like Christianity, puts a lot of stock in increasing its number. So the "phobia" here isn't racist, but religious in nature. And Muslims who object need to take an honest look at countries where Islam is the established faith and see just how tolerant these places are to competing faiths.

3) Finally, there is a basic trait of being human that tends to insulate a group/tribe/clan/society against others who would change (or appear to change) that group's ideology and traditions, or establish a sense of authority from the outside. Call it the "invading horde syndrome" if you will and maybe there is a dose of racism involved. But it isn't all race and it isn't all American, either. All of humanity displays this behavior.

So sure, people need to be more accepting of practicing Muslims in this country. And by the same token, Muslims need to be more accepting of practicing non-Muslims in other lands. Anti-Islamic sentiment is NOT primarily racial in nature and America is NOT a singularly racist nation as opposed to all of the others. Racism exists, to be sure, but those from other lands need to also display some honesty in examining how this problem festers in their original homelands as well and not go around acting as if they are "above it all". They're not.

Coffee Drinker "Outed"

I suppose it eventually had to happen: after the recent strange closing of the very popular and crowded Starbucks down the road, many of their former customers have flocked to my own favorite Starbucks at Magnolia Parke in NW Gainesville. A number of times since then, I have experienced no available indoor seating. I would walk inside, examine the situation, and then walk right back out. Today, though, I decided to go back to my old custom of sitting outside.

This is interesting today in that, earlier on, there was that obnoxious, smelly smoky haze everywhere. But now it's gone and only typical summer heat rules. That's O.K.: I'm a Floridian, no point in whining about the heat, right?

My Run Against Adversity

Today I had a choice: play it wise and cautious with my running, or gut it out Karno-style. I chose the latter.

In case you're wondering, "Karno" is Dean Karnazes, an ultra-distance runner who has written some inspiring books on his interest and about whom I have written on this blog. His message is to run through the pain and adversity in order to achieve progress. Well, today I had some pain and adversity.

For one, the top of my left foot ached because of painful swelling caused by a shoe I had been wearing that didn't fit right. I wondered whether I should just wait a few days before running again (in different shoes, of course). For another, after I had made my decision to go ahead and run anyway, I stepped out of my front door and got a whiff of that horrid smoky haze that comes and goes due to local forest fires. It didn't seem overwhelming, so in spite of my reservations I set out on my run.

During the run, the aching never got worse, and afterwards the foot seems no worse for wear. And I think my lungs were able to hold up as well. I ran my usual distance of 7.18 miles in my usual range of time (1:06:44).

The past few runs of mine have not been pleasant ones, and I can chiefly blame the weather: hot, humid, smoky. Did you know that yesterday's official high in Gainesville was 102?! This was easily a new record, and scorching days are forecast in the near future. And the fires continue to burn...

A Beef About Business Today

I would like to register a complaint.

When I walk into a restaurant, store, coffee shop, or any other business establishment, I have certain standards as to how I want to be treated by the staff there. As part of the unspoken contract that I want honored, I expect the employees to focus their attention and behavior on treating me with respect, showing a friendly attitude attuned to my interests regarding their business. I don't want to have to deal with an individual who wears their personal narrative and feelings out on their sleeve. It is not my "job" to sympathize with how bad a day an employee is having, nor to I have a responsibility to make an employee personally approve of me in order to be treated with dignity as a paying customer. I enter a business establishment with a friendly, respectful attitude toward those working there and with the intention of spending my money on goods, and expect reciprocal treatment. It is not my job to enhance the personal lives of employees there by making myself interesting to them or providing them a source of entertainment.

There is a basic standard of public behavior in businesses nowadays that I very rarely see practiced anymore. Sure, I get a lot of perfunctory "politeness", but it is often quashed by facial and body language that says "I don't want to be here and your presence annoys me". Also, I am sick to death of sitting in a restaurant or coffee shop and hearing the employees there loudly talk about their personal lives, or even worse, customers that they like or dislike.

