Again, with the light week. You’d think I was getting lazy, but you’d be wrong. Mrs. Blocletters and I went to the U.P. When I wasn’t getting ready for the trip this week, I was actually on it.
This week’s rundown:
Total: 9 miles. More this week. I promise.
On a recent trip to my hometown I stayed up late with family rummaging through old photographs and bottles of wine. The whole experience left me thinking about connections and roots, and I’m edging toward taking on a family tree project.
As I think about all of these branches, the complexity of such a project almost overwhelms me. I followed a couple branches in a brief interview with my mother, and came up with more than two dozen people. That covers just first cousins, my mom and her brothers and sisters, and my maternal grandparents. One thing quickly became clear: This project can be started, but never finished.
That got me thinking about scope. Where do I want to take this? The most important limb to follow for me, right now, runs through my maternal grandparents to their parents. Tracking down important names, faces and dates through that generation should keep me busy for a while.
I ordered Genealogy Online for Dummies from the local library with the hopes that it can offer tips to focus my efforts. I find myself asking questions like, do I need to keep track of relatives’ religious affiliations? How do I handle second marriages? What about children from earlier marriages? Hopefully, reading up can help me learn to track and file all of these kernels.
If either of my readers has taken on genealogy project, do drop me a line. Tell me about your efforts — what mistakes you’ve make, what successes you’ve had. I’d love to hear about them.
I eased back after last week’s high mileage. On Tuesday or Wednesday I started a run, only to have some tendon or another give me shooting pain after about eight blocks. After that, I only got one run in for the week:
Better luck next week.
It took a while, but I finally met my next running goal: clocking more than 26 miles in a week. Here’s the breakdown:
Grand total: 27 miles. Rock. On.
Which brings me to the next goal — running a 13-mile trial run for the half marathon I’m training for. I expect to do that sometime this month.
Again, a light week. I would have added a third run on Saturday, but had to split town to attend a family reunion. Here’s the breakdown:
Total: 13.5 miles. The 9-miler went well. It took just shy of 90 minutes, but I think the ol’ bod’s getting used to the stress of longer runs.
I got cat-called about six miles into a nine-mile run yesterday. A quick whistle, followed by an “Ooh, baby!” slipped out of the window of a passing car as I plodded down Coolidge.
Surely, the outburst must have come from a sarcastic place. When it’s 80 degrees, I run with my shirt off — baring my pale, skinny, sweaty glory to the world. I doubt I’m impressing anyone. But, if it was earnest … um, thanks.
My two readers probably long ago tired of posts about running, but I did a tally last night that blew my mind and I wanted to crow. I’ve tracked my mileage weekly here now for five weeks, and in that time I’ve logged just under 95 miles.
Ninety. Five. Miles.
Whoa! That one deserves an exclamation point. That’s about the distance from my home in Huntington Woods to my hometown of Saginaw.
Again, I had an abbreviated running week. On the bright side, one of the two runs I managed to squeeze in raised my personal best by two miles. The breakdown:
Total: 16 miles.
The 11-miler just kind of happened. I hadn’t planned it; I just started out that morning, and kept feeling more into it the farther I ran. To get to 11, I began with one of my standard laps around the neighborhood (a hair over 2 miles). After that, I cruised east into downtown Royal Oak, headed north on Main to Crooks, turned west on 12 Mile, and then headed south along Coolidge back to my ‘hood (a 6.75-mile course). Once in the ‘hood again, I did a little victory lap (an addition just-over 2 miles). Bingo.
Afterward, my calves burned. I stretched a bit, but the tenderness lasted into Friday. That’s it. Just Friday. I blasted past my previous best of 9 miles, and it didn’t tear me up. I’m so close to that half marathon, I can amost see the finish line.
I’ve been on iPhone’s 2.0 firmware for a week, and have had plenty of time to try out a few Apps. My favorite so far is Zenbe Lists.
Though I desperately need an organizational scheme, I find that my life doesn’t quite rise to the level of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done.” I’ve read the book, and like some of the ideas — particularly the concepts of simplicity and capture. I need a simple system to capture thoughts when I have them. Otherwise, they float away. If you’ve seen “Memento”, you get the idea. I’m not quite tattooing to-dos on my body (yet), but I do have a terrible short-term memory.
Which brings me to Zenbe Lists. The App does one thing well: lists. Create them. Share them. Email them. Embed them. As a bonus, the App syncs quickly over the 2.5G network. Mrs. Blocletters can update the grocery list or the Tar-jay list from her work computer (and eventually, her own iPhone). When I get to the store, I just need a couple seconds to sync to make sure I get the latest. As I check things off, another sync updates the Web site so she can see what I bought.
The interface defines intuitive and easy to use. On the iPhone, three taps get me to entering a new item in any list. On the Web site, it’s even easier.
Since I bought my iPhone last fall, I’ve used Notes for these functions. But, as others have written and I’ve mumbled to myself, Notes doesn’t sync anywhere. Sharing? Forget it.
So, Zenbe Lists fills a niche. It’s more feature-rich than Notes and still intuitive and easy-to-use. Now, as always, the only thing standing between me and organization is me.
For your reading pleasure, a try this item from the Freakonomics blog on the New York Times site. The kernel: Price and quality of wine do not necessarily go hand in hand.
I’m not a wine snob by any means. Nor am I particularly educated about wine. But, I know what I like. And I like Charles Shaw varieties from Trader Joe’s as much as many more expensive wines I’ve had. Plus, at $3 a bottle, I’m not going broke to support any kind of wine habit. I’ll drink to that.