Selfies

Selfie Week 32: Potius sero quam nunquam (Better late than never)

We’re a week into August. The big box stores have put up their Back To School displays. Heck, my parking permit for the fall quarter at Santa Rosa Junior College just showed up. The buckeye maples along River Road between Northwood golf course and Summer Crossing are starting to let a few harbinger leaves fall through the shafts of the golden, already-shifting, late afternoon sunlight. Let’s face it, today we are closer to the fall equinox (46 days) than we are to the summer solstice (47 days). Summer, my friends, is waning.

This year I feel like summer snuck up on me. Part of it is I decided not to plant a garden. The daily growth and weeding and picking and eventual die-back provide something of a visual calendar for the growing season stretching from late spring into the balmy Indian summer days. When the season opened I felt I didn’t have the time or money to plant this year, so I didn’t. I do miss it, though.

Another reason for distraction was preparing for – and going on – my summer roadtrip which I still haven’t written up. It’s coming, I promise. If for no other reason than to revisit the pictures and experiences. Ah, so much fun. If I could, I’d go again tomorrow. And look! It’s only supposed to be 111° on Death Valley’s floor tomorrow! Fall is even coming to the desert!

I know a lot of it missing summer is due to working six days a week, but that’s nothing new. And, realizing that’s nothing new? That’s a lot of what brings me here to this post.

Being busy isn’t new. In fact, it’s a pretty lousy excuse, all things considered. Don’t get me wrong, whenever I see those “Michelangelo only had 24 hours in a day. What’s your excuse?” posts I want to slap someone. This isn’t that. But it has been something of a wake-up call to enjoy the hell out of the season that’s left.

Potius sero quam nunquam. Better late than never.

I started Weight Watchers about a month ago and it’s been good so far. One of the things it’s pushed me to do is enjoy my outdoor workouts. The towel and swimsuit in the picture are a result of my fantastic workout in the river yesterday. In the spirit of saying something out loud gives it a better chance of coming true, I’m hoping to hit my other two favorite summer time workouts this week – the east ridge trail at Armstrong Woods, and the Howarth park/Spring Lake loop. Both feel so much a part of my Sonoma County life, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to use them to get into better shape. I went to the gym two weeks ago and genuinely felt a little guilty after I finished my workout and stepped out of the air conditioned building into the bright, hot sunlight. Fall and its shorter days are creeping closer with every day. When outdoor exercise after work becomes inevitably untenable, then I’ll return to the gym. Until then…

One of the interesting aspects of tracking my weight each week has been revisiting my spreadsheet. Back in 2005 Anna started tracking her weight and, in a move of solidarity, I followed suit. But I also realized it’s data! As such, I started logging it in a spreadsheet because of course I did. My relationship with my weight has varied since then from idle speculation to outright denial, and as such, the data points are far from regular. Back in that first year the line graph shows detailed, jagged resolution (oh yeah, of course I graphed it!) but there’s some years where I logged my weight exactly twice, and the line gracefully swoops from one point to the next. The line arcs upwards in late 2012, and by mid-2013 it crosses into heretofore uncharted weight territory and kept going up. This slope coincides, not coincidentally, with the first agonizing death throes of my marriage. The summit was reached late last year and my denial plateaued for a few months. I weighed myself at the beginning of the year and then left it until I joined Weight Watchers four weeks ago and I pleasantly discovered I managed to unwittingly engineer a rather precipitous drop — attributing it to excessive perspiration working in the sun on the weekend, I’ve taken to refer to this drop as “The Sweatening”. Over the last few weeks I’ve continued to lose in fits and starts, and it has been amusing to track the receding weight against its rise, like my weight is time traveling — two weeks ago I was weighing May 2015 and Monday I had reverted back to my birthday in 2014. Here’s hoping this Monday I’m weighing younger still.

Looking at my weight this way serves another purpose: it reinforces the idea that I didn’t put it on all at once, and it’s not going to come off all at once. But it’s starting. Maybe I had to learn something during that rise? I’m pretty confident I did. But the process has begun, and you know what? Better late than never.