I understand that good help is sometimes hard to come by these days, but is the state of general social behavior so bad in my country that we are forced with having to put up with disrespectful and unprofessional behavior in the places where we most want to be treated with respect? That's poor business!

Science Channel Show About Reality

I am not a scientist by training, not even an engineer or technician. I have taken science courses in college, though, and continue to maintain a healthy interest in it. But I don't have the specialized training needed to fully understand the cutting edge of new research, nor do I possess the extensive mathematical prowess needed to make my way through some of the branches, most notably physics. But that shouldn't keep me from writing about it, though. After all, I am affected by scientific research, for better or for worse, and also tend to share in its subsidy either directly through my taxes or indirectly through private companies (which pass on the cost of research to the customer in their goods and services).

The Science Channel is one of my favorite channels to watch. Not that I like everything on it: they seem recently to be ominously turning down the road of fiction programming, something more appropriate to the Sci-Fi Channel. But there are some really good shows on it nonetheless. The other night I saw one of these, which dealt with how today's physicists are coming up with theories and ideas concerning the basic nature of reality.

I probably am off a little with my accuracy in describing the different viewpoints I heard. But still, I was amazed at how divergent many of the top physicists were in their take on the basic nature of the universe and reality. One conjectured that, since time depends on mass to have any meaning, and that at the origin of the big bang there was a singularity which made time irrelevant, then our own universe eventually will expand and cool to the point where only massless photons are left. And thus no time, fulfilling (at least in the mind of this particular physicist) the prerequisite for another big bang to a new universe. Another physicist had a similar idea, only that it was black holes that were the spawning grounds for new universes. Renown Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind, largely known for his holographic theory that supposedly allows for information to be preserved in the event horizons surrounding black holes, postulated that there may be a holographic projection of all of our three-dimensional reality elsewhere in the universe. And then he pulled a mind-job on everyone by suggesting that perhaps what we perceive as reality around us is nothing more than a hologram.

Susskind, with his ideas, still stressed the point that it was through mathematics that he developed his theories. In fact, without this tool, scientific advancement would be very, very limited. And then another physicist came on the show to deliver the coup de grace: maybe mathematics isn't a tool that humankind has invented and developed over the centuries. Maybe instead mathematics IS the underlying structure of reality and we are gradually becoming more aware of it. Upon hearing this I felt like screaming in frustration...

Congrats to the Mavs

So the Dallas Mavericks were able to put away the supposedly-invincible Miami Heat four games to two in the National Basketball Association final series to claim their first championship ever. Good for them! I liked the way they worked as a team, and it reminded me of the way that the Boston Celtics played. As for the Miami Heat, they can have their superstars, for all I care. I am sick of this ongoing melodrama about the hurt feelings of their moody forward Lebron James, who apparently is of the attitude that he can just "turn it on" in a game whenever he happens to be in the mood...

Lord of the Rings: I Have Issues

I loved reading J.R.R. Tolkien's classic three volume fantasy series Lord of the Rings, and I also love watching the three-movie film adaptation thereof. There are however some problems I have with Lord of the Rings, mainly concerning the movies.

When I sat down to watch the first movie The Fellowship of the Ring, I was very eager to see how the movie would portray my favorite character Tom Bombadil. Who, you might say, is that? Well, if you didn't read the book you wouldn't know: director Peter Jackson and his cohorts apparently thought that THREE WHOLE CONSECUTIVE CHAPTERS of the book could be dispensed with, completely omitting any reference to this puzzling character and his interesting domain, which was located between the Shire and the town of Bree. Go figure...

Then there is the matter of the great ring itself. Whoever possessed it and kept it on their person never physically aged, as neither Gollum nor Bilbo Baggins did. Once Bilbo relinquished it to Frodo, though, he quickly aged, and by decades. But with Gollum, he was deprived of it for many years but DIDN'T AGE! H-m-m...

