Bob Space

Distance: 1 mile
Time Goal: 24:00
Reps: 5

As noted earlier, since I’ve got the time goal shattered just on natural pace, it’s all about the reps right now.

But, yes, all goals met for this week, which is an achievement in itself. I just wish I didn’t live near the top of a hill. The final 1/3 of a mile coming home is … the challenging bit.

Today is a recovery day, so I’m sleeping in. This post comes to you care of WordPress’s post-scheduling feature.

This is the second report of up to 33, chronicling events between 30 Aug 2010 and 11 Apr 2011.

My middle years seem to be taken up with resolving unfinished business from my youth: getting my bachelors degree, mastering model rocketry, watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos from start to finish. The next one: getting physically fit.

(Oh, I had enough strength and stamina to do what needed doing. But I’ve never, ever been “objectively” fit. It’s far past time to correct that. And if I can’t do it on my own, right now, then what comes next doesn’t bear speculation.)

I’m not going to spam you with the details of what I will be doing, except to reassure you that it is:

• safe: I’ve seen my doctor and gotten a green light;
• progressive: it starts slow and builds at a reasonable tempo;
• about performance: the job is to meet the simple goals. Anything else that happens is gravy.
• scientific (of course!): the goals are based on age- and gender-appropriate norms derived from a long heritage of research.

I reworked the plan a little bit since the last Facebook post, making the endgame a little more reachable and leaving me room to keep climbing afterwards. But the resolution to not cut the hair remains. Yes, I need to get pictures going.

This is the first report of up to 33, chronicling events between 30 Aug 2010 and 11 Apr 2011.

Nasty blustery weekend is upon us. Good time to be indoors.
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I have been battling a cough to little effect for a week. I now diagnose this as some sort of sinusitis, and I prescribe saline nasal irrigation, frequency and tonicity to be determined.

I gave the Lady of the Manor my Christmas wish list today. Her reaction: “Really? ” I think she’s suprised that I finally put some list ideas together right around the time she usually starts thinking about gift shopping. Hey, it only takes me fifteen years to pick up on these things.

The Daughters will be drafted as range crew to help me at the next couple launch days. They do not yet know this. And I do not yet know how to fit all three of us and my flight gear into the Honda Accord. That seems fair to me.

So, what’s going to be filling my time (besides work, housework, yardwork, and sleep)?
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One of the few up-sides to letting my stuff get all cluttered up is that, when I do resolve how and what to clean, I make such interesting discoveries.

For example, today while I was preparing for [REDACTED], I found the misplaced materials for my “ASL University” self-study course. I really need to start making serious time for this, so that I can develop some level of competency at ASL before The Lady of the Manor loses her hearing completely.

I also found the original binder I put together when I started investigating “simple English” last year. I merged this with the new binder I put together this spring, keeping the best and dumping the dross.

I feel pretty good about where I’m going with my leisure time. I’ll have more to say on that over the next week or so.

Even though one of the anticipated key components of the recipe will be VERY difficult to acquire, I’m going forward anyway with an acceptable substitute.

But on the whole I cannot be very happy with this week’s developments. Still, these things happen and there are still 12 weeks available before the first benchmark. So … onward. Mwah-hah-ha-ha-haaaa.

I had already resolved that this was going to be a long process. Turns out (for assorted reasons) it’s going to be even longer than I thought. This means it’s almost certain that I won’t have any interesting results at the 13-week benchmark. I find that rather demotivating.

But, onward anyway. The 26-week benchmark will still be interesting.

The Geek Bug has been chewing on me for several days this week about flying. As in, me getting a private pilot certificate and being able to fly the family hither and yon. (This largely depends on that other reliable fantasy: winning the lottery.) There are some very nice planes around, some classic, some modern classics, that would make fine “skyroad trip” vehicles. And you know I love all the science and math tied up in flight.

And then I remembered / rediscovered the necessity to pass a flight physical. And investigating the terms of a medical certificate, it turns out I’ll probably never ever pass. Not with my vision issues, prescription requirements, and other chronic conditions which could interfere with my ability to operate an aircraft if they should go acute on me in mid-air. Pilot having an asthma attack? Bad plan. And then there’s the whole issue of my current weight, which tends to become very important in light aircraft.

So, this one boils itself down to: play with the ground school concepts for a year, and learn to fly a simulator. A year of online ground school costs $50, which ain’t unreasonable. And there are actually two flight sims for OS X that I could try — one of them’s open source and free, which fits my budget for whimsies nicely.

Make a note, kids. Dreams deferred can become dreams lost forever. I’ll have to keep my flying to the passenger seats of commercial aircraft, assuming I get my girth back down to where they’ll not force me to buy two seats. Yet another reason my real first priority, geek bugs not withstanding, needs to be getting exercise and improving my diet so my weight will go back down.

I do enjoy being out in the cool and quiet on these fall mornings. Seeing the stars. The sounds as our neighborhood starts to wake up. The frenzied barking of the idiotic dogs in some homes. It’s a nice way to start the morning. We’ll see if I still think it’s nice in February…

And, looking forward: after playing with the county GIS system a bit, I find that the “loop” is 1490 feet long. 7 times around that, plus the 150 feet back to my driveway, makes precisely two miles. Very convenient.