Interesting Times

There is a saying, attributed to the Chinese, that goes: “May you live in interesting times”. Basically, it is a curse that elegantly acknowledges that one of the things that people require for prosperity and happiness is the stability that comes with a schedule packed with uneventful, mundane, boring ol' stuff.

BTW, it is interesting that you only have to type the words “may you” into Google for the top suggestion to pop up with that exact saying. Fun.

I am not going to get into the details. Those of you that know, know. This is basically a note (like this whole blog, really) to Future Me that things are less than boring right now and that I shouldn't forget that once boring times return. This is also why I have not been posting so much lately – it's hard to get in the groove, you know? – but I wanted to throw something out there.

How bad is it? You remember the line from A Princess Bride that goes “Good night, Wesley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning”? It would be a huge improvement to live with that kind of stability...

Well, no, not really. Certainly not the “threat of death” part. That would kind of suck, and is not at all what I am trying to convey here, so just calm down. It's supposed to be a funny quote, and I liked it better than using a creepy Sword of Damocles reference.

It will all be cool again in time.

So... what have I been doing with my bad self?

Well, I finally finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo. It is a fantastic book, but I probably would not have started it, though, if I had realized it was, like, 1,300 pages long. The Kindle doesn't give “page numbers” since the font size can be varied. All I knew is that the “percent complete” number was changing very slowly but, by the time I realized how long it was I was hooked.

It is funny and has an appropriately happy ending. Well, happy for four of the people in it, at least... Everyone else kinda gets their backsides handed to them by a patient, vengeful, relentless, multi-billionaire/master-of-disguise/polyglot/expert swordsman/marksman. The protagonist dishes out revenge Terminator-style... assuming the Terminator decided to dispatch its targets using an unlimited credit card, scathing sarcasm, a flair for the dramatic, and light opera instead of just delivering a hyperalloy fist to the skull.

What else...

I stopped tracking distance-per-half-hour for my treadmill workouts and started skipping the “walking” parts of my run-walk-run strategy. I am now up to 15 continuous minutes running at 6.2 mph, and the rest of the time is done at 4.5 mph at a 10 degree incline. I am probably not going to be ready for the St. Patrick's Day 5K here but the weather is going to start warming up enough soon to take the runs outside so we will see.

Blog back to old form soon.