And what about the way the movie series treated the treacherous wizard Saruman? In the first movie, he was so powerful that he could control the weather from many miles away. But once the Ents flooded out Isengard in the second movie The Two Towers, he was just left alone in his tower without any power. In the book, he escapes with Wormtongue to stir up trouble later in the Shire, something also completely ignored in the films.

The Nazgul, or "Riders in Black", never made much sense either. In The Fellowship of the Ring, they were confined by land on horseback and allowed themselves to be swept away by an enchanted elvish river. And one man, Aragorn, was able to fight off the entire lot of them with an also-unexplained short respite of time following this feat. Later, in The Two Towers and the final book/film The Return of the King, the Nazgul return but are much more powerful and imposing, flying around on their powerful demonic dragons. Yet, in a scene at the end of the movie (but not in the book), they discover the whereabouts of the ring but retreat too easily.

There is something in the films that was a bit unsettling to me, something that I had alluded to in a much earlier blog article. Did you notice that the elves, Gandalf, and Aragorn all spoke the King's English? Other "good guys" like common hobbits and dwarfs spoke in in brogues like one would find in Scotland or Ireland. But the bad guys like Sauron or the orcs? They spoke with common Cockney-like accents. This gave an elitist, aristocratic connotation to the conflict between good and evil, and I objected to that.

Finally, I object to the way that Jackson and Co. tried to get around the aforementioned three chapters that they left out of the first movie by finally reintroducing the characters of Merry and Pippin in the most improbable setting of a maze-like cornfield miles away from Frodo and Sam's starting point for their trek. They could have done better, I think.

Still, I love Lord of the Rings and consider the film version as the best thing in cinema to come out this century so far. I wonder, though, how much they are going to alter the wonderful story The Hobbit when that movie is released. I shudder at the thought...

Title Series Format Change Suggestion

I have noticed over my lifetime (or at least my sports-following portion thereof) that for most of a sports season, there is relatively little interest among the general population. Even with initial playoffs or crucial regular-season-ending contests, the die-hard fans may get all pumped up with excitement but folks who usually don't follow sports still aren't in on what's going on. But once we get down to the final championship event(s), then suddenly interest explodes among the population. The Super Bowl, World Series, and NBA Championship Series stand out in professional sports in this regard. I couldn't get a reasonable discussion going with most people about these sports during the regular season, but come that final time in the season when it's down to two teams fighting it out for the title, then it's quite easy to talk about it with just about anyone.

As for my suggestion, I don't know what more could be done to improve professional football; college football obviously needs a playoff system to give that final game a greater sense of legitimacy. Due to the physically demanding, violent nature of the sport, football titles are decided by single games. In other professional team sports, though, a best-of-seven series is usually played. Currently, the National Basketball Association championship is being played out in a series between the Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks, with the latter leading three games to two so far. The first to reach four wins the championship. But why not change it so that one team, with a minimum of four series wins, must take a two-game advantage over the other in order to claim the championship? This wouldn't change a lop-sided mismatched series, which for all practical purposes needs to be finished and dispensed with. But what about those nail-biting close series, often ending up tied 3-3 with a climactic final game to decide it all? Oh, that last seventh game is a big attention grabber, to be sure. But then it's over. Imagine instead that the two teams are closely matched (like Miami and Dallas currently are) and neither has enough of an edge over the other to muster up a two-game edge. We could then go on for weeks with a great series, with one team finally winning by, say, something like a 20-18 margin.

They should drag out that final series and squeeze as much interest as possible from it. My proposal would do just that. I wouldn't recommend it for just any playoff series (remember, public interest isn't that great early on). Just for the championship series when everyone is getting in on the excitement.

Just think of all the beer commercials this would generate: we could get our economy "afloat" again...

