Hello dear blog,
It has been a long time. Since last we talked I rode the LiveStrong challenge and it was hard because I was out of shape. And then I didn’t exercise really at all until last week and it’s been even harder because I’m even more out of shape. However, I am feeling some motivation and I’ve written up a small schedule of exercise that I’ve been able to stick with for the last eight days. Three more weeks and it should stick well enough to be habit. I still haven’t decided if I’m doing the MS150 again. I’ll have to make the call soon though since I need to register and fund raise and all that. All kinds of things have been going on some of which I don’t really want to talk about out of primitive fear of jinxes and stuff.
I saw Django Unchained with a special friend. I liked it better than Inglourious Basterds which is to say I left the theater without feeling like I had been told I was bad person for watching the movie. The same special friend had also been my guest to the traditional New Years Eve dinner at Asti. However, this year we had a party to attend after dinner so we all went and had sparkling drinks and played Cards Against Humanity and I was victor / worst person in the room. I even got to be the Prepared Gentleman and hold the umbrella I had brought when it was raining on the way to the party.
Saturday I went to San Antonio to see my old friend Bimal’s Indian wedding. He and his wife had been married in Los Angeles earlier this fall but his family wanted to do the Hindu thing as well. It was really nice and was a new experience for me. We apparently got the short version since the ceremony was only an hour and there was a lot of “here is where we would normally do X but we’re going to skip that”. There was no skipping on food though. We had cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and then sorbet and then toasts and speeches and then dinner and then dessert and it was all delicious. They seem happy and are cute together.
Sunday I went to the Blanton Museum to see the sand mandala that had been under construction the previous week and which was to be erased. I have never seen that many people at the museum by half. The line for general admission was down the side of the building out into the parking lot where it ran into a plastic barricade and doubled back on itself. Fortunately I am a member of the museum so I was allowed to stand in the short line and actually got in before they erased it. I have a few pictures I’ll add later.
Things are going ok. I have plenty to do at work but it’s not overwhelming and I was asked to do something a little outside of my normal sphere that will be interesting and potentially good for my reputation should I do it well and in a reasonable amount of time.
I’ve read a few books recently.
Redshirts was entertaining and a quick read. There is definitely a gimmick and it’s fine but when it happens it’s like “oh, so this is about that now” and it was.
South of the Border, West of the Sun was also quick and pretty depressing. It was weird because Hajime, in many ways, leads an appealing life and so his midlife crisis is a little hard to sympathize with but at the same time, I feel like I’m in a better place mentally / emotionally so I must be doing something right. Also, the end is oddly ambivalent. He seems to be able to leave the baggage from his past behind and reconnect with his wife and it seems genuine but the last scene is him sitting at the kitchen table after not being able to sleep with his face in his hands which felt sorrowful and resigned. I’m not sure what to make of it.
The Signal and the Noise was good pop science and though it tends to skip around a bit I liked all of the individual pieces. Some of it has been a topic of conversation around the office and it seems like a lot of the topics touched on things I’ve done in my life either in school, work or just personal interests. He has an accessible writing style, conversational but not distractingly so.
Finally, I read a couple of young adult novels. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There. Being YA they went quickly but they were enjoyable and the world building is imaginative and fun which is really what I wanted from them.
The big book news is that I have been reading the A Memory of Light, the 14th and final book of the Wheel of Time. I started reading the series in 1993. I got the first four books in paperback at Central Park Mall which doesn’t even exist anymore and then I got book five in hardback and have read each as they were released since then. This means that I have been following this series for almost twenty years which is well more than half my life. Mr. Sanderson has done a good job finishing up for the late Mr. Jordan, keeping the same style and tone but moving the plot along, tying up threads that need it and letting go those that are forgivably lost. I’m about a third through it and it’s pretty much what I wanted so far. Provided that work isn’t too bad this week and I can get through dinner and exercise in a timely fashion I suspect I’ll finish it by the end of the next weekend. How odd, to finally be at the end of the journey after all this time.