Blue Moon, Blasting Skies, Alchemy of Being

I'm chilling outside, under the glow of the second full moon of this month: a blue moon. It's one of the last few evenings of the year that it will be nice enough to sit out here and close a day with sipping a glass of wine under the stars. I always find the tastiest watermelons around the end of August, and tonight I'm snacking on some that has been enhanced with a sprinkling of Tajin, a Mexican spice blend I found, concocted specifically to be added to slices of fruit. It gives it a wonderful sharp, zippy bite of citrus and chili, balanced by a slightly salty tang that contrasts nicely with the juicy sweetness. It was the perfect bedtime snack to have after I came back from the fireworks festival down by the river. A fireworks festival is the perfect event to have to symbolize the fading away of a Canadian summer: lively, animate, a burst of hot fiery glorious beauty within the year that feels like it comes and goes way too quickly and fleetingly. The flash of colours lead to the expectation of the changing leaves as autumn approaches.

That excursion, my book, plus sitting out here, were my first real breaks of the day. Before and after work, most of it was spent charging around and frantically writing up some correspondence to get some things prepared before deadlines today.

As I said, I read a bit after all that stuff was over with. If I was ever so diligent enough to create and upkeep a blog or numeric list article about a manly man's guide to literature*, the novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, would definitely be on it. It has been perhaps effecting me more deeply than I thought it would, now that I sit back and meditate on all the actions I took today to work some things out for the better. It seems like a recent entry into the book market, but in actuality, the work is twenty some odd years old. It's one of those universal and timeless stories, with lots of interplay using archetypes. It's sort of an adventure story; not one with a high level of action or drama in the content of the story, but if you have a real soul in you, it triggers you to recollect and probe into any part of some aspect of the adventure of your own life, in terms of both successes and regrets, where you found yourself chasing after a dream. Paradoxically, it's loaded with a setting and themes of things exotic and mysterious, yet is not as riddle laden as one may initially think: it gets very direct and revealing about some of life's deeper wisdom and truths. I wonder if this writing style is just a unique facet related to literary Portuguese, from which this story was translated, or more of a direct characteristic of the author.

Be warned, this book might make you want to approach your desires in life with a little more passion, as well as tuning into using your present moment to do something more pleasantly constructive. It's a Zen book.


*- Such a blog would probably be called something like, Books for Guys Who Like All Things Related to Beer, Boobies, Action Movies, Dirty Jokes, and Things with Loud Throbbing Engines, and Are yet Still Worldly and Securely Masculine Enough to Not Be Ashamed to Admit to Themselves and Others That They Have an Intellectual and Emotionally Sensitive Side That Needs to Be Nurtured and Stimulated With Deeply Awe-Inspiring, Philosophically  Engaging, Life-Enriching, Soulful, and Thought Provoking Literature. . . Ok, ok . . . I'll work on shortening that title.

Neuroeconomics, The Marketing of Intimacy, First Fall Sunday

I've been messing around again on the FOREX* scene, making a lot of small profits, only to have them wiped out by bigger losses. This morning yielded a net profit, too embarrassingly small to mention, but at least it was profit. I'm thankful that I'm still in practice mode, and not playing with real funds. I have been using the orthodox methods of reading and reacting to the candlestick charts; my problem seems to be setting my stops too tight on my trades. It's too technical to get into, I'm just at the stage of learning from mistakes, making it a habit to stick to modest deals that wouldn't be crippling if losses resulted. I'm trying to be mindful that this is just "game mode", and to not to get too caught up in the elements of greed and fear, which are the major forces of failure at making wise trades. There is so much to study and analyze; strengthened proficiency at this game though doesn't even guarantee anything profitable. I'm more forgiving of myself given these following points, which I gleaned from a book by Jason Zweig, called Your Money and Your Brain.