Haze Reprieve Gives Way to Outdoor Run

This morning I experienced a reprieve from the stinky haze permeating the air over Gainesville when the wind shifted to an easterly direction. This gave me the opportunity to do some road running for a change, instead of the indoor treadmill. It was great to get back outside on my old course, covering 8.15 miles in 1:16:41. Of course, this was at my monotonously regular running pace!

Speaking of the haze, I reported that it is primarily due to a large forest fire (about 5,000 acres) in Levy County, adjacently to mine. But I suppose I should step out a minute from my pity party and count my blessings: Arizona has a monstrous, uncontrollable fire on its hands that is about to enter New Mexico. And there is a fire raging in Miami that is 50,000 acres in size!

But at least for my area, there is rain forecast for the next few days. But whether it will fall on that fire is problematic: don't large brush fires interact with the atmosphere and actually alter the weather, keeping rain away from them? I thought I heard that on TV once, or maybe I just dreamed it...

Starbucks Crowds Me Out

The Starbucks store on Newberry Road that closed down recently shouldn't be affecting me, since I had pretty much stopped going there long ago. Unfortunately, though, the customers who used to do business there have gone to other Starbucks. Including my favorite, the Magnolia Parke location. Lately, I have had repeated experiences of walking into this Starbucks with the intent of sitting inside for my coffee and some studying, and then turning about-face and walking right on out when it was apparent that all seats were taken.

That's too bad, because I have begun to frequent some of Starbucks' competitors, places that actually provide seating space for their customers.

Running Away From the Haze

The smoky haze primarily originating from a large forest fire in Levy County SSW of us has made running outdoors not a very advisable option for me. Especially when I have the alternative of running on the treadmill at my local YMCA. Monday, which started out hazy but then turned into a very rainy, stormy day for Gainesville (but unfortunately NOT for fire-ridden Levy County), I ran on the treadmill for 9 miles and felt pretty good afterwards. Today, with no rain in sight, I struggled through the haze to my car, coughed a little on the way and rushed into the YMCA holding my breath. Then I ran another 8 miles on the treadmill.

I could run on the treadmill like this all summer if I had to, but doing so makes the eventual transition to road running more difficult. I just wish that fire was gone.

By the way, I have decided at least for the immediate future to cross-train on non-running days at the YMCA with weight training and their elliptical machine. Tuesday I performed 330 reps on six different weight machines that exercised my upper body and abdomen. I used the elliptical cross-trainer for 40 minutes. Then, at home I did some work on our portable step-exercise machine. What I'd like to do is add some leg-strengthening weight training to this routine. I have heard that such training can be valuable in preventing injuries of the kind I experienced this past January (IT band).

Simple Faith

I tend to look askance at organized religion. Simple religious faith should unite people, not divide them with all kinds of special rules, stipulations, and rituals. Each organized religion says they have the only prescription for spiritual growth and the "good" afterlife based on their own preciously-held rules, names, and catch-phrases. If you talk to any true believer in one, to be sure, they will tell you that behind the utterances and ritual one must "feel it" in the heart as well. Maybe, but a Christian will still insist on the rituals as the required public expression of salvation. And a Muslim will point to the phrase in the Qu'ran that converts to that religion must utter to gain favor with Allah as a true believer.

I tend to have problems with religious people who get completely entangled in their own particular faith's doctrines and subdoctrines, especially elements thereof that assign exclusivity to that religion and consign nonbelievers to suffering after death. Instead, I respect...no, I ESTEEM those who may be members or part of the culture of a particular religion but themselves practice something I call "simple faith".

Underlying simple faith is the idea that life is a mystery, and so is death. What death is like, we don't know. And if there is any special meaning or power behind our lives and our "reality", we don't know either, based on what we can detect with our senses. But if there is, then we can entertain a hope that death is a transition from one type of existence in one reality to another, and that "God", if you will, is a protector and guide to help us on our way, both in this life and thereafter. Having this simple faith can help its possessors to feel empowered to make something of their "earthly" lives with some feeling of confidence that it is meaningful and that all is not lost with death. If you want to call God whatever name your specific religion uses (or forbids), then go ahead. Just don't get hung up on names, unless of course you just have as an agenda the desire to set yourself apart from others with the aim of somehow feeling superior to them.