Five Things This Week: week 31

Atlas Obscura
This story leads with a couple that got married on the bow of the titanic. 12,000 feet under the water. From there are the myriad plans to raise the Titanic from its watery grave, as well as (largely unsuccessful) attempts to protect it. 
Us Weekly
Don’t judge me! This 25 Things was done in 2013 (and it shows: “I love to play Wii tennis.” We all did, darling, we all did) but they re-released it for her role in the new Mama Mia sequel (and, no, I haven’t seen it. Nor plan to. Nor have I seen the first one. Make of that what you will…). But there are some amazing lines that I can only imagine could spin off into (obviously) Cher-starring films (“I have driven a taxi through New York City at 4 A.M.”). This is cotton candy, people, eat it up!
BBC
Cats purring. Need I say more?
Okay, calm from the purrs? Okay, I’m going to drop this here then:
Vox
Are you familiar with the whole Q-Anon conspiracy? You probably should be. It’s gathering steam and, while it’s really easy to dismiss it as whackadoo-crazy (complete with echoes of “Pizza-gate”), it’s not going away. On the contrary, its believers are doggedly loyal to the conspiracy (Washington Post), and that makes them and this whole movement particularly dangerous. Don’t believe me? How about the Q-Anon guy who showed up on the Hoover Dam in June armed with a handgun and a rifle (dailybeast) and a sign demanding the release of an Inspector General report… that had already been released (though, Q-Anon asserts, not the real report). I’m not posting this here to ridicule the movement (though the more you read, the more ridiculous it seems) but rather for edification; if you’ve heard the term “QAnon” and don’t know what it refers to, it’s time to understand just what it is all about. “And knowing is half the battle!” — G.I. Joe.
And your respite from that…
NYTimes
Lately Fern has been posting pictures of puppies to BookFace to try to alleviate the constant stream of bad/partisan/terrifying news flooding her friends’ feeds. This isn’t a puppy, but who doesn’t love baby ducklings. All 76 of them. They’re not all Mama duck’s – think of it as “ducky daycare”.

Selfie Week 30: Resolution Progress Report, Q3

That’s up on the East Ridge trail at Armstrong Woods and is part of my new workout regimen to get into better shape – more on that in a moment.
Wow, it’s been a minute, hasn’t it? Here we are in Week 30, a few weeks out from the start of the third quarter of 2018 and I’ve been slacking! Oh, wait, might as well get started on the New Years Resolutions check-in, right?…
  • Stick to a posting schedule — yeah, that’s fallen off, hasn’t it? I think the term is “blog-fade”. My three-posts-a-week started dipping with me falling behind on my stories. Then the selfies. Then the Five Things This Week. There aren’t any good excuses on this one other than I made my blog less of a priority. There’s reasons for that, sure, but nothing particularly notable. But this week is a nice, round week 30, so let’s try to pick this three-posts-a-week thing back up! Sure, we’re supposed to post Selfies on Monday and it’s Tuesday, but… you know, let’s work on the numbers and worry about hitting the right days later, shall we?
How about some good news?
  • A Selfie Post Once a Week — Yes, I’ve fallen off, but I’m patting myself on the back here. I started in week 3, and we’re on week 30. Out of the possible 27 Selfie posts, I’ve missed six. That’s a high C! I can build on that! Remember that old adage about what you call the medical student who graduated with a C average – Doctor!
  • Achieve low-hanging Bucket List Fruit: Cross off five items this year — While I still haven’t finished my ride report (hoping to get that up this week!!), I can say I definitively crossed two items off:
    13. Soak in a hot spring in the middle of nowhere!

    20. Ride Sherman Pass Road through Sequoia National Forest!
    And I’m claiming a half for 8. Meditate among the ancient bristlecone pines because I did get to the bristlecone pine forest, and I did see some of them. But they were the young ‘uns (only about 3500-4000 years old. Only), and I didn’t have a chance to do the hike out to the really old trees (spoiler: maybe this fall!)
    So at least 2 out of the 5 items I committed to! That’s progress!
  • 10,000 step days — At the last review I mentioned I blew this one, so I was starting fresh for the quarter: one 10K day a week, and Q3 (now) I’d do two 10K days a week. We’re in the fourth week of the quarter and so far I met that goal 2 of the 3 weeks (only one 10K day that first week of July). I’ve got one 10K day in this week and I’m on track for at least one more. So far I’ll take this as a win!
  • Make Things! — The resolution called for making one thing a month. Haven’t lived up to that. Money is a big part of that, but time as well – I’m bartending every Saturday this summer, and that doesn’t give me a lot of free time. Nonetheless, I’m working on this one!
All in all, a little past the halfway point of the year, I don’t think I’m doing too badly. That’s especially true when you realize that most people don’t even remember what resolutions they made by this time in the year. But still room for improvement. Let’s see what we can get done before Q3!