• "If you think you are a financial genius, you are almost certainly dumber than you think - and you need to chain your brain so you can control your futile attempts to outsmart everyone else. If you think you are a financial idiot, you're probably smarter than you realize - and you need to train your brain so you can understand how to triumph as an investor." (page 6)**
• Even smart people make financial mistakes. Sir Isaac Newton, being the mathematical genius as he was, was wiped out in a stock market crash. **
• "Professional" investors, on average, do not outperform "amateurs."**

Zweig's book would have stayed on the shelf if it was only just about economics. It was, however, the emphasis on the psychology of investing/spending/saving money (neuroecomonics) which was the thing that made me pick it up and read it. Money working for you instead of you working for money is a beautiful thing,*** but for most of us it is just a pipe dream, or we get bogged down by listening to the (often conflicting) details, information, and opinions of so-called experts. Prices of stocks, bonds, commodities, and currency values rise and fall for a bunch of innumerable excuses, (usually false) correlations, and the stupidest of variables and reasons.****  I think the best advice on investing I've heard so far is don't give any money to anybody to invest in anything if they aren't willing to show you the performance of their own portfolio. I don't know of any investment brokers yet who are so willing to do that with me.

The degree of automation in an online trading station is wonderful tool once getting a clearer sense of focus and discipline for interpreting the data from it is mastered: for either market/entry order placement, or closing a trade, which let's you free yourself from constantly monitoring charts to do other things. The one thing I don't want to do is to become addicted to watching a bunch of red and blue lines rise and dive on a time chart, which could be easy for an analytical person to get lost in doing.

I still don't know yet what my gimmick would be for getting a little extra seed money for more investing. To be a writer would be interesting, but it would take a keen sense of knowing what key issues are throbbing through the pulse of contemporary society to create a good original story, and making it a sincere mission to tackle them and building a plot around them. For example, I was reading a recent article on MSN about E.L. James, the author of Fifty Shades of Grey. Her erotic novel has been charging up the best sellers lists, and is so controversial that it has been put on the "books to burn" lists of several organizations as well. I think the writing in the book is rather average and mediocre, but the marketing of it was brilliant*****. In my eyes, the popularity of this book is perhaps not really telling about how the average man and woman is becoming depraved and obsessed about alternative (and painful) expressions of sensuality, but of really how deprived and estranged people, in general, are becoming from the feeling of genuine intimacy. The list of reasons of how and why this has become so in modern society is too long for me to write in this entry. If there is a supply and demand marketing paradigm that E.L. James used in getting rich by creating something that is a reflection of what people in this society today are really wanting and craving, I would have to say that thing/theme would be intimacy: something that money and power couldn't buy for Christian Grey, the rich male character in the book. He had to earn it by learning to surrender power and be vulnerable. Getting to even entering a degree of intimacy that a person wants today, has come to the point where it has to be gained through some greater degree of exploration of humiliation and pain, as the character of Anastasia did in the book. The play and antagonism between Christian and Anastasia leaves one wondering which character has gained, and which one lost power in the strange "romance" depicted in the story. The sex is certainly there, a relationship is there, a (fluctuating) power dynamic is there, but as for intimacy. . . that is very questionable, and it leads the reader into exploring if it's there or not.

To be a successful fiction writer in this day in age seems to be harder, in that one has to have volume set no less than a trilogy to be published before ever getting popular; contemporary examples include E. L. James (as I mentioned), J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter series), Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games). Most importantly, there has to be an effort by the writer to be able to build a sense, or a bond of intimacy between him/her, the story, and the reader: an ability in which I'm probably very lacking.

I've been writing this entry piecemeal. It's now Sunday morning: a day off for this part of my rotation. I noticed leaves changing and the smell of the air as I drink my coffee outside this morning, and its crispness makes me feel like summer really has officially ended as of today. I have nothing planned except to harvest the remainder of my tomatoes, and perhaps do some cycling before it possibly rains, or the wind picks up. I don't think I'll be perusing any more female erotica, but the fiction that I would like to check out today is a book by Paolo Coehlo, The Alchemist: a short novel, but reputed to be a very deep one. I'll continue reading along with my non-fiction selections as well. If it stays cloudy, and when my eyes get too sore from reading, I'll maybe nap, or watch a classic movie before the FOREX markets re-open this afternoon (Monday morning in Tokyo and Sydney). I really don't want life to be any more intense than this today after I'm finished dumping out my mind in this entry.

*- It shocks me just how little knowledge people, even amongst those guys whom I serve with commerce degrees, and have had jobs in banking, generally have about the operation/existence of the FOREX market, yet its volume of trading is a few times greater than that of New York Stock Exchange within any given day.

** - Zweig, J. (2007). Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

***- Getting rich by a spark of creativity is even cooler, as you see as I write on.

****- In world of economics and finance, the only prevailing constants are the greed of banks, governments, and corporations, and the power they exert over everyone else from the level of the consumer and taxpayer upward.