Illegal Immigration Issue

Concerning the illegal immigration issue...

Proponents of strict enforcement of American immigration laws are often hammered as being "racist" or anti-immigrant. I have read and heard countless exhortations by well-meaning people (including President Obama) who, like me, want reasonable immigration reform that is realistic and compassionate toward those here without documentation. One of the arguments I hear, though, is patently condescending: we are a nation of immigrants, those currently here without documentation are the same as all of the others who passed into this country while following the law, and if you don't like the largely uncontrolled, primarily-Mexican influx then you must be racist or at least xenophobic (and therefore in need of this patronizing rebuke).

I remember in the not-too-distant past how refugees to the U.S. from Indochina often encountered hostility from some of the "natives": they were seen as "outsiders", supposedly taking away people's livelihoods by working cheaply or setting up competing businesses. But these were admitted into the country within the parameters of immigration law, with many more never making it into the United States. To the ones opposing those refugees, a rebuke about us being a nation of immigrants would be right on target and not condescending. After all, they came here within the confines of the law and were a true continuation of our admirable tradition of enhancing our national diversity through immigration.

Now I have no doubt that there are xenophobes among those clamoring for strict immigration enforcement. They are particularly strong among those who want the millions of illegal immigrants rounded up and summarily deported, even those who have been here for many years. But I can see that those arguing for strict enforcement have some good points without automatically attributing their motives to prejudice.

It is important to provide an avenue for legal residence to those currently in this country outside the law for a number of reasons. For one, they need to be able to rely on police protection and feel that they are not under the yoke of those who would exploit their vulnerable undocumented status to their own nefarious ends. For another, this is America, dude! You know, the land of the free! And when I interact with others in this great land, I want to feel that they, like me, are free to exercise all of their constitutional rights and to hold their leaders accountable. Only with the type of reasonable immigration reform proposed by our present and previous presidents, representing both major parties, can this be achieved.

But please, let's can the condescending lectures, O.K.? I also think our national borders need to be made more secure. That doesn't make me a bigot.

Hot Weather and Smoky Haze

The last couple of days have been stifling-hot, with temperatures climbing in the afternoon to the upper nineties. To compound the effect, a thick smoky haze from many area fires has descended upon the Gainesville area, making issues of breathing second-hand smoke from cigarettes a moot point. There is no way I am going out in this horrible weather to run, so for a while at least I am hitting the indoor treadmill at my local YMCA. Hopefully, some rain is forthcoming and we'll eventually begin to see the typical summer afternoon showers that make living here enjoyable, or at least bearable. But for now it's almost uninhabitable!

I have noticed that the haze is much worse during the evening hours, but I can now detect it throughout the day...

Orlando Visit

I went with my wife today to Orlando, where she had to go to do a mandatory part of the Masters-level class she is currently enrolled in online. Melissa attends the University of Central Florida, but does the bulk of her academic work online from home. Today, though, we were in eastern Orlando at UCF. What is it about this very crowded, noisy city that makes me want to quickly return to Gainesville in a way that ultracrowded Manhattan didn't on my visit there?

I believe that my problem with Orlando is its vast, sprawling nature wholly dependent on street traffic, in combination with lots and lots and lots of people. When I let Melissa off for her class, I drove around trying to find a place to get a good cup of coffee and study. I drove through the UCF campus, where no-parking signs were everywhere (unless you had bought a permit) and some for-pay parking garages, of which I felt no desire to avail myself. So although there were some places I could have gone at UCF, I ended up passing through the campus and back out on the main highway. I found a nearby Starbucks, but every table was taken. I skipped the local fast food places like Burger King and McDonald's, which was probably a mistake. Finally after driving around for several miles, I came across a Dunkin' Donuts that was right off of Colonial Drive. It was a big place, with an even bigger crowd of customers. But I did manage to get a seat and studied some amid the enormous din there. It was awfully unpleasant, though.

