These aren’t just from the past month and half of my inadvertent Tumblr silence, but they cover some very important areas of my life (namely field trips, special events, and food and beverages)
Q1 numbers
- 139 miles run
- 13 books read (plus two listened)
- 5 improv shows performed
- 3 instances of jet-setting
- 2 weddings attended
- 1 childhood home sold
Ranking All 27 Seasons of The Real World
I am pleased with myself with regards to how unfamiliar I am with many of these seasons as it counteracts my over-familiarity with seasons one through ten (though I’m pleasantly surprised that I’ve forgotten that even some of those people existed and hope the place in my brain that once held that information has been filled with something besides rap lyrics). I am also shocked and pleased that my favorite London is in the top ten.
omissions to note (though it is exhaustive and captures many important items) - no mention of:
- the night two residents of San Diego were arrested
- “my friend is having an emergency in the front seat” (Chicago)
- Neil’s tongue incident or his receipt of a pig’s heart for Valentine’s Day (London)
- cornfan (two things) (NY)
If you don’t have the patience to read to the whole thing, the take on Miami is excellent and makes me miss it. That was some good TV there. Also, know that this line from the Philadelphia description is my favorite sentence of the day: “I know you’re incredibly surprised that the season that prominently featured scabies is ranking so low.”
full disclosure: I am mostly going to Iceland to find this landscape from the Sigur Ros documentary that I loved so much that I screenshot it.
Coach Magness and I had been previously unacquainted but beginning today we are in a relationship wherein I likely curse his existence up to six times per week (possibly more if we count pre-run anxiety, post-run soreness, tension over when to fit in a run, etc.).
My running hiatus and I probably have no business with a PR-focused training plan, but we’re going to go for it anyway. I don’t want to go and run too fast through Banff and miss the sights, but I don’t think that’s really ever an issue when one is running at most 7 mph.
I would advise others undertaking such a pursuit to not have your first week of training fall on a 7-day period wherein you have committed to things every weeknight and then are flying to a place where it will be, yes, lovely, but also warmer than you’re currently accustomed to and at one point, you’ll find yourself on an island that is a mere 7 miles long by 700 feet wide (in a turn of good fortune only having to run 6 miles though — and the whole being-on-an-island thing). For reverse extra credit, have your first run be your first morning run in a very long time, necessitated by the aforementioned after-work schedule, and fall on the first workday following Daylight Savings Time’s start, which means it’s suddenly dark when you wake up to run. (This is not firsthand knowledge — I’m assuming that what they say about it having been bright out an hour earlier as recently as Saturday is not a lie.) Don’t worry — it will be cloudy so you can’t even take a braggy Instagram of the sun rising over Manhattan.
See you in 15 weeks Canada.
things the internet told me about that I have enjoyed in the near-recent past
Some no-doubt lovely people around the internet pointed me in the direction of these items and for that I am grateful.
- I was delighted to realize that the two articles in New York Magazine that had been referenced (probably 11 years ago now) were both in an issue I possess as part of a neglected subscription and I finally got to read them while bicycling at the gym: 202 Minutes with the Busy, Glitzy Bronfmans and How Did Susan Miller Become the Go-To Astrologer for the New York Fashion Set? (uh, actual title; favorite line: “My notes from our interviews are intercut with panicky scribbles like I have no idea what she’s talking about.”)
- this article on Tough Mudder isn’t faultless but does a better job at getting to the thing that has always bugged me about these events (I can’t act like I don’t like questionable activities, but I prefer my torture of the universally accepted and sanctioned by something other than a group of people looking to inflict pain upon others variety), possibly best summed up by this: “It’s just three hours of horrible things happening to you for a few seconds at a time. In other words, it’s carefully orchestrated harassment.”
- SoundGecko is my new boo, as someone who opens up tabs of things to read all day long and then stresses about getting to all of them. It converts text to voice and lets me listen to at least some of them while I’m walking to the train (providing a procrastination method from listening to this 34-hour-long behemoth of an audio book in the form of items such as my March Susan Miller horoscope)
- current favorite Instagram account is naturally this Japanese toddler and his best friend the bulldog
I have found one reason why that Google search thing that comes up on the right side of the results page is a positive development.