*****- Yes, I did read this book before having the gall to mildly critique it. I don't ordinarily make it a habit of reading female oriented erotica, but it was good to do to gain some insight into the female head space. Don't let it be said that won't try to understand. It was done so out of some hint/dare/suggestion from one of my female friends (I can't/won't openly speculate on any other motive as to why she did so).

 

BYOB, Generations, TV, Creativity Gulch

My desktop console is back, a day overdue from the time I was promised that it would be ready; even when I plugged it in it still didn't work right. Not all my disk drives were connected, a very amateur mistake on their part. I cracked open the case, traced some wiring, and got lucky in deducing at the first try as to which of the numerous vacant 5-pin connector spots that one of my media/backup drives needed to be plugged into; thankfully fixing the problem without any adverse effect. On the bright side, my replacement graphics card is a couple generations more evolved than the failed one, and the slightly greater expense for it was worth it in terms of cost effectiveness compared to the few days of time and money I would have had to use to reconfigure my network and backup storage. Doing that, plus some domestic stuff like housecleaning/laundry, and making fresh dark rye bread and some borscht* from what I gleaned at the Farmers' Market earlier this morning, were the only productive things I did all day. The rest of the day was spent brooding in a depression which has been sapping energy away from me today I suppose: about all the extra bills being doled out to me lately for things I didn't want or ask for, the remaining pain and stiffness I have, plus some other issues too personal to be put in this entry. The comedy channels on iTunes aren't being very effective today.

Out of this malaise, I did some web-surfing. One thing that caught my attention that I'd really be interested in for the sake of being part of a greater science experiment involving all of the human race is the Genographic Project, sponsored by National Geographic magazine. It would be cool to see ultimately where my roots originated from through the course of a few millennia by using genetic markers. The few documentaries I've seen about this expansion of humankind amazes me.

Speaking of documentaries, I'm reminded that my TV service will resume at some time in mid-September. The only time I wish I had my digital cable this summer was to watch some of the Olympics coverage from London; other than that, I was fine and thankful to be without it. However, on thing that I am disappointed about, throughout this annual summertime media fast, is that I would have hoped to show signs of becoming a more creative thinker. I would have hoped that the absence of someone else's pre-fabricated stories would leave my mind to be freer to exercise the power of filling in blanks with its own imagery, and forced to communicate it, instead of absorbing stories and knowledge passively all the time. That doesn't seem to be happening, at least to the degree I wish it could be. After an experience from yesterday, while accompanying a friend for a 'not-so-average-everyday' activity, I realize how badly I'm becoming at instantaneous improvisation, initiating interesting conversations, making fiction, creative storytelling, and just not being able to even easily outright lie about something (if it meant using it defensively to save my own skin, or just using 'white-lies' to preserve dignity and help save face for others in embarrassing moments).** We found some laughter in that fact (which was good, since at that moment, she was trying to endure lots of pain).

As Fall approaches, along with looking into more fitness programs to keep me in form for next year's running season, and educating myself with practical skills, I think I have to check out more things on the scene that deal with the humanities, and sign up for work that allows me to have some more creative license on things.

*- Perhaps it's because the extra bills that woke up the more frugal Ukrainian half of my personal genome in me. Around here, BYOB means either "Be Your Own Baba", or "Bachelor, Yet Occasional Baker". Both meanings applied here today.

**- One would think that not being prone to bullshitting people would be a very positive attribute to have, but I know I've hurt fthe eelings a lot of people more with blunt sincerity than I have with spinning and feeding them a bunch of sugar-coated mistruths.

Crash, Non-Bucket List, FOREX

With the Ex finally packed away and out of the neighbourhood, I finally succumbed to the mother of all power-sleeps for the past couple of nights. It’s the last day of my summer holiday. I’m almost happy to see that it’s cloudy and threatening to rain this morning: as a day like this, with me being physically bent out of shape as I am right now won’t then be such a big loss*. Just to make me extra super happy today <sarcasm>, my desktop PC died (driver warnings for my video card, and then no power). If it can’t be repaired and resurrected, and if my automatic backups haven’t been working, I’ll be shittin’ kittens. I’m thankful for managing to salvage and save a few things that I didn’t keep on my drives. Thank goodness for Cloud networking.