If you exclude my theme park experiences there, I don't like to visit Orlando. And I don't like anything to do with driving down its congested streets, full it seems of crazy drivers. Nothing personal, but to me it is an ugly, noisy, overcrowded sprawl. Probably like Los Angeles in miniature! If you like that kind of environment, then go for it! I won't be hanging around, though...

On the other hand, to be fair about it, if I actually lived in Orlando and had roots in the area, I might have a different take on it. But just passing through as a visitor is no fun!

Dallas Does It Again

A few days ago I wrote how the National Basketball Association Dallas Mavericks made an incredible late-game comeback against their playoff opponent Oklahoma City, after I had given up on the game to watch another TV show. Last night they did it again, although I was at work during the game and unable to watch. Their victims this time were the Miami Heat, their opponent for the NBA Championship series. After Miami had easily handled the Mavericks in game one, the buzz around the sports media was that the Heat were too hot for anyone to handle. And it looked like that last night, too. Midway through the fourth quarter they were easily handling Dallas, 78-63. Then the Mavs stormed back, with their stars Nowitzki, Kidd, and Terry leading the way. They pulled out their comeback with a 95-93 improbable victory, and on the road. The next three games will be home games for Dallas, so they now have a real opportunity to do damage to Miami's presumed cakewalk to the championship.

Bummed Out on Negative Personal Narratives

I am really tired of being expected to sympathetically listen to other people as they emotionally spew out their very personal hyperjudgemental rancor about others. I don't know how to change this: these people seem totally focused on the negative aspects of certain relationships they have and tenaciously refuse to consider the bigger, more complete picture that includes the positive. I have come to the conclusion that this negativity is at best a form of manipulation of me as a hostage listener and is at worst a psychological disorder, with negative feelings and their open expression feeding on themselves and demanding more and more.

This isn't just one person, either. I see it all around me in various settings. It tends to make me more susceptible to spiritual feelings only in the sense that it appears that demons have a hold on these very negative people. All I want to do when around them is escape.

I am 54. That isn't young. I would like to look forward to my remaining future years as a time of happiness, health and positive relationships. But not around these people, the way they currently are! It matters not what shortcomings they see in others: I have only one option, which is to tune them out...

Spoon June

Spoon is a Texas-based multihyphenated modern-indie-alternative-rock band that has been around since the nineties. Unfortunately, I only have their music that has been released since 2002. They are very good, with strong perscussion/guitar/keyboard interaction in their songs, along with group cofounder, singer/songwriter Britt Daniels' idiosynchratic raspy voice as lead vocal. Even if you don't normally listen to this genre of music, you may have heard their 2006 hit I Turn My Camera On on a TV commerical a few years back.

I Turn My Camera On was the song that made me notice this talented and creative band. Their material, like that of Regina Spektor and Radiohead, is all eminently listenable and there are several tracks on their albums that I have come to like a lot. In fact, I have recently begun to solely listen to my collection of Spoon's music (in shuffle mode) on my MP3 player while running (succeeding Regina and Radiohead for this honor). June looks to be a month full of Spoon listening...

The following is my personal "Top 25" list of Spoon songs. Please keep in mind that I don't yet have their early albums, though. I do have Kill the Moonlight [KM], Gimme Fiction [GF], Get Nice! [GN], Ga Ga Ga Ga [GGGG], and Transference [T]. I have put the above-indicated abbreviated forms for the corresponding albums next to each song.

