It was sunny and 67 and gorgeous on Saturday. We were supposed to run 12 miles, but you get days like this in January here only so often. Or a day. You only get a day like this in January only so often. (As in, Saturday. That was the one day.)
So instead of running we decided to go for a little bike ride. So we set out for the bike and pedestrian trails around town:
It was an easy spin. Just as well, because it was the first time I’d been on my bike since the end of last season. She was in fine form:
A lot of people were out, because they understand the weather to be an exception to what is ahead of us, so the trails were often full. Lots of walkers and joggers and families and you can hear the briefest of a snippet of conversations on the trails and I’m always hoping they fall together to make some nonsensical story. You’re around people for about a second, and it’ll take forever, but I’m hoping.
And there are a lot of kids on bikes. Whenever I see a kid on a bike I always try to compliment their ride. “Oh I need one that color!” Give a little boost and all that. Not this girl, though:
She went by me too fast.
On Sunday afternoon it was overcast and 60. We were supposed to run 12 miles, but I only got in five miles. It just didn’t feel good (so I added four more miles today). But it looked like this, which is what most winter days look like here:
And this:
We passed that barn going the other direction the day before on my bike. I’d tried to take a picture of it from my bike, but my phone’s iOS decided to confuse my opening the phone app for “Yes, let’s update right now!” I just wanted a photo of the silo and I got an all new operating system, instead. It was good that I found the barn and silo again on foot. I had no idea where we were when we rode past it, which is the best way to start your year on the bike.
I could tell you about the shuttle drivers we had this weekend. (They were each great in their own ways. The first because she was enthusiastic and opinionated and talkative and honey this and darlin’ that. And the second because he was waiting just for us and took us directly to the car and then told us which way to go to avoid the new toll on the bridge.) I could tell you about the six-and-a-half miles I ran today in the fog. (It was slow and I’m still not a very good runner.) I could tell you about one book I just finished and another I started. (One was fiction, the rare piece of the genre I read and, thus, a real guilty pleasure. The other is a historical collection, and we’ll get into it at a later date.) I could talk about a lot of things, I suppose.
But I have a picture of The Yankee with a horse:
And we also met a donkey this weekend:
That was at the ranch, which I’ll tell you a bit about tomorrow. But, first, there is a video of the sky:
I was going to write more, but the day got away from me. The days all get away from us from time to time, even as we know the days are always going some way or another. That’s the thing about us, we can seize the day, occasionally, if we are so inclined. But we can never grab the day and hold onto it. Not for very long anyway. I assume this has something to do with how our brains perceive time. We’re flowing through it, or it is flowing around us or some thing or another and the net you are holding isn’t woven with small enough mesh. Or some such.
But, hey! I did entirely rework a page on the site you’ll never see! And I found two or three things there that I need to fix. It is an administrative thing and you don’t care at all. I might not, either, but I started it long ago for reasons that probably didn’t make much sense then and probably mean less now. But I have it under control. For a time.
Also, I have added new images to the top and bottoms of the blog, here. As you might have noticed those are rotating images, built with a bit of code that offers the viewer a random image based on numerical sequence. Presently there are 81 headers and 81 footers. They all have varying heights and they are all 900 pixels wide. So I’m staying with this format for a long time, I suppose. I’ve been with this format for a good long while, as well.
I’ve been watching HBO-produced biopics. There was an Lyndon Johnson movie based on a play and then a two-parter on Winston Churchill that I’ve started. They are both interesting and probably have some accurate anecdotes, and they compress years of civics lessons into two-hour capsules. But try as I might, I see Anthony Mackie and Frank Langella rather than Rev. Martin Luther King and Sen. Richard Russell. Bryan Cranston fills out LBJ pretty well.
But I don’t know that you can really portray LBJ’s in a PG environment. The trailer was really good, I felt, so I watched it. The movie was worth seeing if you like political pieces or period pieces. There were a few really quite powerful moments. I think it captured the best parts of the worst parts of a hard, challenging time.
Stephen Root was J. Edgar Hoover. He is great in everything and there’s one little moment he has that nods at all of the things the cinematic audience we’ve learned about Hoover in recent years. Which makes me think of this in much the same way as we do comic book universes. Except, of course, this was real life. The most fake thing was the makeup they put on poor Josh Lyman to try to turn him into Hubert Humphrey. Should have spent more time on that.
I was half-listening to the Churchill story (turns out this is a BBC-HBO co-produced project) when I heard Lena Headey. Nothing takes you out of the 1940s like an accidental Game of Thrones reference. The problem is that these sorts of films always come off as cartoonish, either in a harsh way or in a soft focus, after school special sort of way:
I’ve been running indoors. Someone left the door open and Canada is cooling all of outdoors so we’ve been at the track. The track is a fine three-lane affair. Eight laps to a mile, only slightly better paces. It is made from special grade painful cement designed to hurt old joints, I think. But it looks like this outside:
So it is a trade off. Eighteen miles in the last couple of days. And now it’ll be a few more days before I set off again. Hopefully outside, where my stride is sometimes better.
The nicest part about being inside, after avoiding hypothermia, I mean, is that my running app can’t cope. For the first three miles or so it things I’m running at a world class pace. I am not running at a world class pace. Also, it thinks this is my course:
That is not my course. My app is just going through a modern art phase. It takes no time at all to imagine that is an aggressive effort.
Back at the office, where things are slow, but productive. They’re moving around a few editing bays and I’m dealing with email and various administrative things like deadlines and deliveries and purchase orders and its all great fun.
My watch beeps and I have to walk around a bit. I discovered that someone brought their foosball table. Not sure who, or if there is an expectation that it will be played, but it is in a common area, and does make that particular room feel something like a startup:
Students will be back next week. I bet it sees some use.
I made this video as a quick experiment. I wanted to see which version looks better when it is embedded. There are three versions of the same below, but more words following that.
I think the last one has the best quality and look. What do you think?
It was 11 degrees outside, so we went to the gym. I joined the gym. Now I have to see what all they have. They do have a nice track, though:
Eight laps equals a mile. The place is newer, cleaner, brighter and has people on it, which is an improvement from the track I was running on last year. That was 10 laps per mile and about 55 years old and I’ve only just realized how drab and lonely that track was.
But indoor running anywhere beats 11 degrees outside. And laps, when you find a rhythm, go fast. I got in six miles tonight. Six miles before a salmon dinner. Salmon is good, but it fills me like an empty lecture. I’ll be snacking again in an hour, I bet.
Chasing my best girl all over on a 10-mile run. That blue dot way off in the distance is The Yankee:
Some days she’s faster than me. Some days she’s really faster than me. Look at her go!
It was a 10-mile run, but it was only 26-degrees. (I do not know what is happening.) And this run was important because those last few miles put me cleanly in the top-third of this year-long running challenge I’ve been taking part in. And I’d probably be a percentage point or two higher, but for the cheaters. (Yeah, Darryl, we know you didn’t run 5,244 miles in the first two days of January. Your plane trips don’t count, DARRYL.)
Anyway, getting in a higher percentile is probably a good goal for next year.
At our last little holiday celebration tonight we had a local delicacy. I’m told this was how they were supposed to taste, and that no one does them better than Neri’s.
And Neri’s pastry is pretty delicious. So when in Port Chester, give them a try.
Also, I’m going to use that graphic for something in the upcoming year. I don’t know what it will be yet, but I’m going to use it. It’s an unofficial resolution.
Hey, thanks for spending part of the year with me. Have a safe and happy next orbit around the sun. I’ll see you next year, you know, tomorrow, with resolutions and the usual frivolities.