These past few days did me no good at all for restoring my body, the vehicle I needed to use to refresh the other two important things of the personal trinity: the mind and spirit. I managed to accomplish one “bucket list” type goals (half-marathon), but not to my greatest satisfaction. I ran much better times for a half marathon distance during my earlier training for it.

I actually don’t have a formally written out “bucket list” of anything. Given the cloudy weather, and the lack of physical constitution to do much else but put ice packs on my hamstrings, and write, it might be a good day to chill out, put my tech worries behind me, relax, and dream up of one.* The things that would be on it would probably be too personal to share publicly; it would be far easier to divulge the things that definitely won’t be on such a list. To help organize a more interpretable schema for this, I consulted with a page I found called 525+ Ideas for Your Bucket List, on the Daring to Live Fully website. Some of these things of note for me are:

Skydiving: It amazes me how stupid some people are to put this as one of the first things, a top priority, to do on their bucket list. It should be the last thing to do since it’s something that presents a higher probability for them to kick the bucket sooner (or be scooped up and carried away in one if their chute fails to open). Para sailing would be different because I’d be able to see a pre-opened chute while safely on the ground, which I wouldn’t be so far off of it once aloft. Not so with skydiving. The only way I could be persuaded to willingly leap out of an airplane is if the damn thing was on fire and imminently going to crash; even then, I’d probably be desperately trying to blow out the scorching flames with my lips first if it meant I didn’t have to jump. If there was someone ever strong enough to manage unhooking my clawed adrenaline-locked fingers from the fuselage, I know my breathing would suddenly stop and all things gastro-intestinal in me would instantly liquefy. Once I’m dropped out of the aircraft, I’m sure that those contents would be automatically and volcanically expulsed from my body. It would be a scene of me rectally skywriting out a great big brown exclamation mark as I plummeted to earth, screaming and praying for my chute to open.

Eating Fugu: Seafood aficionados whine and complain about how inedible the world’s oceans stock of fish (especially top of the food chain species like tuna and swordfish) are becoming with all the environmental contaminants and pollution, yet some of the same such people who opt for the exotic will rave about daring to try dining on a species of fish which, if improperly cleaned and prepared, is poisonous enough to kill a person in seconds. Fugu, a Japanese delicacy, is a puffer fish, usually prepared in a sashimi style. Its gonads, liver, and other internal organs contain the powerful neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin, which induces muscular paralysis and pulmonary failure leading to death, even in trace amounts. It has no known antidote. It’s the culinary equivalent of skydiving. No thanks . . . pass me a maki roll instead.  

Fire Walking: I fail to understand how tramping across coals that are hot enough to be used to forge iron is supposed to make someone a better person. I wonder how often this new age gong show is attempted at some beach resort by some tourist that is willingly wanting to be ‘liberated’ and ‘enlightened’ by this experience, who probably just complained a few hours earlier about how hot the sand was along the beach. 

Becoming a Chef: My friend gifted me Anthony Bourdain’s book, Kitchen Confidential. It was an adventuresome behind the scenes peek at the subculture, big egos, and cut-throat competition involved in the kitchen activity and shenanigans of culinary services in the restaurants that he used to work in during his career. It was humourous, entertaining; it also totally dissuaded me from giving any further thought of trying to enter the stressful craziness that is the restaurant business as a professional chef. I have my Food Safety Certificate, and I like cooking fine enough, but have I do it on my own terms and my own pace. I’d have an extremely hard time taking orders from some jerk customer to make a steak somehow rarer, or trying to pander to some diner’s feeling about how something isn’t seasoned right, and being left at the mercy of their stupidity and vagueness of being unable to find the exact words about how it’s supposed to be for their liking. Worst of all, after making all this stuff with pride, I could be easily be insulted by watching some weirdo pervert it by slopping some ungodly and obnoxiously inappropriate condiment on it.**

Becoming a Vegetarian: I won’t ever consider a lifestyle of going totally meatless, despite developing more of a Buddhist perspective on things***. The reason why there was such a leap in human brain development during the last Ice Age was that humans consumed rich protein and animal fat. We eat, or have killed, animate life forms by even our most mindful patterns of consumption, and in turn we are being eaten by them right now by some microscopic form of them. That’s just reality of nature; any higher moral standing, health agenda, or sanctimony involved with not opting to eat meat, or trying to detach myself from the cycle of having sentient lives taken for consumption, doesn’t make me righteous enough for them to stop eating me. I’ve tested myself with eating no animal protein for a while. I can’t say that it agreed with me very well. Three days was the most I could tolerate. I see the most zealous of vegan maniacs preaching vegetarianism, who are still wearing leather, feathers and furs, a bit of hypocrisy there. I’ve made a point of cutting down a bit (mostly because of the cost) but not eliminating it entirely.