Here's my list:

1 My Mathematical Mind [GF]
2 The Ghost of You Lingers [GGGG]
3 Don't Let It Get You Down [KM]
4 Goodnight Laura [T]
5 Merchants of Soul [GF]
6 Someone Something [KM]
7 Don't You Evah [GGGG]
8 The Mystery Zone [T]
9 My Little Japanese Cigarette Case [GGGG]
10 I Turn My Camera On [GF]
11 Stay Don't Go [KM]
12 The Way We Get By [KM]
13 You Got Your Cherry Bomb [GGGG]
14 I Summon You [GF]
15 Small Stakes [KM]
16 Paper Tiger [KM]
17 Is Love Forever? [T]
18 The Underdog [GGGG]
19 Jonathon Fisk [KM]
20 Sister Jack [GF]
21 Well-Alright [Dark Was the Night compilation]
22 Who Makes Your Money [T]
23 The Delicate Place [GF]
24 Dracula's Cigarette [GN]
25 Tasty Fish [GN]

The Swing Voter Bloc: Fools

Please, somebody explain to me the American voter. In 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency with a majority of votes cast. He also won the state of Florida over his Republican opponent John McCain. Two years later, in statewide races for the U.S. Senate and Governor, teabagger Republicans Marco Rubio and Rick Scott won their races, respectively, putting into office candidates with a diametrically opposite view of how to govern than Obama. Now just a few months after they took office, public opinion polls have Governor Scott with an approval rating under 30%. And he's only been doing what he said he was going to do when he was voted into office!

Now polls are showing President Obama ahead in Florida against the GOP, and incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Nelson has a commanding lead for reelection next year. Huh? I thought the tea party reigned supreme here now!

What is wrong with voters? What I see here isn't a thought-out shift in political philosophy that is reflected in the polls. Instead, it looks as if we, as a collective body of voters, are suffering from mass attention deficit disorder and vote strictly on emotional impulse!

Sure, there are those who stick to their own political perspective and consistently vote in accordance with it. I'd like to believe that I am one of them. But a frighteningly large portion of the electorate seems, at least to me, to be a bunch of silly, easily manipulated fools. Sometimes they vote as I vote on election day and sometimes the other way. But they are still fools regardless. No wonder candidates are now advertised and sold nowadays like sports cars, beer, and laundry detergent!

St. Augustine Memorial Day Outing

Today I took my family for a Memorial Day outing in St. Augustine, which is about 75 miles east of Gainesville. We split the time up between the beach and the old city (St. Augustine, founded by Spain in the late 16th century, is the oldest city in the U.S. in continuous existence). For the beach part, we went to Anastasia State Park, one of the nicer parks I've been to. While in the pretty turbulent ocean, I practiced swimming, concentrating mainly on trying to improve my breaststroke form. This was interesting as the waves were pretty strong around me, quite a different experience from my local YMCA pool. It was a pretty good workout, though. But I think I prefer swimming pools to the ocean, at least when they are actually open and have available lanes.

The old city was the same as I have come to know it from several previous visits spanning the last 25 years. We browsed through different stores and had dinner at Meehan's Irish Pub and Restaurant, not to mention some coffee and chocolate from other stores. We didn't buy much merchandise, preferring instead to simply enjoy each other's company as we leisurely browsed around and took in the surroundings.

Our day together was full of laughs and good feelings, elevating my spirits and making me look forward to the busy week ahead of me.

Theme Park Weariness

From late 2002 through 2006 I was an avid thrill ride fan, enjoying theme parks like Busch Gardens, Universal Studios Orlando, Disney World, Wild Adventures, Cypress Gardens, and Dollywood. Before this time I had been afraid to ride any roller coaster, and any ride that flipped me over or dropped me quickly? Forget it! It took my two fearless children to shame me into gutting it out through some scary rides, and before I knew it I was hooked on them. But my children have since been growing up and now have other interests. The rides never did take hold with my wife, so it often seems that I am the only one left with a real desire to visit a theme park. And even with me, I am not 100% on board with it, either.

For one, just to get to one of the relatively close parks involves some tedious long-distance driving for 100-140 miles. That, simply put, is not a fun ride for me! Then, when I'm finally at the park, there is the chronic problem of having to wait in long lines just to enjoy a ride that often lasts only a couple of minutes. On top of that, it seems that usually several of the rides are in disrepair at any given time, and some of them are my favorites.

