For use when I really don’t have time to figure out to what category the post should belong.
After a day off, I hopped on the treadmill. I am not a fan of the treadmill, but running outdoors is not a safe option with the miserable weather.
Having caught up with my stats, I’m keeping up.
I took a short break from running due to some severe back pain. Especially my lower back. A few chiropractic visits and discontinuing a particular medication appear to have done the trick. I am posting one run that occurred before the brief break and the two most recent runs. Also, note that I managed to get an outdoor run yesterday.
I kept it simple and light. I am not in any shape to push myself beyond my ability. I’ve reached a weight I’ve never been at before – though I suspect I was close to this weight in 2013 or 14 when I took up jogging after 30 years – and it’s taking its toll on me. Currently, my only goal is to put effort into exercising. I have no expectations around weight goals, pace goals, or outcomes. Around 2017 or 2018, I reached 209 pounds and was close to breaking the nine-minute mile. I didn’t have those goals in mind; they happened because of my focus on exercising.
Anyway, to the stats:
It has been three months since I last did any exercise. My Strava records show I last ran on December 6th, 2022. Today was a treadmill run. Anyway, to the stats:
38 years today. Please keep all open flames away. I am a fire hazard.
It’s harder to analyze events than to paste labels on them. Events come thick and fast, and pundits have to say something. It’s mostly pundits I’m talking about, but not entirely. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme, they say, and then they reach for one of these tropes. When the tropes are repeated again and again, they can influence policymakers. They flatten everyone’s thinking.
Here are five that I find particularly irritating.
Nuclear Diner
It’s a good read about how pundits quickly give you rhetorical shortcuts when writing about current events. Cheryl Rofer over at Nuclear Diner gives you five signs that the author of the post, op-ed, or Twitter you’re reading is lazy writing and to be avoided.
I took my last exam. I barely managed to pass the exam. However, I did pull a C+ in the class. It was Introduction to Psychological Measurements. The instructor was terrific; the topic was excruciating. And as I posted earlier, I managed a B for Introduction to Biology. Again, the instructor was excellent; but unlike the other class, the subject was enjoyable.
They are not my best grades, but all things considered, I’m glad to have passed the classes. With all that has gone on during the last five months, I am surprised I finished the semester.
And no, it’s not State Farm. Many thanks to a Hip and Ridge Construction worker for volunteering to plow my driveway. I was at the end of my second hour of shoveling by hand when he came by. I would have shoveled well into the night if he hadn’t helped. My snowblower couldn’t handle the thick, wet snow. It was damn near compacted to ice. So, hence the reduction to manual shoveling. I offered to give him money, but he adamantly refused. So, instead, he’s getting what pittance of free advertising I can give him.
Come the spring; I’m going to see if they can repair the gutter damaged by that mammoth ice dam of 2020. And maybe build us a new deck in the process.
I finished Biology 1001. I took my last exam this morning and managed 87%. I’m happy with that. I also turned in my last assignments for PSY 3801. It was a statistical course, Introduction to Psychological Measurement and Data Analysis. I still have one exam, and then I am completely, utterly, fantastically done with the Fall Semester.
For the record, worse semester ever. Not the classes but what life threw at me the last six months. How I managed to get passing grades is beyond me. I look to be getting a B in Biology, which I am overjoyed about. I look to be holding onto a C in the Psychology class, with which I am content. Considering that I was switching jobs, making multiple trips to Green Bay while Tina dealt with the passing of her mother, including handling the estate, and then Tina having emergency surgery to remove her rupturing aneurysm, I’m grateful I finished my classes.