Learning Astrology: Oh geez, do I really have to explain this one? Predicting things with the stars is ludicrous, and it’s alarming to me just how many people depend on it to make major life/financial decisions.

Speaking of financial affairs, the other way I’ve been trying to force myself to sit still today was to re-acquaint/educate myself with the FOREX market, and the ins and outs of currency trading.**** I set up a demo account with a trading site; playing around with the equivalent of 50 grand worth of digital monopoly money to test my wits and technical analysis ability. My style is to put very little faith in fundamental analysis. I don’t who said it, but I’m inclined to concur with their quote stating, “If you take all the economists in the world and lined them up, they still wouldn’t be able to reach a conclusion.” Perhaps they rely too much on astrology.

*- Still doing some recovering after my masseuse finished ripping and shredding up all the muscle tissue between my scapulae and metatarsals.

**- Did you just put soy sauce on those perogies I just made? You ought to be dragged out into the street and shot! People salting, or overusing sauces/condiments on the food I cooked before they even try it, and then dare to express complaint or criticism to me about how it tastes, must have some sort of death wish as well.

***- According to scholars, the historical Buddha lived and died eating meat, thus I fail to see the reasoning why in some Buddhist circles that eating meat is so abhorrent given that the Enlightened One did so himself. It’s only in tropical regions blessed with having a year round plant growing season, like in India and Southeast Asia, where butchered meat can spoil quickly in such a climate, that eating flesh may be construed as repulsive, and vegetarianism gets to be a more natural and sensible dietary option for such civilizations developing in such regions: which get incorporated into the holy practices in faiths like Hinduism, Jainism, and then later adopted into monastic practice in Buddhism.

****- If there was a high –falootin’ career in the very abstract, yet analytical, in the realm of commerce/ economics that I knew I couldn’t fail at, currency markets and trading would probably be it. I’m not willing that great of a risk taker though, especially at brokering (i.e. gambling with) other peoples’ money.

The Saskatoon River Run Classic: Half-Marathon Race

The Day Before:  Received Ella's friend , whom I'm babysitting for a couple of days. Walked to the Farmers' Market, and then to Remai Arts Centre to pick up racing package. Stretched and used foam roller to fix the remaining knots in my leg and back. Tried napping in the early afternoon, since Saturday is typically the busiest day at the Ex, with the most hooligans touring around the streets, as witnessed yesterday as I watched two cops chasing a youth who escaped them (he was running from them with his hands handcuffed behind his back). Napping was futile, so I worked on other correspondence. Made a beef stir fry for supper, listened to some of the Collective Soul concert from my deck, waited until the fireworks passed before even trying to prepare for bed. Fell asleep sometime after midnight.

Wake up/Breakfast on Day of Race: Awoken at 4:00 AM, by some idiot honking a car horn down the block, and couldn't go back to sleep. Read and replied to e-mails. Breakfast at 5:00 was an English muffin, two poached eggs, eight strips of bacon, two large cups of coffee (with creammilk and sugar). I could only eat half of it, anxiety/excitement was making my stomach flip.

Half Marathon start time: 8:00 AM, at River Landing.  I arrived an hour early. I cycled there slowly, and used much of that time to stretch before the starting gun went off.

Start Position: Middle of the pack. There were only 121 runners registered (108 recorded finishing) for the Half Marathon, so not a really dense crowd to move through.

Mental Preparation: I avoided all instances of watching and being obsessed about my pace time, as I'm sure that it would have been too distracting. I set up only the distance traveled on my GPS watch. I told myself that, given the circumstances, pain will be inevitable, and used a lot of controlled breathing to try to make it dissipate.  My thoughts were focused on being so determined to just getting past that finish line: no matter if I ran, walked, crawled, or even was face down on the pavement trying to drag myself there by my lips. I trained too hard and sacrificed a lot to get this far; to just throw in the towel and quit was not an option.

