Tag Archives: WSJ

Travel Day

04 Saturday Feb 2012

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The blizzard Friday didn’t change my day much.  Weather doesn’t impact a basement commute.  But having Ellie home from school all day sort of made it feel like a Saturday. I laundered clothes throughout the day and started packing after dinner.  I don’t travel much anymore but I’m still fairly efficient at it.  Except I couldn’t find my Garmin or my Nikon’s mini USB cable.  I did find my IBM badge.  Could have used that for my Wednesday afternoon meeting at the Diagonal data center.

I lost my focus packing and gave up once I had all the clothes cleaned and folded.  Figuring I had time in the morning to pack, I sat down to listen to a Diana Krall playlist with Karen.  We sat until about 11:30 in front of the fire while the snow continued to fall – Karen sipping her white, me quaffing my red.  600 flights had been cancelled out at DIA but I assumed I’d be good to go in the morning.  The shuttle was scheduled to pick me up at 8am.

I had time to read the Journal in the morning before the van showed up at the curb.  Karen woke up to send me off with a hug and kiss.  She’ll be a single working parent for the next three weeks.  Today even she’ll be driving Ellie to an activity in Boulder at 11am, which she’ll do every Saturday while I am gone.  Ellie’s activity is 2 hours and Karen intends to go to the studio to work on her Zumba routines.  She’s teaching now a 30 minute class every Monday-Wednesday-Friday in Louisville.  She only has a few students to date but expects the class to grow quickly.

The shuttle driver was talkative.  I’d guess him for about 70 years old.  He had no reluctance in asking all about my trip.  Told him I was visiting my mom and he wanted to know her age, then her health.  Guessing this guy isn’t in tune to HIPAA.  The only way to keep from giving up my SSN and bank pin code was to start asking him questions. Found out his brother is 79 and a long haul truck driver for 40 years. Maybe I’m just more in tune to old people right now, but this guy is old and working.  His brother is older and working.  I stopped by McDonalds as the van exchanged me to the bus and a lady easily of retirement age served me at the counter.  Are old people refusing to retire or am I just overly sensitive given my trip to visit my mom?  They must be hedging their bets in case Romney gets elected and takes away their safety net.

I rode on a bus from the Interstate the rest of the way to DIA.  I was surprised to discover this bus had wifi with a great signal.  Nice.  I took full advantage using my iPhone.  My next surprising observation was as I sat down at the Southwest gate.  Absolutely everyone within sight who had a laptop had an Apple MacBook.  Hmm.

Seating on Southwest is a free-for-all and I got the aisle seat in the first row and no one took the middle seat.  I ordered a Bloody Mary and finished my Saturday edition of Barrons.  Then I started a new piece of fiction on my Kindle – Fear Index.  Good read. After reading 15%, I set it aside for a song writers’ genius playlist and listened wearing my Marshall headphones while drinking a second Bloody Mary.  I was relaxed and feeling pretty good by the time the flight landed in Austin (ten minutes late) and my brother picked me up outside the baggage claim area.  The weather here is cool and comfortable.  Karen called me to let me know I should crash my brother-in-law’s Super Bowl party on Sunday.  Sounds like a plan.

Middle Aged Prime

14 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by in Running

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I forget the context but a friend on facebook recently called me middle age.  Ray called me a couple of other things too which I didn’t debate but I did ask him to define middle age.  He responded over 40.  Hmm.  Then I read a story in the WSJ this morning on mid life crises and related nuances of my age.  What’s weird to me is that I just never feel it.  Of course I’m middle age but I don’t spend much time looking at myself and if it weren’t for the reminders like my symphysis pubis arthritis and friends like Ray, I’d be oblivious to it.

But now I’m thinking about it.  I guess that’s what you do with all the free time available to us pending seniors.  But Honey Badger don’t care.  Honey Badger don’t give a shit.  I find it ironic, and not the least bit vain, that Karen and I are in better shape than we were ten years ago.  That’s less true about Karen because she’s been good about maintaining her shape over the years.  She never let herself go as far as I did.  Friends and family constantly inform me that Karen looks so young for her age.  Perhaps because I tend to consider this a backwards compliment, I respond on how the 2′ x 7′ foot slab of double vanity granite in our master bath is a virtual shrine to the mid-life industrial complex.

With my preoccupation over the thought of middle age building, I did what any other average 49 year old with 4 wifi servers in his house would do – I googled middle aged runners.  I came across this cool blog that has a similar theme as mine but the writer probably does a better job at chronicling his races.  And apparently he runs faster than me.  But not by much and reading it motivated me to get in a good workout today.

I’m actually fine with the direction the second half of my life is taking.  I seem to be improving upon my areas of interest.  I’m reading more.  I’m focusing more on trading which for me is more about enjoying a hobby than about planning for retirement.  And Karen and I both are clearly putting much more time into fitness.  Karen doesn’t run, she’s my tiny dancer.  She likes to dance as an aerobics instructor.  This is not something one makes money at – trust me.  You can argue you’re not paying for a gym membership, but the appeal of teaching is that the time spent making a playlist, choreographing the routine and practicing serves as a much more intense and satisfying fitness experience.  Karen taught Jazzercise for over 5 years and has now moved on to teaching Zumba.  She compares them by describing Jazzercise as aerobics with a dance flair to it while Zumba is dance with an aerobics quality.  She favors Zumba.

So after having thought about what I’m doing in my middle years, I’m happy.  That I’m actually becoming more fit each year as I age is a blessing.  I feel fortunate.  The last few years of returning to racing and hiking in the mountains is like reliving the best times of my youth.  It’s a fantasy really.  I’m good with it.

The Bar Code Diet

10 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Running

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The new year has gone off like a gun shot.  Work is in full sprint with 12 hour days, lunch at my desk, and leaving little time for running.  But I’m catching up on my fitness regimen.  I got in 3 days in a row over the weekend.  And I started situps and light weights.  I feel my tone returning.  More importantly I believe I’ve established some diet discipline to counter the re-emergence of my belly over the holidays.  I’m limiting myself to only a single beer per day.

This is not to say I only drink a single alcoholic beverage per day.  I’m not insane.  I’m starting with some beer discipline and will expand into wine if warranted.  I will say not all beer, wine and spirits are the same in terms of calories.  I know this because I’ve started to scan the bar codes on bottles for their calories with my food scanner iPhone app.  Many beers are probably not as bad as you think.  A Guinness is only 126 calories.  And yet my scan of bar codes on several spirits showed that many and more for a glass of whiskey or gin.  Certainly more once you add tonic or other fillers.  Don’t think you’re sparing calories simply because you avoid beer.

I haven’t actually scanned my wines.  This is because I receive my vino in monthly cases as part of the WSJ wine-of-the-month club and those bottles don’t come with bar codes.  Or QR codes which are the more graphical equivalents like you see on the tomato in the picture above.  That one translates to “organic” in case you are interested.  From what I know, every type of alcoholic beverage adds up to roughly 100 calories.  Light beers might be less but most other drinks are perhaps closer to 125 calories.  Let’s not even talk about a frozen rita.

Point is that at 49 I have to both diet and workout if I hope to lose any weight.  I gained 10 lbs. at the end of 2011 and need to be back down to 180 for the Moab Half Marathon in March.  Which is totally doable, but not by simply wishing it.  I think I’m on track.  I feel like the discipline is in place now and it’s just a matter of time before I start seeing results.