Words are inadequate

keep on ridin' ridin' ridin'

Wed, 10 May 2017 22:05:15 GMT

So, um, yesterday I bought a bike.

This was not something I'd ever intended to do.

( and yet, here we are. )

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la

Mon, 23 Jan 2017 16:56:10 GMT

First day running since ... Coal Harbour, so, 2014. Mildly stiff, but no persistent difficulty breathing despite being out in just-over-freezing weather. Suspect my legs will not be best pleased by the standing desk today.

Also, my quest to become unrecognisable to everyone who's known me for a decade continues. It started with contact lenses in November. Now that my razor's died I'm experimenting with this whole "not shaving" thing. Should be interesting. So far it's been three days and I haven't quite felt the need to claw my face off.

Other than that this morning I've watered my plant and turned off some jerk's phone that wouldn't stop ringing, and now I get to go sit through an R&D meeting. I suspect that my motivation may be slipping.

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things and things

Fri, 11 Jul 2014 21:14:16 GMT

Let's see.

Chaos

Is doing fine after being nuked. He's gaining weight (anecdotally, he feels more substantial when I pick him up), there's been no cat yuke to clean up, and he just generally looks better than he has in months. I feel a little bad for not having caught it sooner... but it was a pretty gradual drop-off.

Running

Is ... going. My knees (more accurately, between my knees and shins, on the inside of the leg) have started hurting, so I've had to cut back. This is deeply frustrating, in a HOW WILL I GET ANY BETTER IF I DON'T PUSH MYSELF kind of way. There's a good chance I need new shoes; will perhaps go get those this afternoon. My lungs remain terrible; I blame the humidity.

As far as running-related goals go, I'm pretty much guaranteed to miss them. 'Run 10k without stopping to walk' by next fall might be doable. '5k in 25 minutes' is almost certainly not. 'Run or swim [or other acceptable exercise] 3x/wk for six months' relies on not getting sick, hurt, or traveling someplace where it's difficult to get out, which is both unlikely and not entirely within my control. Oh well.

Weather

Bright and sunny and warm enough that I'm noticing the humidity: upper-twenties this week, supposed to break thirty next week. Ugh. I console myself by remembering that the highs here have been the *lows* in the DC area for the last couple of weeks.

Other

Apartment-hunting has been fruitless so far.

Apparently pimento cheese is a Southern thing. uilos made some and took it somewhere as a snack earlier this week, and it was met with suspicion and confusion. Huh.

Is there a statute of limitations for when semi-unexpectedly encountering certain people makes one start twitching? Asking for a friend.

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slowly going faster

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 00:20:22 GMT

The thing about running is that I can see improvement on a week-to-week basis. I mean, what I mostly see is how I'm not there yet and taking forever to get there, but that's why I keep a log. I can look back and say that yeah, I'm getting somewhere. Where 'somewhere' is defined as 'running 5k [three miles plus a bit] in 37 minutes, including a two-minute walk at about the 25-minute mark, after four months of getting out at least twice a week.'

According to the couch-to-5k plan I ought to have been running the full 5k in thirty minutes by last month sometime. I blame my factory-second lungs.

On the other hand, where I'm at now would have been completely impossible four months ago, or even one month ago.

It's trite and cliche to say 'everybody's got their own pace for improvement' and 'keep going you'll get there.' Those never meant anything to me. Anything I couldn't do right the first time was a source of scorn: come on, you're smarter than that, etc.

It's nice to have something that I'm a) awful at, b) allowed to be awful at, and c) less awful at than I used to be.

Wisdom from Twitter, original sources sadly misplaced:

Whenever God closes a door, he opens a window. Because God doesn't really understand how doors work.
Ten years ago we had Steve Jobs, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
It never gets any easier. You just get more data points for how well you can stick with it.

( 101 in 1001 update )

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scattered

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:50:38 GMT

The real problem with being sick is that it's entirely thrown me off my running. I was doing alright for the first week of April. Now I can't even take a deep breath without coughing, or even stand at my desk for several hours without getting light-headed and needing to sit down for a bit. Makes it hard to keep up any kind of pace.

It's been pretty bright out lately, which is nice even if I'm still coming to terms with the sun being up at seven PM. I just got used to it being dark at four-thirty and now they have to go and change it on me. Stupid seasons.