Pre-Race Weight: 194.4 lbs (88.17 kg)

Post-Race Weight: 190.4 lbs (86.36 kg)

Most Challenging Part(s) of the Race: The course was made up of sections I've already ran through and am familiar with, but it served no advantage for me with the sciatic problems. I noticed the stiffening occur at around the 12 km point. I forced myself (for my protection) to walk up the hills and inclines by the bridges, and was limping badly at this point (18 km). I had a spike of reserve energy for the last 500 meters before the finish line, I wish it was there earlier.

Things I’m most pleased about with my performance: As pain stricken as I was, I managed to stay more or less in the middle of the pack for the first 15 kilometers. I managed to stay disciplined enough to avoid red-lining, and risking greater injury. Happy that my pain-tolerance has been quite elevated since I've started running. I'm happy that I had the wherewithal, and fulfilled my commit ment to start and end this trial. Happy to be not the last guy in the standing of my Sex/Age group. 

Final Results:

• Time: 2:11:34
• Rank: 77/108
• Average Pace: 6' 15"/km
• Place in Sex/Age Division: 13/14
• Fastest Pace: 4' 51"/km at 2.5 kms into race
• Most Brutal kilometer: Between 18 and 19 (just about collapsed)

After the Race: Gently and slowly cycled back home. Finished my breakfast. Bath and stretching. Ice packs on hamstrings. Emptied two liters of Gatorade to replenish myself. Attempted to nap to catch up on Zzzz's after the lousy sleep from last night, and to rest for a date I have this afternoon before the Ex noise starts up.

What I’ve Learned: Never sleep on the ground just after receiving chiropractic treatment. Bring and drink more electrolytes with this degree of injury. No matter what kind of fancy, space-age wicking material they are made of, black sponsor provided T-shirts are a bad idea. I learned how to pace myself through pain better than I did in my trial runs since getting treatment. 

My award and reward(s):

This award felt very hard earned, but worth it in the end.

Considering how close I came to hitting the pavement, perhaps a practical reward should be getting a Road ID bracelet. They were one of the sponsors of this race.

Grateful for: The volunteers of these races never get enough thanks for their time and energy for helping to get these events set up and running smoothly. Extra thanks to all of them. My special thanks to my best friend for giving me this goal to work towards; I wish I could have been in better shape to honour this gift.

To Strain to Train through Pain Again

“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then victory is yours. It cannot be taken away from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.” - Buddha

The pain I’ve had is gradually fading away, but I’m still not anywhere near the condition I wanted to be in for contending with the race this coming Sunday. I took a trial run yesterday. I only did about three kilometers to gauge the pace at which was tolerable for me to take on a 21.1 kilometer run, and to check and see the degree at which I’ve recovered. I managed to get a pace around 5’ 30” /km within the first 700 meters, which was the target average pace I wanted to have for the whole race before this injury occurred. My performance worsened, getting to 6’ 15”/km, a dramatic drop after one and a half kilometers once the stiffening and inflation started to set in. I don’t expect to break any personal records if this keeps up. My goal now has been reduced to just being able to start and finish this whole  ordeal. 

This tapering off process and session of injury treatment before my race day is driving me crazy as well. Tapering off is very necessary to avoid excessive stress and wearing of connective tissues, and to allow the body to rebuild and strengthen the muscles needed for the day of competitive racing. However, after all these months of effort, sitting still to rest has become totally counter-intuitive. It’s tiresome and boring to be stranded at home using ice-packs, a foam roller, and stretching. With this amount of personal downtime, I usually retreat into my kitchen to cook and eat; and now I can’t just eat whatever and whenever I want*. I’m really aching to be back outside on the trails, to be in the sunshine and fresh air. I miss greeting, and being greeted by the fellow runners (especially the lovely Lululemon clad athletic women) on the trails. Doing cross-training on my bike and upper body strength training is tolerable, but not the same. They don’t invigorate me like running does.

It has occurred to me that I never set a reward for myself for accomplishing this next race. I know what I’d really want, but it’s nothing I can simply buy. It’s a wish that’s too personal to express here.

*- I purposely emptied my fridge for camping and left it that way when I came back home, to avoid mindless eating. I’ll grocery shop when I get back into the swing of work and re-training once sufficiently healed.

