I spent over 3 hours in my car today in principal because there were no public transit options to my remote, suburban destination. That, plus all-day meetings, means that instead of outlining what I'm planning for the weekend—I'll do that tomorrow—I'm just going to line up some articles I want to read:
I now have to pack. Parker will be unhappy with this.
Between my company's work-from-home week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, and the excruciatingly cold weather the week after, this morning was the first time since December 21st.
It turned out that commuting by public transit took exactly the same amount of time as driving to work, but gained me 2,500 additional steps. That's helpful, because in the last 20 days I've missed my step goal 10 times.
Here's to warmer weather and better exercise habits.
My step count over the last week and a half has really suffered. Between Arctic temperatures and working from home (and a dog who hates boots), my average over the last 7 days of 2017 was just 8,441 steps per day. Throughout 2017, I only missed 10k steps 26 times—6 of them between Christmas and New Year's Eve.
This weekend should be warmer, and I'm back in the office this week, so I expect better results going forward. Both yesterday and Monday I hit my 10k goal, and today I'm likely to.
But wow, I hate missing it. I really do.
This time, I'm getting this in early, and posting it automatically just before midnight. So the numbers might be a tiny bit off.
2017 saw almost no significant changes over 2016, except in Fitbit numbers:
- I again only visited one foreign country (again the UK) and 8 states (Michigan, New York, Missouri, Louisiana, Virginia, D.C., Maryland, Texas, and California). I again took only 15 flights. That came out to 31,042 km in the air, one of my lowest showings ever, and the fewest flight miles since 1999. In fact, I didn't fly anywhere for almost the first seven months of 2017. So sad.
- Including this post, I wrote 456 entries for The Daily Parker, down only 3 from last year. For the second year running, it's the fewest since 2010.
- Parker got 202 hours of walks, just shy of last year's 211 hours. That's not so bad, but we can do better next year (if the old dog is up to it).
- Pending today's final step count, I got 5,106,522 steps this year, up a whopping 413,095 over 2016—a difference greater than the number I've gotten in any of the past 4 months. So, basically, my step count in 2017 was almost a month's steps better than in 2016 or 2015. No wonder I wore out a pair of shoes between May and November.
- I also gained 600 grams in 2017. Pfft.
- 2017 may be my most disappointing year for reading in a long time. I only started 17 books, and only finished 13. I've just been really busy. That said, the circumstances that encouraged me to finish 47 books in 2007 and 52 in 2008 aren't any I'd like to repeat. (Now, if I could just find a way to read a book a week without interfering with all my other activities...)
Here's 2016 in review. It was similar.
Parker hasn't felt like himself for a couple of days now. Last night after our Messiah performance I had the delightful experience of cleaning up after him for the third time in one day.
This morning he seems a lot better. We had a normal walk with normal, ah, results, and he snarfed down his entire breakfast the way he usually does.
I still have one more Messiah performance today, so he'll have to be by himself for a few hours. I hope he's fine. Because I'm running out of Nature's Miracle, and don't even get me started on how the house smells.
The good news: After being off his food for two days, Parker seems to be feeling better. He ate a small breakfast and a small lunch, and we've just gotten back from a 25-minute walk that he seemed to enjoy.
The bad news: His food is shooting through him with a velocity I have not often seen, so I've gone through two rolls of paper towels just today.
I'm about to leave my house for several hours to perform Händel's Messiah (for, I believe, the 8th time), so Sir Poopsalot will be confined to a small area of the house that has tile floors.
Meanwhile, I'll have a fan running in my living room. In December. I just hope the temperature stays above freezing until I get back, or my gas bill will be insane.
The first proto-blog post on braverman.org hit the Internet on 13 May 1998. (And it was a joke. Literally.) This is the 6,000th since then.
And every single one of them is here.
(The count of actual blog posts is now 5,804, starting from this site becoming an actual blog on 9 November 2005.)
Yesterday started with a performance on local television and ended with a three-hour rehearsal and midnight showing of Star Wars. I'd already planned to go into work late today, but Parker didn't eat dinner last night and he refused breakfast this morning, so I'm waiting to see if I can get him to the vet.
With that and other things up for grabs today, plus two more performances this weekend, posting might suffer a bit.
Then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
—Roger Waters
I spend almost all my time in cities with world-class public transport systems. San Francisco is one of them. And yet there are odd gaps.
Today I discovered, at 6:45 am, that I was not, in fact, going to take BART to the airport, as it didn't actually start running for more than an hour.
I mean, really, San Francisco.