Media... dug into The Cloud Roads a couple of days ago. Even in my somewhat muzzy-headed state it's quite enjoyable. On advice/praise from a wide variety of people including daghain, silmaril, everyone at LG&M, and my friend Kosh from junior high, we watched the first episode of The Wire a couple of weeks ago. I immediately ordered the complete series DVDs. This looks like exactly the kind of in-depth storytelling I'm looking for.

The last of the immigration paperwork is off to the immigration lawyer, so there's that. Now we just wait for some amount of time which will probably be less than a year, and we're permanent residents and can start the much more involved citizenship process.

( 101 in 1001 update )

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good things what i have done

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:29:08 GMT

First and foremost, I/we have ESTABLISHED A PLAN by which, once the immigration stuff is done and the income situation is a bit more stable, I can take some unspecified amount of time off. Said time will be used primarily for actual vacation, and also writing, and generally recuperating from burnout. Downside: this is at least a year away, and probably more like two.

This morning I donated to the Chicago Teachers Union, who've gone on strike as of this morning. I have no kids; I'll never have kids; I still think that education "reform" is among the worst things to come out of the last ten (or thirty) years. Bonus reading: Why the Chicago Teachers Union is striking; Everything You've Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong.

In running news I made it around Lost Lagoon and back home today, for a total of 1.8 miles according to GMap Pedometer, without stopping to walk. 20 minutes running. "Running," rather, not much faster than a walk for the last five-plus, and I remain a crap runner of the "gasping for breath the whole way" variety. Still. It's a thing, and it's faster improvement than I've seen before.

And I clicked the button to list myself as "Going" to a local [REDACTED] event tomorrow night. Eep.

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a lie: speed is the way of the runner.

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:13:43 GMT

So, I'm running again.

I started running in spring 2006 for reasons that can only be described as Awful. Thing is, even if the reasons are bad, the health benefits are real. People tell me exercise is good for fighting depression. Plus I like being able to fit into certain shirts, and I like being able to sprint back to the game store to pick up my hat when I forget it.

The big obstacle has always been my lungs. In cold weather they freeze up during any sort of exercise. (In humid weather I sweat like a beast and overheat, which is also no fun.) In 2006 I worked my way up to the point where I could run for about 20 minutes at a stretch without stopping to walk, and then it got too cold to go out, so I fell back off the wagon. Later years had a similar but less effective trajectory, usually interrupted by high summer, Lyme disease, or other factors beyond my control.

I never even got started this spring. I blame apathy. Or I would if I could be bothered to care.

Now I'm back to the condition I was in during spring 2006 when I started all this. And like then, I've reached the point where I hate my physique more than I hate getting up in the morning.

So, I'm running again. Living a quick walk from Lost Lagoon helps: it's got a nice dirt path which is nicer on my knees and hamstrings, it's basically flat so there are no hills to struggle with, and it's very pretty. After a week and a half I'm running five minutes at a stretch, which originally took me three months to get to. So that's something.

I have goals, both performance- and apperance-based. I have no idea if they're at all reachable. Since my inherent response to reaching goals is "obviously i didn't set them high enough," that's okay. At least I'm doing something.

(And yes, I'm familiar with The Fantasy of Being Thin.)

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again, running

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:36:19 GMT

21 days for Dreamwidth, #2:
Why did you choose your journal name?

For continuity; it's my LJ name, and it's been my online handle since, mm, summer 1996. (Originally, from Howie Green's book, via Steph.)

The journal title is from John M. Ford's revolutionary "Chromatic Aberration":

Words are inadequate (the poor craftsman curses his tools) to describe the beauty of our coasts, but words are what I have available.

It warmed up enough last week for me to start my sixth annual "how long will I last this time?" running spree. These have consistently started in April or May, and have lasted... well. For reference:

2006: kept up through at least October, I think; I remember running to the polling place to vote in early November
2007: aborted in late June due to Lyme
2008: aborted in July due to heat and laziness; started again in September, ended in October.
2009: stopped in September due to personal stress.
2010: aborted in early July due to heat and personal stress.

So far, so... far. Yesterday I was at the start of week five; I expect I'll stay there for at least another week. Stupid humidity. Stupid hills. Stupid lungs. I'm looking forward to the point (probably next week) where I have to stop running because my legs are giving out, rather than because I can't breathe anymore. I'm looking forward even more to less warm and humid in another month and a half.)

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