The Long Weekend, Healing, Ideal National Getaways

I’m outside tonight writing this, getting a free concert blaring from the Ex bandstand, probably getting a free high from the odd stray drifting cloud of pot-smoke wafting in from the schoolyard-become-parking lot, just waiting for the fireworks to spark up any minute. Someone was digging up the fossils of 80’s rock bands for the entertainment here, and managed to blow the dust off the bones of Foreigner, who is playing on stage right now. Actually, they still are sounding pretty good, even from a few blocks away.

It turned out that going to the lake for the long weekend wasn’t a favourable decision for me after all. The pelvic and leg pain was only worsening. Ordinary, a decent amount of rest would usually help settle it, but out of the past three nights, I only managed to get a total of maybe eight hours of quality sleep (due to what I mentioned noted in my last entry, and more). Not even the peace and solace I usually get out of fishing was there for me. When I’m this exhausted and pain stricken: being open, social, or being forth-coming with anything else for conversation and entertainment just doesn’t happen. All I was doing was struggling to stay calm and composed, trying to contain my misery, trying not to dump the resulting negativity on someone else. Trying to drink it away didn’t work. I returned home on my last night only to discover more disappointment, regarding Ella and the mischief she caused for herself and her sitter.

I took myself on a trial run yesterday after breakfast. I could only perform well enough for a strain-loaded nine kilometers before I was forced to walk (limp) the rest of the way home. I seem to be back at square one with the sciatic nerve pain and its interference; any progress, or benefit, from the chiropractic treatment I had during the week was totally canceled out by the conditions I had to deal with this weekend.

I finally underwent massage therapy today. It helped a lot afterward, but during the time that I was receiving it I was doing all I could to keep from yelling out loud as my masseuse was tearing at some of my badly knotted muscles (basically 75% of my back, and 80% of my leg). I felt completely useless physically for the rest of the day. This is not the way I wanted to spend my holiday time.

What would be my ideal summer holiday time? I don’t know, I’m still trying to figure that out myself. I do know it wouldn’t involve sitting around with a half-buggered lower back and leg, listening to extra street noise, squabbling riff-raff, and near-geriatric rock stars from my deck. Some ideas that strike me as great summertime getaways, were I fit for it, within my country, would be:

1.       The Just for Laughs (Juste Pour Rire) Comedy Festival, Montreal, PQ

2.       Crawling through every brewpub along the waterfront of Halifax, NS (SOCIABLE!)

3.       Bumming around Stanley Park/Granville Island, Vancouver, BC

4.       Touring the shops around Whyte Avenue, Edmonton, AB

5.       Visiting the Viking settlement and ruins at Lanse-Aux-Meadows, NF

6.       The Royal Tyrell Museum (thinking of fossils), Drumheller, AB

7.       Canoeing on the South Saskatchewan river from Lake Diefenbacher back to Saskatoon, SK

8.       Tofino Beach on Vancouver Island (the furthest point west in this nation)

9.       Kensington Market, Toronto, ON

10.   Waskesiu, SK (or any lakeside park in the Parkland/Boreal Forest of this province)

Over-Training, The Ex, Cellphones

I shouldn’t be still awake writing this now, but the thought of relaxing outside on the deck by the light of the full moon of this rapidly passing summer appealed to me too much. That, plus some hydrotherapy and stretching of my pelvis and legs perhaps re-invigorated me as well. I’ve been enduring a notably bad training setback. The pain, weakening, and loss of flexibility in my pelvis and left leg appear to be due to a pinched, or irritated, sciatic nerve. Perhaps it’s due to a combination of over-training, and having more lapses of neglecting to use the proper orthotics that I should be wearing. Because it’s been so hot out; I’ve been opting more for cheap sandals instead. My 18 kilometer run last Saturday was followed by me not being able to muster any speed, energy, or endurance for a simple four kilometer run on the next morning. This is not what I need two weeks before my race. I’m now at the mercy of whatever results the chiropractic care I’m scheduled for can provide for me. I hope I have enough resilience and the kind of constitution that would allow me to get fixed up in time.