So when I read about some of the new rides coming out at places like Busch Gardens, Sea World, and Universal, I wonder to myself whether I really want to invest the time, effort, and expense to go try them out. Shoot, I haven't even tried out any of the rides at Sea World, but I don't see any visits there in the foreseeable future.

Years ago I saw a promotional show on TV about Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia. They had a wonderful steel coaster called Alpengeist (similar to Tampa's Montu), and a man who liked this ride so much he had ridden it more than 500 times rode it again for the cameras. I bet that dude probably lived across the street from the park!

When I occasionally go to South Florida for family reasons, I check out a place in Dania called Boomer's, which is primarily a large arcade building with a whopping giant wooden roller coaster towering over it. I just drive over there during my visit, park my car for free, buy my coaster ride ticket, and walk right up and get on the coaster with nary a wait nor hassle.

Why can't other places be like that? They wear me down.

About My Chinese Study and Reading of Late

I am currently adding about 2,500 Chinese characters to my personal vocabulary, doing this in a painstakingly methodical fashion. Much of this involves looking up words in dictionaries and adding them to a "grand notebook" that I have constructed, holding new words learned along with where I encountered them. I am also inserting Japanese transliterations of the characters that they have incorporated into their language.

All of this takes a lot of time, but it is interesting that, when I have free time, I do a lot of writing that involves little actual thinking. And when I am involved in something else, I can mentally multi-task and practice my newly-acquired vocabulary from memory. Hopefully, this all will lead to me being able to more fully enjoy exposure to Chinese (and eventually Japanese) by being able, as I currently already am with Spanish, to pick out, either from reading or listening, the gist of what is being expressed in that language.

One result of this increased emphasis on foreign language study has been to reduce my time in reading fiction. Usually I am working on one or two books, but lately that has slowed down. Now, at certain times I still pick up a book, concentrating now on getting through Stephenie Meyer's interesting Twilight saga. Yes, this series is primarily targeted at teenage girls, but I enjoy it, too! I am currently beginning Eclipse, the third book. By the way, I have carefully avoided the movies made from this series, preferring instead to give my own imagination a workout, thank you.

Workout Room Supplants Swimming

As many articles that I have recently written about swimming, you might come away thinking that I am a hard-core fanatic about the subject. This is not so, though. What I have been trying to do is TURN myself into a fanatic, because I have reasoned it out and believe that swimming is a very healthful and potentially enjoyable form of physical activity that can endure with my passing into the "golden years" of life. But transforming that conclusion into reality is another matter...

This week I completely skipped out on swimming, substituting my YMCA pool sessions with intense workouts in their adjacent "wellness center". I found that doing weight training and using the elliptical cross-training machine gives me a better workout than swimming. There is no competition for access as I have to endure at the pool. It also doesn't matter what the weather is like outside: I am pretty much guaranteed a seventy-something degree environment that is nice and dry, without the need to spray on sunscreen. And like with running, after my indoor workout I am hot and sweaty but don't have the pool water to wash off of me. Also, I don't need to deal with that water seeping into my body through swallowing and sinuses.

Today I had a great time in the workout room. I looked out at the pool, where one of the local elementary schools had sent some of their students to play today. It was packed, and the swimming lanes were reduced for the occasion. But managing to get a lane wasn't enough: the swimmers had to endure large beach balls continually drifting over into their paths. I saw one swimmer doing several meters with a ball riding his back! I said to myself, "Isn't it nice to not be there right now!"

My main issue with swimming is access. The other problems are either resolvable or are things intrinsic to the activity that I have to adapt to. But I don't see that access issue improving in the near future and, besides, I have for now quite an acceptable alternate with the weights and elliptical trainer. Not that I've given up swimming, but something has to change to make it less of a hassle for me.