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jimsjournal |
Resolutions -- 01/02/12 |
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I liked today's xkcd comic:
I was planning on working today. In theory, this was the observed holiday for New Year's Day because that fell on a Sunday. Well, after taking off the Thursday and Friday before Christmas plus all of last week, what was one more day off? I had a lot of work to do, so I thought I would start the year by getting a good head start... but it turned out that a certain server was down and that kept me from being able to use a tool that I needed... so after a couple of hours of frustration, I shut down and decided that I would take the rest of the day off. Thus, I was able to get to the Y and make use of some of their exercise equipment. I once asked someone at the YMCA when was their busiest time (thinking of a time-of-day) and they laughed and said "The first week of January." Yes, indeed, a lot of New Year's resolution were being exercised today. It was very crowded. I jogged about fifteen minutes on a treadmill before I got a chance to grab a stair-stepper. (I like using the stair-steppers.) After about ten minutes on the stair-stepper, it seemed as if the Nautilus equipment was not as busy as it had been, so I got off the stair-stepper and went over to the Nautilus area -- did one machine there and decided that it was just too crowded in that area. (I don't like it when you have to wait to get the next machine and I don't like having people waiting to get on the machine I'm using.) So... I did another fifteen minutes of climbing stairs to nowhere... Despite the crowd, I got in a bit over forty minutes of exercise... and, in a few weeks the crowd will diminish as resolutions are abandoned. Many years ago -- when I began running -- I began to keep running logs, keeping track of when and where I ran and how long was that run, etc. -- and keeping weekly and monthly totals, etc. One day last week I dug into a desk drawer and pulled out some of those old running logs. In a few instances I had been keeping track of my weight as I was attempting to get faster. Oh, my goodness. I discovered that at my lowest weight in the summers of 1987 to 1990, I was ten pounds lighter than I had remembered being in that era. I guess I was remembering my off-season weight. And I'm not talking about when I was in college; I'm talking about when I was in my mid-40s. I guess I could use a few resolutions of my own. Who am I? I am a 68 year old computer geek who lives in Rhode Island with my wife, Nancy. She used to be a computer person as well (we got our MS degrees in Systems Sciences together) but she has since escaped from computers to become a middle school math teacher (and, this year, has moved from teaching math to teaching science). Eldest child lives in New York City with his wife and their two boys. Daughter is currently in Ottawa with her boy friend. Youngest is a restaurant manager here in R.I. The nest is empty. I work for a big computer company (you definitely know their initials) in their education and training department. I used to write courses and teach courses for them but a few years ago I got involved in helping to set up a quality assurance group and now I work from home doing editing and quality assurance checking on courses written by others.Hobbies & interests include photography (and video), running, reading, gardening, cooking, drawing, writing, and politics as a spectator sport. (No wonder I never seem to have free time.) And I've been babbling here on a semi-regular basis for more than fifteen years.
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