I’m restricting myself to lighter cross-training for now: like cycling, some core training, and I might even try some swimming, as per a friend’s suggestion. I’m a terrible swimmer; I honestly really don’t know how to do it right. I jokingly tell people that I swim like a drowning cat, but in reality, I’m so bad at it that swimming like a drowning cat would actually be an aspiration for me. I’ll be at a lake for this long weekend, so maybe I’ll be able to try this stunt, if the water out there isn’t too loaded with revolting weeds and algae blooms, or full of hungry leaches. I hope that sleeping on hard ground in a tent won’t irritate the nerve problem more.

Although I haven’t had a chance to do much of the long list of preparation and packing yet, I’m looking forward to this camping trip. I totally need to get out of this town for a while, and have absolutely no commitments. Unfortunately, I return just as the Ex would be getting under way. The extra night time bandstand noise, and throngs of more obnoxious hellraisers and hooligans circulating around the neighbourhood (drawing in the consequential blaring police sirens) get to be a pain in the ass; it’s enough that I have a real literal one to cope with now. It’s also the week of pure terror for Ella whenever the nightly fireworks shows start erupting for the duration of that time. The space underneath my bed becomes her refuge in which to hide, tremble, and whimper for the rest of the week as she is scared silly by the mortars and rockets blasting away, the weird and wild looking sky-born fires and flares, and the resulting percussive shockwaves slamming against the building. In my dog’s mind, this is the end of the world . . . canine Armageddon.

My big advancement is that I purchased an iPhone. I know the newest version of it will be marketed very soon, but I can't see the one I just purchased going instantly obsolete. I chose the iPhone because I already have an iTouch with a familiar interface, also most of my apps that I already see need for are purchased rather than using the extra time and expense of switching over to compatible apps with an Android model. My other cell phone finally calved after more than six years of use, and it's only because it broke down that I was led to replace it. The iPhone is about four generations ahead of my last cellphone. As much as I like technology in general, the cellular phone concept is one that I’ve grown least fond of. It doesn’t even make the top five of my favourite technologies list*. I just don’t want to be available all the time, but just because some people know you have a damn cell phone, some have expectations for you to be so. I call that a leash; not very appealing to someone who prizes independence. In my world, a cell phone (or any phone) is used for getting basic specific details, not for long chats; that’s what social visits, coffee shops and lounges are for. Except for with one close friend, I generally keep phone conversations short, especially on a cell phone. I sure as hell won’t permit a whole detail intensive conversation to be texted to me, nor will I ever allow someone to make me an object of their emotional drama over a phone, or with texts. The nice thing about most LAN line phones is that you can give them a nice hard, authoritative, cathartic slamming down to hang up on an irritating asshole, in the privacy of your own home, and most of these phones can endure it. Do that to your cell and you’ll break the damn expensive thing, adding to the extra embarrassment if you receive and react to such a call within the public eye as one could in this case. I watched some idiot once, freaking out with anger during such a call, after which he then threw down his phone on the sidewalk, smashing it to bits. May God smite me now if there would be ever a time in my life if I’d ever succumb to that degree of impulsive, childish stupidity, and failure of anger management in public. I have a hard time getting over the irony about today’s cell phones being light years ahead in technical superiority over a conventional LAN line phone, yet we expose them to greater risk, bizarre environs and hazards beyond our homes where this thing is more prone to being damaged, or rendered useless by lack of tower coverage, or incidents of losing battery life, or inconvenience of opportunity to recharge them.

Overly-teched out cell phones have made us a lot more socially witless in a lot of ways: the technology outpaces the etiquette to use it. What I hate most about cell phones is that some people think it gives them a free license to be obnoxious, like the example I described earlier. The loudest, most obnoxious people around are the ones with the most annoying blaring and vulgar ringtones, and are the personalities with the least inhibition to take calls in a public setting wherever consideration for silence and attention is demanded.

As much as I've ranted about a my general distaste for cell phones, I do appreciate some of the features I have now that my Wi-Fi enabled iTouch doesn't. Banking, with a visual of my statements, from anywhere now has its appeal. I have a means of GPS navigation should I ever need it, and with all the heightened likelihood of theft, vandalism, and other crimes in the neighbourhood during Ex season, I have a better means and chance of capturing photos and videos for Crimestoppers to collect some reward money. Other than that, the "toy-appeal" of a cell phone is totally lost to me, especially considering that service providers it seems are scheming to find ways to ding you with a charge of some sort for every button you push on them.  

*-In a real emergency though, it might rank number three.